As Sofie prepared for bed that night - across the hall from Justin, in case he needed her - she congratulated herself on a day well spent. This was much, much better than killing him!

Ironically, the only reason she hadn't killed him was that Ben had beaten her to it.

It was, in truth, Clayton Jones who'd "clobbered" Stroud. (Lies came easily to Sofie.) The newly empowered Sofie had shot Jonesy with Stroud's gun, rather than waste time arguing with him. She'd driven back to New Canaan with every intention of murdering the man she now knew was her hated, rapist father.

But frightened New Canaanites - still milling about, late at night - had told her about the wild goings-on at the carnival. No two accounts were identical, but there was general agreement that Justin had last been seen either entering or leaving the largest tent, in pursuit of a "healer" called Benjamin St. John. Later, there had been a terrifying display of lightning, which climaxed when it struck and consumed the landmark tree on the hill.

Until then, Sofie hadn't had a clue as to whether Ben and the later-arrived carnival had gotten together. Since Ben believed Justin had killed his father, and he hadn't come to New Canaan to save her from Justin, it was a safe guess that he'd come to try to assassinate him. It was an equally safe guess that Samson and company hadn't shown up by coincidence. What was less clear was whether they'd come to help Ben, or stop him.

The Benjamin St. John story had given her the answer to that question, and many more. With her new understanding that she and Justin were, for want of a better term, Beings of Power, she could see that Ben was one too, albeit of a different kind. All the signs were there. He'd been performing real healings in that tent - and Justin's misadventure on the Ferris wheel told her why he'd been doing it. He and Justin had fought. And whether or not Ben had survived, Justin had undoubtedly met the same fate as the tree that was his symbol.

Ben did me a favor, she reflected as she slipped into her nightie. Though I didn't appreciate it at the time.

Her first reaction had been fury at being cheated out of her revenge. But with her intended victim already lying dead somewhere, she had to slow down and think. She'd been given time to attune herself to her newly discovered inner nature...to absorb more knowledge of that nature...and finally, to weigh her options regarding Justin in light of what she'd learned.

She could choose to do nothing. Leave him dead. He had, after all, died an utter failure. He'd spend eternity in Hell, not as the honored lord he should have been, but shamed and disgraced.

She could bring him back to life (at the cost of killing someone else, she'd realized with a shrug) in order to have the satisfaction of killing him herself. His lot in Hell after that humiliation would be even worse.

Or she could bring him back to life and let him stay alive.

Was there any conceivable reason why she should do that?

Oh, yes. Much as she hated him, there was.

The most significant truth she'd discovered about herself was that she possessed power. She didn't have to be a victim all her life. Didn't have to be persecuted or patronized, held prisoner or protected.

She possessed power. And with every passing hour, she craved more.

The exercise of power in bringing Justin back to life would be a thrill in itself. But beyond that, she sensed that if he was alive only by her sufferance, she'd be able - in time - to establish herself as dominant. To control him, and through him, his legions of followers. Why go to the bother of building a movement from scratch when she could manipulate an existing one from behind the scenes, and at some point, inherit it?

She had no idea what she'd do with "legions of followers," or a "movement." That was irrelevant. Power was a goal in itself.

But even so, she thought now, I might not have brought him back if I hadn't foreseen what would happen later. She snickered. I really should send a thank-you note to Ben!

All her inner self had been able to tell her was that she could restore a dead person to life by killing someone else. In the end, she'd reached out with her mind and killed Stroud - who really had been incapacitated by a fractured skull, but only died in the instant before Justin came back to life. (Before she "found" Stroud's body in the company of those Knights, she'd driven out to the shed alone to hide Jonesy's. A dead Clayton Jones couldn't have been explained as anything but a carny who'd tried to rescue her, and that wouldn't have jibed with her claim that her former "family" had spurned her. But there had been no sign of Jonesy, living or dead: she'd concluded that she hadn't killed him, and he'd been able to walk away.)

The formula was simple. Kill one person, revive another. But while she was debating whether to do it, she'd remembered snippets of carnival gossip, and another tidbit she knew to be fact. For the first time, she saw how the pieces fit together.

For weeks after the fire that had claimed her mother (who'd started it in an attempt to kill her), she'd been too distracted by her own life crisis to pay attention to anything else. But she'd eventually heard that at the time of the fire, Ruthie had been desperately ill as the result of a snakebite. Gabriel had supposedly told people that Ben had helped nurse her through it. Other gossip held that Ben and Ruthie had been an "item" at the time, though the relationship had later cooled.

A strange coincidence: Lodz had disappeared on the night of the fire - which was also the night Ruthie's fever broke. From the beginning, there were rumors that Ben had killed him. Lodz had taken a peculiar interest in Ben (the least prurient theory being that he thought the youth had latent psychic ability, and wanted to help him develop it). Whatever his motives, Ben had regarded his "interest" as harassment. Lodz and Ruthie were enemies, if only because of that. And for all the months Ben had been with Carnivale before Lodz's disappearance, he'd owned only one ratty shirt, borrowing others when it was being washed. That infamous shirt had "disappeared" on the same night as Lodz...and the rumor mill attributed its disappearance to bloodstains.

When Sofie looked back on that now, the truth was crystal clear. Ruthie had died, and Ben had killed Lodz to restore her to life. He'd taken care to choose someone whose absence wouldn't trouble Ruthie any more than it would him.

But there was more to the story - more, probably, than Ben himself knew. Ruthie had told Sofie that for months after her supposed brush with death (she undoubtedly hadn't realized it was more than that), she'd had an unwanted ability to see ghosts!

Sofie was still smiling as she closed and locked her bedroom door. (She might go to Justin - to coddle and comfort him. But not for sex, never for sex. And she'd vowed never to allow him in her room.)

That was bad enough for Ruthie. Just as I expected, it's ten times worse for Justin, because he's being plagued by the ghosts of men he killed.

One day of it, and he's already a basket case. By the time the ghost-viewing wears off, his sanity may be past saving. An excellent revenge!

And of course, the poor thing is going to find himself hopelessly dependent on me.

She was about ready for bed. But there was one last thing to be done, here in the privacy of her room. She'd been putting it off, letting the anticipation build.

She reached under her mattress, and pulled out the carefully wrapped blade of Ben's dagger. A handy thing to have, since a day would surely come when she'd want to rid herself of Justin! But at the moment, she had a non-lethal use for it.

To prick the tip of one of her fingers.

When she licked the drop of blood away, she found that blue blood tasted exactly the same as red.

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The End