"Are you really going to eat that?" Weezy said, eyeing Eddie's thick pastrami on rye. "All of it?"

He smiled. "Every freakin' bite."

Weezy shook her head. If the meat wasn't stacked a full two inches, it was close. She looked around at the Lower East Side kosher deli Eddie had chosen - Moishe's on Second Avenue.

"How'd you find this place?" she said as he took a great-white bite. He had a sublet in the West Village, on the opposite side of the island.

He chewed, swallowed, and sipped his Pepsi One.

"I wander the city most of the day. I mean, nothing else to do. I wandered in here for breakfast once and liked it."

"Youse folks okay here?" said a high-pitched, cigarette-scorched voice with an aggressive Brooklyn accent.

Weezy studied their waitress. She looked seventy and was built like Olive Oyl, but with a widow's hump and hair the color of a caution light. She seemed to have a pot of coffee grafted to her hand. Her name tag read Sally and her eye makeup was a wonder - a rainbow of blue hues applied like spackle.

"We're doing great," Weezy told her.

"You ain't touched your lox. Eat up. You never know when you're gonna get to eat again."

As Sally wandered away in search of needy coffee cups, Weezy forked a piece of the salmon into her mouth. She wasn't particularly hungry. Not after seeing the Lady pierce herself with that sword.

She nodded at Eddie who'd just taken another huge bite. "I don't think you'll have to eat again for a week."

She noticed he'd gained some weight since she'd last seen him, though nothing like the Pugsley pudginess of his teen years. He was either letting his sandy hair grow longer or hadn't bothered to get it cut.

"Still working out?"

He shrugged. "What's the point?"

"Same point as before, I guess."

"For what?" he said with some heat. "I played by all the rules, Weez. I slimmed down, I got in shape, I worked hard, gave good value to my clients. And where did it get me? I had to abandon my business, I'm afraid to go back to my house, I'm subletting a roach-infested apartment. What went wrong?"

He'd never been the type to feel sorry for himself. Maybe he was simply bored and frustrated. Either way, she would let him answer his own question.

"I think you know what went wrong."

He sighed. "Yeah. I joined the Order."

Bull's-eye.

They'd discussed this before but she'd never gotten a satisfactory answer.

"Why, Eddie?"

He shrugged. "At the time it was, 'Why not?'" He raised a hand as she opened her mouth to reply. "I know, I know. You always categorized it as one of the sinister forces in the world, one of the powers guiding the Secret History. But do you know how that sounds to the average person?"

"Yeah. Crazy. Plus I did have my emotional problems, and I was diagnosed as manic-depressive, so I don't blame you one bit for dismissing what I said."

"It went beyond dismissing, you know. I got to the point where if you said something was black, I'd assume it was white."

She felt her throat tighten and her eyes fill. She blinked back tears.

Eddie reached across and covered her hand. "I'm sorry, Weez. I didn't mean - "

"No-no. It's okay. It wasn't just you. Mom and Dad were the same, and the kids in school. Every time I opened my mouth, eyes would roll. Finally I simply shut up. And now..."

"Now you know you were right all along."

"And wish I weren't. I wish this were all the product of a mind careening out of control due to a screwed-up soup of neurotransmitters." She squeezed his hand. "But Eddie, it's worse and more fantastic than I ever suspected."

He frowned. "More fantastic? How - ?"

"Trust me?" She squeezed his hand harder. "I'm saying it's black."

He hesitated a heartbeat, then nodded. "Then black it is. How black?"

Weezy closed her eyes and swallowed a sob of joy. Breakthrough. Her brother believed her ... finally believed her.

"Black-hole black."

He shook his head. "That book of yours - "

"The Compendium of Srem."

"Yeah, that. There's nothing else in the world like it. That was a clue. And then the Order turning against me."

"They were never for you."

"Pretty obvious now, but they come on so benign, with such a seductive line. All the movers and shakers belong, and you can belong too - if you qualify."

Weezy nodded. "That's the grabber."

"Damn right it is. Appeals to the elitism in all of us. And it's not a marketing tool. You really do have to qualify. They put you through a rigorous vetting that lots of people don't pass."

"'Many are called but few are chosen.'"

"You're quoting Jesus now?"

She shrugged. "Whatever fits."

"Well, whatever their criteria, I was chosen. I look back and can't believe I let them brand me. That's how seductive it is. I spent six years in blissful ignorance until..."

"Until I upset the apple cart."

"Turned on the light is more like it." He shook his head again. "The Order was going to kill me."

Right ... bad enough Eddie had learned something he wasn't supposed to know, he'd mentioned it to the wrong person.

He added, "They would have if Jack hadn't interfered."

Weezy had to smile. "He's very good at interfering."

Had it been only two weeks?

"You should have seen him, Weez. He beat the crap out of some guy named Szeto, then killed the guy who was driving me on my one-way trip. I mean, killed him like you or I would swat a fly."

"Well, the driver was trying to shoot you."

"I know that." He barked a brittle laugh. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not being the least bit critical. You'd told me he'd killed to protect you, but the image wouldn't stick. Then I saw him in action and he was ... the best way I can put it is coldly efficient. It was like someone else had taken over."

Weezy nodded. "He's able to do that. It's like he has a switch that can turn off every emotion and allow him to do what has to be done without hesitation."

"Well, I don't have that, but I do want to get involved."

"In what?"

"In getting in the Order's way. They've made a mess of my life, so I'd like to return the favor."

A part of Weezy immediately disliked this. The last time he'd been proactive hadn't turned out so well.

"I don't know, Eddie..."

He leaned forward. "Why not? You don't think I can be useful?"

"You're maybe a little too emotionally involved."

"I'm an actuary, Weez." He tapped a temple. "A numbers guy. I can be dispassionate, especially about probabilities."

"But you have no idea of the scope of what we're up against. The Order is just the tip of the tip of an unimaginable iceberg. Meanwhile, humanity, existence as we know it, is sunning itself on the decks of the Titanic."

He frowned. "'Humanity' ... 'existence as we know it'?"

She sensed a reflexive doubt.

"Listen to me, Eddie: It's black."

He hesitated, then nodded. "Okay. Black. I accept that it's black because I trust you. But you never take things simply on faith, so don't expect me to. You need to educate me."

She wished he could have been at the Lady's just a little while ago. Seeing that flap of skin melt into her back ... that would have been a combination education and big-time doubt eraser.

She tapped her backpack. "I've got the Compendium. I'm going to give you a crash course in the Conflict."

"The Conflict?"

"With an uppercase C." She looked around. "But not here. Eat up and we'll go to your apartment. We'll start with the First Age."

He frowned. "That little black pyramid you found as a kid ... you said it was from some First Age."

"It was, Eddie. It's all connected. Everything is connected."

Wait till she told him about the Otherness and the Ally and the Lady - he'd grown up knowing her as Mrs. Clevenger - and all the rest. The big question: Would he be able to handle the fact that he and the rest of humanity were property?