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Alone forever, unless she found the Omegahedron and returned with it to Argo City. Unless? she thought. Unless she found the Omegahedron? No. She would find it. She must find it.
    While Nigel trudged one way on the gravel road above the lake and Kara another, Selena returned joyfully home to her best companion, friend, and favorite boot-licker, Bianca.
    Home was a Ghost Train on the midway of a bleak, deserted carnival grounds. Outside, the Ghost Train was, as Ghost Trains ought to be, spooky. Inside, this cozy little den was mostly musty, usually dusty, always windowless, and completely cluttered with great massive chunks of furniture and a vast assortment of battered old carnival artifacts. Wherever the eye landed, there was something else to muse over—streaky fun-house mirrors, a garishly painted canvas backdrop of a dimpled, elephantine fat lady in a little pink tutu, piles of pink-and-green plastic kewpie dolls, and a fortune-telling machine made in the shape of a demented hag with two long teeth jutting out from withered gums. Home is where the heart is. Selena was home.
    "Beeeeeeeeeee-an-ca," she called. "I'm here. Show your face, darling. I have a sur-priiiiise!" Cradling the glowing Omegahedron in one arm, Selena pulled off her little mink-lined jacket, then rummaged through the foot-high mess of papers, cards, beads, dice, and stale doughnuts on her desk until she found what she was looking for.
    The Coffer of Shadow.
    "Ahhh." Selena sighed contentedly. The darling little ugly thing. How sweetly repulsive! How delightfully sickening! It was an ornate, complex box made of dead birds, chicken bones, and various other foul matters. Just as she had cleverly thought, it was exactly the right size for—oh, dear, what should she call this little toy in her arms? The Thing? The It? The Presence? Never mind. A thing by any other name . . . She closed the cover of the Coffer of Shadow over the Omegahedron.
    "You called me?" Bianca trotted into the room. Where Selena wore white, Bianca wore black. Where Selena was tall and regal, Bianca was short, chunky, and loyal. "I figure," she said, waving around her cigarette holder, "the only way we're gonna, like, pay our bills next month is, like, just go ahead and, you know, start our own coven."
    "No longer necessary."
    "I was reading in this book, the Witchs' Basic Guide , that if you, like, start a coven, you can charge five bucks a head admission."
    "Chicken feed," Selena said, starting for the refrigerator.
    "Where's little Nigel?" Bianca followed her.
    "Nigel, my dear Bianca is—history. . . . The water department and their nasty bills are history. The car payments are history. The mortgage payments are history."
    "How about the property taxes?"
    "History." Gripping the Coffer of Shadow in one hand, Selena rummaged in the refrigerator with the other.
    Bianca stared at her bemusedly. "We won the lottery? We finally hit it? We got lucky?"
    "Luck" Selena chuckled serenely. " Bad luck. I—have—been—chosen. The Powers of Darkness at long last have come to their senses."
    High above the earth, Supergirl flew through the night. Her flight was steadier than her daytime flight, less ebullient, less playful, but strong and satisfying, and in some ways even more enchanting than the looping, swooping play with the sun. This was private, intense, almost prayerful, a flight in which she spoke to the night and it answered her. She flew over the great silver shields of lakes, over long strings of jeweled highways, and the glowing night skyscrapers of Chicago . . .
    Later . . . much later . . . a deserted street in the small town of Midvale, the stores shuttered, the only light a pale glow from a streetlamp. The silence of a town at rest . . . then Supergirl landing in the middle of the street, lightly and gracefully. Tired now, wondering where she was going to sleep. She had hardly eaten all day. And when was she going to start thinking seriously about her life here? She couldn't just