Whether Pemberton was his Christian name or a street name, I had no idea, but I'd interacted with him several times while making my way through the neighborhood in disguise and had always been tickled by the way he carried himself.

I've never been the maternal type. I have not once had the impulse to mother children, nor have I had even the faintest regret of being unable to do so. I am what I am, and I like what I am. In honesty, children are an annoyance. They are little more to my eye than small, irresponsible humans.

But every once in a great while, I would meet a youth who impressed me in some way. Pemberton couldn't have been more than 14 or 15 years of age, but he had a solemn and dignified way about him, despite his sordid occupation. He was one of those young men who was keen on nothing more than being taken seriously and being respected by those around him.

This New York street kid reminded me much of a young fellow I had known many ages before, a lad named Wulff who I'd met in the northern Balkans.

I'd been living in that region for some years, moving about as I often had between one hearth fire and another. I was more than merely pretty and was cultured and well liked, so I was never at a shortage for hosts to take me in.

I also was a woman of some wealth, having recently been widowed by the death of a rich man who was foolish enough to marry a lovely stranger with a taste for blood, and the Balkans at that time appealed to me. There was no end of war, brigandage, and civil strife, and hardly a soul asked a question when a body are two showed up on the road outside of town.

There was in those days a tiny hamlet between Sarajevo and Split at which I sometimes would stop while journeying between the two cities. The place was a bit off the beaten track, but traveling the main road had not always been safe, and I enjoyed the country air.

The master of that place was a retired officer of hussars named Johan Vukovich who may have held some minor title—I forget the details—but who had been forced by circumstances to open his house to paying guests. There is no doubt that taking money for hospitality was an indignity to him, but it was a tiny thing for me. A few bob here or there for a pleasant day or two's rest along an otherwise wearisome and tedious road was one of my rare treats.

My host Johan was a sweet man with a thousand or more exciting stories about his adventuresome life at war and in peace, and I happily passed that way, sometimes two or three times a year.

Regrettably, with each passing, the straits of the family appeared more dire. Politics is ever a blight on decent folk, and a landed gentry family of new title and even newer money, Markovich they were called, had its sights set on controlling the area around the Vukovich homestead.

It saddened me deeply to hear on one of my trips that the voluble and delightful Johan had died, of old age I imagined, and when next I passed that way some months later it was to hear that one of Johan's grown sons had gone missing while off looking for some sheep that had strayed from the family flock.

By that time, it was clear that something was afoot. But what was that to me? I soon was back on the road to Split.

My business and pleasure in Split kept me there several seasons, and when next I came to visit the Vukovich homestead, it was to find Johan's youngest son, Wulff, running the inn. The boy was then no more than 14 years old, and he had for several years been solely responsible for managing the stables at the inn.

My, he was such a little gentleman—smart, polite, and proper, the kind of lad who always looked you in the eye and who never tolerated an insult. The kid was even charming and flirtatious in his innocent way.

What father or mother wouldn't be proud of such a young man? I always made it a point to flatter the lad and to force my coins upon him with such diligence that it would have been rude for him to refuse a gratuity.

And here that young fellow was, the only man of the family, his next older brother having been killed in some sort of quarrel with one of the sons of the neighboring Markovich clan, the new upstarts in the area.

I missed Johan's stories. I missed the friendly chatter of his sons with their sisters and wives. That visit, I stayed at the inn a few days longer than was my usual out of—I'm not sure what. A sense of duty? Loyalty?

These were no kin of mine. I'd never spent more than a day or two there before. But that inn had been such a pleasant interlude in my life. Without my then knowing, it was to be my last visit there.

I passed that way, as was my usual, some six months later to find the Vukovich home abandoned save for some squatters. When I went the final quarter mile to the hamlet to inquire about the event, it was to find a tiny body dangling from a scaffold, face bloated, eyes mere hollows, and the flesh of a once young and promising body contorted and twisted through violence and decay.

The scaffold upon which young Wulff Vukovich had been lynched was near the town square, and I knew from hard experience that his earthly remains had dangled there for at least a month, no doubt as a warning to others to give the local squire his unquestioned due.

Not a word did the locals say about what had transpired there, and there was not a hint of what had become of the women of the Vukovich family. None were saying, but I had my guesses.

It was night by then, and my coachmen and servants were exhausted. I always traveled with servants and with at least a few guards because it would raise eyebrows if I did not. The only place to stay in the local environs was the Markovich house, so it was to there that I ventured.

I had not the least impulse to avenge the Vukovich clan. They had been pleasant and kind, but they were not of my blood. I do recall that I formed at that point the intention never to travel that road again.

When my carriage reached the Markovich residence, it was to find a large estate that was not quite a mansion. Me being a woman of breeding and wealth, the master of the place, Branco Markovich, was inclined not to send me away.

It was an unpleasant evening. The food at the Markovich table was palatable but not good, the wine was second cousin to vinegar, and the conversation was filled with double entendre and sly remarks that bordered on the rude but never quite stepped over that line.

Did the Markovich family know that I had been on good terms with the family over whose destruction they had presided? Probably. Did they intend me harm? Possibly. But I didn't really want to find out.

My body felt no weariness, but I decided as dinner came to a close that I would allow my servants a dram of sleep and be out of the Markovich home well before first light, on the off chance that Branco and his sons tried to stop my departure.

And, yes, I did ponder doing away with the lot of them that night out of a general sense of dislike. They were a large clan, but I am what I am. That murderous impulse soon abated. I liked my servants too much, and not a one of them had even the slightest notion of what I truly was. I didn't want to have to kill them too.

And then it happened.

Life or death sometimes turns on the most trivial of things. I forget which of Branco's many sons it was, the first son or the fifth, but the boor caught my gaze as I prepared to retire from the dinner table and made a faint sucking sound between his lips. It was a sickening hiss and pop that I'm sure, in combination with the ridiculous roll of his eyes, was meant to be seductive.

It was not. And the faint cough from Branco at that moment told me that he had seen his son's crude gesture. The patriarch had the decency to give the lad a rebuke, but it was a mild one, and it came with a smile that was only half hidden behind the old man's cupped hand.

I don't like being insulted. And as I've told you before, I'm often able to ignore such things. One cannot murder everyone who pisses one off. But one can kill some.

My servants, guards, and I were up and away well before first light the following morning. If the Markovich family noticed our departure, they were too lazy to do anything to stop us. Or perhaps they saw the idea of facing my two brawny guards as too much trouble for the value of my carriage and the contents of my purse. The world will never know.

My servants and I rode another 25 or so miles that morning before reaching the main road and finding a more than suitable inn at which to spend a few days. I rested at this new establishment for the day, but covertly set out on foot not long after dark.

I suppose you know what came next.

Cruelty was not a thing in which I ordinarily took joy, but neither was it a thing at which I blanched. Nay, there have been times, rare though they have been, when I have gloried in that vile impulse. Such was one of those times.

It was in the wee hours when I at last reached the Markovich manor, and that night I took but one piece of fruit from their miserable and rotted family tree. Branco's youngest son was but a lad some years younger than Wulff Vukovich. The youngest Markovich did not grow a day older, and I left his twisted and contorted remains spiked to a fencepost by the front gate of the manor.

That was not the end of it.

I chose a new road to make my occasional journeys between Sarajevo and Split, but at each passage over the years I spent a day or two at the same inn on the main road. On each of those visits, I gave my servants their liberty and a few ducats so that they might have a gay time in the common room of an evening.

Not a one suspected that their generous and amiable mistress made off in the evening and did murders while they reveled. I started with the young, plucking one or two of the Markovich children here or there. When at last their children were gone, I started on the adult sons, and then the wives, the sisters, and the cousins.

Branco was a wealthy and powerful man. He hired bodyguards and watchmen, he sought the help of officials and the militia, he hired hunters and trackers. But he could never track down the fiend that was stalking his family.

I am many things. A ghost in the darkness is one of them. I can move through the forest without a whisper, can sneak up on a man who is wide awake and watching, and I can get into any home, through any locked door or any window, without detection.

It was a torture that went on for years. No one ever guessed that the monster, the fiend, the vourdalak that stalked and decimated that wealthy clan was poor little old me, sweet and charming Natalia Princip. How would they? I fell into the habit of taking a different group of servants each trip, and the inn at which I paused was just far enough from the Markovich estate that no one ever put two and two together. So easily and swiftly could I come and go across 25 miles of forest and mountains that I was able to do my vile deeds in but a single night and return to the inn before the dawn.

After several years of finding his kin butchered and being helpless to stop it, Branco and what remained of his ruined family fled their home for Sarajevo, hoping somehow, against all hope, that this family curse would not follow them to that city.

It did not follow them there, for by that time I already owned a home in Sarajevo. But by that point, I had wearied of the game. There was no need to extinguish the entire clan. Leave some alive to tell the story. And so, some months later, Branco's broken and mutilated corpse was found impaled on the cross atop a local church tower.

As if by magic, the curse died with him.

I'm not sure why Pemberton reminded me so of Wulff Vukovich. They looked nothing alike, had grossly different lives, but there was something about the way Pemberton carried himself, with a certain openness and dignity that impressed me.

I let go of my nostalgia and walked past him. There was no chance the lad would recognize me. The previous times that I had seen him were when I was garbed in my usual dungarees and oversized hoody, the costume I wore when working the streets for information or when intimidating the local base element. In that persona, the local street folk had taken to referring to me as the Bruja.

My garb now was that of a young woman coming home from the gym, and the surgical mask I wore was the same as those worn by a million New Yorkers. The Bruja would come back another time when she had a chance to play. For now, I had an appointment with a client.