She left the hospital and went home. Sedna was waiting for her in the sitting room. Dema sat down across from her and smiled. "Grandma, I may have good news. Sort of. I may have found Kore."

For the first time Dema could recall, Sedna looked unsettled. "Is it possible?"

"That's what it is, is possible. I can't be sure. But here's the story. There have been reports of a big white snake attacking drug dealers. And some of them involve a naked woman. I visited one of the victims in the hospital. I saw what he saw. She looked just like me. I mean, me when I'm the Lamia. And the snake. He was high on drugs when it happened, but if what he saw was real, there's another Lamia out there. It wasn't me. Who else could it be, but Kore?"

"Kore, after all these years. But Dema, you are the Lamia, I'm certain of that. How else can we explain your detailed recall of how it all started? Can Kore be one too?"

"You've said it yourself, Grandma. We are all her children. We all carry the shaman potential. And the promise."

"That the daughters of the Lamia will not allow evil to exist in our world."

"Right. The inheritance belongs to all of us."

"So you think your sister became a shape-shifter, just like you did, and started going after drug dealers?"

"I think it's possible."

"But why didn't we hear of this before? Where has she been all these years?"

"I don't know. Except for one thing. The first victim was the one I met at the zoo. I told you about him. And he oozed fear. It was palpable in him. The tiger had sensed it. No doubt a snake would too."

"A snake. You mean Kore. You think she's been living as a snake all this time?"

"That's what my shaman sense is telling me. I don't know if I want to believe it."

"Well there have always been stories of snakes and other creatures living in the city sewers. Escaped or abandoned pets and such. It could have been one of those. But if it's true, if it really is Kore..."

"If it's true, and Bonnuchi saw her, his fear, and the memory he projected of facing me as the Lamia, could have triggered something in her, made her respond to her heritage."

Dema saw the fire stirring in Sedna's eyes. "Dema, if it's Kore, we have to bring her home."

Dema responded with equal intensity. "Leave that to me, Grandma. You just be ready for when I get her here. I don't know what kind of shape she'll be in mentally. She's killed people, Grandma, no telling how many. I don't know what it will take to bring her back to herself, if she's been a snake all this time. I'm not even sure I'll know if it's really her. But if it is, I will bring her home."

Over the next few days, Dema became absorbed in tracking down the rumors about the street-Lamia. They were concentrated in the area of the Medical District. This made sense for two reasons. If it really was Kore, the District was where her mother Naga worked, and not far from the town house where she and Dema grew up. It would be, in a sense, home ground, familiar territory for her.

And the District was also the focus of an underground trade in bootlegged medical drugs. Many junkies had come to prefer prescription drugs to the usual street drugs, and the Chicago Medical District had become one of the best sources in the country. The reason, as the DEA understood, was that in spite of the tracking procedures in place it was impossible to keep tabs on all the legal shipments of drugs to the legitimate facilities here. If some of those shipments got lost, or intentionally sidetracked, it was routinely chalked up to the cost of doing business.

As often as the DEA agents tracked down someone who was doing a bootleg trade here and took him off the street, another, or maybe two, would discover the possibilities and take his place. Like most of the war on drugs, it was a losing battle, as long as there were people willing to buy on the black market. And with the prices of prescription drugs being what they were, the black market could be tempting even to honest citizens, when the cost of their medications began to overtax their resources, and when the illicit dealers worked through an innocent-seeming front.

As she learned more about these operations Dema gained new respect for what her mother was trying to do, in offering drug-free alternatives to the people who came here looking for help, and ended up going broke without getting better. Naga's clinic was not in the center of the District, but it was prosperous. She honestly helped people, and word got around.

There were new reports. It was not only dealers, now, but users who were being attacked by the snake. Dema didn't know what to make of that, but it worried her. If it was Kore, or even if it wasn't, this had to end. She had walked the streets of the district for two nights, shaman senses alert, hoping to pick up Kore's presence, or even for a chance encounter with her. But luck failed her.

Fortunately, this case hadn't aroused the Lamia in her. Dema thought it was because this was not the pursuit of an evildoer, but the quest for her lost sister. But if there were more deaths that might change. Dema was running out of time.