Louis and Angel missed Parker’s company. They had grown so used to being part of the investigator’s existence, and the investigator being part of their own, that the months since his shooting seemed strangely empty, as though they were being held in stasis, waiting for Parker to return to them. All Louis could say for certain was that when he looked into Parker’s eyes he saw a man in the process of reformation, and he had an image of a sword melting in a forge, there to be molded into a new instrument, although if that was to be a weapon remained to be established.
