res persist. The unwelcome visits." On the second anniversary of Emily's death, Victor, a best-selling novelist, is haunted by guilt and memories surrounding a bizarre chain of events that began in New York and culminated in Los Angeles. Determined to gain perspective on what was real and what was imagined, he revisits his fateful relationships with the beautiful Nadia, who inspired his spiritual search, and Emily, who seduced him with black magic and deceit. Link by link, he unravels the travails of possessive love, loss of identity, and the willful ignorance he embraced to regain a sense of self. But has he?