The Church of Ishtar was advertising openly now. They were almost respectable, flourishing anyway, in a time of war and whores. Carlotta had been right about that. She thought about Carlotta, lost somewhere in her holy demimonde, smiling her sunny, drugged smile and batting her eyes at some client. Maybe their paths would cross again, somewhere somehow sometime, but Laura doubted it. The world was full of Carlottas, full of women whose lives were not their own. She didn’t even know Carlotta’s real name.