He can feel the coin pulling him toward an elegant London townhouse. Liveried carriages are waiting out front. No sign of the footmen or coachmen, though. Probably having their own party backstairs with beer and chambermaids.

He enters the townhouse swiftly, dispatching the butler swiftly and ruthlessly, slashing open the man's throat before he can scream. The smell of warm blood mingles with other, more domestic smells: rich wine, heated and spiced; plums and currants, boiled almost to bursting, their scent wafting from fresh-made puddings; the sweet tang of hot applesauce; the unmistakable smell of roast pork.

Burnt human flesh smells nothing like roast pork, he thinks. Whatever storytellers say.

He is close to the coin now; he can feel it deep in his soul. Or whatever passes for his soul, these days.

He peers into room after room, but sees no one. At last he opens the door to the drawing room...and walks in on an orgy.

The number and the variety of the couplings stagger him. For a moment, he is awestruck, his memory travelling back to childhood and tales of debauched aristocrats. The memory is followed by rage and bitterness. Here is something else these mortals have that he cannot.

Some portion of his mind notes uneasily that none of the people coupling are pausing, or displaying any awareness that an undead pirate is present.

He scans the room, his glance finally settling on a white-skinned woman of medium height who smells of summer peaches. He is beside her in two strides.

"The coin," he says, in a voice full of more hunger and longing than he would have believed possible. "Give it to me. Now!"

A smile of passion, temptation and desire curves her perfect lips. She toys with a charm bracelet made from coins of all lands.

He raises his cutlass, and brings it down in a swift blow meant to sever her hand and wrist from her body.

And at the last moment, she glances at him with inscrutable eyes as golden as the cursed coin.

He lowers his arm. He kneels before her. It seems right, somehow.

"That's enough, sibling," says a voice he has not heard before. It is a grey and weary voice, a voice has not forgotten the meaning of the word "hope" but who knows that hope is not hers, and never will be. The tone is soft, but soft like quicksand, dragging him into depths he hadn't known existed.

He struggles to glance around and find the speaker. It's a woman--a fat, squat, grey-skinned, snaggle-toothed, naked hag. "Let him go," she says to the golden-eyed woman. "He's mine as well as yours, so let him go."

The golden-eyed woman fingers her bracelet and pouts. It only makes her look more desirable. She addresses the hag in a husky tone. "I don't want to."

One bitter, empty word echoes from the fat hag's lips. "So?"

The two exchange a long, long look. Then the golden-eyed woman shrugs elegantly, slips the bracelet from her arm and tosses it to him.

He squeezes the bracelet tightly, as if to reassure himself that it is real. He sheathes his cutlass and staggers to his feet...

...and the woman's eyes meet his. Not a glance. An endless, unbroken gaze.

Desire fills him, a hunger and longing more unquenchable than any he has ever known. Compared to this, his need for the coin was a mere shadow. He has the coin now, little as he esteems it. But he will never have her. He will burn for her forever, whether in undeath or death or even if he should be restored to life...but she will never be his.

This damnation will never end.

He staggers from the room, straining to keep the woman in sight as he does so. Only the fact that he has lost so much to gain the coin compels him to grip the bracelet with all the strength he possesses.

"That was cheating," says the hag in the vinegary tones of one who has been tricked and deceived too often to be surprised by it now.

"I always cheat, sister," answers the woman, her smoky voice filled with amusement. "Always."