The last hot time

"No," Danny said, without thinking about it.

"Well," the man said, "then it ain't too late to go home."

"I s'pose so." Danny didn't want to start a string of lies with the guy, and he supposed that anything he said would have about the same effect.

"If you need directions…" The old man nodded toward a cardboard box, between a rack of oil cans and the end pump. A card said THE ONLY MAP YOU NEED. The box was full of Gideon Bibles, black and green, probably from the motel. Danny'd seen the same box in Iowa, half a dozen different times and places. He paid the attendant and drove on.

The road was empty. Every half hour or so he slowed down for a reflector barricade marking off a patch of crumbled pavement or collapsed embankment or a mass of burnt-out vehicles too big to remove. There was a little fingernail of moon, making foggy gray shadows on the concrete, but mostly the night was black on black, with a few lone stars on the horizon, barns or one-crossroad towns. A couple of the towns had signs, the old white-on-green reflective ones. He didn't turn off. Towns like that had shot at him in the county ambulance with the lights going. The odds wouldn't be any better now.

Maybe, Danny thought, Illinois was different.

Nope. It would be different where he was going.

He flipped on the radio and started scanning with the knob. There was noise with long dead spots between, no change there. He got a ripple of piano music and an unintelligible voice, but it slipped away.

Then rhythms came up clear, and a voice Danny knew: one of the WGN night people. Danny smiled. This was the sound that had kept him sane, in his room, with the earphones stuffed in tight and muffled with gauze so that no one else would hear. He could ride the beam all the way now.

A record came on. The car hummed and Danny did too.

None of you knows what to do

You better move it 'cause Vm coming through

Everybody s sayin ' that the kids insane

I'm doin ninety miles an hour In the breakdown lane

As the road rose up to meet the car, Danny saw an edge of orange light on the distant horizon. It reminded him of a night fire call, last summer, when a barn and silos had gone up a county over. It had taken a couple of hours to cover twenty miles, to find a road somebody hadn't blasted or blocked for some weird local reason. When they got there, the VFD had given up trying to put the fire out and was just holding it back from the farmhouse.

One of the firemen led Danny and his partner to a covered pickup. In the back were a woman wobbling between numb silence and screaming fits, two little kids who just wanted to watch the fire, and a teenage boy with second-degree burns on his hands and arms who didn't want to be treated and really didn't want pain meds. After a while Danny understood the boy needed something to fight, and the pain was all he had. If he lost that, he might just break down.

Some of the VFD guys had burns and smoke, so the paramedics went to work on them. Danny's partner asked the fireman he was bandaging where the farmer was.

The man twisted his face around, and then said, "When we said there was nothin' we could do for his barn, he just up and walked into it. Captain tried to knock him down with the stream, but he just kept goin'. I mean, we tried, but-"

Up ahead of us walls and wire

We're gonna take 'em like a house afire

Everybody s sayin ' that the kids insane

I'm doin" ninety miles an hour

In the breakdown lane

Wolves are gettin ' hungry, let 'em off the chain

Doin ' ninety miles an hour

In the breakdown lane

Danny fiddled with the radio again, trying to t^ct sonic news about the glow ahead. The orange li^hc was too big to DC a burning house, or even a whole town. What the heck could it be?

Headlights flashed in the rear-view. There was a big car back there, gaining on him. Danny thought about giving the guy a run for his nickel, but he was already getting enough crosswind to make the Triumph wobble, and besides, the car behind had asked permission. He dropped a gear and slipped into the right lane.

The car pulled up. Danny took a look. He saw headlights like chrome buckets, a hood like a coffin, bow-wave fenders over white-sided tires, and running boards six feet long: a car straight out of a James Cagney movie.

The near front window was down, and a face showed in it, lit by green dashboard glow. Danny saw weirdly sharp, foxlike features, long white hair.

An elf. A real, honest to… whatever elf.

The elf raised two long thin fingers and the car rolled on. Danny tapped his hands on the wheel, feeling a charge right down in his gut. Elves. Fast cars with power to burn. Next stop Chicago.

Just ahead the road made a tight right, notched through a low hill; the big car's headlights spilled across the blasted rock face. Danny dropped back a little farther; this wasn't necessarily a divided highway anymore, and Halfway through the curve, the Triumph's lights picked up the other car, dead ahead in Danny's lane: it was another high-wheeled box like the first car had been, it was blood red, and its lights were out.

Just as the two big cars in front of Danny were side by side, white fire spat from the side of the red one. Danny heard the guns above the wind, like saw blades going through pine. The red car spun its wheels and shot away through the darkness toward the city glow beyond. The dark car bucked and wavered, but somehow kept to the road until it was clear of the rock face; then it bumped over the left-hand shoulder and came to a stop on the roadside, tilted nose-up, headlights aimed at the treetops.

Danny braked hard, pulled off the road to the right, and stopped. He opened the door, looked around: no more traffic. His working stuff was in a red roll bag behind the seats; he slung it and sprinted across the highway.

Crazy patterns of holes were punched across the side of the car and starred the dark windows. Danny heard a groan from somewhere in the rear. He grabbed the door handle, got it open. A soft light came on inside.

The rear space was as big as a normal car's whole interior. There was a sofa-sized rear seat, and against the front wall, just below a glass divider, were folded jump seats and a wooden cabinet holding cut-glass bottles. One flask was smashed, and Danny smelled whiskey.

A woman was sprawled on the backseat. She wore a sapphire-blue gown and a short white jacket. There was blood all over them, and on her short, white-blond hair. Her head rested in the lap of a small man in a dark suit with wide peaked lapels, a silver shirt, and a shiny black tie. A broad-brimmed hat hid his face. Danny zipped the kit open.

"Cloud," the man said.

Danny felt a movement past his left ear. He jerked, got something in his hand, turned. There was a white-fleshed, thin man- the elf he had seen in the dashboard light-just beside him, in a blue leather cycle jacket and a long dark scarf. The elf was holding a short-barreled pump shotgun. Its muzzle was what had flicked past Danny's ear.

Danny had automatically grabbed a pair of angled shears, to cut access to the wounds. Its metal was warming in his hand. It looked pretty lame compared to the elf's gun. As if that weren't bad enough, the bent metal made Danny think of Robin, and he'd come up here to not do that anymore.

The suited man looked up. He was black, with a sharp chin and nose, large dark eyes. He said, "You have excellent reflexes, young man. Do you know how to use that equipment?"

"That's why I brought it," Danny said, calmly enough. He'd heard Ain't you awful young for a paramedic? often enough that it didn't sting any longer, not much.

"You'll see to the lady." He spoke without an accent, but with an odd rhythm. He put the woman's head down, \cr\ gently, and moved to the jump seat opposite. The elf hadn't moved.

Danny shoved his brain back into Trauma Mode. Air\\a\ first The woman sucked in a breath, and the dark well of blood in her flank sucked and bubbled. Through the lung. Bad. "Excuse me," he said, stuck a penlight between his teeth and bent down to check beneath her. No exit wound. One hole to seal: less bad for the moment. An ER would have to worry about where the bullet was.

A couple of long rips with the shears got the white jacket out of the way. Danny ripped open a pressure bandage, peeled the blue satin away from the hole. There was nothing between the thin slick fabric and her skin. The pad went on and he leaned on the sucker. He tore off some tape one-handed and sealed it down. She heaved another breath, coughed, but the bad noises stopped.

Danny took inventory. The scalp wound looked minor, a bullet crease or a flying sliver; it was clotting okay, not a priority. There was a nasty clip out of her upper left arm. He could see bone.

The door by the patient's head opened. A big man in a black bush jacket leaned in. There was a Colt. 45 in his hand; it looked small there. "Looks clear, sir." His voice had some Irish in it. "Ruthins. Mighty hunters. Fah." He turned his head and spat. "Norma Jean?"

The small man said, "The young man seems to be doing well by her."

"The young man could use a hand," Danny said, feeling the sweat on his hands and face. "Can one of you guys hold her shoulder? Really firm, and don't let go if she screams."

The big man leaned into the car. "Reducin' the fracture?"

"That's the idea."

The man nodded and put his hands on the woman's upper arm. Danny pulled, clenching his teeth against the sound of grating bone, but the woman didn't yell, just grunted. He got the dressing and splint in place. "That's it. Thanks."

"Think nothin' of it."

"Her name's Norma Jean?"

"Around here," the small man said, "names are something one keeps to oneself. We call people things." He indicated the big man and the elf in turn. "This is Lincoln McCain. And Cloudhunter Who Keeps His Sisters' Counsel, though Cloudhunter will do. I am called Mr. Patrise." He spelled it.

"Danny Holman."

"You're a… medical student?"

"I'm a paramedic."

"That means you have a license."

"Yeah. Can I show it to you some other time, please? She needs a hospital."

"Yes. And yes."

The big man, McCain, said, "Cook County's closest."

"Not secure," Cloudhunter the elf said. His voice sounded like the wind in high grass.

"I'm afraid that's right," Patrise said. "It's always at awkward times that one is reminded of one's weaknesses."

McCain said, "Michael Reese, then."

"Fine." Patrise said to Danny, "I assume you're used to working in a vehicle? The car rides smoothly, and it'll get better as we get closer to the city."

"City?" Danny said. "No, wait, my car's out there, and my stuff."

Mr. Patrise said, "Nothing you absolutely need in the next few hours." He did not seem to be asking.

"I can't leave my car here!"

"Yes, you can. I personally guarantee its safety, and that of all your belongings. They will be brought to you by morning. Anything you need before then will be provided, and by that I mean anything. You will find me a properly grateful man." Patrise looked past Cloudhunter, out the car door. "Besides… you haven't been to the Levee before."

"You're from the Levee?" Danny said, too quick. It was a stupid question, with an elf in the car. "Uh-no, never."

McCain said, "Your car may not work once it hits the redline, then."

"What about yours?"

"Ah, we're dual-fuel," McCain said. "Don't worry. She looks like a nice machine. She'll be cared for."

Mr. Patrise said, "Cloud, I'll ride in front. You stay here." Cloudhunter nodded, pulled down the jump seat, and shut the door.

McCain moved aside to let Patrise get out, then leaned in again. He pointed to some buttons on the backseat bar. "This one keeps the light on. Lighter here if you smoke. 1 Iclp yourself to P hat's left of the stoek; there's eold beer below." He picked up the broken decanter, flung it away into the dark. He shut the door.

The car started. It bumped a few times, then found the road; the ride was very, very smooth. Danny wiped some of the blood from Norma Jean's scalp wound; it really wasn't too bad. He put a small dressing on, deciding to leave cutting her hair to the hospital team. In the dim light he could hardly tell Betadine from blood.

He looked up. Cloudhunter Who Keeps His Sisters' Counsel was sitting absolutely still, the shotgun across his knees. Only his silvery eyes moved, shifting like mercury. Danny couldn't see a thing through the tinted windows, not even into the front seat; he had heard that elves had night vision, or some kind of special vision.

"Mr. Cloudhunter-"

"No titles," the elf said. "Cloudhunter is fine. Cloud if we get to be friends."

"Cloudhunter, could you put that thing away?"

"The Ruthins might try again." The elf's voice was softer now, more like human. "Not much use put away."

"Yeah, I guess."

The eyes shifted again. "The Urthas like to plot," he said, still more softly. "Urthagwaed's clever and likes to be seen so. Long Lankin, or Iceberg Jack, Glassisle, Rhiannon-any could find a nice human lad, good with the kingsfoil… have him finish whatever needed finishing."

Danny didn't say anything. Assuming he understood what the elf was saying, there was no point in arguing with it.

Norma Jean groaned, stirred. She gurgled out a half scream. "Easy, now, easy, Norma Jean," Danny said, and put a hand on her shoulder, pressed just slightly. She sighed as the pain defocused. The blue dress had covered her breasts maybe halfway, before Danny had started cutting.

"Is she in pain?" It was Patrise's voice through an intercom grille.

"I don't think she's really conscious. But-is there a blanket back here?"

"Drawer under the seat."

As Danny got Norma Jean covered, Patrise said, "Can you give her something?"

"You mean for pain? I've got aspirin and benzocaine cream. No good here."

There was a pause. The woman's head trembled.

Mr. Patrise said, "I'd like to see your license now." A little drawer slid out of the dividing panel. "I'm not questioning your ability."

Danny got out his wallet. "You want my driver's license, too?"

"That would be all right."

He put the cards through. "Ah," Patrise said. "Do you see this birthdate, Lincoln?"

"Okay!" Danny said. "Okay, so I'm still nineteen, all right? The stuff's all real and the car's really mine. It's only a few weeks to my birthday-"

"It certainly is," Patrise said. "October thirty-first. All Hallow's Eve."

Cloudhunter's head turned.

Mr. Patrise said, "Hallowseve. Holman, Hallownight. That's a fine alias. Doc Hallownight, I think." He laughed. It was a pleasant sound. "There are already several Docs on the Levee, there always are. Oddly enough, few of them ever have MDs." He laughed again, and Danny found himself wanting to laugh too.

After about fifteen minutes, Danny could see the glow of the burning sky through the dark windows. They were apparently traveling at high speed, seventy at least, but the car seemed barely to be moving. Danny looked at his watch. The liquid-crystal display read FEAR. Danny blinked, angled his wrist to catch the light. 2:28 AM. No wonder he was seeing things. He'd been driving for nearly nine hours straight before all this.

He said, "How long till we get to the hospital?"

McCain's voice said, "Ten minutes."

"Can I have my IDs back now?"

"Mr. Patrise is rather tired."

Danny's watch said 2:30, and then RAGE, and then 2:31.

At 2:40 they drove into a brightly lighted garage. An ambulance was parked nearby. Cloudhunter opened the door. A moment later. Norma Jean was on a gurney and Danny was giving the ED team the lowdown: "We have a woman, early twenties, two gunshot wounds to the left flank and upper left arm, punctured left lung.."

Somebody, probably a resident, nodded to Danny by way of acknowledgment and the team closed him out. Nothing new about that. He looked around for Mr. Patrise and the other men, but they had disappeared. He wandered out into the waiting room.

It had the usual litter of old magazines, empty cardboard cups, and smokers' debris, and an unmanned counter of ancient varnished wood. The room smelled both musty and of disinfectant. As he started to feed change to the drinks dispenser, a woman's voice said, "Don't do that. Even if you are near a hospital."

A muscular, dark-haired woman in surgical scrubs, stethoscope draped around her neck, was standing in a doorway. "You're Doc Hallownight?"

"Daniel-uh, yeah."

"Lucy Estevez. I'm the lucky bozo in charge of the Knife and Gun Club tonight. It was pretty quiet until you got here." She held out a hand and Danny shook it. "Come on back and have some actual coffee. It's probably just as toxic as the machine stuff, but at least it's free."

They went back to a nurses' station, facing a row of a dozen curtained cubicles, about half of them with signs of occupancy. Dr. Estevez poured coffee from a heavily stained pot into two mugs bearing the names of drug companies; one was advertising an antihypertensive, the other a stool softener.

It was real coffee, as strong as he'd ever tasted it. It made Danny's chest burn and his head stand up and cheer. "Thanks."

"McCain said you were a paramedic."

"Yeah."

"Hey, relax." She told him a story about a motorcycle decapitation, down to the last splintered vertebra and drop of O-negative. He told her one about a disk-harrow accident. He'd had the conversation before, at Adair County. He relaxed. He knew this place.

Dr. Estevez got a bottle of peroxide and a towel to take the blood off Danny's denim jacket. She fingered his blue chambray shirt. "I think this one's had it. Mind accepting a loaner?"

'Sure." He was given a blue scrub shirt, found a bathroom to change in. In the mirror, there was more blood on him than he'd realized. He rinsed his chest and slipped the shirt over his head. It was Stamped STOLEN FROM MICHAEL REESE HOSPITAL.

When he came out, Dr. Estevez was emerging from a cubicle. "The young lady ought to make it," she said. "You do good work."

Danny nodded.

"I mean that. You did it all dark?"

"There was light in the back seat."

"I mean, you didn't use any magic."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. You're from the country?"

"Duz it show s'much?" he drawled.

"When you came in, you said, 'We've got a woman.' One of the local people would have said, 'white female.' "

Danny thought hard about that. Things were going to be different here. People were going to be different, in more ways than one.

Dr. Estevez said, "I don't suppose you're looking for a job. W 7 e can always use another van jockey."

"Well, actually, I just got here, and… I guess a job sounds pretty good."

"The pay's fair, but I guarantee the hours stink worse than anything you're used to. And you know the New Paradigm?"

"No."

"There are never enough of us, so if you bring somebody in and don't have another call right away, you can get drafted as an ED assistant. OR too, sometimes. And you do know which end of the baby to grab?"

"Did it for real once."

"Good enough. Anyway, it's all the fun of being a first-year trauma resident, without ever getting to be a doctor."

"We did all that at home. We didn't have a name for it."

McCain appeared from somewhere in the back of the ward. "Mr. Patrise wants to see you, Doc."

"Offer's open," Dr. Estevez said, and went into one of the cubicles.

McCain led Danny to another cubicle. ('loudhuntcr u as waiting outside, holding a hand inside his coat. Danny had no doubt there was a weapon tucked away there. The elf opened the curtain and Danny went in.

Patrise was sitting up on a bed, his shirt off. His chest and arms were very thin, and his dark brown skin had the blue-gray cast of heart disease. EKG wires ran to a monitor; Danny saw a slightly abnormal rhythm, probably valvular trouble.

On Patrise's right chest was a black bruise the size of Danny's palm.

"You didn't tell me you'd been hurt."

"A ricochet. My coat stopped it." Patrise tilted his head back. His face was delicate, even-featured, thin-lipped. His hair was black and combed straight back from his forehead, caught in a silver clip at the back of his neck. "Some first night in the big city, eh, Hallow? What's the time?"

Danny looked cautiously at his watch. It showed just numbers. "Three-ten."

"Little late to show you the bright lights, then. But you're still going strong. That's good. Night people are at an advantage on the Levee. Lincoln."

McCain looked in. He had a broad, rocklike face, all planes and crevices. His eyes were sharp blue. When he looked at Danny they seemed friendly enough; Danny didn't want to see unfriendly on McCain.

Patrise said, "We'll go by the club; Doc can shake some hands."

McCain nodded and left. Patrise said, "They always treat your clothes like something dangerous. Find my shirt."

It was on a hanger nearby. The label said TURNBULL and ASSER. As he helped Patrise put it on, he realized that it was silk. He had never in his life seen a man's silk shirt.

Patrise fingered the rip in the shirt above the bruise on his chest, touched one of the EKG wires glued to his skin. "Shut that gadget off. I don't want them thinking I've died. Too many people have ideas already."

Danny switched off the monitor. Patrise peeled the electrodes off, buttoned his shirt.

"Mr. Patrise, the doctor on duty offered me a job here."

"I'm not surprised. Lucy can see competence a mile off. I'm sorry to disappoint her. Don't worry 7, Lincoln will make the excuses." He paused. "Perhaps it wasn't clear: you have a job. With me. Personally. There's no room for moonlighting." He pulled on an elastic-sided shoe. "You'll have plenty of your own time, but you work for me. Understand that and you'll have no cause to complain."

"Mr. Patrise, this is-I mean, I just drove into the city. You don't know me, it was just an accident-"

"There aren't any accidents." Patrise examined his slim hands, rubbed away a bit of electrode paste. "You have options, of course. You could work here. It's a nice place, if you don't mind the pay and the hours, the homicidals and the positive Wassermanns, all that. And, too, Norma Jean's family is Gold Coast, and they'll probably want to express their gratitude in a concrete way. But you'd regret it." He looked up, smiling. "That isn't a threat: I won't make you regret it. You just will." He stood up, wavered a little; Danny caught his arm.

Patrise looked up at him, eye to eye. "As for not knowing you.. ask me again in a month if I know you. Cloud."

Cloudhunter pulled the curtains open, held Patrise's coat. At the nurse's station, McCain was signing some papers. Dr. Estevez waved as they passed. "Have fun, Doc," she said. "If you ever get tired of the good life, give me a call."

They got into the car, Patrise and Cloudhunter in back, McCain driving. Through the clear glass in front, Danny could finally see the city. A long building with lit strips of stairwell would be the hospital; beyond it was the hollow concrete shell of a structure just as large. McCain turned into a broad street lined with burnt wood, broken bricks, empty windows, lit only by the car's headlights and the orange sky hovering low above everything.

"People live out there?"

"Not so you'd call it that," McCain said. "This is the Boneyard. The Penumbra if you're in a fancy mood. Went in the big shakedown. You saw the first big wreck back there? They blew that as a firebreak, to save the hospital. Now it's too far out of the World and the Shade both for either to care."

There was more red in the airglou now. "It burns like this all night? Every night?"

"Nothing's really burning. The light's something from the change. Witch stuff, not my department. We'll lose it once we're really inside. We're almost to the river now. Watch."

The car climbed a bridge approach. Danny could see red light turning water to blood. Suddenly the sky was black, with the fingernail moon descending. Stars came out as Danny's vision adjusted. He looked back. The river still had a pink tinge.

The little moon, without competition, washed down dark walls to wet pavements. Here and there a streetlamp glowed, and a bit of brilliantly colored neon flared. Motorcycles were parked in clusters, and a few of the boxy old-style cars.

Danny saw a multiple, hunched movement, as of something huge and dark and formless slithering down an alley-or else just a group of people, keeping their backs to the wind.

"Was that-"

"Probably. Where're you from, Doc?"

"Nowhere."

"Been there many a time. Little dull, but no cooking like it. Where?"

"Okay, Iowa. Adair, Iowa. Know anything you didn't know before?"

"Adair, Iowa. The James brothers pulled their first big robbery around there, didn't they?"

"Yeah. Yeah, they tried-but they robbed the wrong train."

"Ah, well, everybody has to start somewhere, eh?" McCain laughed, and Danny felt himself relax.

Then McCain said in a dead cold tone, "Where you start is knowing that all the attitude in your little farmboy body don't come up to the top of my shoes. Got that?"

It hit Danny like a fist. "I guess I'm learning."

"If you can learn, then it'll all be right. 'S'how it goes." McCain's voice was back to normal.

"Earlier-when Cloudhunter had the shotgun on me-he would have blown my head off just like that, right? No warning? Is that how it goes?"

"When you mean to kill somebody, only a damn fool gives him a chance to disagree. And only a damn fool pulls a gun without meaning to kill somebody." McCain turned, smiled-not all that reassuring a sight-said, "Ease up, Doc. You did a good job tonight.

You work for Mr. Patrise now. There's no better friend you could have on the Levee."

"Are we friends?"

"I do sincerely hope so."

McCain stopped the car in front of a lighted building with a violet awning that stretched from the curb down stairs to a double glass door. Massed electric bulbs spelled out LA MIRADA.

The door was opened by a man in a white top hat and tails. "Good evening, Mr. Patrise. Mr. McCain, Cloudhunter. And good evening to you, sir. Your coats?"

Patrise said, "Pavel, this is Doc Hallownight. A full member of the club with all privileges."

"Delighted to meet you, Mr. Hallownight. What will you be drinking?"

"A beer. Please."

"Your brand, sir?"

"Uh-anything. Have you got draft beer?"

"Of course, sir."

The entryway was lit by brass towers that threw light against the white sculptured ceiling. Brass vases of fresh flowers stood in niches along the wood-paneled walls. The corridor led to a double door of glass, frosted in geometric patterns, framed in chrome.

That door was opened by a blonde girl in a white blouse and an extremely short black skirt. "Oh! Mr. Patrise!"

The name stopped everything in the room. The few people there all turned.

The room was large and circular, with a domed ceiling that was black with twinkling stars. The outer part of the circle was three steps higher than the center. On one side of the upper ring was a black glass bar, backed by chrome and mirrors and endless ranks of bottles; a woman in a white shirt and red bow tie was mixing drinks. A man and woman leaned against the obsidian bartop, interrupted in conversation. On the other side were dining tables, all empty but one where two men in dinner jackets and two women in astounding gowns were seated.

The lower circle was a glossy black dance floor, empty. At the rear of the room was a bandstand with a white grand piano; a woman leaned against the piano, toward a man seated at the keyboard.

None of them looked like elves, but there was enough glitter and cool light that Danny was hardly sure.

Patrise went to the occupied table. One of the women said, "Patrise, how good to see you! You won't believe the stories that have been going around tonight." She sounded very drunk.

"Then you must tell me sometime, Tonia," Patrise said genially. "Hello, Erika. Bob, Warren. Have you had a good evening?"

They agreed that it had been splendid, that Fay had been in top form.

"Then you must consider it on the house. Always a good time here."

They were dazzled at Patrise's graciousness, and oh my was that the time, they'd all turn into pumpkins, good night, good night.

The woman from the piano was running across the dance floor. She wore a low-cut, ruffled black blouse and a gold metallic skirt; she held the skirt up to run, her golden high-heeled sandals clacking on the black surface, which reflected her image full-length, two people tap-dancing sole to sole.

"Patrise, oh God, Patrise," she said, flung her arms out and hugged him. "Oh, God, you're here."

"Of course, Carmen, dear." He put his hands on her wrists and unwound her. "Meet someone new. Hallow, this is Carmen Mirage. Carmen, meet Doc Hallownight. We had a little to-do with the Ruthins tonight, and Doc saved Norma Jean's life."

"Ohh… where is Norma?"

"I'm afraid she'll be going home now."

"Oh, that's so sad… but you saved her? That must have been very brave."

Danny said, "Well-" and then Carmen's arms were around him. She was very warm, and wore a potent cinnamon perfume, and she hugged tight.

"Pleased to meet you," Danny said past the lump in his throat.

"You mean that isn't a tongue depressor in your pocket, Doc?" Carmen said. "Or maybe it is." She laughed and finally let him breathe. He couldn't think. He looked down at his scrub shirt and jeans, here among all the satin and silk, and felt like he was knee-deep in pigshit and had a live chicken tucked under each arm.

The bartender had arrived with a tray of glasses. Patrise and

Cloudhunter had brightly colored drinks in tall frosted glasses, McCain a mug of coffee with whipped cream. Danny got hold of his beer, took a gulp. It went down just fine.

"Doc, this is Ginevra Benci." He gestured at the woman with the drinks.

She was a little shorter than Danny, with intensely black hair, dark blue eyes. She couldn't have been much older than he was. Her black skirt came to just below her knees, her legs and ankles showing pale and delicate.

"Hi, Doc."

He looked up at her face. She was smiling. "Hello."

Mr. Patrise said, "And Alvah Fountain at the mighty Bosen-dorfer." The young black man at the piano waved. His hair was done up in a mass of long, slender braids.

The two people who had been at the bar were approaching. The man was an American Indian in a wide-shouldered suit and a flowered tie. The woman was petite and Japanese, with dark hair coiled up and held with jeweled pins; she wore a tailored suit and a black turtlenecked shirt, calf-high boots of light brown suede. "Evening, Patrise," the man said. "Is this an open party?"

"Of course. Doc Hallownight, Lucius Birdsong of the Chicago Centurion — "

"Syndicated worldwide through GNS," Birdsong said.

"— pen sharper than a Trueblood arrow. Tongue, too. And Kit-sune Asa, the Tokyo Fox."

"Welcome to the Levee, friend," Birdsong said, and shook Danny's hand. "What's the matter? Aren't you going to tell me you read and admire my column every day?"

"No."

"Fair enough."

The Tokyo Fox said, "You're a doctor?"

"I'm a paramedic. What do you do?"

"Right at the moment, I drink standing up. Pleased to nicer you, Doc."

Patrise said, "Where's Fay?"

Ginevra said, "She went home right after her set."

Patrise said, "Yes?"

No one spoke. Then Miss Asa drained her glass, put ir on Gi nevra's tray, and said, "About two AM a couple of my-mama-eats-ambrosia Ruthins came in, with a side dish of Vamps."

Carmen said, "You said the rule was-"

"I know," Patrise said calmly. "Ginevra, get the lady another drink. Ruthins, attended. No Highborns?"

"Nope." The Fox shrugged. "They were hinting that you wouldn't be coming home tonight. Didn't seem to get the rise they wanted, so they left after Fay sang. People started drifting out after that. Last half hour it's been just us and that mooch patrol you saw."

"Who took Phasia home?"

Lucius Birdsong said, "Stagger Lee."

Mr. Patrise spread his hands. "Another hot time in the old town. I think it's time we went home too, ladies and gentlemen: I believe I'll have to be seen by a few people today, upright and walking in my own semi-solid flesh."

Birdsong said, "Is that typewriter of mine still under the bar someplace?"

"I couldn't find an open hock shop," Patrise said, and the two of them chuckled at whatever the joke was. "Ginevra!"

"Yes, sir, almost ready," she said, whipping a cocktail shaker.

"Pavel will shut down in front; you serve Kitsune and Mr. Birdsong as long as they want, then lock up. You've been on golden hours since two. And take tomorrow night off."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"Cloud, see Miss Mirage home. Lincoln, Hallow, let's go."

They got into the car, Patrise alone in the back. With the Mi-rada sign switched off, all the world seemed dark, the big car's headlights just pushing the blackness aside for a moment.

Danny said, "The Ruthins are a big elf gang, right?"

"One of them," McCain said. "Red's their color. You see a red leather jacket, you take care."

"The car that shot at you was red."

"You're observant. Yes, that would have been the Ruthins. Unless it was someone else who wanted them blamed."

"Is there some kind of gang war going on?"

"Conflict, I'd say. And there's always conflict. War, now, well. They'll cut each other up as easily as a round-ear. You heard there were gang elves in the club tonight: they can come right in as long as they follow the rules. Not like the pure-Ellyll clubs."

"What's an-ethyl?"

"E//y//. Not that I can say it right, either. That's an elf name for elves."

"And Miss Asa said something about Vamps. That can't be what it sounds like… can it?"

McCain's voice was suddenly tense and quiet. "Vamps are human or halfie kids who want so bad to hang around no-shit-real live elves that the elves let them. The price is that you get a taste of elf blood."

"You mean, like, literally."

"I mean real literally. There's something in their blood that hits mortals like heroin. Slurp, you're hooked, and you'll do anything for another little sip. So the elves think up in-ter-est-ing things for you to do. Be real careful around the Vamps: an elf'll kill you for the sake of a joke, but a sucker'll kill you and never know why."

The car turned sharp right, went down a ramp. A steel door rolled up before them, and they drove into a concrete bunker of a garage. There were half a dozen cars parked, none as big as Mr. Patrise's, but all in the same old-time style. The garage was only about half full. As they got out, Danny saw a row of motorcycles, some with sidecars: big Harleys, BMWs, classic Indians.

A man in coveralls was cleaning the parts of a Thompson submachine gun. Laid out on a table near him were two pistols, several knives, and a black metal crossbow.

Mr. Patrise said, "Good morning, Jesse."

"Morning, sir. Glad to have you home."

"Have Stagger Lee and Miss Phasia come home?"

Jesse looked at a wall clock with a round white face and a swinging brass pendulum. The glass case read REGULATOR. " 'Bout two hours ago."

They walked on to an elevator lined with panels of etched bronze. It began rising. "Hallow will be in the north wing with US," Patrise said. "Good morning to you, gentlemen."

The door opened. McCain stepped out, waved for Danny to follow. They left Patrise behind.

They were in a broad, carpeted corridor, with Art Moderne geometric wood on the walls and overhead lamps of marbleized glass. It looked about half a mile long.

"In here." They went into a room lit by a hard white downlight. It shone mostly on a telephone switchboard, dozens of sockets and a row of plugs. A refrigerator-sized safe was in the corner. A woman was sitting at the switchboard, wearing a headset. "Hi, Line."

"Hi-de-hi, Lisa."

She moved her right hand out of shadow, put down the revolver that had been hidden there and picked up a coffee mug. "I take it things are all right now."

"Norma Jean got hurt. But she'll be okay, thanks to this guy. He's gonna be moving in with us. Twenty-four."

McCain made the introductions. Lisa picked up a phone and spoke softly while McCain went to the safe and twirled the knob. Danny saw Lisa reach under the switchboard, and the safe door opened. McCain closed it again, came away holding a key on a white tag.

"Give me your left hand."

Danny did. McCain squeezed the end of Danny's ring finger, and he felt a stick. A drop of his blood plopped onto the key tag, which seemed to suck it up like a sponge. The tag glowed for a moment. It was blue now. McCain pressed the key into Danny's palm.

"Lisa, call Michael Reese at six, find out how Norma's doing. Then call her folks."

She made a note. "Anything else?"

"No changes otherwise. G'night, Lisa."

"Good night, Line. And you, Doc."

As they walked down the hall, McCain pointed at the key Danny was turning over in his hand. "Nobody but you can use that now. You need somebody let in, let the staff know. Just pick up the phone in your room, you'll get Lisa or whoever's on the board."

"Is 'hi-de-hi' code for 'everything's okay'?"

"Good thought. Sometimes it is. Know anything about the witch works?"

"Magic?" McCain nodded. "No."

"You'll find out soon enough if you've got the Touch. If you do, you'll be able to find the key with it. Enough stuff, and you can zap it to you. Here's your room."

Danny waited, then looked down stupidly at the key in his hand. He opened the door.

The room was about the size of the one he'd grown up in, paneled in rich dark wood. Desk, table, big closet door. The sofa would fold out to a bed, or maybe there was a wall bed, a Murphy.

"Front parlor," McCain said. He rapped a knuckle on a wall panel and it swung open. "Coat closet. Next one's the gun cabinet, there's a trick lock on that. We've got an infirmary downstairs, but you might want to keep a crash kit ready in here."

He opened the "closet door," went through into a room three times the size of the entry, fully furnished, with a bar and kitchenette at one end. Danny still didn't see a bed-wait, there was another doorway. This place looked bigger than the house he'd grown up in.

McCain opened the little refrigerator. "Isn't stocked; tell the kitchen what you'd like. Bar's probably dry too. You a beer man?"

"Yeah." He didn't have a clue if that were true: he'd had beers with the fire and rescue guys-everybody knew his age, but nobody said anything. And he'd split a pint of Wild Turkey bourbon with Robin once, before the accident. They had to sleep it off in the field behind Rob's place. He couldn't remember now what dumb excuse they'd come up with after that, but Rob's dad was-well, you could believe he'd been eighteen once.

McCain stood up, opened a drawer, took out a tin box. "Matches." He pointed to a tall-chimneyed kerosene lamp in a reflector on the wall. "You know how to light those?"

"Yes." That was true; he had grown up in Tornado Alley.

"The power's usually pretty good, but this is the Shades. We like to save our generator juice for real emergencies. If you turn out to have the witch gimmick, keep that in mind." He put the matches away. "Bedroom's that way; Lisa called and it should be ready." He went to the entry door, leaned against it, said gently, "Yeah, 1 know you've got about six million questions. Anything that won't wait till tomorrow?"

"When's breakfast?"

McCain laughed. "Hey, this is your house now. Breakfast's when you wake up and get hungry. The dining room's a floor down, or you can call to have it up here." He looked aside. "That's how it is here: you do as you please-unless it's Mr. Patrise asking."

"You're telling me I just lucked into all this."

"Mr. Patrise says that people make their own luck, and I think I agree with him." McCain knocked wood. "Not to worry, is it? If you're dreamin', you'll wake up somewhere else, won't you? G'night, Doc."

"Good night, McCain."

After McCain had gone, Danny wandered into the bedroom, into carpet up to his ankles. There was custom cabinetry all around the walls, another desk, and an oversized four-poster bed in carved walnut. His great-grandmother had a bed like that. Her heirs had done everything short of spill blood over who would get it. The covers were turned back, and a white plush robe and a pair of gray pajamas were laid out on the spread.

He picked up the pajamas. Silk. He decided he didn't want to put them on without a shower first.

The bathroom was all glass and chrome and silver-veined black marble. The tub was marble, with taps like spaceship controls; the shower was completely separate, a cylinder of glass block with multiple heads to spray from all directions. Somehow the stone floor was warm.

Washed and in the slippery gray silk, he slipped between the sheets. There was a console at the bedside that controlled every light in the apartment. A dial selected music channels: jazz, jazz, classical, swing, opera, jazz-wasn't this the city? Where was the rock? He got some electric folk and listened for a while. One song was about somebody named Matty Groves and somebody else's wife, another about a bandit on a mountain who got seriously screwed over by a girl.

He snapped off the lights and lay there, stone awake.

Lights on, robe on. A midnight snack-okay, a five AM snackcouldn't hurt. At the last moment he remembered to get the key out of his jeans and stuff it into a robe pocket.

The heavy oak door made no sound at all. Danny looked up and down the hall. The elevator was to the right. So was Lisa's switchboard room. There must be stairs someplace, especially if the power went off and on. He turned left.

The last door had a glass panel. He could see stairs beyond. He paused to look out the window at the end of the hall. It had bars outside, and steel shutters. He couldn't see very much-what looked like a hedge, maybe a moonlit garden. He went down the stairs.

The hall here had less wood, more crystal and steel. There was an office, that must be a library… dining room, yes.

There was a flutter of light just at the edge of his vision, and he turned, half-thinking of Cloudhunter's shotgun at his head.

He saw a woman. She was wearing a black and gold kimono tied with a fringed silk sash. She looked up at Danny, and his heart crashed straight into his brain.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, so much so that he had trouble actually seeing her-the eyes drew him to the lips, and then the chin, the ear, the throat, without a stop to register any of them fully. He tried to speak, but his tongue wouldn't engage and a blimp was docked in his throat.

She smiled. He ached, he hurt, he thought he would drop to his knees. She walked away from him, down the hall. He didn't quite see her go; she was]usx. gone, and a man's voice said, "Is there something I can get for you, Mr. Hallownight?"

The man was a butler in a perfect gray uniform. Danny felt the sweat on his own palms, his gasping, his locked-and-loaded erection. "Was that-ff-Fay?"

If the butler saw anything untoward about Danny, he gave no sign of it. "I didn't see, sir. Miss Phasia is retired for the night, but it could have been. Can I get you something?"

"A sandwich… roast beef? And a glass of milk."

"Certainly, sir. And might I suggest something to help you sleep?"

"Yes."

"I'll have it sent up at once, sir. You know you can telephone us at any time."

Danny climbed the stairs slowly. When he got into the hall, a girl in a gray uniform was coming out of the room. She paused to hold the door open. "Good night, sir."

"G'night."

There was a tray on the bedside table with a rare roast beef on dark rye, pickles and chips, and a glass of milk with a brown sprinkle on top. Danny sniffed it: nutmeg, and doubtless something under it. Something to sleep on.

Well, he had something, and he couldn't sleep on it unless he stayed flat on his back all night. He looked dizzily at the bed: no, not in those crisp clean sheets. He walked into the bathroom, stripping as he went. The floor was warm to the skin.

He cleaned up, took another couple of minutes' worth of shower, and crawled into bed. He took two bites of the sandwich, which was of course delicious, drank the milk-and-whatever in three gulps, and sank into sleep like quicksand, fully expecting to wake up, naked and damp, somewhere else.

But he didn't: same bed, same bedroom. A sliver of light ran around the drapes. He got hold of his watch, which read PAIN; he threw it across the room. The bedside clock's hands pointed to ten past five. PM, presumably.

He sat up, shook his head, dragged the robe on and walked around the apartment, just checking.

The two bags he'd had in the Triumph were in the entrance room, and the closet door stood open with a couple of paper laundry covers inside. A note was pinned to one of the bags:

Your cases were opened briefly, to check your sizes. Mr. Patrise instructed that you were not to be awakened, but if you rise in time, he will be pleased to see you at La Mirada for dinner at eight o'clock. If these clothes do not suit, please call me at your earliest convenience.

Boris Liczyk

Danny ripped the paper open. Inside was a wide-lapel suit, with pleated trousers in a deep gray-green, a tan silk shirt, and dark golden tie. At the bottom of the closet was a package of underwear and socks, a pair of wingtip shoes, and a black leather doctor's bag. Behind the suit he found a pale-tan trenchcoat, with the full complement of buckles and buttons, and up top a matching snap-brim hat.

On the desk was a pocket watch on a chain, and a leather sack of coins. Danny had read that paper money wasn't worth much in the Shadow; it was barter, or metal.

It was crazy. It was all plain crazy. He moved to check out his own bags, then decided why bother? What did he have worth this crowd's stealing?

The bathroom cabinet had shaving stuff, aspirin and cold pills, a box of rubbers, and some of those sponges girls used. He showered again, shaved carefully, dressed in the new outfit. It all fit nicely, and felt good, crisp and sharp and good. The shirt collar was a little tight, and Danny had never been able to manage a tie knot, but he didn't care. There was a full-length mirror in the bedroom: he looked at himself for a long while, jacket off and on, coat and hat off and on. He experimented with the hat angle. Even his hopeless red hair seemed to look right. The freckles-well.

He hung the coat and jacket up and went downstairs. In the dining room, he found a short, thin man with gray hair, in a perfectly creased navy-blue suit and a red scarf at this throat-ascot, that was it. The man turned.

"Good day to you, Mr. Hallownight. I am Boris Liczyk." It came out Lizzik. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thanks." Danny began to wonder if there was a way to turn off the solicitude.

The man looked Danny up and down. "It's not bad, not bad- is that how you usually stand, sir?"

"I guess so. Would you call me, uh, Doc?"

"Certainly, Doc. I'm Boris. Now, if you'll just hold still-" Liczyk adjusted Danny's suspenders, pulling the waistband way up. He pinched a seam of the shirt sleeve, and Danny felt a chill down his arm. It passed in a moment. "Don't move, now." Liczyk did the same to the other sleeve. Then he put his hands on the collar, and at once the collar wasn't tight any more. Another touch smoothed the tie knot. "Yes, that's better. Do have me show you how to knot a tie. Do the shoes fit?"

"Fine."

"Mm-hmm. You didn't bring the jacket down."

"No, but it fit just fine."

Liczyk gave a blink of a smile. "Do you expect to be wearing a shoulder holster?"

"I-uh-well, no."

"Good. They're intractable. I'm sorry, I'm probably keeping you from breakfast."

"No, it's okay. I guess I'm having dinner in a couple of hours."

"True. Some juice? Some coffee?"

"Yeah, coffee. And maybe a glass of orange juice."

"Why don't you take them in the north garden? And I'll let Mr. McCain know you're awake."

It was pleasant in the garden; the sun was about to disappear below a building, but the still air was warm. The plants were still surprisingly green, with dashes of color from late-season flowers. There was no view. Brick walls twenty feet high, topped with iron points, enclosed it completely.

McCain entered. "Not bad," he said. "Boris always likes having a new body to work on. You know you're in for a full custom fit-ting."

"Did he use magic on this?" Danny described the work on the shirt seams.

"That's his Touch. All he works with is fabric. Seams, cigarette burns in the carpet… He's a wizard with drapes, he is." McCain grinned. "What, did you think it was all throwin' lightning bolts? Come with me. Bring your coffee."

They went down to the garage. The TR3 was there, hood propped open. Jesse the mechanic was leaning over the engine.

"You tune this thing yourself, ki-Doc?" Jesse said.

"When I can get the parts."

"Yeah, that's always the trouble." He pointed at the engine block, at places where the metal looked unnaturally shiny, or glowed a deep cobalt blue. "Wasn't any way to go dual-fuel-space, mass, architecture-and you needed new lifters anyway, so I put in sensitives, and bound a desire to the fuel pump. That should get you through any short-term tech failure." Jesse closed the lid. "She's a pretty car, Doc. I wouldn't do her wrong. Turn her over yourself."

Danny slid in. He noticed that a couple of familiar dings were out of the panel, and the rips in the soft top had all been mended.

He started the car. It caught on the first try, and sounded slick as iced snot.

"Take her 'round the block," McCain said. He held out two slabs of plastic: a driver's license and paramedic's card, new ones with his new name. Danny tucked them away, saluted, and put the Triumph into gear.

He got up the ramp, turned onto the street, upshifted. She liked it.

The low sun bronzed the corridors of glass and brick and the stumps of broken skyscrapers. The near buildings were mostly clean and cared for, with here and there a notch of fallen stone. Beyond, there were walls holed with empty windows, holding up nothing, and bare metal frames, twisted like dust devils petrified. Above the near rooflines, Danny could see the tops of skyscrapers: they were dull, and dark, and looked ravaged. Not one seemed to be intact.

A cluster of five motorcycles went by the other way. The riders had this-and-that leathers, not a helmet among them, streaming long hair and tassels and bits of chain. One was a bare-legged barefoot girl. They revved, popped wheelies, split to flow around the Triumph, hooting and hollering. Something bounced off the soft top and crashed against the pavement. Danny drove on, checked the mirror: they gave no sign of doubling back.

He saw the lake then, across a band of highway and a line of wrecked buildings. It roiled, green and whitecapped, more like pictures of the ocean than any lake Danny knew. It faded out into darkness to the east.

He stopped on a bridge, got out of the car for a look around. The river was low, with sludgy banks littered with broken concrete and old metal. There had been a whole series of bridges toward the west; about half of them looked intact, the others just pilings, or collapsed and partially cleared. One looked as if something had bitten out and swallowed its span. Somewhere upstream-no, downstream; the water was, illogically, flowing out of the lake-a cargo ship was beached and rusting along the waterside, tilted twenty degrees over.

To the southeast there was a green park, little smokes eurling up from among the trees. At least it seemed like something people were doing. He couldn't tell how far the park went; beyond a certain point, maybe a mile and a half away, the world got vague, like a running watercolor. A long way off to the southeast the sky was just a long smudge of smoky color. Danny had been to the Paint Pots at Yellowstone Park once, all steam and sulfur and colors; it was like that, but stretching for miles.

A breeze whistled through the bridge ironwork. It was the only sound there was. There was nobody here. The emptiness, the loneliness was awful.

A dull metallic sound came from beneath the road. Contraction? Loose bolts? Trolls?

He got back into the car. Up ahead was more iron, framing the street. He took a right, and the sun went out: the street was framed and roofed by metal lacework, big riveted girders. The elevated railroad, Danny realized. There didn't seem to be any trains running, though he saw a couple of station signs, and a stairway with people sitting on the steps.

Danny drove as straight as he could back to the house, down into the garage. McCain and Jesse were playing cards.

"The stuff you put in," Danny said, "does it work, outside? I mean, where there isn't magic?"

"Sure," Jesse said. "Not so well, but better'n spit 'n' baling wire." He put a card down.

McCain picked it up. "You know what-"

"Yeah, I know what baling wire is!" Danny shouted.

Both men were looking at him. Neither had any kind of meaningful expression.

Danny said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" McCain said. "Now, Jesse, he's gonna be sorry. Gin" He tossed his cards down. "What do you say we go down to the club now? You'll have a better look before the crowd gets there, and we can get a head start on the evening's serious purposes."

"Without Mr. Patrise?"

"Oh, he'll be there. Get your coat… and grab your hat…" He sang the last four words in a terrible baritone. "And don't forget your black bag, Doc."

The took the Triumph, McCain folding with care and some difficulty into the passenger seat.

"Left up here," he said. "So, magic or not, you like how she drives?"

"Oh, yeah. I, uh, she doesn't seem to have as much power, though."

"That's 'cause you're partly on spells. They don't have the kind of power you get from high-test gas." He chuckled. "Sounds funny, don't it? You think about magic, thunderbolts, splittin' the Red Sea. And some of it's like that. I hear in Elfland-but we'll never see that. In the Shades it's rickety, and when you tie it to machines it's rickety-tickety. Tin."

"Mr. Patrise's car seemed to have plenty of go."

"Mr. Patrise's car is particular. The others are mostly wood and fiberglass. The kids who can afford 'em ride bikes. But you can't see Mr. Patrise on a bike, now can you?"

They parked in an alleyway and walked the last block to the club, coats flapping in the cool air. Somebody in a cap and a frowzy jacket hustled by, carrying something in brown paper tucked tight under his arm. Danny wondered if he were a Vamp. He supposed he'd have to learn to tell that.

A few steps before they reached the awning, the electric sign came on. Abruptly there was movement at every edge of Danny's vision: people rounding corners, moving deeper into shadows or changing the ones they already had. A few people came out of darkness, too: all of them dressed up, dressed to kill.

"Mr. McCain!" one of them said, a man in a broad-brimmed hat and a cowboy duster, walking with a woman in a fringed jacket and tight skirt of white leather.

"Sheepscry. And Miss West. Good evening." McCain tipped his hat. The man lifted his. He was an elf, ivory-skinned, silver hair- not gray but metallic silver-slicked back, small round glasses with black lenses.

Miss West, who was human, said, "I would imagine this is Doc Hallownight." Her hair was black and white in jagged stripes, and there were a dozen silver studs in her left car.

"Yes, miss," Danny said, and lifted his hat crookedly. "\1 a\ I ask how you knew?"

Sheepscry said, "The inimitable Birdsong wrote about \mi."

Pavel opened the door. "Good evening, everybody! It's cold outside, not in!"

The ceiling stars shone specks of light around the room. Alvah Fountain, in a brocade jacket, was playing "Hey Bartender" at the piano.

"Draw one, draw two…" Danny muttered.

"Don't mind if I do, Doc," said Lucius Birdsong, sitting at the end of the bar.

McCain said, "Later, Doc," and moved off.

Danny said, "I heard you wrote about me?"

"Shaker," Birdsong said.

"What's your pleasure, Mr. Birdsong?" the bartender said. He had pointed elf ears, and pale, not pure-white, skin, black hair with patches of steel-blue at the temples. Danny had heard that elves and humans could interbreed.

Birdsong said, "Another one for me, and-is the doctor on duty?"

"Beer, please."

"And a Chi-Cent, Shaker. Unless you've used them all as bar towels."

"Wouldn't think of it, Mr. Birdsong." Shaker reached under the bar and produced a paper.

The paper had the feel of industrial toweling. Danny's thumb smudged the ink, which had a distinct chemical smell. The CHICAGO CENTURION- For This Price, You Don't Expect a Tribune banner, with pictures of eagles and trumpets, was a coarse linoleum or wood cut.

"As your fellow doctor Sam Johnson put it," Birdsong said, grinning, "it's not that the puppy tap-dances like Honi Coles, but that it has any rhythm in the first place. That's how / heard it, anyway."

THE CONTRARIAN FLOW

by Lucius Birdsong

I'm sure every devotee of this pillow-stuffing remembers what Mark Twain said about newspaper obit uaries and exaggeration, so I shall merely note for the record that when that well-known gentleman Patrise entered the La Mirada nitery in the small hours of this morning, he was accompanied neither by the sound of clanking chains nor by cherubim strumming six-string Rickenbacker harps.

Witnesses report that an innocent bystander (or rather bysitter-whatever has happened to the standards of marksmanship in Our Fair Levee?) was seriously injured in the incident that inspired all those campfire stories, but was ministered to by an able young man known as Doc Hallownight, of whom Our Fair may expect to hear more anon.

Personal to the Lousy Shots: Mind how you treat Doc. He did you a big favor.

"Sing ho, for the Fourth Estate," Birdsong said, and tapped his glass against Danny's.

The beer he'd been given was a medium brown color, with thick foam. Danny tasted it carefully; it was slightly heavy, a little sweet. He thought he could actually get to like beer like this.

Birdsong finished his drink. "Good night to you, friend."

"Where are you headed?"

"They're showing His Girl Friday at the Biograph. Miss it and they revoke your press card." He paused, looked Danny in the eye. "Circulate, Doc, circulate! Everybody here wants to meet you, and those that don't aren't worth meeting anyway." He tapped the newspaper. "Thank me later."

Danny looked around for McCain, Cloudhunter, someone he'd met last night. The piano was playing something jazzy but slow. He turned to Shaker, saw that the bartender was

wearing a lapel button that read HALF THE BLOOD, ALL THE CIVIL RIGHTS.

"Does Mr. Fountain take requests?"

"Sure does, sir."

"No sirs. I'm… Doc."

"You got it, Doc. Just tell Alvah what von want."

Danny went down the steps to the glossy, cmpt\ dance floor. "Evening, man," Fountain said without missing a note.

"Could you play something… that, you know, rocks out a little?"

"Nothin' easier, man. You got yourself a girl to dance with?"

"No."

"Well, maybe by the second chorus."

"Yeah, maybe. Thanks."

"Cool runnings, Doc."

Danny walked back to the bar, hands in his pockets. Halfway there, he could see Shaker setting up another beer for him. As the glass touched the bar, hammer chords came down like thunder, and everything stopped. Fountain had kicked into "Great Balls of Fire" like the world was gonna end in three minutes five.

Couples were pulling each other away from their tables. A woman with a tenor sax came out of nowhere and swung in. High heels banged and elflocks shook. Even the waiters were twirling.

"Good Golly Miss Molly" followed hot, and "Roll Over, Beethoven." Some of the dancers were spending more time airborne than on the floor. Danny just stood there watching, the beer going warm in his hand.

"— gotta hear it again today," Shaker said in his ear. "Oh, come on, Doc! It ain't a movie."

There was a black-haired girl in a deep blue dress, one of those flapper dresses that ended in long points, showing and hiding leg at once. "Do you dance?" Danny said, half hoping she'd knock him on his butt for asking.

'Til try," she said, and he saw that it was Ginevra Benci, the bartender from last night. She held out her bare white arm and he took it.

There was one extraordinary pair of dancers on the floor, a man with dark, dark skin in a pure-white suit, large but totally graceful, and an elf woman in a black sequined flapper dress like Ginevra's, who moved as if she was boneless. Danny tried to follow their style, ridiculous as he felt. After a moment, he realized that the man was looking at him; Danny felt his collar tighten, but the big man winked and nodded, and the couple started doing steps Danny could follow with relative ease.

By the second chorus, Danny and Ginevra were actually moving as a unit, off each other's toes. Danny hadn't done this since well, he'd done this, but he had never enjoyed it before.

The piano crashed, the sax cried, and the music stopped. Everybody applauded, even the waiters. Ginevra tugged Danny's arm; he turned and saw Patrise in the doorway, clapping furiously.

"Delighted you could both make it," he said. "And that you kept each other busy. Come up here, let's get to dinner."

Danny looked at Ginevra; she looked slightly away from him. Had Patrise told her to be his date for tonight? There were four couples plus one at the table: the two of them; McCain and an older woman, certainly over thirty, in black and pearls, introduced as Chloe Vadis; Cloudhunter and Carmen Mirage; and the two expert dancers, whose names were-that is, who were called Matt Black and Gloss White. Patrise sat alone at the head of the table.

Other people took the cue, drifting up to the tables and the bar. Fountain had gone back to a slow swing tune. Two couples were still dancing, half melted into each other.

Danny ordered a rare steak. McCain had his well done, with a lobster tail on the side. Ginevra had chicken salad, Gloss a dinner-sized Caesar, Matt a rack of barbecued ribs. Chloe Vadis was brought some kind of multicolored pasta dish. Carmen just had a little fruit cup, and Cloudhunter didn't eat at all. Patrise had a half duck glazed orange he caned like a surgeon.

There were occasional bursts of conversation as they ate; people came by to say hello, to admire Matt and Gloss's dancing, to mutter into Chloe's ear. Patrise had a compliment for every compliment, a quick answer for every question. He gave things a center. Danny still felt one part in three dreaming. He looked at Ginevra. Ginny. He wondered how she felt.

Carmen stood up. So did Cloudhunter. "Well," she said, "here goes nothing."

Patrise said, "Knock 'em dead, primoroso?

Cloudhunter took Carmen's hand and kissed it. She shut her eyes for a moment, then went around the curve toward the Stage, disappeared through a curtain. Cloudhunter bowed and followed.

As the plates were cleared away, the room lights went down. Candles flared to life on the tables-like magic Danny thought, and then let go the "like." The music stopped, and the last dancers left the floor.

A soft-edged spotlight showed Cloudhunter on the bandstand. He was wearing a blue velvet tailcoat and white tie, boots with silver trimmings. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, sounding like the rise of a summer storm, "Miss Carmen Mirage."

He stepped back. She came out, bowed at the light applause, and began singing, a slow, torchy tune.

Tell me what my true love loves

'Cause I want to fit him

Like my hands in gloves

Will he get in motion

For a carol of devotion

Or a cooing like a soft gray doves

You know I can '/ take the waiting

Or the silence or the doubt

So will you tell me what my loves about

Carmen had a nice voice. She seemed to be pushing hard, as if she really wanted the crowd to break down and cry for her.

Tell me what my true love needs

Should I dress in satins

Or in old gray weeds

Would it suit his style

To be Emperor of my Nile

On a barge among the whispering reeds

Even Moses wouldn '/ travel

Without spying out the land

So will you tell me where my loves heart stands

Everybody applauded. Someone whistled. Carmen took a bow, went off, came back for another bow. Another spot came on, moved around the room, stopping on Matt and Gloss. More applause.

"Would you mind?" Patrise said.

"Should have had one less rib," Danny heard Matt say, but they stood up to applause. Matt took off his jacket (there wasn't a speck of barbecue sauce on it) and they went out on the floor. Gloss White whispered to Alvah. He nodded, cracked his knuckles with a flourish, and barrel-rolled into "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting."

Matt and Gloss danced: they moved like fury, they lit things up. When he spun her round, cometary light followed them. By the chorus, the crowd was up, shouting "Saturday! Saturday, Saturday!" and hell, it was Thursday. Finally they pressed back-to-back for a tap routine that seemed to take place in air. And there was a cheer. The dancers took their bow, scrambled out through the door Pavel was holding open.

"Coffee, I think," Patrise said. When it was poured, he held up his delicate china cup and said, "Once upon a time, when you had to go to the Shadow country for a drink of anything worth going out somewhere to drink, they served it in teacups. Now the World drips whiskey, and we slip the coffee over the line."

Danny said, "Was there a Levee-" He stopped, afraid he'd said something out of turn.

But Patrise smiled. "The first Chicago Levee existed at the end of the nineteenth century. But the Shadow regions have always been, and always will be. It's… other places that come and go."

Carmen reappeared. "How did I do?"

"You did," Patrise said, "And you do, and you are." She leaned down to kiss him.

Matt and Gloss came back, in fresh outfits, still all white, all black: Matt in a loose cotton suit over a crewnecked shirt, Gloss in a shiny ebony skintight, with thin satin straps that crossed and wound to her throat, and an oval of elf-white midriff showing behind a gauze panel.

"I must speak to Boris," Patrise said, as if to himself. Then the spotlight was on the stage again, on Cloudhunter.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, and now his voice was a faint breeze on a still pond, "friends of all lands and all origins. La Mirada is pleased to present… Phasia, the Voice."

Cloudhunter stepped back, out of sight There was absolute silence. Danny felt his heart hammering in anticipation of god knew what. The curtains opened. A woman in a plain white bare-shouldered gown stood in a column of light. She was pale, but not an elf; dark brown hair fell in curls around her bare throat, and her eyes were piercingly blue in the downlight

It was the woman he had seen last night… Danny thought. The face was the same, he was sure, but she did not have the extreme, unreal, frightening beauty he had seen then. Maybe he had been dreaming.

She raised her arms, curling long thin fingers with bright red nails, and began to sing.

No, this had to be the dream.

There was a singer Danny's mother had liked, a woman with a multiple-octave range who could use it all as an instrument, making silly pop lyrics sound profound, meaningless be-bop-a-lula syllables meaningful.

There weren't even distinct syllables now, just a continuous flow of sound. Danny could faintly recognize the tunes: they were, had been, "Orange Blossom Special" and "Walk On By" and "Can't Help Lovin'," but that didn't matter either; with the voice, the Voice-it was silly to call it pure music, like saying rain was pure water and the sun was pure light, so a rainbow was-there it just was, and Danny thought how much better it would be to be blind than deaf. It was hard to move one's look away from Fay, but Danny saw Alvah Fountain sitting straight up on the piano bench, his hands folded, his fingers knotted tight enough to snap right off. He wasn't playing a note, so where was the music coming from?

She wound down to the last note of a song that was "My Funny Valentine" when it had words, and they all woke up, back where they had been, wondering what they had done in their sleep. Phasia took a sweeping bow, and the curtains closed on her. Danny wondered why there was so little applause-why the walls weren't cracking with it-and when he tried to clap, found that his hand wouldn't move, and hurt. In a moment he realized it was because Ginny was squeezing it in both of hers. She was crying.

He fumbled the silk handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to her. As she wiped her face, he noticed the dampness on his own cheeks. He saw Mr. Patrise watching them.

Patrise said, "Why don't you take the lady home, Hallow? This has hardly been a quiet night off for either of you."

Ginny nodded and looked into her empty coffee cup. Danny wobbled his chair back, went to stand by Ginny's. She took his hand and stood up.

Patrise said, "Ginevra, you're not on duty tomorrow, are you?''

"No, sir. I would have been working tonight, but…"

"That's fine, then. Hallow, we will be working, but not until quite late."

"Yes, sir."

"Then good night."

Pavel brought their coats, lifted his topper as he opened the door.

"It's cold," Danny said. The sky was mostly low pink clouds, with a few holes. Mist drifted across the street.

"It's almost Halloween," she said. "Is that why you're called Hallownight? 'Cause you got here on Halloween?"

"It's my birthday. Halloween is, I mean."

"Oh. I had a friend whose birthday was the Fourth of July. They always had her parrs' a couple of days early, nobody wanted to have two parties at once."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Down this way." They turned into the alley. Danny heard a scuffling, then feet running away. He looked up and down the street, into the darkness past the car, but didn't see anyone. He thought about taking Ginny's hand, but just put her between himself and the nice solid wall. He pointed to the Triumph. "Here it is."

"Oh, it's cute! I haven't seen one like this."

"It's mine. I brought it with me from home."

"A guy with his own car," she said, faraway. "My grandma used to talk about when all the guys had their own cars, you know, before Elfland and stuff." She walked around the TR3, looked at the rear plate. "Iowa, huh."

He opened the door. "Where you from?"

"Ohio. Since my mom and dad broke up. But I was born in Italy. My dad was Navy, with the Med Fleet."

"That sounds neat. I mean, well-was it?"

"Sometimes. Dad took me around Europe, when he could. We went to Paris four or five times. The Shadow there's called the Rc\ c Gauche. Do you get that?"

"Sorry."

"It's… I'll tell you another time. I think mv favorite cit\ is Florence, though. Florence is beautiful. The art, and the buildings .

Elfland didn't come back there. They say they don't need it."

He helped her get into the car, then got in himself. "So then your name's really-"

"Oh, no. My name-my dad's name-was Artensteen. Ginevra da Benci is a woman in a painting by Leonardo da Vinci. I don't look anything like her, though. Mr. Patrise called me that." She gave him a small, nervous grin. "He said, 'You can't be the Gio-conda. You smile too much.' "

"The Jo-I'm sorry, I'm stupid."

"The heck you are. You know the Mona Lisa?"

"Sure."

"Same painting. She's also called La Gioconda"

He started the car. "So, where do you live?"

"Aren't you going to take me home?"

"Well, yeah, as soon as I find out where it is. Oh." He banged his knuckles on the steering wheel.

"I mean, I think you're a nice guy. And Mr. Patrise has always been really good to me."

"Oh." He heard something clatter down the alley, turned to see what it was. Nothing. His heart was so loud he had to check that the car was still running. "Which way do I go from here? To get to your place?"

She pulled the shoulder belt across her breasts, cinched it. Danny looked away. She said, "Back out of the alley, then right."

After a few blocks, she said, "It wouldn't be the first time for me. I'm not scared." She tugged at her coat. "Do you want to?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. But not because somebody told you to."

"Turn right here."

"You're not-you won't lose your job, or anything, if-"

"I'm not one of Chloe's girls. Left, you can't get through down there. Did Mr. Patrise ask you to-well, heck, do anything with me, except drive me home?"

"No."

"Stop the car."

He did, expecting her to get out. Instead she turned to look directly at him. "This is important. Listen. I came out here a year ago last summer. I didn't have a car, I hitched. I thought I was gonna have to go work on the street, or-I don't want to tell you what I thought about doing. You ever been crazy, I mean, just crazy over the way things were, so anything else looked good?" Her voice was rising. Danny knew why.

"McCain picked me up. I knew who Mr. Patrise was; everybody on the Levee does. So I thought, yeah, sure, one night on clean sheets. But Mr. Patrise gave me a job. And Shaker taught me how to tend bar. So if he told me, to lie down for you, I'd do it, okay, Doc?" She breathed in hard, clenched her hands. "He's taken me to dinner a couple of times, and I mean dinner. Everybody who works for him gets things like that. But this is the first time-do you want to know what he said?"

"I guess I do."

"He said, 'Hallow's new, and he's alone, and that's not right. No more right than that you should be alone. See what happens.' "

"You said you'd-"

"That was a long time ago," she said. "I guess we'd better move on, huh?"

Danny started the car again. Ginevra said, "Up here, on the right."

He pulled to the curb in front of a brownstone apartment block, torch-shaped lamps flanking the door. She sat there, buckled in tight. "So I guess nothing happens tonight, huh?"

"Not tonight."

"I could make you some tea, or something."

If he went up there, he surely would not come down until morning. He didn't dare even touch his seat belt, and he surely could not touch hers.

She unfastened herself, turned as much as the little car would allow, her face just inches from his. "You're really sweet. And you want to be nice, and I like that. I appreciate that. But you're on the Levee now, in the Shadow. You have to know nobody cares one way or another. Nobody but us." She kissed him. "Hey, redhead. you're hot."

He didn't move.

"You wanna safeword out, Doc?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have you got a word that means 'really stop it, ri, t; ht now*?"

"I never heard o(that."

"Oh," she said, and Danny understood that he was missing something important. "And I haven't seen any reason to use mine. Well. Let me tell you how to get back to Mr. Patrise's house. You really don't want to get lost around here." She spelled out the directions; he tried to remember them. Then she got out of the car.

His body made him call out, "I'll see you again?"

"Oh, jeez, Doc. Sure."

He waited until she had gone up the steps and entered the building before starting the car. You could have, he kept thinking all the way back, you could have. Nobody. Would. Have. Cared.

"She wasn't afraid" he said out loud, as he passed a cluster of people warming themselves around an oil-drum fire. It brought him to the edge of laughing, and the tension got him home. lie woke up a little after eight the next morning. When he went down to the dining room, Phasia was there, sitting at the table in a long flowered gown. There was also a man Danny hadn't seen before, wearing shirtsleeves and suspenders; he had short brown hair, large dark eyes behind round-rimmed glasses. He ate scrambled eggs and home fries with his left hand and wrote on a pad of graph paper with his right.

"Hello," Danny said.

Fay looked up from her egg cup and toast. She was still very beautiful, especially when she smiled and her crystalline blue eyes twinkled, but the fabulous glow was not there. Danny wondered if he had really seen it at all.

The man scratched his head with the eraser end of his pencil and looked up. "You must be Doc. I'm Stagger Lee. Sit down and join us."

Danny did. One of the staff was there instantly to take his breakfast order.

Stagger Lee said, "You're up kind of early. I thought you were out at the club last night."

"I came back early."

"Oh. I'm just finishing up for the night." Danny noticed that Stagger Lee's shirt was badly wrinkled, and one of his suspenders was flapping loose.

Fay folded her napkin and stood up. Stagger Lee was on his feet at once; Danny did likewise.

"Staganess day toll," she said, or something sounding like that. "Doc well be dockelnight, sorge do well." She made a small, nervous gesture with her hand and left the room..

Stagger Lee said gently "I guess you haven't heard Fay speak."

"I heard her sing last night."

"No. Not the same."

"Phasia," Danny said, understanding. "Aphasia"

Stagger Lee said, "Yup," dragging the syllable way out. "I guess we could sit back down now."

Danny's pancakes and bacon appeared. Stagger Lee said, "Excuse my company while you eat; I need to get this done before I drop over. You know we're going to be out late tonight. You might want to get a couple of hours' sleep this afternoon."

"Does Mr. Patrise party every night?"

"Not every night. And I wouldn't call this evening a party, at least not the way you mean." He worked a while longer, then said, "Are you a poker player, Doc?"

"I know how."

"There's a game Monday night. You'll be welcome." He glanced up. "Unless Patrise wants you then?"

"He hasn't said."

"Right." He sat back, drinking coffee and examining his notes. As Danny finished his breakfast, Stagger Lee said, "I've got the infirmary keys. You ought to get your bag like you want it before tonight."

Stagger Lee led the way out of the dining room, absent-mindedly hitching his loose suspender. "Know anything about magic?"

"They tell me it works here."

"True. Not always well, but it works."

The infirmary was in the south wing. It had white enameled cabinets, a desk and examining table out front; in back was a room with two hospital beds, and another room fitted for light surgery. None of the facilities seemed to have seen much use.

Stagger Lee said. "Some of the staff have first-aid training, so if you ever need a hand down here, give the switchboard I yell.

And there's me." He disconnected a small ring of keys from a larger one, jingled them in his fingers. "Glad to pass the buck, to be honest."

"Are you a doctor?"

"Not an MD." He unlocked one of the cabinets. It was full of supplies: vials, boxes, syringes, tape. "I'm just the general tech guy around here. Have you ever heard of Stagg Field?"

"Where the nuclear reactor was."

"Bingo. It's not there any more, but I went to what's left of the University of Chicago. Just in case," he said with a grin, "you thought I'd shot somebody on account of a hat."

He took some boxes down from a cabinet. "This is goldenrod unguent, for all-purpose healing; it works best on elves, but you can use it on humans. Pinon gum's for abscesses and infections. Boneset leaf, you may have seen that before in the World…"

He held up a fabric-covered object a little thinner than his thumb. "This is a tarantelle cap, for serious systemic poisoning. You use it like an ammonia inhaler: crack it under the nostrils, have the victim breathe. And then get clear: they'll start dancing like crazy to drive out the poison."

"You're kidding."

"Empiricists don't kid, Doc. I've seen it work. I mean it about the getting clear, too. If the patient's busted up physically, you've got a judgment call, because the tarantelle doesn't care about a few broken bones. But remember that we've got poisons here like nothing you ever saw in the World."

"Magic," Danny said.

"These aren't spells. Most of them are old folk remedies on our side of the fire; some even work-pinon kills Staph aureus. They just work better here, like penicillin works better in the World. That's the other thing: magic's unreliable here in the middle, but so is penicillin. The only things you can really always rely on are mechanical closure, sutures and tape, and usually the simpler antiseptics, alcohol and iodine. You're going to see some really bad scarring around here. Don't let it get to you."

Danny thought of Norma Jean. He thought of Rob, too, of course.

Stagger Lee held up a glass vial of what looked like colored glitter. "This is fairy dust: broad-spectrum illusion powder. The Shadow uses a lot of this stuff. Did you see people at the club who looked like they were glowing? Dust."

Okay, Danny thought, that was it. That explained Phasia's appearance, her light.

"It's also a euphoric, psychologically addictive."

"Psychologically?"

"You can't prove dust has any somatic effects. But it sure does hook people."

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Comfort the dying." Danny couldn't tell if Stagger Lee was joking or not. "Meanwhile, back at reality…" Stagger Lee unlocked another cabinet, pointed to boxes of hypodermic cartridges. "Meperidine, haloperidol, straight morphine-synthetics don't work as well on elves."

"I can't carry that stuff."

"Why not? You've got a license."

"Sure, but I'm supposed to have authorizations."

"Doc. " Stagger Lee sounded amused. "You can carry any of this stuff you want, and prescribe it any way you want, to anybody you want, at least on this side of the Fire. You have all the authorization there is." Danny got the message. "Okay. Atropine, lidocaine, most of the rest of it you know better than I do. There's a reference library over there. Down here's bicarb in a heart needle pack, though the only coronaries I've ever seen Shadowside were so coke-boosted they needed the bomb squad more than CPR. It's your call, but most of your cases are going to be trauma, and combat trauma at that."

"How about IV fluids? And blood?"

Stagger opened another cabinet, revealing racks of solution bags and accessories. "The plastic bags are hard to come by, even for us. We've got a glass still and autoclavable bottles, though they're a pain to haul around. Remember what I said about trauma?"

Danny nodded.

"So you understand the problem?"

"Yes."

"Wish I had a good answer for you."

"Thanks."'

"Don't mention it."

"How about blood?"

"Mm. Anybody told you about elf blood?"

"It doesn't mix."

"Sure doesn't. Somebody down in the New Carre gave a human patient who would have died anyway a unit of gwaedgwir… Well, like I said, he would have died anyway. Don't even think about transfusing between Truebloods; the class and race situation's too complicated. They don't mingle."

"Truebloods…"

"Elves."

"McCain called them Ellyll."

"Yup. Short course in nonhuman nomenclature: All elves are Truebloods, or gwaed gwir. Ellyllon-that's the plural-are a kind of minor nobility. Almost all the elves you see on this side of the gates are Ellyll; the lower orders can't come across and the higher ones rarely bother. You might think of the Ellyll as like the nothing-special European nobles who went off to the New World a few centuries back, looking for adventure and easy loot.

"Once in a while a High-born elf-an Urthas-comes over to our tacky little reality. It's not polite to mix them up with the Ellyll, but you're not likely to. High-borns are conspicuous. And if you do goof, they're probably not listening. Get it?"

"Got it."

"Good. The only other sort of Trueblood you might see are the Mani; they're a service class, who fetch and carry for the Urthas."

"What do I say to them?"

"They're easy to get along with. Very mission-centered, and either you're the object of the mission or you're not there. Even if you are-do you talk to postage stamps?"

"How many of the… Truebloods speak English?"

"All the Urthas and Ellyllon can, when they feel like it. Their own languages-I know of forty-aren't available for mortals to study. But there's Ellytha, which is like a trade language; humans can learn it, and it's okay if you don't speak it very well, because heck, humans aren't supposed to speak the beautiful elven tongue very well. They don't even mind if we call it 'Elvish'. There are dictionaries and recordings in the library downstairs, if you're interested."

Danny nodded.

"Okay, let's finish up here. I have got to get some sleep." Stagger Lee pointed to a clipboard inside the IV cupboard. "All us mortals in the house are typed; list's here. If you need a withdrawal from the bank, Mr. Patrise can arrange that."

"Is there anything Mr. Patrise can't get?"

"He's got me. And you." Stagger Lee yawned. He tossed Danny the key ring. "The house is about as safe as anywhere on the Levee, so you don't absolutely have to lock up every time you go out the door. Your call."

"These aren't-anybody can use them?"

"No, we don't tag those keys. If you got hurt, you wouldn't want us to have to fool around getting the door open, right?"

"Right."

"Just take care of 'em. See you tonight."

"Yeah."

Danny stood in the infirmary for a little while, looking around at all the stuff with no rational idea of what to do next. Finally he put it all back on the shelves, locked the cabinets, and went over to the library shelf. He got out the Merck Manual, the PDR, and all the books on emergency medicine, called the kitchen for a pot of tea in his rooms. They politely asked if he wouldn't rather have coffee. He agreed, and went upstairs to study.

By noon he had worked out a list. He took the black bag downstairs, then had a thought partway through loading it, and went to the dining room. McCain was there, eating a sandwich and reading the Centurion. He hummed and nodded. "They said you were up early. You know about-"

"Tonight, yeah. I'll be awake. What are we gonna do tonight, anyway?"

"Raise some hell. It'll be interesting." He gestured at a pitcher of iced tea, and Danny poured himself a glass.

Danny said, "Miss Phasia talked to me this morning. How long has she been like that?"

"A couple of years." McCain looked up suddenly. "She calked to you? Was anybody else here?"

"Stagger Lee. But she spoke to me: she said my name, or tried to."

"She hadn't ever seen you before. Not close."

"Well-" Danny told McCain about the previous night, the encounter in the hall. "I couldn't understand it, until Stagger Lee told me about the fairy dust."

"You thought that was dustV" McCain looked terribly intense. "Let's go down to the infirmary."

McCain shut the infirmary door behind him, and leaned against the frame, head tilted as if he were listening for a sound in the hall. "Piece of friendly advice. Seeing Fay that night-forget it happened." Danny started to interrupt, but McCain stopped him with a raised finger. "I know it was just an accident, and all she did was smile. Leave it at that." He didn't sound angry; he sounded concerned.

"Okay."

"Okay." McCain relaxed.

"Can you tell me what happened to her voice?"

"She used to be a singer," McCain said, almost offhandedly. "Pretty good one, as I hear. Then one night after a show, she said something to piss off an Ellyll. Big boss in the Glasa gang."

"What did she say?"

"I wasn't there, but I imagine it was something like No. Elves get upset easy anyway. So he cursed her. They do that. Crumpled her speech up, like you heard."

"And… her singing voice? The one I heard last night?"

McCain tapped one hand on another. "I stay clear of the witch ways, mostly. But I know it doesn't work right, here. Elves forget that, a lot. And some say it's to do with innocence-she hadn't done anything to bear cursing-but I don't know, it's not my idea of justice.

"Understand, she's like that with all words: she can't speak, or understand right, nor write nor read. When you're around her awhile, the understanding starts to come. And there's the Voice." He stood away from the door.

Danny said, "The elf who did it…"

"He didn't know how to undo it. Away from home they don't know how their own magic works. He's dead now."

"Aren't elves, you know, immortal?"

"They don't die of old age. But nobody ever dies of that in the Shade." He looked at the door to the surgery room. "If they can crawl back to Elfland, all the holes close up. This side, they die just like anybody."

"Okay," Danny said, because he didn't want to hear any more of this, "thanks for telling me, Lincoln."

"Wait. Fay trusts you: she doesn't talk to people she doesn't trust. You know what a glamour is?"

"Not something to do with movie stars?"

"No. It's a magic, that changes people's senses. The Voice is a glamour." McCain paused a long beat, as if considering something long and hard, then said, "It can show itself in other ways. You follow?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Don't mention it." McCain looked up, with just a little smile. "Really." He opened the door. "This place got everything you need?"

"Sure."

He nodded, paused again. "Oh, yeah. Can you shoot?"

"A rifle. Twenty-two."

McCain shook his head. "There's a range down in the garage, if you want to learn. 'Sides, didn't you always want to shoot a Tommy gun?"

"Well…"

"Thought so. Jesse'll teach you."

"Should I?"

"Can't hurt. Not tonight, though. See you, Doc."

It was a few minutes before midnight. "September gave up early," Stagger Lee said, and breathed out fog.

Stagger had driven Danny around town for twenty minutes or so, in one of the wobbly lightweight cars. They parked in an allev Stagger Lee carried a black nylon shoulder bag. Danny had his red paramedic's bag; the leather doctor's kit was fine tor carrying a few-essentials, but too small for a serious trauma kit. And besides, he knew his own bag. He and Stagger wore dark topcoats and hats. So did the two people on the street corner ahead. Danny saw the glow of a cigarette, no faces.

"Evening, brethren," Stagger Lee said, cheerfully though not very loud. "Have you seen the true light?"

"Shinin' like a beacon," a woman's voice said.

They were in a warehouse district. Windows were barred at ground level, or bricked up. Webs of razor ribbon caught the moonlight, and the hard shine of bare electric bulbs.

The four of them walked a block, and met two more people: McCain and Patrise. Patrise carried a silver-headed cane. There were nods, a hi or two. They kept walking. Then Patrise gestured with a gloved hand, and they stopped.

Patrise tapped the cane on the sidewalk. A fluid shape slid out of the darkness: a small figure in a wide-brimmed hat and a long cloak. The hat tilted up; Danny saw a flash of lace, and a face. It was Kitsune, the Tokyo Fox.

"Around the corner, two doors along," she said. "This is as close as I get."

"Naturally," Patrise said. He took a step, and the Fox's cloak swept; Danny was aware that something had changed hands. Then the Fox hurried on into the night, almost floating, with no sound at all.

The group moved on, around the corner, to the indicated door. It was a hinged steel door, with a massive padlock. There was no light or sign of life from the building. The woman who had joined Danny and Stagger Lee kept on walking. Patrise gestured at the padlock, and Stagger Lee reached into his bag.

Stagger wrapped a length of soft metal ribbon around the door hasp. He looked at Patrise, holding his hand arched. Patrise nodded. Stagger Lee moved his hand, and a match flared; the thermite caught, there was a ring of white fire and a spray of sparks, and the hasp and padlock dropped into Stagger Lee's gloved palm with a plop.

McCain grabbed the edge of the door and flung it wide open. Light spilled out. Patrise walked through, just as if it were La Mi-rada. The others followed.

The warehouse space was more than two stories high, lit by bulbs in green tin fixtures; cardboard and junk sheetmetal had been duct-taped over all the windows. Toward the rear was a dimmer space, a metal framework, and stacks of crates. Up front was an assembly line, snaking back and forth around the floor.

At one end, a young man took empty bottles out of crates. Another pushed them along rollers; they stopped below a glass tank of red liquid, with a long rubber hose leading from it. Another person dribbled a half inch of the red stuff into a bottle, then sent it along to another station, where the bottles were topped off with clear fluid from a tube attached to an iron tap. At the next stop, the bottle was capped, shaken to mix the contents, and placed in a wooden case. Another worker leaned on a hand truck, staring into space, presumably waiting for the case to be filled.

None of the workers seemed to have noticed the intrusion. They just kept on shoving, filling, stacking. Their clothes were battered, ragged, filthy; they wore ruined tennis shoes or none at all. Danny could see that the capper's hands were scarred and bleeding. Some of them looked like part-elves, some human, but their skin was so dirty, their eyes so red and vacant, that it was hard to be sure who was how much of what.

He looked again at the tank of red fluid. He knew well enough what it was. The workers were Vamps; the red stuff was elf blood, cut with water to make it go farther. This was where the addicts got their supply.

A woman in a red leather jacket appeared on top of a stack of crates. She had a clipboard in one hand and a long-barreled revolver in the other. Her hair shone blue-white; her skin was the color of bone, her eyes silver. She wore black jeans with a hip holster, and army boots.

"What the fuck is this supposed to be?" she shouted, in a chiming voice that might otherwise have been beautiful. "If you're coppers, you can just-"

"Not at all, madam," Mr. Patrise said, tipping his hat and bowing from the waist. "Not a copper button among us. We're merely a community interest group. North Side Citizens 1 Sanitary Committee, at your service."

He gestured with his cane, and Stagger Lee went to the kid who was filling the bottles. Stagger took the hose from the boy's hand, not roughly; he just stood there, looking slowK around.

Stagger Lee gave the hose back. The Vamp took it in both hands and stuck it in his mouth. The red stuff dribbled down his front.

Patrise said, "Grossly unsanitary, madam, I'm sure you'll agree. I'm afraid we'll have to file a formal complaint."

"Complaint?" the Ellyll woman said, still stuck between anger and puzzlement. Then she drew herself up straight, and her hair seemed to crackle and spark. She threw down the clipboard and brought up the pistol. "Why don't you complain about this, asshole?"

To one side, windows near the roof crashed in. Glass and cardboard fell away, and the tall woman Danny had seen earlier stepped onto the high platform, holding a tommy gun. She was flanked by two bulky men wielding axes. %

The woman fired, a long spit of yellow flame and a noise like a chainsaw. There were little explosions from the crates below the elf's boots; splinters of glass flew, and the red stuff bled from the crates. The elf shrieked something, not in English, ran to the back of the warehouse and dove out of sight.

"Lincoln," Patrise said, and McCain's Colts were instantly in his fists. He fired once, and the tank of blood exploded. All around the room, the workers' heads came up, scenting the air. They converged on the puddling fluid.

"Hallow," Patrise said, "you and Lincoln clear the area. Ladies and gentlemen, let's file our complaint."

Danny and McCain rounded up the kids from the bottling line. They didn't respond to speech, but followed numbly when herded along. McCain led the way to the street: a canvas-covered truck had pulled up before the door. Cloudhunter got out of the passenger seat, swinging his shotgun. The Vamps let themselves be loaded aboard, and the driver took off.

Danny said to McCain, "What was that? Withdrawal?"

"Outsider's Disease. Sometimes they turn nasty-Loop Garous. But they don't use the violent cases for work like this."

Back inside, the gunner and axmen had come down to ground level, and the other man had produced a crowbar and sledgehammer from under his coat. Stagger Lee was examining the machinery.

"Here," he said, and the hammer struck once hard; a whole section of the assembly line collapsed.

Cloudhunter handed his gun to Patrise, who said, "Thank you, Cloud," and began firing into the crates, smashing more glass, sending up sprays of fluid. He handed the gun back, and Cloudhunter reloaded it, as the axmen continued the job. Stagger Lee had strapped on a dust mask and taken some canisters from his bag. He began spreading powder over a pile of cardboard crates and wooden pallets.

There was a crash from the rear of the warehouse, then a movement: a figure in red and black, running straight at them, at Patrise. Cloudhunter took a step, leveled his shotgun: it clicked. He let it go and raised his empty hands. There was a blinding sweep of light, a clunk as the shotgun hit the concrete floor, and a yelp like a hurt animal. The running figure fell down.

Cloudhunter suddenly had his long jeweled knife out, and in front of him lay another of the Vamps, wrapped in the elf-woman's jacket, his head nearly severed.

"Loop Garou," McCain muttered to Danny. "Everybody's got a job to do."

The Ellyll woman, in a white shirt, appeared from around a corner and fired. Cloudhunter jerked, doubled over. McCain's pistol was out then: he fired twice, the woman screamed, and then the Colt jammed. McCain started walking forward, clearing the jam, ditching the magazine and slamming in another. But the woman had disappeared again.

"Cloud," Mr. Patrise said, and woke Danny up. He dashed to Cloudhunter's side, unslinging his bag. The elf was in a half-crouch, right arm pressed to his chest, left hand still holding the knife at guard. "Can you sit?" Danny said. "Here, lean against this."

Cloudhunter had taken the hit in the upper left chest, just below the collarbone. He was still bleeding freely. One of Damn's books said that the elf vascular system was close to human. Aorta? Not a direct hit, or Cloudhunter wouldn't have been standing, and there was no arterial spurt.

Danny got Cloud's jacket open, cut awav his shirt. Cloudhunter's neck scarf was wrapped around his upper chest It was a hard silk, blue with points of light in it. Danny couldn't find a tear, and no blood seemed to have soaked into it; it was driven in A memory floated up, something about silk in wounds. The Mongols, that was it. They had worn tightly woven silk shirts. Arrows didn't tear the silk; they would still make wounds, but a tug on the fabric would bring the arrow out clean.

It would be worth a try-later, when they weren't under fire. "I'm going to dress this just as it is for now," he told Cloudhunter. "If I try to get the bullet out now, you might start bleeding. That wouldn't be good, here." At the edge of his vision, Danny saw some of the Outsider's workers shuffling about. Yeah, he thought, /'/ sure wouldn't. He pulled out the bandaging supplies, and a pair of angled scissors to cut away the excess silk.

"Don't try to cut that," he heard Patrise say. Danny looked up, then felt the metal spring apart in his hand. The hinge rivet was sheared, and the lower blade clattered to the concrete floor.

"I guess not," Danny said.

Mr. Patrise said, "Don't worry about that now. You're doing very well. Please proceed."

Danny said to Cloudhunter, "I'm going to pin up your arm. You need to move as little as possible until I can see to it at the house. Okay?"

"Yes," Cloudhunter said. His voice was thin and tight.

Danny reached to the bag, loaded a morphine cartridge into the hypo carrier. "And something for the pain."

Cloudhunter said, "No."

Danny hesitated. He could see the stress on the elf's face, in his eyes. "Yes," he said. "Just for the pain. I won't knock you out."

"It's all right, Cloud," Patrise said, bending down. "We're almost finished here."

Cloudhunter nodded. Danny gave the shot. "Thank you," the elf said softly.

Patrise said, "Rudy, Katherine, bag detail and follow with Stagger Lee. Where's Sam?"

"Went with Line," one of the others said, and indicated the back of the warehouse.

Mr. Patrise tapped his stick. "Hallow, can you follow them carefully?"

"I've been in fires."

"But not firefights, I think," Mr. Patrise said. "However, you are no longer needed here, and you may be there. Go on."

Danny gathered up his kit and moved toward the back of the warehouse. There were crates of empty bottles, coils of tubing, crates of God knew what. Through a doorway he saw a doctor's examining table with an IV arm board. That would be where the supply came from. There had been at least a couple of quarts in the glass tank. Losing two quarts of blood was fatal, if you were human. Maybe they pooled it. Or He felt a cold breeze. To his right a few steps was an open door. He looked through. There was an empty lot beyond, and in the distance a low stone wall, some trees beyond. He clenched his fingers on his bag and walked through the doorway.

"Dance with me, mister?" a woman's voice said, right in Danny's ear.

His spine froze and he tensed for a bullet or a blow, but there was just an instant of silence, and then the voice again: "I've gotta go home soon, but I'd really like one more dance. You look like a nice fella. Please?"

Danny turned. A girl was standing just a few steps from him, wearing a long beaded dress that sparkled in the moonlight. She held out her hands. "Come on, mister. Just one more. Before they miss me at home."

Danny heard a grunt from behind. He turned. The wounded elf-woman lurched out of the doorway, toward him. Danny ducked to one side; his foot hit something and he lost his balance, tumbling over as the woman just brushed by him.

"Yes, you'll do," the girl's voice said. "Let's dance."

Danny struggled to get up; his foot was caught in a root or cable of some kind. A hand touched his shoulder, and he twitched. "Take it easy, Doc," McCain said, and helped Danny stand. He pointed a finger. "You find her like that, or did you take her down?"

The elf was lying face-up a few yards away. Her hands were clawed at her throat; she was absolutely still. The girl in the beaded dress was nowhere in sight.

"I didn't…" He tried to explain about the ‹; irl in w hire.

McCain looked into the distance, and said, "Oh."

"I know I saw her."

McCain went to the fallen elf, drew one of his guns, aimed very deliberately between the woman's eyes, and fired. He put the gun away. "I believe you," he said, with no irony at all, and crossed himself.

"I don't get it."

"Her name's Resurrection Mary," McCain said, and tilted his head toward the stone wall. "That's Resurrection Cemetery over there. Usually she's on Archer Street, but I guess it was a slow night."

"Okay, but I still don't know where she went."

"She got what she wanted and went back where she came from, Doc. What's the matter, don't you whistle in graveyards in Iowa?"

Danny stared.

"You go on back," McCain said. "Night's not over yet."

When Danny reached the bottling floor, everyone was gone except for Mr. Patrise and Stagger Lee. Stagger was wiring up what were pretty obviously explosives. "That's it, sir. Good night."

"Good night, Stagger," Patrise said. "Come with me, Hallow."

Danny and Mr. Patrise got into the big car. The woman Patrise had called Katherine and Cloudhunter sat in front; Katie drove them away. About half a block down, there was a muffled sound of thunder, and a shimmer of orange light behind them.

Mt the house, Danny took Cloudhunter to the infirmary. Mr. Patrise followed them. The Ellyll removed his shirt, showing a slender, very angular chest. By human standards, there wasn't much musculature, but Cloudhunter was certainly not weak; Danny touched his shoulder and felt wiry hardness beneath the skin.

He had Cloudhunter lie flat, got a pressure bandage ready in case of serious bleeding, and unwound the blue silk scarf. With a firm, even pull, it came out of the wound, displaying the flattened slug like a piece of jewelry in a shop window. The bleeding was minor.

Danny opened a tube of goldenrod salve, looked at it skeptical 1 v. Stagger Lee had made some pretty wild claims for the stuff;

Danny supposed it was at least an antiseptic. He rubbed some on the broken skin.

The oozing blood just stopped. The bruising began to fade, and Danny could see the edges of the hole crawl toward closure. He blinked, thinking he must be too tired to see straight, but there it was. With a nervous glance at Mr. Patrise. who was watching silently, halfway smiling. Danny applied a gauze dressing and reslung the Ellyll's arm.

"Do you think you can rest okay. Cloudhunter? I think that's what you need more than anything."

"Call me Cloud." the Ellyll said, and nodded. "I will have some.. camomile tea."

Danny laughed. "My grandmother used to make camomile tea."

"Was she wise?"

"Yeah." Danny lied.

Mr. Patrise said. "The tea will be in your room. Cloud." He yawned. "It's been a busy week. I think we'll all just relax for the next couple of days. Good night." He went out.

Danny said. "You'll be all right in your room. Cloud? If this starts to bleed at all. or hurt, call me."

"I will. Doc. You have my thanks.''

"Oh. It's my job now. Here, don't forget your scarf." He folded the blue silk, then felt the hard spot within it. "You want the bullet?"

Cloudhunter stared at him in a way that was deeply unsettling.

"I. uh-I knew some people who'd keep things like that. Luck. I guesv

Silently, Cloudhunter accepted the piece of metal, closed his fingers over it.

Danny tried to think of something else to say. "That's really beautiful silk."

Cloud said something that sounded like "Nancy." Danny supposed it was a word in the elf language.

The phone buzzed. "Infirmary"

Staggd Lee's voice said. "Doc. arc vou still working in there?"

"No, just finished."

"Would you stay there, please? There's another job."

"Sure." Cloud nodded and left the room. "Who's-" But Stagger had hung up. Danny hadn't seen anyone else hurt. He paced a bit, then looked around at the cabinets and refilled his bag, adjusting the load-fewer pills, more wound closures, an extra inflatable splint.

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. Stagger Lee came in, followed by two of the gray-coated house staff. They were carrying a zippered black bag. From its size and weight and the way it folded, Danny had no doubt of what was in it. Without a word it was carried into the surgery room, dropped on the table. The bearers left. Stagger Lee had hung up his coat; he went in, unzipped the bag.

It was the dead elf woman.

Danny said, "What's this for?" He remembered something McCain had said: If they cant crawl back to Elfland, they die. "She won't-I mean, she isn't going to-come back."

Stagger Lee looked faintly amused. "She's quite permanently dead. We need the bullets out." He uncovered a tray of surgical tools. "It'll wait till tomorrow, if you're really worn out, but the job won't get any prettier."

"The bullets."

"Yes. It doesn't have to be done neatly. Just get them out intact." He exhaled. "I am in serious need of a scotch. Can I get you something?"

"Just some coffee. Please."

"Be right back." He stopped at the door. "Wait. You were taught all about body-fluid safety, right?"

"Yeah, sure." Danny looked at the body. "Don't touch the blood, right?"

"It won't soak through unbroken skin. But yeah, don't."

Danny pulled down his suspenders and took off his shirt. There was a waterproof apron hanging against the wall. He reached for a pair of surgical gloves, then found a heavy rubber pair.

The body was wearing a white cotton shirt with ruffles down the front, and thin leather bands with silver buckles wrapped around her forearms. Danny cut away the shirt front with scissors. He cut off the straps, too, so he didn't have to look at them.

There was a hole near the heart, another on the left flank, by the floating ribs, a third in the abdomen-when had that happened? He was impressed that the Ellyll had gone so far with those wounds. The wonderful silver hair was matted and vile. McCain's shot to the forehead seemed like overkill, unless it was something to do with the pale girl… There were a couple of long bluish marks around the throat that didn't make any medical sense, but he put the question aside.

He had seen plenty worse, riding the van, in the County ER. learning the trade. Shotguns. Traffic accidents; a little bullet had nothing on a pickup truck for kinetic energy. And farm machinery-was hell on muscle and bone.

Death made a difference, too. A dead body didn't move or pulse or clutch or moan. When the life had faded out under you. after you'd pounded and stuck, breathed and fought for it, you felt something. You couldn't let it last, because there'd be another run any minute, but it was bad while it held on. A body you just found, though-when the bullets or the truck bumper or the tons of corn falling down the silo had finished the job before you got there- there was nothing but the taxi ride to the morgue. Meat delivery some of the guys called it.

Retractor, probe. He thought he heard a click, but there wasn't enough light. He tossed the probe down and opened drawers until he found a headband light. Yeah, there the little bastard was. Dissecting knife. Forceps. He examined the slug: it hadn't deformed much, looked like an ordinary hardball. At home, people had mostly used hollowpoints on each other. He tossed it into a steel basin, where it gave a rolling clang.

The other chest shot had gotten behind a rib. Danny got a spreader on the bone, cracked it out. Hemostat, to pull back the mangled heart wall; it was tough and kept slipping. Light on metal. Clang.

"Coffee's on," Stagger Lee said, and put a big china mug on the counter.

"Thanks. Halfway there." The coffee was muddy-looking, and had a sharp, sweet smell. It burned the back of his throat, not with heat.

"What's in this?"

"Irish. Just drink it slow. The comfort of mankind."

There was brown sugar in it, and thick cream. It did taste good. Danny took a long sip of it, then noticed his glove left a bloody print and wrapped the mug in a towel.

The bullet in the lower thorax was deep. He undid the woman's belt, started to unfasten the fly buttons, then just got the shears and cut his way in. It wasn't anything like undressing her. Meat forgave everything. He made a Y-shaped cut, pulled back the points and got retractors and elastic on them. The liver was a strange coppery color, and he didn't see a spleen.

Stagger Lee said, "You know what you're doing. I just dug like Fred C. Dobbs."

"You do this often?"

"When it needed doing."

Danny thought about objecting to the answer, but didn't. "What's it for?"

"Mr. Patrise didn't talk to you about this?"

"No."

"The body goes back to the Ellyllon. Sometimes they take it over Division to Elfland, sometimes not. It's their fancy Borgia politics, nothing to do with us." He looked down at the deep incision. "We take all of our stuff back."

The third bullet went into the pan.

Stagger said, "Do you need help?"

"No."

"I'll be in the other room. I quit being curious about brains a while ago."

"Go to bed if you want."

"No, I'll wait."

The knife went around the forehead, the scalp peeled back. The electric skull saw buzzed right through the bone. The brain didn't look any different from a human's, not that Danny's job had involved much neurosurgery. He was getting tired. He used the long-bladed knife and cut out a wedge, as from a watermelon, pried out the bullet and shoved the section back. He put the bowl of skull back in place and tugged the scalp down. "That's it," he said. "What now?"

"That's all," Stagger Lee said. "I'll call to have the body collected, get the maids to clean up in here."

"I can do it."

"We've got maids. You're a specialist. Get your-" He looked at the mug with its pink stains, wiped it, carefully poured the contents into a paper cup. "Here. Call it a night. Remember, poker game's Monday. Let me know."

Danny didn't object. He carried the coffee up to his room, took a short hot shower and fell into bed.

Something didn't add up right about the bullet business. It might be true about sending the body back to Elfland, it might even have been true about removing the World stuff; but it didn't feel true-at least, not like all of the truth.

He didn't think anymore, he didn't want to. He slept.

There was a tall woman there-really tall, somewhere over six feet-in a red flannel shirt, black vest and jeans, blazing away with a Tommy gun. Danny recognized her from the raid on the bottling plant. She turned her head. "Hi," she said.

"Hello. I'm… Doc."

"Just a sec." She pulled off her soundproof earmuffs. "Hi," she said again. "You said you were Doc, right?"

"Yeah."

"We didn't have a chance to get introduced the other night. I'm Katie Silverbirch. Long Tall Katie if I'm not there to hear it." She pulled the magazine out of the Thompson. "Come to play?"

Danny gestured at the weapon. "I never shot one of those before. I was going to ask Jesse about it."

"Jesse's busy, I think. But he taught me, and I can teach you. If that'll do."

"That'd be great. Thank you."

"Get yourself some goggles and a set of muffs. Right over there."

When Danny was equipped, Katie showed him how to load and work the gun. "You've basically got two useful stances. If you really want to hit targets, you hold it like a rifle, bring it up to your eye, like this. If you can brace against a corner, that's even better; gives you some cover, too." She lowered the weapon to just above her waist, leaned forward on the balls of her feet. "Hipshooting isn't very accurate, but if you've got to charge through a door, it makes the bad guys duck. And a Thompson throws so much lead you'll probably hit something. This is the way." She leaned into the gun and fired a burst, tearing the midsection out of the paper silhouette at the end of the range. She handed Danny the gun. "Try it."

He did. The Thompson bucked like a firehose under full stream, but he clenched hard and got some of the bullets into the target.

" 'S'okay," Katie said. "What do you think made all those other holes in the wall-moths?"

"How long did it take you to learn?"

"Awhile. But I was handling a chainsaw when 1 was four. It's all in the control."

"Four?"

"My folks are loggers, up in Michigan. The Peninsula."

"That's the skinny north part, right?"

She laughed. "Right. How about you?"

"Farmers. Iowa."

"Came 'bout as far. Call strong down there?"

"What do you mean?"

"The call to come here. You know, to where the magic's strong. My Mama calls it medicine. She's Ojibwa. Try changing out the magazine." As Danny did, Katie said, "I didn't know what it was at first. I just had some dreams, and a funny feeling when I saw clouds in the south. But Mama knew. She said to Dad, 'Girl's had a vision. She's gone go.'

"My dad, he's a big old Finn, but he's got medicine of his own… Anyway, Mama packed me up, and said goodbye. Dad drove me to Green Bay, to the train station, and he said goodbye. Don't think he could have done it with Mama there. The way he did it, he could go back home and tell Mama I'd gotten on the train all right, everything was fine. So what did your folks say, when it happened?"

"They didn't want me to go." Danny put the gun down, thinking hard. He thought he'd gone away on his own account. What did it change if something had made him do it? "We argued a lot about it."

"Oh." Katie chewed on her lip, and then said, "I got scared, on the way. I got off the train when it stopped in Milwaukee, and I thought about just not going on. But it was dark, and when I looked out on the lake and saw the Fire glow… I got back on. I don't know what would have happened if it had been daytime."

Danny told her about the old man at the truck stop, with his box of Bibles. "Maybe… there's always a last chance to change your mind." He wasn't at all sure he believed yet in a call, but he couldn't deny that it made sense.

"Turn back, O man," Katie sang without much of a tune, "forswear thy foolish ways."

Danny said, "Do you still hear from your folks?"

"Mama writes every month. Dad's not much of a writer, but he always puts a line or two in. Sends a photo, sometimes. You know what a bloodstopper is?"

"No."

"Some people can stop bleeding, with a word, sometimes just by willing it. This is old, long before the elves came back. All the loggers know about it; somebody'd take an ax in the foot, or a bucksaw right through the hand, and they'd call the bloodstopper. Even if he was on the phone, he'd work the charm, and the bleeding would just quit."

"You've seen that?"

"Yes. My dad can do it, and on the drive to Green Bay he taught me. A man can only teach a woman, and a woman has to teach a man." She paused, put her hands together. "I haven't worked it. Shade medicine's strange-the elves' and ours both. I'm not sure of it. Not like Tommy." She touched the gun. "The Ojibwa say that everything you are is a gift from the spirit world, and until you have those gifts inside you, you aren't really anything."

Katie smiled crookedly at Danny, as if she wanted him to answer that.

He smiled back, and nodded. He didn't have an answer. wver a late lunch Monday, Stagger Lee said, "How long has it been since you went to a movie?"

"A while." It had actually been two years. There was no theater in Adair; every chance they could, Danny and Robin had hitched to the drive-in a county over. Rob usually talked them in for half price, since they wouldn't be taking up a car slot: the guy at the gate looked dubious, but Rob had always been good at getting his point across.

Danny couldn't remember what the movie had been.

Stagger Lee said, "The Biograph's showing The Train with Burt Lancaster. That's supposed to be first-rate, and even if it isn't, it's Lancaster. And it's Monday, so Laughs Lost will be running Chaplin all afternoon."

"I don't care."

"Biograph, then. I'm not that big on Charlie. Keaton's on Tuesday: that's different."

The theater was only a few blocks away. No prices were posted at the box office, which was manned by a halfie in a brass-buttoned jacket and an odd round cap. Damn saw people in line pa) with silver coins, little scrolls of brown paper, a bundle of exotic weeds. Stagger insisted on paying for both of them, with a tarnished quarter. He scooped up the tickets and waited.

"Change, Johnny," he said finally.

The boy behind the glass said, "What, Mr. Lee?"

"There's only two of us for one show. Besides, I saw you palm the dime the World lady gave you."

The boy pushed it across.

As they walked through the doors, Danny said, "How could he do that?"

"What? Cut a deal? Same way I did. Down on the Levee, nothing has a fixed price, and nobody pays retail. Allow me to demonstrate further." He went to the snack counter, waved at the young man behind it.

"Afternoon, Mr. Lee. What can I get for you?"

"Your neon box is stuttering. How about two giant double-butter popcorns for a recharge?"

"Just a moment, Mr. Lee."

The counterman tapped on a side door, spoke with someone within. "Manager says sure thing, Mr. Lee. You know the way?"

Stagger Lee waved a reply and led Danny to a door marked employees ONLY. Beyond it was a service room lit by a steel-shaded bulb, meters and junction boxes around the walls. Some of the boxes had red-lightning warning labels, others a tilted-spiral mark and the words CAUTION SPELLS ACTIVE.

Stagger Lee rapped his knuckles on one of the spell boxes, cocked his head as if listening for something. Danny couldn't detect any change in the room's overall hum.

Danny said, "Should I-you know, watch this?"

"Nothing secret about it. You don't need hocus-pocus when the trick really works."

Stagger opened the box. Inside was a flat brass ring ten inches across, surrounded by other bits of shiny metal and glass. The ring rotated about a turn to the right, then back as far to the left. At each reversal the rest of the machinery ticked and flashed. The big ring didn't seem to be physically connected to anything else; the devices made no obvious sense at all.

Danny wondered how he would explain a fuse box to someone who'd never heard of electricity: You mean the little wires are supposed to burn up?

Stagger brought the silver dime out of his pocket.

"Does that-"

"Just a second, please. Gotta concentrate."

Carefully, Stagger held the coin in the center of the brass ring. He put two fingers of his other hand on a flattened sphere of red glass, and muttered something Danny couldn't hear.

A blob of darkness appeared around the coin, and Stagger pulled his fingertips away. The red glass glowed, not very brightly, and Stagger let it go as well.

The darkness filled the ring, and the coin vanished into it. The blob was like a blind spot in the eyes after staring at the sun; Danny looked away. Stagger exhaled loudly and shut the box.

Danny said, "The coin's fuel?"

"Not really, though it'll get used up. Magic doesn't just happen, abracadabra poof. It runs on energy, like everything else. Can you get your head around the idea of multiple universes?"

"Like Elfland."

"Like that. Some people always thought there were other universes; it helps a lot to have one we can point to. Elfland's a parallel universe, and the magic source is another. There may be more, maybe an infinite number.

"Anyway, Elfland's got a wide-open channel to the magic source. They're bathed in it, like we get sunshine and cosmic ravs. while we're insulated. Sometimes, though-at least since Elfland punched the big holes-we can get into contact with the power.''

"The Touch."

"You got it. If you're good, you can pull in power without props. But spellboxes need something to drop the resistance. Some metals can do it, especially silver." He tapped the box. "The flow will eventually wear the dime away. Nobody rides for free."

"You said people didn't need props," Danny said. "What if you're the dime?"

Stagger Lee said quietly, "Doc. you arc no more than the third person I know who's ever asked that. The answer is that we haven't been doing this long enough to know. It's going to be interesting finding out. Come on, let's go collect our popcorn and some good seats."

The movie was exciting, a World War Two adventure with evil Nazis and brave Resistance fighters and a long railroad chase. It was in black and white; Stagger explained that movies were still made that way even after color was available. "Artistic choice," he said. "The sort of image you want in the viewer's mind."

"Well, sure, but isn't it-"

"Not what's on the screen. In the mind. Like any magic trick, it's what the audience remembers that counts."

They went back to the house and collected Danny's car. This time they drove north, to a place called the Rush Street Grill. It had large round tables, a short but busy bar, a small bandstand with drums and an amp set up. Lucius Birdsong was there, alone at a big round table, eating a huge sloppy cheeseburger. He was wearing a sweatshirt with what looked like a college seal, with the school name and motto in neat lettering. It actually read J-SCHOOL is for the other guys.

"Glad you could make it, Doc," Birdsong said. "I trust you have brought all you hold dear, intent on bidding it farewell?"

"Listen to this guy," Stagger Lee said. "I've seen him shove in his last typewriter on a pair of fours."

Carmen Mirage came in. Heads turned. She was wearing a bronze shirtwaist blouse with a deep-cut neck, and a long black leather skirt. Her hair glowed with fairy dust. She sat down with Danny and the others. "Deka won't be here tonight. She's got a gig way uptown."

"Neither will Spoke," Stagger Lee said. "He's got a date… some distance downtown." Carmen laughed musically.

A woman sat down behind the drum kit, and a man in a vest and black T-shirt stepped up next to her, carrying an electric guitar. The woman began with a stately beat, the man joined it, and then they launched into an instrumental of "Wall of Death."

During "Valentine's Day (is Over)" the Tokyo Fox came in. Under her coat she was wearing a brilliant red dress, one of those Oriental silk dresses with a high collar and a slit halfway up her thigh that showed black stockings and red high heels.

She looked straight at Danny. "Good evening, Doc."

Danny had the impression that the others were looking at him as well. He didn't turn his head to check. He had a feeling that his response was important. "Hello, Miss Kitsune. Pleased to see you. Are you joining us?"

"Wouldn't miss it," she said as she sat down.

A couple of songs later, the waiter whispered into Carmen's ear. "Well, of course, cara mia," she said, excused herself, and went up to the bandstand.

The drummer began a quick four-beat; the guitarist launched into a twanging riff. Danny hadn't expected country music here. It wasn't that he didn't like country. He was just, well, tired of songs about guns and trucks and the love of good women, dogs, and Jesus in no particular order.

What Carmen sang, though, was jazzy and very quick, not danceable at all:

Black iron through the hard red wheat

Blue crocuses around her feet

North prairie house that stands alone

And the light goes down behind the painted shutters

In the early dark

And Persephones daughters are home

Danny had read the Persephone story: she had been taken away from her mother for part of the year, and the separation made winter. But her daughters…?

Hard benches in the emigrant cars Straight horizon under strange new stars Railroad passage to a dream of land I 'ntil the wheels stop turning And the milk needs churning And the chaff wants burning And the days get over too soon To quite understand

White crosses in a pale green plot

Time passes but the heart moves not

Take comfort that its Someone's will

As the storm wina" s rising and the beech tree shudders

In the golden haze

And Persephone's daughters are still

Long shadows from the great white mills Thunder echoes from the unseen hills Somewhere surely there are welcome lights But this is where you 're dwelling And the crop needs weeding And the children feeding And there's never time for a word To soften her nights

Danny glanced around the room, wondering if there was anyone here who hadn't left home for the Shade. Did anyone get born here? He hadn't seen any children at all. He turned his head away, looked out the window at the empty street. He didn't stop listening.

Gray geese across the diamond sky

How long the wings have passed her by

Good children ought to carry on

But the clouds shine doubled on the clear blue waters

In the silver night

And Persephone's daughters are gone

Carmen took her bow and came back to the table. Around the room, the other diners were rising from their seats. "Guess we should start?"

"Guess we should," Lucius said.

The crowd was moving to a large back room. The tables here were covered with green felt. Behind a brass teller's cage Danny could see racked chips, cased decks of cards in neat stacks. There were already people around a craps table, and a roulette wheel was turning.

A slightly plump blond woman in a green velvet tuxedo was greeting people, shaking hands. "Hello, Lucius, Fox. Nice number, Carmen; thanks. Or do I owe you?"

"Owe Alvah next time you see him. It's his lyric."

Lucius said, "Doc, this is Flats Montoya. She owns this joint. Flats, meet Doc Hallownight. He's giving us a try tonight."

"Good evening, Doc. Didn't I read about you in Lucius's column the other night?"

"She can cook a rare burger and she reads my column," Lucius said. "Will you marry me? Or at least let me leave teeth marks on your ankles?"

"Let's hear it for journalistic ethics. Welcome to the game, Doc. Good luck."

They sat down at one of the round tables. Stagger Lee said, "Our game is even buy-in, table stakes, dealer's choice. You can sit out any game you don't like; we're all friends here, but the game's still poker. Is that all right?"

"Sure."

"I'll get the box," the Tokyo Fox said. "Hundred chips each?"

"Make it a hundred fifty," Stagger said. "Keep us going longer."

Kitsune nodded and went to the teller's cage. Danny saw the others putting coins on the table, and did likewise. Stagger helped him work out the value of his stake, since the original denominations of the coins didn't seem to mean much here. The Fox returned with several racks of chips and a black wooden box. "The cash goes in here," she said to Danny, "and the house holds the box until we're finished and divide up. They also get a cut of the box for the use of the table. Got it?"

"Yeah. But why does the money all go up there?"

"Two reasons," the Fox said. "One, a lot of things get used for money in the Shadow; this establishes that everybody put her stake up, whether it's gold or shamrocks." She herself had put in a small pouch full of beautifully cut stones. "Two, it avoids confusion if someone isn't paying attention, or takes a long piss break, or whatever. Oh, and there's bar service back here too, just in case you think you're playing too well."

So they played poker. It was, as Stagger Lee had said, a Friendly game, but there was nothing loose about it; a dropped card meant a redeal, as Danny found out carls on. Stagger Lee never dealt anything but seven-card stud, no wilds. Kitsune liked draw games, with occasional variations. Lucius alternated seven-stud and five-draw. Carmen changed games every deal, but always called for high-low; it seemed to pay off for her. Danny stuck mostly to five-card draw, what he knew best; he won a couple of big pots but mostly lost slowly.

There was one thing Danny had never seen before: the buck to show last dealer was a waiter's green order pad, and part of the deal was noting each player's total of chips. All the tables seemed to be doing it.

It was nearly eleven when the lights flashed red, and a low chime sounded through the room.

Immediately everyone shoved his and her chips into the center of the table. Every table. Danny stared for a moment, and Lucius shoved Danny's chips in. The Fox slipped the green pad into the flap of her dress. There was a buzz, and the centers of the tables just opened up; the chips dropped out of sight, and the green felt sealed up again.

Meanwhile, the craps players snapped their chips into racks on the table edge, and the table slid like a drawer into the wall. Two croupiers pulled a false tabletop away from the wainscoting and dropped it over the roulette table; a moment later, waiters were setting salad and hors d'oeuvre dishes out on the "buffet." The teller's cage retracted a foot into the wall, and a panel slid down and faced out flush.

Another set of waiters came in with trays, and dealt out tea cups, pie, and brandy to all the seated patrons. The standing players were handed drinks; some lit cigarettes, some lounged against the walls.

A few moments later four police officers came barrelling through the door. Copper buttons glittered on their blue uniforms. "All right," the man in the lead bellowed, "this place is-" He paused, looked around.

Flats came in, her tuxedo jacket off, a bib-front apron tied over her ruffled shirt and velvet trousers. It read KISS THE COOK. "Hello, O'Gara," she said pleasantly.

"What's been going on back here, citizen Montoya?" the policeman said.

"Looks like dessert, O'Gara. Want some tea? I'm all out of doughnuts, and you know I can't afford coffee these days."

The show went on for fifteen minutes or so; finally the cops filed back out.

"We always give them fifteen minutes' departure grace," Lucius said to Danny. "Drink your brandy: when there's a raid it's on the house."

"Which is to say, the house take covers it," Carmen said merrily.

After fifteen minutes, the table service was removed, order was restored to the craps and roulette players, and the panel covering the chip bucket opened up. The Fox took out the green pad and they reclaimed their stacks.

"What if they raid us again?" Danny said.

"Never happen," the Fox said. "It'd be bad art."

There were no further interruptions. Shortly after one AM, a different chime rang, and Flats came out to say, "Closing down, ladies and gentlemen, closing down. Have you no homes to go to? Last Deal coming up next, ladies and gentlemen, thank you all."

They finished the hand they were playing-Stagger Lee won with a completely hidden straight-and Kitsune went to retrieve the cash box.

Danny said, "What about the last deal?" Stagger raised an eyebrow and turned to Lucius, with an odd expression; Lucius touched Danny's elbow and shook his head slightly, conspiratorially.

Danny followed Lucius out of the back room. The musicians had closed down in the front, but there were still several diners. Danny turned; Kitsune had followed him, but not the others.

"Sit down a minute, Doc. No more for you, you're driving. \1. burnt beans black for the Doctor here, will you?"

Danny looked around. Some of the other back room patrons were gathering their coats to leave, a few were ordering desserts. In the corner two police officers were talking over beer mugs and ravaged hamburger platters. Danny was absolutely certain they had been in the raid.

"Stagger Lee'll find his own way home," Lucius said. "Let me explain about Last Deal. Everybody still back there gets fifty chips. and they play five-card draw until half of 'em arc tapped. Then everybody goes home. First player out with the biggest winner, second with second, and so on. Odd number makes a threesome in the middle. Clear on the concept?"

Danny tossed it around in his mind for a moment, then nodded.

Lucius said, "We're just here for the poker. Figured you were, too."

"Don't blame Stagger," Kitsune said. "He'd have told you if he expected you to play. He made sure you had a ride home, right?"

Danny drank his black coffee, looked from one of them to the other. "And you-and Lucius-are you-"

Lucius's eyebrows went up, and he showed a lopsided smile. Kitsune was smiling too. She touched her knee, exposed as she perched on the bar stool. "Don't let the red roses fool you, kid. Lucius only chases girls, and so do I."

It was all happening too fast. Danny thought hard about what the Fox had said. His mother would have left the room. His grandmother would have come back with a shotgun.

He thought about-a great number of things. He said, "Can I give either one of you a lift home?"

Kitsune said, "I'm covered. Lucius would probably appreciate it, though."

"Yes, I would."

In the car, driving through the uncertain streets, Danny said, "It's not like I expected. The Shade, I mean."

"Very little in the world is. I myself find that uncertainty to be one of the few things that makes the prospect of another morning endurable."

Danny looked at him. Lucius said, "Excuse me, Doc. I was talking like my typewriter."

"It's all right."

"Is it? It matters, you know."

"Well… the other night-"

"No. Wait. Hold it. I am a journalist, Doc. Anything you tell me is liable to wind up on the opinion pages of a hundred and twenty-seven newspapers syndicated through Global. If you give me your trust, I will value it. I will brood over my ethics, I will agonize, and I will use your secrets, just to get through one more column."

"I saw somebody get killed the other night."

"Friend of yours?"

"No." Danny thought about telling Robin's story. No, that was really out. "I just wondered if-a lot's happened since I got here, and I don't know what to think about most of it."

"Stop here," Lucius said. They were in the middle of an empty, half-ruined block.

"You don't live here."

"Just the fringes of my palatial estate. I want to walk the rest of it. Muse upon a couple of things. Good night, Doc. Thanks for the ride."

"Yeah. Good night, Lucius."

Danny drove the rest of the way back wondering what he had said, what he could have said.

When Danny woke late Tuesday morning there was a pot of coffee outside his door, and the Centurion.

THE CONTRARIAN FLOW

by Lucius Birdsong

What times we are living in, loyal readers, what times. Not since the days when the Powers That Clout feared the wholesale dumping of LSD into Our Fair Levee's reservoirs (for late arrivals, LSD refers to a drug of whoopee, not that road on the waterfront) has there been such a to-do over a non-alcoholic beverage.

Mere days ago one could walk into any flop, crash, or unlit basement in Our Fair Levee and crack open a bottle of the Drink that Keeps on Soaking. No grubby expeditions up to the source, no hoping the source wouldn't laugh in your slack jaws. Why, it was said that in some of the finest wicker hampers of the Gold Coast and the Way Outer I)ri\e. tucked in among the \ehi and the CanfieldY was the odd bonded flagon of Sucker Punch.

And now? Now you not only have to know to knock two longs and a short, that Louie sent you, and that the password is swordfish, you have to have brought your own, because they ain't got any. Friends, of all the un-Levee-like phrases this correspondent has ever heard, "ain't got any" is by far the un-Levee-est.

Now, I submit that Our Fair is founded on the principles of personal liberty, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship. If you want to refresh yourself from a noble friend, that is personal liberty. If you prefer to pay someone else to draw one, draw two, draw three-four units of red, that is free enterprise. And if somebody taps, and somebody tipples, and somebody in between collects from both ends, why then, one of you is an entrepreneur and Devil take the hindmost.

But does it seem, despite all that, that for the last few days Our Fair Levee has had just a little bit less Hell to pay?

Okay, Danny thought, maybe it makes sense, maybe we did something good. Thanks, Lucius.

He let out a breath. His chest had been drum-tight without his even noticing. Suddenly, a little relaxed, a little relieved, he had an idea.

Danny picked up the phone and asked the operator for Ginevra Benci's number. She made the connection for him.

"Hello?" She sounded sleepy. Danny started to apologize, then caught himself: if he didn't go straight into this he would never manage it at all.

"It's Doc, Ginny."

"Hi, Doc." A yawn. "What's going on?"

"Are you working tonight?"

"Yeah. Tuesdays to Thursdays, usually, eight at night to two."

"Would you like to…" Okay, what? "… see a movie this afternoon? Maybe have some dinner, before you go to work?"

"This afternoon? Oh! Sure, yeah, that'd be great. What movie?"

"I heard that there's a Buster Keaton show, all afternoon."

"Okay. At Laughs Lost, right? Should I just meet you there?"

"No, I'll come get you."

"Great. Give me an hour or so, okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah." He looked around wildly for the clock. ''Two o'clock?"

"See you then."

The phone nearly slipped out of his hands as he hung it up. He cleaned up, dressed, went downstairs. Fay and McCain were in the dining room.

Danny said, "Does Mr. Patrise need me this afternoon?"

McCain said, "No, I don't think so. He'll be going to the club tonight, and I think he'd like to have you there."

"I'll meet you there at eight, if that's okay."

"Just so. Mind telling me where you'll be till then? Just in case."

"I'm going to the movies. Laughs Lost. We'll probably go out to dinner after-but I don't know where. We, that is-"

"You needn't say," McCain said easily. "Your time's yours."

Fay said, "Radiant speak connect? Trupsever glow, carol, abun-daniel."

She knew, Danny thought. She had sensed something, seen something-or was it obvious? Was McCain grinning, secretlv?

He nodded to her. She nodded back. He turned to McCain, whose eyes were suddenly flat and cool and empty. "Enjoy yourself, Doc," he said.

W T hen Danny got to Ginny's building, she was waiting, dashing down the steps in a bright red cloth coat, a bag slung over her shoulder. "My work stuff," she said, tossing the bag behind the seats. "I can change at the club. So we can have a nice, slow dinner."

Laughs Lost had a big marquee out front, with half an acre of electric bulbs, and spell-fired neon tubing bent into smiling masks. The lobby was full of framed photos of movie stars; all the pictures seemed to be in black and white, and most had a kind of fogg) glow-that was glamour, Danny thought. The seats were worn, and a little creaky. As the lights started to dim, someone dressed as Chaplin's Tramp pushed a broom down the aisle. He tipped Ins hat and disappeared into the darkness.

First there was a cartoon, a Red Riding Hood and the Wolf story set in a world of nightclubs and big cars. When Little Red threw off her cloak, revealing a tiny white dress and a lot of herself, and went into a swing dance, the Wolf's eyes popped yards out of his head. He bashed himself with a mallet. Danny stared. When had they made this? It couldn't have been for kids.

The cartoon ended, and in the minute of silence Danny felt his heart banging. He looked straight ahead. The screen flickered again.

Danny had heard of Buster Keaton, but never seen any of his films. He was hardly ready for the little man with the sad eyes, who never seemed able to smile. Keaton walked onto the screen, in his flat hat and rumpled clothes, and Danny thought, we're supposed to laugh at him}

Whatever they were supposed to do, they laughed.

There was a short movie about a moving man with a horse-drawn wagon, slogging on against what seemed like all the powers of nature. And another where Keaton was mistaken for a criminal, ridiculous on the face of it, yet his every action only got more police chasing him. And then a long film about the Civil War, with locomotives chasing one another, burning bridges, cavalry charges- Danny kept thinking of the tight-lipped thriller he had seen the other day, with its spies and trains and war, and somehow it only made this one funnier. The last image was of Buster triumphant (though hardly seeming to notice it), finding a way to salute his fellow soldiers and still kiss his girl.

Ginny's hand, Danny realized, had slipped easily into his. He started to turn, saw her face white in the glow of the screen. Then, with really rotten timing, the lights came up.

Stagger Lee was in the lobby, popping chocolate-covered raisins from the jumbo box. "Good afternoon, Doc, Miss Benci. Haven't seen you here before."

"No," she said. "I've been to some of the late shows, but not this."

"First time," Stagger said. "What an enviable position. Wish I'd known. It's an addiction, you know: you try the really hard stuff and you'll never kick it." Danny wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. But Stagger Lee just smiled, said, "There's a matinee every weekday. Tomorrow's Laurel and Hardy: I think they figure that's midweek, better bring out the heavy artillery. Thursday rotates: Snub Pollard, Charley Chase, Harold Lloyd, lots of other people you never heard of." He pointed a thumb at the pictures on the lobby wall. Stagger Lee had a striking resemblance to Lloyd. "Friday's sound shorts. Fields, the Stooges, Andy Clyde. And the Little Rascals, which is good, because those days I can get some work done. Did you like the cartoon?"

"It was great," Ginny said, laughing. "That crazy wolf-and the dancer! How did they do that?"

"Magic," Stagger Lee said. "The old kind. Weekends there are cartoon matinees. Do they still remember Superman, out in the heartland?"

Danny realized Stagger was asking him. "Sure. 'Truth, Justice, and-' "

"The American Way, right. But come by in two weeks and you'll see him like you never have. And more too. The greatest heroes of American fiction are Huckleberry Finn and Bugs Bunny."

The lobby lights blinked. "You'd better get back to your seats," Stagger said.

Ginny said, "How about you?"

"Oh, I've got a spot in the back. I like to watch the audience, you see. Almost more than the movies." Quietly, just to the two of them, he said, "Have you noticed how many Ellyllon are here today?"

Danny hadn't, but now he looked: the crowd was maybe a third elves, more than he had ever seen in one place.

"They like Buster," Stagger said. "I've overheard them claiming that he must have had some of their ancestry, which is the funniest thing I've ever heard an elf say."

Danny noticed the Truebloods after that. Sometimes they laughed at different spots, or a little before or after the humans, but mostly it all came together, elvish laughter and human, silver and gold.

When the second matinee ended, they paused to look over the coming-attractions posters in the lobby. Danny turned to find Stagger Lee standing quietly behind him. "Ask you something?* 1 Damn said.

"Just my specialty."

"Why are so many of the movies here in black and white? I know the silent ones are from before there was color, but…"

"Ah." Stagger looked around; the lobby was mostly empty. "It has to do with Trueblood vision. They don't see colors in the same way we do; subtle combinations turn muddy, can even give them headaches. You ever see an elf wearing more than one color, plus black and white?

"They can get through some of the really vivid Technicolor pictures, and cartoons-and I think they'd watch The Wizard of Oz and the Errol Flynn Robin Hood if they got nosebleeds-but black and white is just naturally more popular." He lowered his voice. "I assume you know the story of Joseph and the many-colored coat? I have a friend at the University of Chicago who believes that's a mythified version of a changeling narrative-elves abducting a human child."

Danny said, "You're kidding."

"My friend isn't. You should see her research. And it's more important than just one story. A lot of people would like to know just when Elfland went away the last time. The Truebloods aren't very forthcoming, so we're hunting for events that indicate the gates were open."

"Mr. Lee?" the woman behind the candy counter said.

Stagger Lee threw up his hands. "The things I do for free popcorn. Th-th-th-that's all, folks." He went into the manager's office.

It was dark outside, and the masks on the marquee were bouncing and spinning with light. Danny and Ginevra went to dinner at a little Italian restaurant a few blocks from the theater. Several people said hello to them, calling Danny by his Levee handle, tipping hats to Ginny.

"It's like I'm somebody famous," Danny said, embarrassed.

"You are," Ginny said. "You're close to Mr. Patrise. Mr. Bird-song wrote about you in the paper. That's what famous is, right?"

"But I haven't done anything."

"You saved Norma Jean's life, and someone said you took care of Cloudhunter. I think that's something." Much more softly, she said, "You're taking me out to dinner, and I think that's something."

After dinner they drove to La Mirada. Ginny disappeared into the back to change.

"Hallow, good evening," Patrise said. "I trust you had a pleasant afternoon?"

"Very pleasant," Danny said.

"Good. Good. We've got a place at the table for you."

There were two elves at a nearby table, Ruthins in bright red leather jackets. White silk scarves, that sparkled in the light, wrapped their throats; with their mirrored sunglasses, whipcord pants, and boots, they looked like pictures Danny had seen of World War One aviators. W 7 ith them were a couple of human kids, not badly dressed for Vamps. Danny could see the butt of a pistol inside one of the Vamps' jackets, but there didn't seem to be any hostility or tension in their look, just the usual moony sucker stare.

Something felt wrong, though. Danny couldn't tell just what. Not the Ruthins, not Patrise's company…

Carmen came out, in a loose gold metallic shirt over a short, tight leather skirt, black sandals laced up her calves. Alvah banged out hard fast chords, and Carmen sang clear and uptempo:

Here I go again into the valley of sublimation Flashin syncopation says there's trouble ahead I don't intend to swerve Waitin for a washout or a bridge to freeze Playin ' metal music on the Corvette keys Nothin ' could be easier than slidin ' into Dead Man s Curve

Tell me do you think this is a suitable case for treatment

Are you gonna take me to that beautiful place

Shelter me from the cold

Nobody believes in a one-night stand

Nothing lasts forever on the other hand

Meet me in that faraway land where the good die old

Danny knew what the problem was. It was with him. Or Ginny, or both of them. He was over here at the table, sipping dark beer, and she was over there pouring it.

This was part of his job, he thought-he had his bag, and was supposed to stay ready and sober enough to use it-and she was doing hers, just as Carmen was singing and McCain and Cloudhun-ter were on watch.

Pay gave the last performance, as usual. Danny stayed on through the empty hour after that, when the Ruthin elves led their followers away, and Patrise bid all good night. He played a quiet game of penny poker with Lucius and the Tokyo Fox until two, so he could drive Ginny home. He tried to tell her what he'd been thinking. She said, "I like what I do. The crowd at the Mirada doesn't treat us badly: they know Mr. Patrise can lock anyone out he wants to. And I like seeing you there, having a good time." She touched his arm. "You do have a good time there, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then so do I."

Once or twice a week after that, Danny met Ginny for a movie. They saw the cartoons Stagger Lee had so insisted on, and Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn at the Biograph-which indeed had a large audience of Ellyllon, who cheered at all the right places. One evening she called, insisting that he must go with her to see somebody called Danny Kaye; the picture was The Court Jester, and over coffee and pie afterward she got him and half the restaurant letter-perfect on where the pellet with the poison was.

They went to The Magnificent Ambersons, because Orson Welles was supposed to be good. Danny watched it all, but he couldn't enjoy it. The small-minded people who couldn't see or think of a world different from their own, wearing their fears and self-righteousness like jewelry, were too much like people he had grown up with. He didn't believe the happy ending at all. Ginny seemed uncomfortable too. He wondered if she felt the same way; but he didn't ask.

Danny spent most of his evenings at La Mirada, watching, listening, learning to hold his drinks, bandaging the occasional kitchen accident. Sometimes there was a worse wound, gunshot or knife, someone he didn't know or had seen only in passing.

By now he was an expert in isolating elf blood- gwaed ellyll, he had learned to call it. One afternoon, Cloudhunter complimented him on how much of the Ellytha Danny had learned; Danny hadn't really noticed it happening, but the praise warmed him for days.

It no longer bothered him to see Ginevra behind the bar. The more he watched her, the more it seemed that she really did love her work, and the more he liked to watch her do it.

Every time he left her at the apartment steps, or waved good night to her as he went off to a midnight surgery, he wondered why it was so easy to go. Wasn't his heart supposed to break, or at least sink a little, when he said good-bye?

He wondered if he would know what a heart breaking felt like.

About once a week, late at the house, there were dead elves to be dissected, one or two. He worked alone now, cutting and drawing the lead from the dead white meat, pausing for a swallow of coffee or a bite from a sandwich. He was trying to be neat, even elegant; he would close up the incisions with a few stitches, zip the body bag, and call someone to take them away. The bullets went into an envelope for Stagger Lee. Danny wondered what was being done with them, but he did not ask.

One night at Mirada, a Glasa-gang elf in a green leather sheath dress fell through the front doors, cut all up in front-slashed, as if by an animal. Pavel shuttered the corridor at both ends and steered customers to a side entrance. The Ellyll woman bled maybe a quart into the carpet while Danny packed her in gauze, wound her in yards of tape. Hemlock and pressure finally stopped the flow, but the morphine didn't seem to be taking, and she gasped and moaned and arched her back, calling out in Ellytha. Once she got her hands around Danny's shoulders and pulled; Cloudhunter unwound the hands without speaking.

Mr. Patrise watched for a while, then nodded, patted Danny's shoulder, and went back to the main room. Finally two other elves wearing green took the woman away; up to Division, to heal in Elfland, Danny supposed. But he didn't ask.

He asked Mr. Patrise if he could go home. His shirt was saturated with gwaed e//y//; he stripped it off in the Mirada kite hen and buttoned on a clean white cook's jacket. Cloudhunter drove him back, and then followed him to his rooms; Damn was too wound up to offer any objection.

With the door closed, Cloud said, "You followed her words, did you not:"

"Yeah."

"She was unminded. Pain, injury, drugs. She did not know you, nor where she was, nor what she said."

"She called for the Wild Hunt. For me to send the Wild Hunt after her. Does that mean-"

"You are correct. The Hunt is not Death."

Danny nodded. He was shaking. "Cloud," he said, feeling horribly empty, "I cut up the dead ones, and I don't care."

"You saved a lady's life, and you do care," Cloud said simply. "When she crosses the portal, all will be healed. She will not remember what happened, what she said, what you did."

Danny let out a breath, looked up. "Thank you, Cloud."

"Any thanks due are to you, Doc. But if I assisted you, you are welcome." Cloudhunter bowed his head and went out.

Danny stumbled into the bathroom and undressed, checked himself for remaining elf-blood; he turned the shower on hot and collapsed into the sprays.

He knew enough of what the Glasa woman had said. Mr. Pa-trise probably did too. And Cloudhunter would have heard all of it.

He had tried to think of her as just a set of wounds he was closing up, a combative patient. But no patient had ever howled to be hurt again. And to beg for the Wild Hunt Was that what he wanted Ginevra to say to him?

He had the kitchen send up a pot of cocoa, sat in his living room with every light on drinking it until well toward dawn.

I he phone woke him. "Hello."

"Happy birthday, to you," Ginny said. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday, Doc Hallow, happy birthday to you."

"But it's not-"

"Yes, it is, too."

Then he understood. It was two days until Halloween. "Oh. Well, thank you."

"You aren't busy tonight, right?"

"No."

"Then you're busy tonight. See you at six." She hung up.

He stared at the phone for a moment. Then he laughed.

That afternoon, McCain asked to meet Danny in the infirmary.

"What can I help you with, Line?" Danny said, absurdly aware that he was playing the old country doctor.

"It's about not getting-a girl pregnant."

"Well, there's condoms." This was getting more ridiculous by the second.

"I know about rubbers. I have to know if there's anything better. Something that can't miss."

"There are pills-"

"For the guy?"

"No, the girl. And there are those sponges."

"No. Not something for her. For me." Between the topic and the crazy urgency in McCain's voice, Danny was hopelessly out of his depth.

"I don't think anything's absolutely perfect. But if you cover from a couple of angles… There's a cream, too, that kills sperm. If you use that with the rubber, you ought to be all right."

"Okay. I guess that's good. Have you got some of that?"

Danny had to hunt around in the cabinet, but there turned out to be four tubes. "You don't have to tell me, Line," he said with what he hoped was quiet understatement, "but why-"

McCain said flatly, "I'm a Vamp. Loop Garou, as if you couldn't guess."

Danny managed not to blurt out anything stupid. "But… you don't…"

"Not anymore. But they say you don't ever get it all out. The idea of a kid born that way… couldn't do that, Doc."

The revelation, from McCain, made Danny feel like whistling in the graveyard. He dispensed the meds and what wisdom he could offer with them.

"Thanks, Doc," McCain said. "Wasn't something I could talk about with Stagger Lee. Don't tell him that."

" 'Course not."

When McCain had gone, Danny let out a long breath, and stocked his own pockets.

The movie at Laughs was The Ghost Breakers. Damn hadn't much liked the Bob Hope movies he'd seen, but this one wasn't bad, funny and mysterious and even a little scarv. Ginnv's hand locked onto his during the first thunderstorm scene, and never let go until they were out of the theater and in the restaurant up the street. Then she let him go long enough to get into an inches-deep pizza with half the garden on top.

A bulky figure in a baggy, wrinkled trench coat came up. "Good evening, loyal readers."

"Hi, Lucius."

"Don't stop," Lucius said. "I may be a busybody-in fact, I am a busybody, and a highly paid one at that-but I know better than to interfere with serious eye contact."

"It's a birthday party," Ginny said.

"Oh? Oh, I see. Happy birthday, Doc."

Ginny said, "Would you join us for a while, Mr. Birdsong?"

"Oh, Ginny. Have all those long scotches come between me and my first name?"

Danny said, "Sit down, Lucius. Please."

He spread his hands, shrugged his coat off, pulled up a chair.

Ginny said, "We want to go out someplace after dinner. Not one of the usual places. Do you have any suggestions?"

Lucius ordered a beer. He was frowning. It looked strange on him. "Can I tell you a story, by way of answering that? One you'll never read in the column?"

Danny said, "Sure."

"Okay. Wait for the beer. It needs a beer." They talked about nothing in particular until Lucius's drink came. He clicked glasses with them, took a sip.

"Once upon a time," Lucius said, "I got lost on the Levee. Somewhere up around Division and the River. I mean, / got lost: the Minstrel of the City Streets. I certainly wasn't going to ask directions. Even if I'd seen anyone to ask, which I didn't. It was a cool night, not cold, good for walking. So I walked. Straight line, keep going. After all, sooner or later I'd hit Elfland, or the lake, or New Orleans, or San Francisco, any of which would do for orien-tational purposes."

Danny had never heard Lucius tell a story before. His voice was soft: he was speaking only to the two of them. He had some of the same manner as the newspaper column, but not so dry, not so distant.

"Eventually there was a neon sign up ahead: not buzzing, wired to a spellbox, so I hadn't crossed the Line without noticing. It was a dance joint, jumping pretty good; in go I, who do not exactly jump with the best. It was Danceland. Ever hear of it?"

Danny said no. Ginny said she'd read a magazine article.

Lucius said, "The immediate point is that Danceland is a Shadow joint, but not our Shadow, not the Levee, understand? You can't just turn on Blessing Way and Michigan and get there. But I got there.

"Inside, there were elves in leathers, whole-Worlders in destroyed denim, halfies in anything and all. A bunch of them were slamming, and though he might jitterbug or even Madison if the cause were strong, Birdsong does not slam. Two half-naked Ellyllon were doing the lambada-I don't suppose either of you has ever seen a lambada?"

They shook their heads.

"Good for you. Oh, and a werewolf was waltzing with an elf maiden. Waltzing, Jesus Matilda. So I watched for a while, and then went to the bar, because there are some true compasses in the thickest weather.

"I turned around then. Maybe something made me turn. I saw a man: my height, my build, my color. Thinner, but if any of my other parts got the exercise my tongue does I'd be pretty trim too. He was wearing buckskins, moccasins, and eagle feathers in his hair. He looked me dead in the eye, and he started to dance, solo. Slow, not hard to follow, one-two, step-two. And I follow.

"No one looked at us. What's strange enough to stare at in Danceland? Not dancers, surely. I danced all night with mv eagle brother, until the spells that drove the neon died, and the loose fairy dust in the air got thick enough to choke on, and the fire we show the World went out. Never did touch a drink."

Lucius reached inside his jacket, took out a flat leather case. He showed them three feathers, black and white and golden. "You're an open-spaces man, Doc: have you ever seen an eagle?"

"No. I thought I did once, but it was just a turkey buzzard."

Lucius turned the feathers over in his ringers. "Reporters have sources. That's like magic, but more expensive. There hasn't been a confirmed sighting of a wild eagle since the return of KIHaiul. \‹›r a California condor. And there are rumors about the ravens of Dresden." He put the feathers away.

Danny said, "Are you suggesting we go to Danceland?"

"Oh, no." Lucius finished his beer. "Birdsong on high adventure in one paragraph: Even if it were within my ability to send you, I was just pointing out that you don't really seek places out in the Shades. You find them." Suddenly he reached out, put two fingers against Danny's jaw and turned his head. Ginny had been leaning against Danny's shoulder, and their cheeks touched with something like an electric shock. They both jumped.

"Good night and good hunting," Lucius said, picking up his coat. "See you in the funny papers." He drifted out into the night.

Danny said to Ginny, "Where do you think we should start looking?"

"Do you think you could find my place? I mean, up the stairs and everything?"

"It's worth a try."

Ginevra's apartment was small, and tidy. No, it was austere. Ginny went into the kitchen to make tea, and Danny absorbed the details: a portable CD player and a few dozen discs, classical and old rock and folk; paperbacks on bare wooden bookshelves, plays and poetry and illustrated travel books; cardboard bins of magazines about travel and history. The rather hard chairs were softened a little by throw pillows, and a small orange rug lay precisely in the center of the polished wood floor. The only wall decoration-the only decoration at all, really-was a framed poster of an ornate, domed building with a tower, in the middle of a foreign city. Fl-RENZE, it said.

Ginny came out of the kitchen, holding a tea tray. Danny swallowed. She was wearing black cotton pajamas, a high-collared shirt and long trousers.

"You don't mind my getting changed," she said.

"No. 'Course not. It's your house." Shut up, he told himself.

She put the tray down, sat in the one comfortable-looking chair; she was scrunched over to the side, leaving room. Danny sat on the floor. She smiled oddly and tucked her feet up beneath herself. "There's nothing in this room really big enough, sorry."

He shrugged, shook his head. It was clear enough what she meant: there would be only one other furnished room in the apartment, and there was no bed in this one.

But he was happy just to look at her, the curves of her body under the cloth. She handed him a teacup.

Danny said, "Do you think this is what Lucius had in mind?"

"Maybe," she said, with a hint of a laugh. Then she said, "He seems so lonely. He's at the club a lot, but he's never with anyone, unless it's someone he's talking to for a story. Or Kitsune Asa."

"Is there really a typewriter there for him?"

She nodded. "That's part of what I mean. He'll be in really late, sometimes the last person there, typing, like he didn't have anyplace else to go. As if going home were like dying." She rubbed her hands on her teacup. "When he told that story, tonight-I wondered where he was going, when he got lost." She shifted again, looked at her bare feet, looked at him, smiled. "Tell me a story. Doc."

"What about?"

"About you. Tell me something nobody else in the city knows about you."

"Oh-"

"Come on, please. You must have done things before you came here. You must have had friends."

"Robin was my best friend at home," he said, too quickly.

"What was she like?"

"No, Rob was a guy. He was about my size, sort of blond. I'm sure he was a lot better looking. He sure didn't have freckles."

"Hmm."

"But, see, the thing about Rob was that he could really talk to people. You always knew what he meant, know what I mean? See, I can't do it."

"Go on. He was your best friend. You took twirls out together, that kind of thing?"

"No. I mean, nobody did, really. We were all a long way apart, and nobody had cars. We had bikes-bicycles, not motorcycles- but where can you go on a bike? The only place close to go, really, was when there was a social at the school, ami then everybody's folks went too." He took a swallow of tea, bur ir didn't stop him: he was started now, and knew he was going to tell it all. The in credible thing was that he hadn't told it before now.

Ginny tucked herself up tighter in the chair. Danny put his cup down so he wouldn't spill it. Quickly he said, "What happened was, we were haying on Danny's folks' place. We-were you ever on a farm?"

"No."

"We all did that. Help's always short, and they don't use the machines too much, now, but-well, there was a mechanical baler. That's a machine that bundles up the hay with wire. Rob got caught in it. I don't know how, nobody saw what happened, but he yelled, and you could see blood…

"A couple of us got him out. He was really messed up bad. I'd read some first aid books-I kind of wanted to be a doctor, I guess, but it wasn't going to happen."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why couldn't you be a doctor?"

"Because you have to go away to school for a long time," Danny said faster than he could think, "and my folks didn't want that." He paused. "I don't have any brothers or sisters. I had a little sister, but she died of flu when she was four."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah." How could he explain that he had felt nothing? That she had been there, and then she wasn't, and at six years old Danny had no idea what all the fuss was supposed to be about?

Ginevra said, "Rob got hurt in the baler machine."

"Yeah. Like I said, I knew a little first aid, and I got tourniquets on, so he didn't bleed to death. But he lost his left arm, and most of his left leg.

"Rob's folks were really grateful. His dad was on county council, and he helped me get my EMT card; the county paid for the training, and I worked at the hospital, and then for the fire department after I made paramedic. And, uh, they helped me buy the TR3 from a sheriff's sale. I don't think my mom and dad were too happy about that."

"And then you came up here."

"Yeah. I hauled some stuff downstairs, and we yelled at each other, and I said they could shoot me if they wanted to but they weren't gonna stop me.

"I couldn't stand seeing Rob, see. I'd go visit, because we were friends, right? And I'd see him at school, and church. And he'd just sit there in the chair. I told you, Rob was good at letting you know what he meant. He sure did. He hated me 'cause he hadn't died."

"Did he have a girlfriend?"

"No. Not really. Nobody did, much." He tried to follow the question. "He was okay, wasn't cut up-you know, there."

"Was he gay?"

"What?"

"Im sorry," she said, sounding frightened. "I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"No, it's okay. Really, really, it's okay." He wanted to hold her, show her it was all right, calm her fear, stop his own. "The thing is, you're right. One day-this was maybe a year before his accident-Rob said, 'Let's go for a ride,' and we got on our bikes and just rode. I don't know how far, five miles at least. That's when he told me." How would she understand? She came from the other side of the earth, and lived here, even farther away. "We didn't have 'gay people.' Sometimes you heard somebody was a fag. You know what decent people do to fags in Iowa?"

"I know what they did in Ohio," she said quietly. "Probably not much difference."

"Probably not," Danny said, and shut himself up for a moment. Suddenly Ginevra seemed much closer to him, maybe close enough to touch.

He said, "I guess that's why he hated me so bad. If he could have gotten out, come here, or anywhere, who would have cared? But now he'll never get out. I didn't let him die, and I sure didn't save his life. Like I say, he knew how to tell you things."

"I think you know how to hear things," Ginny said. Damn. with no answer for that, took a swallow of the tea. It had gotten cool, and bitter. "I think I ought to leave/'

"Do you?" She unfolded, arching her feet on the floor, opening a lap to sit on. "Nothing's found us yet We could keep looking."

"No, I'll go." She seemed about to say something: would she ask him, straight out? He shifted uncomfortably. Could she tell he was hard? If she- begged him He stood up. "I had a really good time tonight, Ginny. Thank you."

"Oh. Hey, it's your birthday." She stood up. "You still have a hug coming."

He nodded. She put her arms around him and pressed. She was naked under the pajamas. His crotch tightened some more.

She pulled him down to the floor. They bumped knees, elbows, scraped ankles. She was on top of him, soft, so soft. He held her; he couldn't stop.

He said, "I just don't-"

"This is your birthday hug," she said, her breath warm against his ear, her hair blinding him. "You say when it stops." Her hands played his ribs like a piano. "Or how tight it gets."

This was good, he thought, relaxing. This was fine, he could do this. He didn't want to let go; he didn't seem strong enough to pull away. They stayed there, just holding, until Danny's head bumped the floor and he realized he was almost asleep.

"I should go."

"Go? / think you should-" She stopped, pressed her face against his shoulder. "What should / do, Doc? What do you want me to do?"

He almost told her. His hands were near enough to pin her shoulders in a moment, to lock around her slim strong wrists. He shook.

He looked down at her, and saw the brutalized elf-woman from the night before, clutching and pleading. He wanted to crawl under a rock, away from his thoughts.

"Doc…?"

He said, "Just… don't be angry."

"Is that your safeword, Doc? 'Don't be angry'?" she said, smiling.

"Maybe." It came out a whisper.

"I'll never be angry with you, Doc." She unwound herself, sat up with her hands around her knees.

Danny stood up. "Will I see you at the club on Halloween?"

"No. I'm helping sit some of the little kids in the building, so their parents can go out."

"Oh."

She laughed. "Night of horror and suspense, huh."

He said, "Next Friday's some kind of special show at the Laughs. Stagger Lee keeps talking about it."

"What is it?"

"I forget. Somebody named Corvette."

"Not really."

"It's something like that. Want to go?"

"It's on."

The air outside woke him up, but it did not make him cold.

L

ate on Halloween afternoon, there was a knock at Danny's door. It was Boris Liczyk, carrying a small leather case and a garment bag. "I've brought your costume, sir."

There were slightly baggy trousers, a high-collared white shirt with a ruffled front, a velvet string tie.

"Shall I manage that for you, sir?"

"That'd be fine, Boris."

Danny faced the mirror; Liczyk stood behind him and effortlessly spun the tie into a shoelace bow. Boris held up the jacket, and Danny slipped his arms in; it was a long coat, nearly to his knees, with a narrow waist. The slightly stiff fabric was deep forest green, the collar of a lighter green velvet. Liczyk did a bit of pinching and the fit was perfect.

Then he brought out a long cloak, dark brown with a golden satin lining, adjusted and tied it around Danny's shoulders. "You might wish to walk about for a while, sir. Men don't wear such things nowadays; moving gracefully requires a bit of practice. Please be quite careful on the stairs-wouldn't do to lose our physician.' 1

"I'll be careful."

Boris held out a pancake of dark green silk. "Observe, SIT." He flexed the object, and it sprang into shape as a top hat. "Just like Mr. Astaire," Boris said, smiling. He put it on Danny's head, showed him the proper tilt. "I am to remind you to earrv your bag as well. sir."

"To the party? With the costume?"

"Yes, sir. That's all I have for you: is there anything else I can do?"

"No, I don't think so. Uh, Boris?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Shouldn't formal stuff be, you know, black?"

"Not for you, sir. Black isn't a red-haired gentleman's color. Which reminds me, we must fit you for a dinner suit soon. It'll only take an hour or so."

"Sure. Thank you, Boris."

"My job, sir. I enjoy this." He bowed and went out.

Danny looked at himself in the mirror. Okay, what was he supposed to be? The ruffled shirt and tie had a sort of Western look; he'd thought of Doc Holliday. But surely not the top hat and the cloak. And he was supposed to carry his bag. Was he Doctor Jekyll?

Oh. Of course. He got the bag, took out the dissecting knife.

The phone rang.

"Hello, Jack the Ripper here."

There was a burst of laughter. Mr. Patrise's voice said, "Good evening, Jack. Would you join me in the office for a few minutes? Bring your costume things-we'll go straight to the party."

"Certainly, sir."

Danny went up a flight. Boris Liczyk was right: the cloak was dangerous on the stairs.

Patrise's office was a long, high-ceilinged room with geometric carpets, Deco furniture of glass, chrome, and black wood, artwork on the walls. The desk was a spotlit, L-shaped block of white metal with a black marble top. Patrise sat behind it in a leather swivel chair. He was wearing an ornate brocaded jacket, like something from a Shakespeare play, and his hair was combed straight down on to his shoulders all around. It never seemed so long, tied back as he usually wore it. He waved a hand, with rings on all the fingers. "Hello, Hallow. Happy birthday. Drink?"

"Not just now, thanks."

"We'll just be a moment. I was thinking about Ginevra Benci, and I wanted to ask you a question or two."

"Yes?"

"You've spent some time with her. Certainly more than I have lately."

"Well, we're friends-"

"Of course. I'm sorry she couldn't be here tonight. I tried to make arrangements, but…"

"I'm sure she'd have been here if she could."

"Oh, it isn't her fault. Almost anything can be purchased in the Shade, but a trustworthy babysitter is beyond an elf-lord's ransom. Perhaps I should enter the business." He played with one of his rings. "Ginevra is a talented woman; obviously bartending doesn't begin to challenge her." He looked at Danny's bag. "I imagine she could learn first-aid nursing in not much time at all. I'm sure Lucy Estevez at the hospital could arrange something."

"It'd be up to Ginny."

"I'm perfectly aware of that. But she isn't here, and I wanted your opinion."

"I think she likes her job," Danny said carefully, "a-a-and I wouldn't want her to think she was being moved around. Certainly not on my account."

"Yes. That's a very considerate response. Thank you, Hallow. Now, we'd better get down to the party." He stood up and came around the desk. The "jacket" was actually just the top of an embroidered gown that fell in deep pleats almost to the floor.

"Oh, by the way, Hallow… you're welcome to play your part as Saucy Jack if you wish, but he wasn't the original idea."

"Oh?"

"Boris never remembers these things. If it isn't cut on the bias, it might as well be made of air to him. You were meant to be H. H. Holmes. Local fellow of the same era. He put away a dozen times Jack the Ripper's total. Which shows you how fleeting fame is."

"And you, sir?"

"I'm Cesare Borgia. Do you know what I could have done to you for not knowing that? Come along."

All the rooms on the ground floor had been rearranged to make party space. There were at least a hundred people there, all in costume, none alike. Danny thought of the Hallow ecu socials it home-half a dozen pointy-hatted witches, as main ghosts in per cale, here and there a Frankenstein ragbag or a pumpkinhead. One year two kids had shown up as Dorothy and the Scarecrow from Oz, and been sent home by a couple of parents. Witches were okay, at least if they were warty and toothless, but subversive literature was something else. He wondered how many of these costumes Patrise had provided. Boris Liczyk had been looking a bit worn for the last few days, and McCain told Danny later that the tailor had the night and weekend off.

McCain wore the flour-sack face of a scarecrow, a wooden beam across his already broad shoulders. From time to time he would laugh. It was scary. Cloudhunter was some kind of fantastical warrior, with leather armor and a black two-handed sword carved with mysterious figures. Another elf was Poe's Red Death, in a cloak the color of an arterial spurt, with bleeding gravewrappings beneath.

The Tokyo Fox was dressed in a tweed Inverness cape and deerstalker hat. She hardly needed to produce a huge round magnifier and examine the mantelpiece and the other guests-or maybe she did, because somehow it worked, despite gender and height.

She examined Doc's left sleeve. "Ingenious, Doctor," she said, with a curious Eurasian accent.

Danny caught the cue. "Why, thank you, Holmes."

"Indeed. I ask you to disguise yourself so as to divert suspicion, and you arrive in the guise of the most wanted murderer in London."

There was a laugh. But Danny had this one. "Egad, Holmes, I'd hoped to follow your own advice on the subject of disguise, but do you know how difficult it can be for a naked man to hail a cab in Mayfair?"

The crowd applauded. Patrise stared for a moment, face open with wonder, and then laughed out loud.

Matt Black had a slouch hat and cloak, a scarf across his face, and two Colt pistols. Gloss White was wrapped all up in gauze, her features barely visible; someone told Danny that she was Resurrection Mary, the Archer Street ghost. Danny thought back to the night of the blood raid, and was glad not to see any close resemblance.

Phasia was dressed as a spectral Marie Antoinette: a red cicatrice circled her throat, a thin trickle of blood seeping down. She did not speak, of course, but waved her fan with cool authority.

Carmen Mirage was wearing a black silk cheongsam embroidered with a golden dragon; she had sheer black stockings, wildly high heels. Her hair was pulled back into a knot pierced with two lacquered pins, and makeup gave her eyes an almond shape. A narrow black scarf was around her shoulders: it was full of points of light, like a strip of the night sky.

"And who might you be?" Danny said, trying to sound genially sinister.

"Fah Lo Suee," she said coolly. "Perhaps you are acquainted with my venerable father, the Doctor Fu Manchu."

Not much really happened during the evening; people played at their characters, occasionally danced a bit without music, ate, drank, and generally seemed to be having a good silly time. Now and then someone-or more often two someones-vanished. Now and then they came back.

About ten o'clock the wind could be heard rising outside. That was strange: the house was built like a bank vault, and didn't let wind noise through. Then the lights went out. Someone shrieked. People collided; elf voices muttered in English and Ellytha.

Lit candles appeared then, and the hurricane lamps were lit. The dining room and ballroom chandeliers were lowered, and candles set in place on them. In fifteen minutes it was as if nothing had happened.

No, not quite. People seemed merrier now, as if they had been waiting for this.

It was well after midnight when things began to wind down. Danny found Patrise seated next to Fay, holding her hand. "1 think I'll go upstairs now, Mr.-my lord Cesare."

The candlelight made something strange and deep of Patrisc's smile. "Yes," he said. "Rest well."

A candle was waiting on the foyer table. Danny lit lamps in the living room, the bedroom, the bath. He had just hung up the cloak and the coat, and gotten the string tie loosened, when there was I knock at the door.

It was Carmen.

"Hi," she said. "Could I borrow your bathroom for a little bit, to get out of this stuff:"

"Oh. Sure."

"Thanks, Doc." She came in, shut the door, took a look around. "How was your evening?"

"Good. Yours?"

"Oh, I'm great." There was something in the way she said it that denied it. "Which way…?"

He led her to the bathroom. "Stay there," she said, running water into the sink, "talk to me."

"What about?"

"Anything. You, for instance."

He felt odd, suddenly. This was too much an echo of two nights back. "I haven't ever been to a really big party like this."

"Halloween's special," she said above the rush of the faucet. "We all get to play being something else." She leaned into the doorway. A strip of flesh-colored adhesive tape hung off her fingertips, and one of her eyes had lost its tilt. "Big change."

Danny sat still on the edge of the bed. Carmen came out, toweling her face. "Whee, that's better. Just call me Blinky." She sat down on the bed, right next to him. "So I hear it's your birthday."

Oh, God, he thought.

"What's the matter?" she said, "What's the matter?" and her voice was aching so that he looked her in the face, and saw Oh, God.

He said, "Look, you know I-"

"Yeah, I know you. And her. And I know you're not."

He stared.

"No, she didn't tell me. She didn't have to. That's one-well, let's say wistful girlfriend you've got there, kid."

"I'm not… a kid."

"You're twenty by one day. I'm twenty-seven. And you're a virgin, which I sure the hell am not."

"Well, so what?"

She spoke softly. "So you're probably scared- take it easy, Doc. And I'm a horny old lady who can't hold on to a guy with handcuffs."

He flinched.

She didn't seem to notice. "So, how'd you like to lose it to No-Tell Daisy, up here where nobody's gonna notice? It'll make you feel good. It'll sure make me feel good. And in the not-so-long run, it'll make her feel good too."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Sure it does. Watch." She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard on the mouth, shoving her tongue between his lips. He sucked in a breath, pulled away. "See?" she said. "Everything south of your eyeballs knows it makes sense."

He stared at the floor.

"I'm sorry," she said, and the hurt in her voice made him look at her again. "What you do is, you say yes, or you say no. That's all."

"Yes," he said, though he wasn't sure the voice was his.

"Okay."

He stood up, dizzy. "Do you want me to wear a… the…"

"A condom?" she said, very gently.

"Yeah."

"Up to you. I've been tied."

"Wha… at?"

She looked straight at him. "Tubes. You know." She made a knotting gesture. "When I was sixteen, I figured I might not know what I wanted to do with my life, but I sure knew what I wanted to do with my personal equipment."

Danny nodded. He knew, in a book-learned way, what a tubal ligation was. He'd never heard of anyone at home with one, or for that matter a doctor who would admit to doing them. Here, apparently, the patient didn't even have to be twenty-one. He supposed it would be stupid to ask about parental consent…

He thought about some other things he knew only in the abstract. Like how to put a rubber on. Nothing he'd heard had been particularly precise.

He sat down next to her, put a hand on her hands, reached experimentally around her shoulders, feeling softness, the smooth movement of the shoulder blades. There was hardk any fabric between. The lamp flickered highlights in her hair.

She said, "I'm glad you asked, though. Guys don't, usually. Truebloods never do. And afterward they think there's something dirty about halfies."

"I can still get a-"

"Uh-huh. You know how? Don't fib."

"Well, I-"

"Right. Go get it. It'll take five minutes to demonstrate, and make your whole life better." She kissed him, on the mouth. It was just as startling the second time. He pulled her closer. Her tongue wet his lips. His hand slipped to her thigh, through the slit in her dress, closed involuntarily on something hard. It was a garter strap.

"Good place to start," she said in a thick voice.

He tried. It wouldn't give. Her hand closed on his, and she led him to the chair across from the bed. "Sit there, and watch."

Danny felt himself flush.

"No, really. Just watch. It'll be fun." She pressed down on both his wrists. "And you can't get up until I say so, all right?"

"All right."

She slipped off her shoes, tossed them aside. She stretched, then flicked open a garter strap with two fingers, reached around her thigh and did it again, and again. She sat back on the bed and began rolling down her stocking. Slowly.

Was the game that he was supposed to sit still? Soon enough he knew it was, and why it was a game, and that he was losing it fast. What was the elf word?

The Wild Hunt. Right. He tried not to think about that.

Now she was wearing some underthing of gold lace, no shoulder straps, barely over her hips. It had white pearl buttons down the side; it might as well have had printed instructions.

He started to get up, but suddenly she knelt in front of him, leaned on his lap. He gasped.

"Did I say you could get up?" She unfastened the first of his fly buttons.

He said, "Don't."

"One of us has to." Another button. "Jesus, Doc, you've gotta be hurting."

He was. "I'll do it."

Her fingers moved again, and one of Danny's braces flew free. "If you really want me to stop," she whispered, "make me stop."

He grasped both her wrists. Her eyes closed. "Now you got it, Doctor."

The Wild Hunt howled in the thickets.

She opened her eyes, all black. "You don't want to just hold mo, like that all night."

"I don't want-" He stopped. He was going to lie. He was scared to death and had the heartbeat to prove it. "-to hurt you," he said, which was the truth, or at least he hoped it still was.

"I didn't think you did. That I can get anywhere." She pulled easily out of his grip, picked up the long, thin black scarf with the starpoints in the silk. She draped it across her wrists, dropped to her knees again.

"There aren't a lot of girls who'll tell you what they really want. Doc. And damn few who'll trust you this far." With an improbable kindness she said, "Are you gonna abuse a girl's trust?"

He felt the silk. "I'll ruin this."

"That's Nancy silk. If you can tear that, I'd better send for the Kryptonite." She laughed. "You can't even take it… and I haven't got anything else you can take." She lowered her left wrist. "Meet me halfway. One hand, to the bedpost."

When he hesitated again, she reached out, put a finger on his hand. "Listen. My safeword's 'tortilla.' Sounds dumb, right, but I'm not gonna yell it by mistake. You hear that, you stop. No guilt, no hard feelings, we just stop. Is that good enough?"

"I guess so."

"W 7 hat's the word again?"

"Tortilla."

"Good man." She leaned back, held very still as he tied her right wrist. He tried to hide the sudden heaviness of his breathing. He started to unfasten his shirt.

"Move back a little," she said softly, "let me see you."

He got undressed. He wasn't sure how; there was no sensation in his fingers, and she was watching the whole time. Then he crawled onto the bed and started on the pearl buttons. She moaned, and he was sure he must be crushing her. He shifted at once, but she just smiled, eyes closed.

He unfolded the gilt lace; she arched her back and he slipped it free, let it fall to the floor. There wasn't anything else in the way. In the lamplight she was all gold and darkness.

She tugged hard with her bound wrist. It was quite secure.

"See, Doc? You can't tear it, or stretch it. It's hard. It's got no mercy."

You re not at home anymore, he thought, what little of him could still think, nobody here cares. And he had to know. Maybe even for Ginny's sake. At least next time, he'd have some idea of how.