The last hot time

He moved, and groaned. Her left hand brushed him-he nearly screamed-and then practically pulled him in; after that, it actually started to seem easy, something you could do again, almost without effort.

Like going down the stairs into the darkened cellar, and wondering what it could have been that you had been so afraid of.

And then, in the middle of the night, waking with the fear fresh again, all around you.

Carmen looked asleep. Carefully, trying not to wake her, he unfastened the loop around her wrist. He stroked the silk: it was, indeed, undamaged.

She wrapped both arms around him. "Hello, Doctor Hallow-night."

"Are you okay?"

"Great. You wanna continue the therapy anyway?"

"I, uh-"

"Uh-huh. I'd better fly."

"What time is it?"

"Almost five. Same morning." She stood up, wound the black scarf around her throat, picked up her gold slip. "I should go. Really."

"Well, do you-shall I drive you?"

"No. Jesse'll get me a ride back. Or I might just walk." She began dressing. "Safest night of all for it: all the mortals are afraid of the haunts, and who fears the devil? Not I. Not I, says Carmen alone."

He sat up, pulling the sheet to cover himself. "Well, shall I at least-"

"Don't do anything," she said. "I want to remember you just like that."

"Will I see you again?"

She laughed. "You see me all the time; figure that'll change?"

"I mean-"

"I know what you mean. No, I don't think like this. Not for a while, anyway." Quickly, she said, "It wasn't anything you did, okay? You were fine. You were good. I'm just kind of… well. My birthday's in June. Maybe you can wrap me up a present. But I'll bet two silver Georges and a Trueblood's lock you're in love by then."

The same pain in her voice, still there as before. Nothing at all might have happened. "Maybe you 7/ be in love by then."

"You're very kind, Doc." She came over, bent down and kissed him on the forehead. "You are kind. I mean that."

"Maybe," he said, his mind's bearings grinding off-balance, "at the poker game-"

"No. Please, don't do that. It wouldn't make you happy. Even if you got me." She leaned very close. "Remember: no guilt. I made you do it. You were helpless." Then she tossed her coat over her shoulders, snatched up her shoes and stockings and walked out of the bedroom without stopping to put them on. He heard the hall door close.

He sat there for a while, wrapped naked in the damp bedclothes, all that had happened lingering thick in his senses. No guilt, Carmen had said. He had been Then he thought of the one other time he had said Will I see you again? and his heart fell, and fell, and fell. one piece?" He thought of the drape of a shoulder, joining a sleeve. "What kind of loom?"

Cloud looked up at Doc. He pressed the heels of his hands together, arched the fingers. "Eight legs, same as spin it."

"Oh." Suddenly the beautiful cloth made him uneasy. "Thanks, Cloud."

"Always." He tucked the scarf around his throat. "May I ask you a favor, Doc? In return, if you please?"

"Of course."

"There is a hall of relics-a museum-in the city, just beyond the Shadow line. It is called the Field, though I believe that is a person's name."

"Yeah. The natural history museum. I've heard of it."

"Have you ever visited it?"

"No."

"Then would you like to do so with me?"

"Now?"

"If you have no other obligations."

Mr. Patrise assured Doc that he was free for the day. "Render unto Caesar," Patrise said.

"Sorry, sir?"

"Have Lisa give you some honest American folding money from the safe. The World has its ways."

Cloudhunter proposed that they walk, but after consulting a map and guidebook they decided that the museum would be exercise enough. When Cloud stood by Doc's Triumph, it never seemed possible that the Ellyll could fit into the little car, but he folded himself in without apparent effort. Doc drove them south, over the river and into the World. The transition was barely visible in clear daylight, and Doc felt nothing; if Cloud did, he didn't show it. "I appreciate this," he said to Doc. "I have gone with Stagger Lee to the science museum, farther down the coast, bur he has never shown much interest in this one."

"I always figured Stagger was interested in everything,* 1 Doc said idly.

"Oh, he is by no means impolite. But one sees/'

Doc glanced at Cloudhunter. The silver elf eyes were hidden by the sunglasses.

The museum's columned, white marble front stretched for a block and a half. Broad stairs led up to the doorway. Doc reached for his wallet, but Cloudhunter waved a finger and paid both admissions. The ticket seller loudly and elaborately counted back the change, as if to a small child. Cloud jingled the coins in his hand as they walked past the booth; a few steps on, he showed them to Doc. "Nickel and tin," he said, vaguely smiling, and shoved them into a pouch.

They were in a high-ceilinged hall that ran from one side of the building to the other, display halls opening off to either side. "So," Doc said, "what shall we see first?"

Cloud examined a floor-plan brochure. "Upstairs, I think." He led the way up a massive staircase. The sign ahead of them read: DINOSAURS.

As they entered the hall, Cloudhunter's eyes blazed-not a twinkle, but a flash like close lightning. "Dragons," he said softly.

They were surrounded by the bones of giants. Doc knew Ty-rannosaurus and Stegosaurus by sight, but the variety of shapes and sizes on display here was a surprise. Some stood, some crawled, some ran; one dove on them from above, having apparently leapt from a tall glass case. They were all only bones, of course, except in the paintings that accompanied the displays, and a few surprisingly live-looking clay models. Looking at the skeletons, Doc was suddenly reminded of a fire he'd been to, in the hours before dawn: the sun came up on a blackened stick model of the buildings they'd tried and failed so save. He felt the same sense of Gone, won't come back.

Cloud was moving from display to display, case to case, quiet as a shadow. Across the hall, someone pointed at him. Doc tried to keep up with the tall elf.

Cloud said, "It isn't allowed to touch…?"

"This one says you can," Doc said. There was a brown bone, more than a yard long, set in sand-colored concrete. "I think it's real.

Cloud put his fingertips delicately on the surface. "It is genuine, Doc. Touch it."

Doc put a hand on the bone. It felt cold, smoothed by who knew how many hands before.

"Now take my other hand."

Abruptly the light was slanting and fierce, yellowed by dust in the air. Doc's vision was tilted to the right. His head hurt; so did his back and right hip. There was a heavy, sweetish, boggy stink. Just before his eyes was a clump of fat-stalked plants, bristling with fine green shoots: the fresh scent made his mouth water, and he pressed his head forward, but his body wouldn't follow. He stuck out his tongue, but it did no good. His… tail?… stirred heavily, making his hip hurt even more.

Beyond the plants, blurry in the distance and haze, a mottled tan shape moved. Teeth inches long flashed in an enormous mouth, and the shape stumbled closer. Alarms rang somewhere in Doc's consciousness, pulling at his muscles to move.

Doc knew what was about to happen, and that he couldn't do a thing to stop it. This is bad, he thought idiotically, but could not clearly identify just what was Bad about it, why it filled him with such urgency and rage. The one obvious and understandable thing in his mind was the sight and smell of those green shoots: if he could get a mouthful of those, things would be much better. Everything else would pass.

The allosaur stomped closer.

There was a pop inside Doc's head, and he was back in the museum hall, Cloudhunter's hand on his shoulder, Doc's fingers tingling against the dinosaur bone.

"I thought the sight would be interesting," Cloud said, his voice a soft, plaintive rumble. "I am very sorry if I displeased you."

"No… I…" He shook his head to clear it. "The dino died."

"Not then. Memory needs time to dwell in the bone. It never knows its death." Cloud took his hand away slowly. "] would never hazard you, Doc. Still…"

"Don't be sorry, please, Cloud. It was wonderful. I didn't have any idea you could do things like that."

"Oh," Cloudhunter said, and turned to the text panel next to the bone. "Seventy million years. The depth of it…"

"How old are you. Cloud?"

"'I?" Cloud seemed startled by the question, and Doc worried that he had violated some Trueblood rule. "I couldn't tell you in years. I was not there to see the gates closed. Some of the Ellyllon were, and all of the Urthas-the Highborn." He put his fingers on the dinosaur bone again. "Seventy" million years… I don't know if even Urthas live so long." He gave Doc a sidewise grin. "Though I shouldn't say such things. Come on, let's see more."

The next hall was lined with totem poles, painted headdresses of wood, pottery and spears.

"These are American native, I think?" Cloud said. "From nearby?"

Doc read the labels. "These are from the Pacific Northwest. Seattle-that's more than a thousand miles. Alaska's at least twice as far."

Cloud absorbed this, looked around again. "Are your people somewhere here. Doc?"

"Uh… I don't think so. Just a moment." He found a wall-mounted building plan, scanned the listings. What was he looking for, exactly? Midwestern Tribes of Uncertain European Ancestry?

When he turned back, Cloud was crouching by a little girl, showing her the silver bracelet on his left wrist. Doc had a sudden hollow feeling in his stomach. He looked around for worried parents. There they were, closing in quick. He'd never beat them to Cloudhunter unless he sprinted. Maybe that was the best idea, he thought: create a diversion. But he just walked as quickly as he felt he could, and tried to work out the soft answer that turneth away wrath.

"… and these are the names of my sisters. They are very long names in English, but we also call them First Star, and Lilac, and Cools as Rain."

"Those are pretty names," the child said.

The father said, "Does the blue stone have a meaning?"

"There are four like this, cut from the same large stone," Cloud said. "Each of us has one in a band like this. There is no meaning beyond that."

The girl said, "Momma, if I have a brother, could we have bracelets like that?"

The woman laughed. "If you ever do, my dear, we'll see."

The man said, "Would there be any offense if we did that?"

"It would be your choice, and the jewelry of your making. There could be no offense to take. But I am being rude. This is my friend Hallownight. He has been explaining the museum to me."

Doc shook hands with the father.

The woman said to her husband, "I was thinking-what about that piece of rock crystal your grandmother brought with her from Greece? We wouldn't need to use it all, just have a few pieces cut."

The man looked thoughtful, then smiled broadly. "Just the thing." He held out his hand to Cloudhunter again. "That's a wonderful idea. Thank you so much."

"I am glad that it pleased you."

The family moved on. Cloudhunter watched them go, then said quietly to Doc, "The girl will have a brother, the summer of next year."

"You know that?"

"I believe the parents do as well. Are human children troubled by their brothers and sisters?"

"Sometimes. They get upset that their folks seem to like the new baby better."

"Is that true?" Cloud asked. The question was perfectly innocent-as a child would ask it, with no prior knowledge.

"I suppose it is sometimes. I don't have any brothers or sisters."

Cloud was silent. Somehow his silence seemed to echo in the long hall.

Doc said, "I mean… I had a little sister, but she died when we were both small."

"Oh," Cloudhunter said. "I am very sorry." He looked in the direction the family had gone. "Their fear is, I think, of some old pain, some loss they fear to come again."

Doc considered this. Cloudhunter had used the Touch, of course, but it was apparent he was also interpreting what the magic had shown him. Maybe guessing as well. He wondered how Cloud had known he was lying-well, not telling all the truth — about his sister.

For the first time since he had crossed into Shadow. Doe fell a desire for magic, a Touch of his own. To be able CO read a patient's history from the bones and flesh themselves, know without being told where the worst pain was… He glanced at Cloudhunter, who was examining an eagle-headed totem pole and showed no sign of hearing Doc's thought.

How did the Touch show itself?

This wasn't the time to ask. Stagger Lee had said that elves lived their whole lives with magic: there was no reason to suppose Cloudhunter knew what it was like for humans. And there were halls and halls left to explore, a whole world inside walls.

I hirty-five points," Stagger Lee said, examining Doc's cards. "Good thing for you we're not playing Hollywood."

Doc nodded and took a long swallow of beer. They were playing in his apartment, to kill a slow afternoon. He was down a substantial number of points-gin rummy didn't seem to be his game- but he couldn't remember how much they'd agreed the points were worth. "Sure you wouldn't rather play poker?"

"What can you do in poker for two? 'Here's your cards. Yup, that pair wins. Next deal.' Now, two players left out of a table full, that's interesting." He scooped up the cards and began shuffling. "Hey, it's not that long till Monday."

"Yeah. Another beer?"

"Much obliged."

Doc refilled Stagger Lee's glass from the keg. As he set the beer on the table, Stagger fanned and interleaved the cards in an elaborate shuffle, and said, "Last Deal still bothers you, doesn't it?"

Doc sat down slowly. "You've got a right to do what you want with yourself."

"Cool. Now say that again like you believe it."

"Look, have I ever said a word to you about it? To anybody?"

"No," Stagger said seriously, "and I appreciate that. But you act like the word's stuck right there north of your xiphoid, and a good Heimlich would pop it right out. More to the point, about half an hour before Last Deal, the fun content of poker seems to take a serious drop for you.

"It's poker. It's not about fun."

"Nice sidestep."

"I… just don't think I get the idea of never knowing who you're going to sleep with."

"We always know who. There aren't any strangers at Flats's place. Which is the question." He took a long swallow of his beer. "Don't be offended, but a big reason I didn't warn you about it the first time you were there is that you were a stranger, and you wouldn't have been allowed in anyway."

"Stagger, what's this about?"

"Oh, well, the game wasn't going anywhere, cards made me think of Monday night, one thing led to another. I also thought it was about time to make sure of the situation. I take it you haven't just been politely waiting for an invitation to join the game?"

"No."

"Fair enough. The other thing that you might as well know is that, on any given night, as many of those couples are going to spend the evening listening to Dave Brubeck, cooking an elaborate late dinner, reading comics, or whatever as end up playing sixty-nine pickup. Don't get me wrong: much as I like Brubeck, I am nonetheless bisexual as I ever was."

Stagger finished his shuffling. "Now, if you won't misunderstand, how about I teach you honeymoon bridge?" l#oc and Ginny went to the Laughs show the following Friday. The films had an odd, flat, gray quality, with black halos around any bright light; Stagger Lee explained that they were "kinescopes," films made from early television.

The shows had little comedy sketches, musical numbers, blackout jokes that lasted only seconds. Some of the longer playlets had no characters at all, just kitchen utensils or office machines moving to music; not really funny, past the first surprise, but oddly engrossing, watching the machinery dance.

The artist's name was Ernie Kovacs. During an intermission. Stagger said, "If you'd seen a lot of television, this probably wouldn't look like much to you."

Ginny said, "Why?"

"Because ten years later, twenty, thirtv, the rest of television started to catch up to Kovacs's ideas. Do you remember what he said in the third program, about 'the first rule of television is, if something works, beat it to death'? Forty years after he said that, thirty after he died, TV was still following that law" Stagger looked past them, into an unseen distance. "If television is ever allowed to function again, I think we could reconstruct everything good about it from Ernie."

Doc said, joking, "Is the world ready for that?"

"No," Stagger said seriously. "The world is never ready for anything until it's too late. By which time something else has arrived."

They watched a sketch of people getting ready for something special, a party or a night out. There was no dialogue, just music, as the men in one apartment and the women in another showered, shaved, made up, dressed (Doc found himself staring hard at the technique of the garter strap in closeup). This tie wouldn't knot; that stocking was torn. The music was driving toward something, some tension that would have to be released.

A doorbell rang; the women dashed to answer it. Then, abruptly, Doc knew. There were three women in the apartment. There were two men at the door.

Two left with two, and the third woman, her hair and dress perfect, turned away. The camera was looking down on her from above, above the walls of the apartment. Doc did not think anyone in the theater was breathing, all waiting for a doorbell, a telephone. The woman wandered from one room to the other, small in the depths of the shot.

The walls of the apartment collapsed outward, the break of the chambered heart. The music crashed to a stop.

He found Ginny's arm, wrapped his fingers around it.

One of the ushers was leaning over Doc. "Mr. Hallownight, you're needed outside, sir."

He and Ginny went to the lobby. Stagger Lee was pulling on a long wool coat and scarf. He looked worried. "Doc, Patrise wants us. Now."

"What is it? Somebody hurt?"

"Not yet. Ginny, I'm sorry. We didn't know-Mr. Patrise didn't know, it came up suddenly and we've got no time. Will you get home okay?"

"Sure," she said. "tJnless I can help."

"Patrise didn't ask for you. Good of you to offer, but you'd better not get involved. Take notes on the good bits, will you?"

She nodded, caught Doc's sleeve. "Call me when you get home, okay?"

"Oh. Yeah, I will."

Doc and Stagger slid into the TR3. "So where are we going?"

"Down by the river." He reached inside his coat, brought out a large, odd-looking pistol with a cylindrical wooden grip. "Nice night for a drive," he said. "But what the hell."

Doc drove into the iron tunnel under the L tracks. "Magic's weaker down here than near Division, right? Does all this iron have something to do with that?"

"Heard about cold iron, have you?"

"Yeah. Did it keep the Truebloods out of the Loop? When they first came back, I mean?"

"No. As an antidote to magic in general and elves in particular, cold iron is way overrated. Some people suspect all it ever did mean was that iron weapons gave us a slightly better chance against the fair folks than bronze ones. Not to mention rocks and sticks."

Doc slowed down, swung the Triumph around a wrecked car and a half-collapsed wall. Above, among the dark girders, there was a flash of bright metal. It moved. "Stagger! You see that?"

"Shit! Don't slow down!"

A figure dropped from above. A flash of purplish light appeared near it, and a brilliant little comet flew past the car. Doc felt his hair prickle as it went by, and there was a sharp bang behind them.

"Maybe I should give the iron more credit," Stagger Lee said.

Doc looked in the rear-view and saw two motorcycles swing out of an alley, figures in long coats gunning them. From under wide-brimmed hats, elf hair streamed long and white. Before Doc pulled his eyes back to the road ahead, he registered that the bikes didn't have any wheels in their forks: they were gliding an arm's length above the pavement.

Stagger leaned out and fired three times. One of the bikes laid down hard and skidded into an L stanchion.

Doc said, "Where do I go up here?"

"Right, next chance."

Doc slowed just enough to make the turn on all wheels, and saw another floating bike straight in the headlights. "Hey, chicken," he said under his breath, and floored it. The bike reared up on its rear non-wheel and came for them. Stagger fired another round, then swore and began working at the jammed gun.

The bike's headlight shone full-moon blue into Doc's eyes as they came together. There was a scraping noise, and the bike jumped the car, an empty fork ripping the canvas top as it went over. The Triumph wavered. Stagger had pulled something out of his coat. "When I say now, punch for the next left!" He leaned out, threw the object. "Now/"

Doc threw the bar down, heel-and-toed around the corner, seeing a ball of yellow and black fire erupt in the back corner of his eye. Then the two flying bikes plunged out of the light, just black streaks in the moment of vision but still running.

"Go! Go!"

Doc checked the rear-view. Yes, they were still back there. After a moment, two bikes with wheels swung in to join them: two white lights, two blue. Ahead was one of the river bridges, a steep arched one, unlighted, barely visible except as a black gap in the shimmering water. It looked scratchy, like a worn old film.

Stagger said, "After the bridge, turn-"

"Look." Doc flashed his brights, making the coiled wire blocking the crest of the bridge sparkle like dew on a spider's web. As they started up the slope, he pulled the handbrake, threw the little car into a four-wheel drift, praying they wouldn't roll. The suspension ran out of travel, and metal threw sparks. They came to a stop turned one-eighty, pointing straight at the bikes.

Stagger thumbed something on his pistol. It spat a long flame and played a bull-fiddle note. Two bikes went down, the others scattered. Doc drove. Loose bits of motorcycles sputtered and banged beneath the car. A body went whump against his door and was gone, all unseen.

There were no more lights behind them. They were alone.

"Where to now?"

"Let me think."

"Should we just go back to-"

"No. We need to tell Patrise." They were both gasping. "It may have just been a random ambush."

"You think so?"

"No." Stagger started to put his head down, then jerked upright, looking around, behind, for more targets. "Not with the bridge blocked. That took some work. So we really have to see Patrise. Turn right up here."

A couple of blocks on, Doc felt himself relax, just a little, and then he laughed. Stagger Lee turned to look at him.

"We beat 'em, didn't we?" Doc said.

"Yeah," Stagger said, and then he was laughing too. "Guess we did at that."

"It feels like…" He tried to compare it to an ambulance run, but it wasn't the same thing. It felt good to beat bleeding, or shock, or a stopped heart, but this Stagger's voice was suddenly distant. "Next time I'll drive and you shoot. Then tell me what it's like. Second right here."

"The cave thing?"

"That's it."

There was a metal tunnel ahead: streets elevated a full level above them, and a void below. Patrise's big violet car was parked near the entrance. Doc parked behind it.

Stagger said, "Get out slowly. And don't show a gun."

"I don't have a gun."

"Good. Try to look like you don't."

Two elves stepped out of the shadows, and Doc felt his heart skip; but one of them was Cloudhunter. Cloud had a sword out, a long white flare of metal in the dark. The other elf wore a black leather jacket with throwing knives in chest pockets, a black baton and handcuffs hanging from his belt. Then Doc noticed the copper buttons and the badge.

"There are elf cops?" he said.

"Pride, Integrity, GwaedEllyll" Stagger Lee muttered.

Cloudhunter raised a hand. "What happened to you?"

"We got hit," Stagger said. "Set up, I think. Is it oka) down there?"

"Getting no worse," Cloud said calmly. "Patriae will want you both right away." Doc reached for his bat;: he saw. then, the rip in the car top, eighteen inches long and Straight as a steel rule. He put a hand to his temple, just exploring. Nothing there. He looked up, saw a dark streak against Cloud's white cheek.

"You're hurt."

"Not at all. You are needed." Cloud said "Sergeant Aquila," and the Ellyll officer nodded. Cloud led Doc and Stagger beneath the street. Stagger flipped on a flashlight.

"There's a whole level down here," Doc said, as they walked past riveted iron columns, broken traffic signals, signs corroded past reading, clouds of dust rising and falling in the light beam. He reached into his bag for a tube of goldenrod salve and an adhesive bandage for Cloud's cheek.

"Two levels, at one point," Stagger said.

"Why?"

"It was supposed to solve a traffic problem." He swung the light to this side and that. "Before my time, Doc. City planning's a lost sorcery."

A car's headlights cut a slant across the street. Four, maybe five bodies were on the pavement, a Ruthin Ellyll in a short red leather cape and some humans dressed in Ruthin colors. The headlight beams ended at a door, and next to the door stood McCain, holding a Thompson with the big round magazine. He touched a finger to the brim of his hat, pushed the door open. From within, red light spilled out into the cold dusty underground, as from an entrance to Hell.

They went in.

It was Hell.

There was a large room with an iron-beamed ceiling, and a freight door into another one. The light was deep red, threaded with paler shafts from flashlights. The rooms were furnished with tables and cages and racks. There were people in the cages, people on the racks and tables: strapped to them, roped to them, bolted and nailed to them. There was a heavy smell of blood and urine and shit. The people looked like drawings in anatomy books, though the light was so red it was hard for Doc to tell what he was seeing, what only imagining. Some of them moved, with the scrape of metal, the crunch of bone.

There was a soft, wavering moaning through the room, a sound that pierced straight from the ears to the base of the spine; more horrible than screaming, because it should have been screaming. This was Hell as Doc had always understood it: a mass-production pain factory with everybody suffering at maximum efficiency and nobody dying on the job.

Doc pushed the salve and bandage into Cloud's hand, no longer seeing them.

Mr. Patrise came out of the next room. He was walking stiffly, his face shadowed by his wide flat hat. "Hallow," he said, quite clearly, "I'm glad you're here. I hope you have morphine. Shall we send for more?"

Most of Doc's brain wanted to yell out loud that giving pain shots here was plowing up Iowa with a nail file, but he didn't. He put his bag on a narrow, empty table and got out all the stuff he had, loaded up with meperidine. He looked at Stagger Lee, said with a calm he couldn't quite understand, "Did you know about this?"

"This? No. No. I thought maybe, a couple of animals-but this, holy clockwork angels, no."

"Give me a hand, will you?"

Stagger nodded unsteadily. They went to one of the occupied tables, Mr. Patrise following a few steps behind. The body on the rack might have been female, but that was just a guess. It was tough enough to be sure it was human.

Doc shook his head. He wasn't thinking hard enough. "Mr. Patrise, is Cloudhunter busy?"

"Not if you require him."

"Well-" He looked around. "We can save some effort if any Ellyllon here go straight home to Elfland. Probably save some of their lives, too. But I'm not sure I'd know which is which. I thought maybe another elf would."

"An excellent thought, Hallow. But there are no Ellyllon here. That is quite certain."

"All right. Stagger, can you give me a hand with this one?"

Stagger Lee nodded. He fingered the clamps holding down the victim's ankles, unfolded a pocket tool and spun off the bolts.

The body gave an airless howl and the lc.^s bent up. trvinu to curl into a fetal position, hard as cramp could pull them. Doe pushed the drug in, grabbed an ampule of haloperidol and gave that as well. The body sagged. The lidless eyes rolled over. Doc forced himself to touch the body. There wasn't any pulse or breathing. Raw meat, Doc thought, and it didn't put an inch of distance between him and the body.

"Tell you what, Doc," Stagger said, "let's go toss now, get the suspense over with."

They went outside and vomited into a dark corner. Doc wiped his tongue on a gauze pad; Stagger pushed a flask into his hand, and he swallowed the whiskey straight.

At the red-lit door, they both slowed down, not ready at all to go back in. A black shape, humped and broad, crossed the light, and Doc's chest seized up; but it was only the combined silhouettes of McCain and Mr. Patrise.

Patrise said to Stagger Lee, "We got some of the equipment. They were in the process of removing it. I would like to believe that our information was simply late, and not someone else's early." He stopped suddenly, said, "That startled you. Why?"

Stagger told Patrise about the ambush.

"I see," Patrise said. "For a while we will act as if this all was just unfortunate timing. Find Wolfpond; he'll take you around to the loading area. Give me your assessment tomorrow.

"Hallow, we still need you inside. If you would, please."

"Stagger?" Doc said.

"Yeah," Stagger said, but didn't move.

"Got a deck of cards?"

Stagger blinked once, then pulled a battered pack of steamboats from his pocket.

"Thanks," Doc said. "I'll replace 'em."

Doc and Mr. Patrise went in. It was worse the second time. The shock was over, and the details showed more clearly. Hands, faces, what was left of them.

Mr. Patrise said, "The cards are for what?"

"Triage markers. Dead get a spade. Too bad to spend time saving, a club. Anybody who just needs first aid, not that I expect many, gets a diamond. The hearts are the ones we focus on."

"Very good, Hallow. I will pass the word."

Doc started walking the tables, stopping to look for responsive pupils, check for breathing and blood pressure, poke at exposed viscera and bone. He didn't lay down any diamonds; no surprise there. What surprised him was how few drew spades. Despite the damage, most of the victims were holding on by their splintered fingertips.

Once, at home, his crew had been called a hundred miles out to help with a town a twister had chainsawed through. There had been this much mess, then, but the sorting was mostly done by the time they'd arrived. "Hey, friend," one of the local paramedics had said to him, "let me show you a card trick."

Doc was aware that as he walked, and made decisions, Mr. Patrise's other people had become very quiet around him. As they did, he could hear the soft hum of moaning from those who couldn't move but weren't yet gone.

Mr. Patrise was standing quite still at one side of the chamber, McCain still his armed shadow. Doc said, "Do we have any backup coming?"

"Everyone here knows some first aid. All will follow your directions. I would not expect anything beyond that."

Doc flipped a heart, more from hope than honesty, and got a couple of people working, just to break the silence and stillness. "Then most of these people are gonna die. Maybe all of them." Doc paused, swallowed hard, fought down the urge to vomit again. "Don't mean to be rude, sir, but that's it."

"Understood, Hallow. What do you propose to do?"

Yea, Doc thought, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil, for somebody put me in charge. Then he pushed himself to think for real, and he knew what the true decision was.

It was something the fire guys talked about, late on call; always about themselves, because-well, you were allowed to decide for yourself. Suppose a wall collapses, and Vm rice pudding south of the sternum. You won '/ make me live like that, right?

You know, if I was gonna be stuck in a wheelchair… if I lost my eyes… my right hand… my nuts…

Somehow it never got to the last word, the action verb. Now and then somebody'd say "Save th' last bullet for yerself," in a John Wayne drawl. Every ambulance, and most of the fire trucks, had a pistol, against regulations. They were always generic name-brand revolvers, the kind everybody had in a bedroom drawer. Easy to drop in a creek, no hard questions.

"It's like this," Doc said at last. "If we do nothing, they'll die. If we move them, most of them will die anyway. If somehow we manage to patch one or two together-what'll be left of them?"

Quietly, just above the rumble of the dying, Mr. Patrise said, "I asked you what you could do, and I accept your answer."

"Okay." Doc ran a hand over his bag. "Morphine would work, but we'd be wasting it. I don't think they'll even feel bullets."

"You heard, Lincoln?"

"Sir." McCain handed the Tommy gun to Mr. Patrise and drew one of his. 45s.

"I can do it, sir," Doc said, and immediately wondered if it sounded as stupid to the others as it did to himself.

"It is not your job to do so," Patrise said, with a lack of intensity that seemed somehow kind. "And you work for me. Go home now." His eyes were just black in the unholy light. "I will see you out. Lincoln, you will wait for me."

Doc followed the small man into the iron-framed street. Patrise said, "You are not to go home alone. Do you understand that? Take Cloudhunter with you."

Doc nodded. "He's hurt a little. I should fix that."

"Very good. Lincoln is slightly hurt as well; if you will wait at your car, I will send him out."

"Sure. I'm not-oh. We left Ginny at the theater-I mean, it wasn't too far from her place, but-"

"If you wish to visit her, by all means do."

"No. No, I'd be-I just-"

"My people are under my protection, Hallow. But I will make certain." He turned, stood silhouetted in the red doorway. "I appreciate the difficulty of what you had to do tonight. You understand that I won't apologize for it."

Quicker than he could think, Doc said, "Will you tell them I'm sorry?"

"I will," Patrise said, and was gone.

Doc forced himself to turn around and walk to the car. It was a relief to patch up Cloud's cheek. McCain had a shallow gash almost the whole length of his left thigh. Doc cut away his trouser leg, dressed and bandaged it with McCain sitting in the Triumph's passenger seat. McCain held a pistol ready all through the operation, then said thanks and went back to the building.

Doc and Cloud piled into the car, drove into the dark.

"Cloud… what was that place? What was it fori"

"They were drawing power for magic. A great deal of power."

"From the people?"

"Life is a great source."

Doc was quiet a moment. "Do you know who they were?"

"A gang of humans. Whisper would not have dared do such a thing to Ellyllon."

"Whisper?"

"His name is Whisper Who Dares the Word of Words in Darkness. He is quite insane… though perhaps that is obvious. I do not say it to separate him from my kind. We are not human, but… we are not all like him."

"I know that, Cloud."

Doc drove into the garage. Jesse shook his head over the state of the Triumph's ragtop, and pointed out a spattering of shot scars in the trunk lid. Doc hadn't noticed.

Lisa, in the telephone room, told Doc that Ginny had called, wanting to be called back no matter how late. "I'll put it through to your room," she said.

The phone was ringing when he got there. "Hello."

"Are you all right, Doc? There was a rumor about some big shooting."

"Yeah. W'e're all okay. Lincoln and Cloud got scratched, but they're fine."

"You're sure?"

"All the noise was over when we got there." He found suddenly that he really did want to see her, hold her close; wanted to Then he wondered if he would ever be able to want anything again. "Look, I'm probably going to have to Stay in the rest of the weekend, but-could I see you next Friday?"

"Yes."

"We'll do something. Think about what you'd like to do."

She didn't answer at once. Doe wondered how he sounded to her. Finally she said, "I will. Doe. Good night."

He went downstairs and had the kitchen make him a plain hot eggnog-no brandy, no sleeping powder. He didn't want to wake up abruptly, sometime in the dark small hours. He got a book from the library, a Rafael Sabatini swashbuckler with brave, kind heroes and the certain promise of a happy ending.

Sometime after midnight the lights flared and died. He wasn't sleepy yet, so lit the hurricanes and kept reading. Sometime after three he jerked awake from a doze, doused the lights and crawled into bed; it didn't work. He lit a lamp again, picked up the book.

At five-thirty, still as dark as midnight, he went downstairs again in his robe and slippers to get some food. The dining room was candlelit. A silver coffee service was on the table, a blue flame keeping it hot. Fay was there, sitting back with a cup cradled in her hands, her feet propped up on the seat of another chair.

She turned, saw him, started to sit up straight. Doc raised his hands. "No," he said, "it's all right, stay right there," and tried to put it into gestures.

She smiled, resumed her position, pointed at the coffee, an empty chair nearby. He poured, sat.

Fay pointed at him. She held up her index fingers, brought them together, made a cradle-rocking motion with her arms, pointed at him again. Doc thought. She knew who his girlfriend was, certainly-then he got it. Do you have a family?

He held up the parent fingers, brought them together, pointed at himself, spread his empty hands. She nodded, tapped her chest. Same with me. Then she held up the fingers again, slowly folded them over.

"I'm sorry," Doc said, and shut his mouth.

She shook her head, opened her lips, made a rolling-on motion with her hands.

So he talked: he told her about planting and haying, and silly stuff he'd done with Robin, and the time the twister barely missed the house. He gestured a lot at first, but Fay seemed more interested in just hearing the sound of his voice. So he just talked, with illustrative movements now and then, until he noticed that the sun was up. The poached egg and toast that the butler had brought him more than an hour ago were dead cold, untouched.

He turned away from the window, back to Phasia, and his eye lids dropped like fire curtains. She laughed then. It was a sound somewhere between a baby's laugh, wind chimes, and a silver piccolo. She stood up, put her hands on his cheeks, and kissed him on the forehead. Then she pressed her palms together, put her head down-to-sleep on them, and tapped Doc on the head.

"Yeah, I think you're right," he said, and went upstairs to sleep all day.

I he house was quiet that weekend. Everyone seemed to be keeping in. Doc ate in his room, finishing the Sabatini adventure and starting another, then shuttling down to the infirmary to read on shock and trauma.

He passed Stagger Lee once in the dining room. Stagger was staring at a half-eaten roast beef sandwich as if it were a chess problem. "Want to play some poker?" Doc said.

Stagger looked up, his expression lightening. "That's… well.. not now, thank you."

"Give me a call if you change your mind."

"Sure."

"Stagger… did any of them make it?"

"None of them."

Doc could nearly convince himself that he couldn't have made any real difference to his patients' survival-not even touching what surviving might have meant. He kept catching himself staring emptily at the wall, the book idle in his lap, thinking, thinking.

Part of it was his old job. People didn't die in the ambulance. Often enough they were dead when you got to the scene, and all you did was haul goods; that was unhappy, but it wasn't bad. If the patient was alive, he stayed alive until you got him to the emergency room. His heart might stop, but you just maintained the compressions and ventilation. The declaration, the time check, the paperwork, were in somebody else's hands.

None of them. Damn.

Sunday evening he picked up the phone three times to call Ginevra. But he didn't.

On Monday Patrise announced early in the day that everyone was to meet for dinner at La Mirada. Doe packed up and went early, just after opening. As he had hoped, Lucius was there, sitting alone.

"Good evening, Doc. Buy a member of the free and unbribable press a drink? Or here's a better one: Tell me what tomorrow's column is about and I'll buy yours."

"You heard about what happened Friday night?" Doc said cautiously.

"Ah. Not an ideal topic, Doc. Meddle not with the preconceptions of audiences, for they are obtuse and quick to switch channels."

"Channels?"

"Newspapers, I should have said. My, how hard some habits die."

"It's-"

"It's Whisper. And yes, Doc, the incident is news. It isn't features. Mark the difference."

"You know about him, then. Whisper."

"I know about Whisper Who Dares. We aren't acquainted."

Doc waited. Lucius didn't say any more. Doc said, "What do you think he was trying to do?"

Lucius said slowly, "You really want to talk about it, don't you?"

Doc pressed his hands on the table.

"Well, you can't," Lucius said, more coldly than Doc had ever heard him speak. "I keep telling you, confidences aren't my beat. Just the opposite."

"Who do you suggest I do talk to?"

"Birdsong on trust in one paragraph: Nobody. You do not live among such people, good people though they are. You do not, in fact, live in such a world, good world though it is… On second thought, you do know someone who can keep a secret."

"Who?"

"Phasia."

"Thanks," Doc said unpleasantly, and then suddenly he began to understand. Something was horribly wrong, locked up inside Lucius, and he couldn't speak it directly; he was telling Doc the only way he could. Doc felt angry with himself for not hearing it sooner.

"Would you mind telling me something, then?"

"Within the bounds of time, knowledge, and the language."

"What do you know about Mr. Patrise? How he got started, I mean."

Lucius looked sad, but no longer cold and angry. "I guess you're buying the drinks, huh."

"Sure."

"There are a lot of stories. I came late to him, so stories are all I know, kapeesh? For something closer you'll have to talk to someone who was there earlier-Stagger Lee, maybe, Cloudhunter. McCain goes the farthest back, but, well. So are stories all right?"

"Yes."

"He was a South Side kid, that's pretty certain. There's a story that when he was, oh, nine, ten, he carried books everywhere he went. If you laughed at the bookworm, you found out how neatly a signature binding could hide a stiletto. I'm not sure I believe that one. Or if it's true, I think Patrise has put it a long way behind himself.

"A reliable tale is that he put together a gang to turn over rare coin shops. Pure burglary, no bodily harm anyone's heard of, though it's your call to believe that part. They were very selective: gold and silver, none of the alloy coins that came later. Some stamps, apparently. And some pennies were made out of shellcase metal after World War Two: they always got those.

"Later, so spools the yarn, they quit that and went on to plumbing suppliers and salvage yards-copper and zinc and lead in quantity."

"Lead?"

"This is a what story, not a why story. Eventually, as most of the smarter gangsters did, he moved legitimate. Like them, he was providing what people wanted, not necessarily what they needed- places like this, the coffee trade."

"I see."

"You say that like you know what it all means. It wasn't Patrise who decided the returning elves were Cuban commies from Mars, and saved Miami from a fate worse than death by turning it into a radioactive lagoon.

"Patrise was made in refiner's tire, out of true metal," Lucius said. "Whereas the Great Spirit made me of sawdust and printer's ink and cheap scotch, and was working under deadline."

"Oh, Lucius, stop it."

"I know what you want to know about." Lucius's voice had a rough edge, partly whiskey. "And I can't help you. If it were a simple matter of betraying a confidence, that would be no trouble at all, just as I say. But it's beyond that. I wish I could help you, Doc, you're a good guy, but I can't."

Patrise came in then, and at once the evening had organization and direction.

McCain and Stagger Lee had come with Patrise, Carmen, and Phasia, but not Ginny or Cloudhunter. Doc wondered if Ginny was alone. He wondered what he would do about it if she were.

Carmen came onstage, in a tight gold blouse that showed one shoulder and a triangle of midriff, a trailing black skirt.

Say how you cut it

You'11 never get it so thin

An edge of softness

To turn the hardness within

When will your face fall

After the long masquerade

The razors open

Come out and dance on the blade

So here's a tip of the hat

To all the melancholy people

So uncertain what they 're ready to feel

(Waitin' all night)

Diamond cut diamond

Silk cut steel

During the second verse Matt and Gloss came out, doing a sharp turn around the floor timed to the lyrics. It wasn't really interpretive. Doc supposed that might have made people nervous.

So here's a tip of the glove To all the solitary people Undercover in the world of the real (Hidin all night)

Diamond cut diamond Silk cut steel

Pavel was standing in the doorway, making a hand signal. Pa-trise nodded and looked away. Pavel stared, then went back into the foyer.

So here's a tip of the shoe To all the predatory people Overeager for the whip and the heel (Playin' all night) Diamond cut diamond Silk cut steel

Carmen and the dancers took their bows, disappeared through the curtains. The room lights came up.

Everybody turned around.

Two new people were standing just inside the door. One was a tall, dark-skinned woman with black-and-white hair. She had mirrored sunglasses above lips like a surgical incision. She was wearing a long trenchcoat of silver-gray leather over a loose white cotton suit; no shirt, a thin strip of metallic silver cloth around her long throat. Her hands were thrust into the coat pockets, not casually.

The other was the shortest elf Doc had ever seen, a man built like a bull, his white hair cut down to fuzz on his skull. He had sunglasses as well, heavy-framed black ones. Doc had to check again that he was really Trueblood, and not an albino human, but the ears were definite, as were the weirdly delicate hands-really weird, on those piston forearms. He wore a black team jacket for the Topanga Toons, heavy gray trousers bloused into cycle boots. His wide belt had a bunch of pouches and clips; a white rod, thin as a pencil and eighteen inches long, rode in a sleeve, and there were handcuffs hanging on the other side.

They were eops. They didn't look like any eops Doe had e\er seen before, but he knew anyway.

Someone at another table said, in an awful fake British accent, "I say, Patrise, we're nor being bally raided are we?"

"Relax, Nigel," Patrise said, with complete unconcern. "The

Mirada is not raided. Have another brandy." He stood up. "Officers. We haven't had the pleasure: my name is Patrise, and this is my establishment. Won't you please share our hospitality?"

The two cops came to the table. The tension level dropped a hairsbreadth.

"I'm Lieutenant Rico," the woman said. "This is my partner, Lieutenant Linn." The words might have been steel blanks rolling out of the mill.

Patrise said, "Newly arrived."

"Special assignment. For the Shadow Cabinet."

"Yes, who else. Do sit down. Is there something I can offer you? Coffee?"

Linn put his fingertips together. Rico said "Coffee would be nice of you." They sat down. Alvah played "A Nightingale Sang," and couples came out to dance. The club settled back.

Lieutenant Rico didn't talk much. Lieutenant Linn made an appreciative gesture when his coffee was served, but didn't talk at all.

Patrise said, "You're on special assignment here, you say."

"I did."

"Not voluntary? I think I should be insulted for my city."

"Is it your city, sir?"

"People make cities theirs. Robert Moses and Richard Daley in their ways, Samuel Johnson and Colette in theirs. Excuse me: and Robert Peel, Eugene Vidocq, and Eliot Ness in theirs."

Rico said, "And Capone and O'Banion and Moran?"

"Bugs or Colonel Sebastian?"

Rico turned her head. The silver glasses hid anything that might have been called expression. She said, "You have a reputation as well, Mr. Patrise."

"You're not looking to change employers."

"The Cabinet wants the situation here dealt with."

"Do you mean Whisper Who Dares?"

"I mean the situation."

"That's an admirable desire of the Cabinet."

"They want to avoid a gang war."

"You didn't say 'at all costs'."

"Should I have?"

"No. The Shadow Cabinet never writes a blank check to anybody."

"That's true. It's also true that it takes two sides to have a war."

"Oh, no, Lieutenant. There you're wrong. It takes far more than two sides. There are all those people behind the lines: the ones who support it, supply it, stand facing the walls when the colors pass, and generally say Why Not, all making their particular contributions. All the really good trades are triangle-plus."

Patrise went on, his tone light, friendly, even merry. "You're an officer of some experience, Lieutenant, you and your partner; your reputation has been here before you. How many Ruthins and Sil-verlords have you hauled off how many pinkies? How many Vamps and Snaketooths and miscellaneous starving freelance shiv artists have you scraped off the sidewalk, only to see them returned or replaced by your next turn around the beat? And has there ever been an end of shift when you took off your weapons and armor and said to yourself, 'At last the world is safe for law and justice'?"

Lieutenant Rico said pleasantly, "I won't take that as an insult, sir."

"Not meant as one. I am, as I am certain you and your partner are aware, a voting member of the Shadow Cabinet. Which means that the other members were confident I would not be outvoted. So which arch-ironists pulled you off that unending duty to visit my city and, you'll excuse me, deal with a gang war?"

He had never raised his voice. If anyone beyond the table had heard him above Alvah's music, they had paid no attention.

Rico said, "Thank you for the coffee, Mr. Patrise." She started to rise.

"There's another act onstage in a moment. I think it would be for the best if you stayed that much longer."

"Is that a threat, sir?"

"I never make threats. It's a promise."

Rico stood quite still, drumming her fingers on the chair back. Then she sat, Linn following. The lights dimmed.

Fay sang.

It was a happy song-upbeat, at least. Doc didn't recognize the lyric-but you could never get up and dance to Fay's music. Something suspended all action deep down. Something about The Voice in joy was nearly unbearable. Doc realized that he had never heard her sing a really sad song. People might die of that.

Or, he thought, of joy.

When she finished, Rico was entirely still; Linn's head was bent, his eyes closed, an ivory Buddha. Finally Rico said, "Thank you for your hospitality, sir."

"You're welcome always."

The detectives left. As always after Phasia's set, others began drifting out as well.

Patrise said, "So what do you think, Stagger?"

"Linn is a dynamics master, no question about it. No indications from Rico; she might have a touch of pure receive, but I doubt it. Pickups tend to be brittle. She didn't strike me as brittle."

"Lincoln?"

"They're serious enough."

Patrise rose, went around the room shaking hands and saying a few words here and there. "Coming, Hallow?"

"I'll be along."

"No hurry. If the Lieutenants should come back, make them welcome, will you?"

"I'll do my best."

"But of course." Patrise waved and went out. Doc looked around for Lucius, who was still sitting at his corner table near the bar.

"This was the place they first called them coppers, do you know, Doctor," Lucius said. "For their uniform buttons. This is the true folklore, accept no substitutes."

Doc nodded. He could sense the pressure going critical inside Lucius, and as much as he wanted to know what was wrong, and to help fix it, Lucius showed no sign of explaining himself, and Doc didn't want to be present at the explosion. "Good night," he said. "I'm sorry I couldn't help with your column."

"You did, though," Lucius said. "I'll have to owe it to you. Have Shaker send over the ol' alphanumeric piano, will you?"

He did, and then he went home. He left word to have the newspaper sent up as soon as it arrived, and slept very badly until it did.

THE CONTRARIAN FLOW

by Lucius Birdsong

Do you hear the horns of Elfland,

Sounding in the night? Hear them calling souls from slumber

At the traffic light. Can you hear the horns of Elfland,

Echo 'cross the dell? Mind, oh mind, your left rear fender

Parking parallel. Now you hear the horns of Elfland,

At the close of day, Seeking out the vile offender

Walking like a jay. Should you hear the horns of Elfland

Soar and swell and wax, Copper voices soon shall follow,

Getting just the facts. When you hear the horns of Elfland

Cleave the night in twain, Just remember, on the Levee

Law and Order reign.

Just a reminder, gentle readers, that from time to time the moon smiles down upon Our Fair Levee with something really putrid caught between its teeth; and if you have been wondering lately if we are really living in a rational universe, why, others are wondering too. Good night, good night, sleep tight.

"I have a message for you," Patrise said the next day. "Norma Jean's feeling much better, and she'd like to meet the man who saved her life."

"Is she coming here: "'

"No," Patrise said slowly, and then, "I think this is best done in the World, if you don't mind a drive. There's a nice place on the North Side, not too far for either of you."

"All right."

"Six tomorrow evening, then."

It was almost sunset Wednesday when Doc drove out through the Shadow fire, and full dark when he reached the restaurant, a small place, dark and quiet. He gave his name, and was taken to an enclosed booth that might have been the only one in the place.

A few minutes later, there was a mechanical whirr. A motorized wheelchair appeared. Norma Jean was in it, working a control with her right hand. A tall man in a dark suit walked a step behind.

Doc stood up. Norma Jean smiled. The man in the suit looked hard at Doc.

Norma Jean said, "I'll see you later, Eddie," and the man vanished. "Oh, come on, sit down." She laughed. "/ sure am."

She was wearing a navy-blue jacket over a low-necked white blouse, a skirt just to her knees, ankle-strapped high heels with little silver buckles.

"Can I-" He reached for the push handles on the chair.

"Nope. Sit." She drove the chair up to the table, and he sat down. He saw that her left arm was in a sling inside the jacket, the hand pale and limp against her chest.

A waiter slid out of the dark. "Just some tea, please," Norma Jean said. "How about you, Doc?"

"Tea's fine."

"I miss coffee," she said, once the waiter had gone. She settled back in the chair. "I wondered what you'd look like. Anna-you know, on the switchboard-said you were red Irish. Are you really?" Her voice was flat, neither musical nor unpleasant; Doc supposed her wind must be short.

He touched his hair. "Really."

She laughed. "I meant Irish, not red."

"Somewhere way back, I think. Is your family Irish?"

"Polish and German. But that's away back too. Seven generations in the city, I think it's seven. We made it to the Gold Coast in the Twenties. My great-grandfather was in the Dion O'Banion gang."

"Yeah?" he said, and then wondered if it was the wrong topic.

But she grinned and said "The real thing. My granddad, his son, used to tell me stories about it. See, when he was little-Granddad, I mean-his dad wouldn't talk to him about the gang days. He'd only say 'I just drove a car, I never shot nobody,' and that it was all made up for the movies.

"But when the war started-you know, with the Japanese and the Germans?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Granddad was going to sign up, because, you know, everybody was. Then his dad said, 'We're gonna go on a trip first.' Granddad said, 'How long?' 'Two weeks oughta do it. Can't win the war in two weeks, can't lose it either.' So they got in the car-it was a big Cadillac, that's what Great-granddad always drove, they called him Cadillac Billy-and they went up to Wisconsin. Granddad thought it was a hunting trip, or maybe ice fishing.

"They got to this lodge in the woods. It belonged to a couple of guys from the mob days. There were pictures and newspaper clippings all over the walls, of everybody-Al Capone, Moran, O'Banion, Torrio. They said John Dillinger was trying to get back there, to hide, when the G-Men shot him.

"And they had this arsenal — Tommy guns and shotguns and pistols and grenades. And Granddad spent two weeks learning how to use them all. And to fight with a knife; he could scrap okay, any kid could in those days, but this was serious. His dad said, 'Two weeks ain't much, but it's better than you're gonna learn from the Army, 'cause most of them guys never had to do it for real. Unless they were like me.' He even made out a list of guys who'd been in the gangs, who Granddad could trust if he needed help. Granddad said he burned the list after the war, because too many of the men on it were heroes then. You want some more tea?"

"Sure," Doc said. When it came, Norma Jean said, "Could you dump two spoons of sugar into mine, and stir it up? This one-wing stuff is no good."

"Your arm's going to be okay, isn't it?"

"Oh, yeah! I didn't mean that-you know I wouldn't have it at all if it weren't for you. The) said it may always be a little weak. but I've got therapy three days a week, and Granddad-well, let me finish that story."

"Please."

"Well," she said, a little more softly, "Granddad says that, when they were up there in the woods, fighting and shooting, it was the first time he really felt like his dad loved him, you know? 'Cause he was teaching him what he knew to stay alive in the war. But then he joined the Marines, and he went off and fought, and after he'd fought for a while… he understood that his dad'd loved him all the time before-hadn't wanted his son to grow up with guns and knives and wars all the time."

Doc waited. She didn't say any more. He said, "Your Granddad must be quite a guy… I mean, is he still alive?"

"Oh, yeah," she said. "He saw me every day I was in the hospital, and he helps me with my PT. He says I ought to learn to shoot a bow and arrow-you know, an Amazon." She looked down at herself, where the chest wound was hidden. Then she grinned again. "When I got so I could sit up, he said he was making plans to bust me out of the hospital-you know, go over the wall at midnight, like in the movies. He made me promise that if he was ever in, I'd-" Her voice caught. "-crash him out. Funny thing to say, huh."

Doc flashed on the end of High Sierra, with Bogart shot down in the desert, and the girl trying to understand his last words, asking what it meant when a man crashes out.

That's a funny thing to ask, sister, the cop replied. // means he s free.

He had a sudden terrible certainty of what Norma Jean's grandfather had meant.

"You could meet him," Norma Jean was saying. "I think he'd like to meet you. I'm sure he would. He's never really been to Town, and keeps saying he should. He calls it Old Town-you know the song? 'There'll be a hot time in Old Town tonight'…?"

"In the old town."

"No. That was later, when people weren't singing about this city anymore. When the song was written, it was about Old Town here. Really."

"I didn't know. Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about. Even people who grew up here don't know that. Lucius Birdsong, the reporter, told me. Do you know Lucius?"

"Yes."

"Oh, of course you do-someone said he wrote about you. He's such a swell guy, but, you know, so odd-I mean, you wanna carry a torch, okay, but do it for someone who's at least on your side of the street.

"

Doc waited, but that seemed to be the end of that discussion. Then she said, quite from nowhere, "You living alone?"

He took her meaning at once, somewhat to his own surprise. "I'm seeing somebody. Pretty regular."

He saw lights fade within her. "I'm glad," she said, earnestly. "Do you ever see Chloe Yadis?"

"Sometimes at the club."

"I heard one of her girls ran away. Jolie-Marie, the little one. I mean, petite, you know."

Doc nodded stupidly.

"My mom would die," Norma Jean said, to no one in particular, and then painfully, "No, she'd die"

Then Doc understood. Norma Jean was stuck in the World now. and she wanted back-back with Mr. Patrise, or somebody close to him, like Doc. Even working for Chloe the madam would be a way back to the bright lights.

But there she was, in that chair. Just like Robin had been.

Floundering, he said, "I'll tell Mr. Patrise that you're better. I know he'll be glad to hear it. And-I really would like to meet your grandfather."

She nodded.

Doc tried to think ahead. "Some night we should… spring him. Get him to the Mirada, at least. My car won't hold three, but I could borrow one of the others."

"Oh, wouldn't that be great?" The light returned to her face, briefly. "Unless he-it might not be like he remembers. Wants to remember. I just don't know."

In that moment Doc knew the meeting was over. In the next moment Norma Jean was telling him how much fun she'd had. how great it had been to meet him. She touched the control and rolled her chair back from the table; Doc stood up hastily.

She was offering him no hand to shake, and even a small kiss on the cheek would have required him to swoop and bend over her in the chair. So he just stood. The man in the dark suit reappeared; he seemed to take no notice at all of Doc.

She stopped, rolled back toward him. "Granddad said I should be good to you," she said unsteadily. "That somebody who does- what you do-was really special. You'll tell everybody I miss them, won't you?"

"Of course."

"And tell your girlfriend you're special," she said then, in a voice full of agony and venom. She turned away and was gone.

As he drove back, a windblown winter rain began to fall, that scattered the ghost fires of the Shade far across the real city.

Friday afternoon, Doc went upstairs to see Patrise. He was sitting behind his silver desk in a long violet dressing gown, feet up, a large book of art reproductions open in his lap.

"I don't expect we'll need you tonight, Hallow," he said. "Have a pleasant evening."

Doc hesitated.

Patrise said, "Was there something else?"

"I was thinking," Doc said, "you know, with all the stuff I carry in my bag, it's a wonder I haven't been jumped before this."

"Do you think so?" Patrise said, sounding interested.

"It makes sense. I mean, I drive a car everybody can recognize, and they probably know I don't carry a gun."

"You haven't wanted to carry a gun."

"I still don't. I just… guess I ought to be more careful, from now on."

Patrise's voice cut right across the nonsense. "Who do you think it was that set us up, Hallow? Are you afraid it was Ginevra?"

"No, it couldn't have-she didn't know anything about what was happening, any more than I did."

"You don't know that," Patrise said, calm. "You don't have any way of knowing that."

"No," Doc said, and stopped while he still had his voice.

Patrise put his book on the desk, sat up in his chair facing Doc. "But / know, Hallow. And she did not."

"Then… do you know-who?"

"Let me tell you something about people, Hallow. If you give people work that makes them feel strong and useful, then they will become strong and useful. Their strength, through you, is power, and astounding things can be done with that power. Impossible things.

"Keep the same people in fear, and you may still get use from them, but never strength. If they find strength despite you, the first thing they will do with it is bring you down. No matter what it costs. Understand that very well, Hallow: any being with a real soul will prize it above anything-certainly above life."

"A soul."

"I am not excluding the Truebloods. If Cloudhunter has no soul, then souls are surely overrated." He leaned back. "Have you thought about where to take Ginevra tonight?"

"Oh… the movies, probably."

"Why don't you take her off the Levee?"

"Is something wrong?"

"Not that I know. You should visit the World now and then. The Art Institute is open late tonight. It's not far. Barely past the Shade. Made dinner plans?"

"No."

"The Berghoff should do. Here." He scribbled a note, signed it, folded it. "Please, take it. Let me have my fun."

"Thank you, sir."

Patrise waved. "And think about the Art Institute."

"I'll ask Ginny."

"Yes. Tell me, Hallow, if you don't mind… do you make her laugh?"

"Uh…" Doc had to turn his thoughts sharply around. "She-laughs at the movies. And other times too."

"Good," Mr. Patrise said. "It is an extraordinary thing, that half the human species should need laughter so much from the other half. It is no small gift, you know. Hallow. Magic and Klrland have no substitute for it. Now, the best of nights to both of you. Hallow."

It was beginning to snow when they left the Shadow. Suddenly the air was on fire, turning the snowflakes blood-red; Ginny gasped, and Doc stopped the Triumph for several minutes while they watched the silent, heatless firestorm.

Ginny took his hand. Under her winter coat she was wearing a ruffled white blouse with a small string of pearls, a long black skirt. "I'd forgotten the fire," she said, sounding astonished.

The plaque NEW ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO was on a gray stone building that must have been a department store before the world shifted. The entrance was flanked by huge bronze lions, one old and green, one looking nearly new. A guard tipped his hat as they came through the door; Ginny scanned a brochure on what to see first, and dragged Doc up a flight of stairs, directly to a huge painting of strolling people: Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Doc had seen pictures of it in books, but…

"Look at it close," Ginny said.

He did. It was made up of thousands upon thousands of dots of color. Close up, they exploded into an atomic-structure diagram; a step back, and they coalesced again into the calm people in the sunny park.

In one of the modern halls, there was a painting of a theater usher, a girl in cap and vest standing in a golden slant of light. She looked weary; she looked terrifyingly alone. When he could look away from the girl, he saw that the pattern of the walls was a precise reproduction of a corner of the Biograph's lobby. Or was it the other way around?

He turned, a little dizzy, and there was another image he had seen any number of times before, but never like this: a long horizontal frame, a night scene somewhere in a big city, a streetcorner diner lit against the gloom. A sign on the brick wall sold nickel cigars to a disbelieving world. Inside, small at the big L-shaped counter, were a handful of people huddled over their coffee and pie, a counterman in white. No reproduction Doc had ever seen captured the electric green of the fluorescent light-it was like spellbox neon, though the artist had died long before things changed.

He looked at that picture for a long time, too, until its loneliness was too much to stand.

Near the museum exit was a room bannered The Third Fire.

Third? Doc thought. Just inside the door were two enormous engraved illustrations: the Great Fire of 1871, facing the "White City," the Columbian Exposition of 1892, burning at the turn of the century.

Beyond was an architectural model of the original Art Institute building, and an array of photographs. They showed the old building in flames, and a small army of people moving paintings and sculpture and art objects across littered, flame-lit streets. A glass case held a chunk of verdigris bronze: the distorted face of a lion, like those at the doorway looked out.

"The building burned when Elfland came back, you see?" Ginny said wonderingly, pointing at a map. "They moved it all- in one night, this says."

"Under cover of firehose and spell," a voice said. A uniformed museum guard was standing a little behind them, a plump woman with a small, secret smile. "We lost a few paintings, and a fair amount of sculpture, sad to tell. And one of the lions, of course. But look here." She led them to a side alcove: it was filled with a painting, a surreal, darkly vivid nightscape laced with flame and streaking energy. Across the center, figures-some human, some Ellyll-formed a chain, carrying paintings that, in contrast with the rest of the picture, were rendered with photographic realism.

"Picasso Crossing Adams" the woman said. "The elves knew something, even that first awful night. We hardly ever see one here now, but that night-" She shrugged, and smiled again. "Pleasant evening to you."

The woman left. Ginny said suddenly, directly into Doc's ear, "Shall I ask you now? I want to ask now."

"Ask what?"

"If you're coming home with me tonight. You don't have to. you know that. But there's enough suspense in mv life. And if we're going to have a really special dinner, I don't want to be knotted up all through it. So just tell me now, and it'll be OVCI with."

He stared at the painting, the tire and art and sorccrv and said. "Yes."

She let out a breath and hugged his shoulders.

Berghoff's restaurant was a crowded, bustling, jolly place, with fancy wood and stained glass. The maitre d' looked coldly at the young couple with no reservation until he saw Mr. Patrise's note, and at once they were given a table, and brought soup and steak and amazing platters of sausage, with dark beer to wash them down, until Doc wasn't sure the TR3 would carry their weight. There did not seem to be any question of presenting a bill.

Doc parked the car in front of Ginny's building. As they went up the front steps, Ginny slipped in the fresh snow, and Doc caught her. He had a brief, wild thought of carrying her inside, but he didn't; just kept his arm around her shoulders all the way in. Ginny locked the door behind them. "You remember when I said there was too much suspense in my life?"

"Yeah?"

"Maybe I was wrong."

He found himself unbuttoning her blouse before she had quite pulled him into the bedroom. He had heard it wasn't difficult, after the first time. It was easier. He still seemed to weigh too much- the dinner was only part of that.

It wasn't that there was any difficulty. She seemed pleased, and that alone was enough to make him feel good. But something wasn't quite there: the Wild Hunt didn't ride, and he knew that she knew it. Still she sighed happily, and laughed, and held him all night.

Still, he knew what was locked up in his thoughts, and hoped desperately that she did not.

Monday night the usual poker crowd met at the Rush Street Grill. They sat over Flats Montoya's wonderful burgers with an uneasy quiet; Doc kept thinking of the Hopper painting, the diner at midnight. It was a relief to go back to the poker room, where quiet and blank looks were part of the game.

The Fox's game was way off form, and it threw everyone else's play off as well. After an hour, Kitsune tossed in her cards-an ace flipped upright-and said, "That's all. Good night, everybody."

Carmen said, "I'll get the box."

"Just say I'm tapped." She hurried out.

Stagger Lee counted Kitsune's chips. "Everyone agree we'll hold her share out?"

They did. "Who'll see her first? Lucius?"

"I'll take it to the Mirada. Shaker can hold the stake."

After another hour the raid alarm went off, and everyone went through the ritual of tossing in and covering up.

It wasn't the usual Copperbutton squad. It was Rico and Linn, with two very worried-looking Coppers trailing behind.

"Hello, Officers," Flats said. "Can I offer you something hot on a cold night?"

"Don't you love it?" Rico said. "Everybody here's the Welcome Wagon. Linn."

The elf went to the table where Doc and company were sitting. He looked at the people, then took a lens-shaped blue crystal from his belt. He gave it a snap of the wrist and it hung, spinning, in the air above the table, casting an electric-blue light. The tabletop turned transparent, showing the bucket of cards and chips beneath, the sitters' legs, a glimpse of their leg bones. Linn snatched the stone from the air with an easy movement and a tight little smile. He tucked it away.

Rico said, "The stuff that passes for cop work around here."

Carmen said, "We've got a seat open, Lieutenant. Maybe you'd like to sit in? There's room for two."

"Maybe some other time, honey."

"You mean that?"

"Yeah. I mean that."

"Look forward to it."

The police went out. The patrons dug into their pie and brandy.

A burst of gunfire came from the front of the restaurant, and a long crash of glass. Someone screamed. Stagger Lee, with a completely artificial calm, said, "Somebody's wa\ off script."

Doc was on his feet by instinct, grabbing his bag. "Keep do**, dammit," Lucius yelled, and Doc dropped into a booth-high crouch.

Just as he got to the front room, there was a brilliant white Hare from outside, and the front of the restaurant blew in. The shock knocked Doc down; he huddled for a few breaths against debris and any second detonation, but the booth wall had protected him well enough. He got up.

The room was smoky, and smelled of hot metal and burning. People were groaning, but not screaming now. There was some blood, but no immediately apparent critical cases. The front windows were pretty well demolished, and the oak front door was a jagged strip of bare wood.

Lieutenant Linn came in, breathing mist. His white wand was out, floating between his open hands; a black nimbus of negative light surrounded it. He looked at Doc, who went outside.

Rico was on the sidewalk outside, sitting up against the front of the building. Her left leg looked chewed, and her mirrorshades hung broken from one ear.

Doc snipped away her trouser leg, sponged blood off. The wounds were fairly minor; no heavy bleeders, bones intact. He got some dressings on. "You should be okay. Got any drug allergies?"

"Yeah. To needles. Go ahead, kid."

"People usually call me Doc."

"Yeah. Shit, that's cold."

"That's thorncast salve. It'll pull any fragments out. Did you hit your head?"

"Other end. Linn saw the bikes coming, got a ward up. Any sign of our so-called backups, Linn?"

Doc was conscious of Lt. Linn standing behind him, but missed any reply. He looked at Lt. Rico's pupils: they were even, but dilated. He pulled off her glasses-carefully, around a bad bruise on her cheek-shone a light on one eye.

"Watch it! Those used to be Night Owls."

"Sorry."

" 'S'okay. Doc."

"Lieutenant Linn, would you help me get her inside?"

Linn picked Rico up, carried her in to a bench. Doc saw to the other injured. Through some combination of luck and Linn's spell, nobody had caught a bullet or major fragment.

There was no question of going on with the games. The place cleared out quickly. Carmen left with Stagger Lee, and then it was just Doc, Lucius, Rico and Linn, and Flats, who brought out real coffee with Kahlua and cream.

"You said they were on bikes?" Doc said.

"Did I say that? I must have been delirious."

Doc glanced at Lucius, who raised an eyebrow and half of his mouth.

Flats said, "How about you, Linn? You ever talk?"

Linn shook his head.

"You gotta have something," Rico said. "When you're trying to do a job nobody wants done, by flaky rules, in a hostile country, among people who don't want you there in the first place, you've got to have some way of knowing who you are. That or go dinky-dau."

"What?"

"Crazy. Something my dad used to say."

Doc said, "You'll be sore for a while."

"I've been torn up before, Doc. I'll make it."

Doc nodded. "Take you home, Lucius?"

"Don't mind, Doctor."

"Hey, Doc," Rico said. "Thanks. And hey, Jake Lingle."

Lucius said, "Yes, Lieutenant, ma'am?"

"I read your column all the time. Nice to meet you."

"Thank you very kindly, Lieutenant."

"Don't get killed."

Lucius snapped a salute. They went outside, their shoes crunching on broken glass.

"So which way's home?" Doc said.

"Drop me at the Mirada. I've got to give Shaker the Fox's stake, remember?"

"Yeah." Doc thought about Kitsune's behavior, about speaking of it. But he didn't. Instead he said, "Who's Jake Lingle?"

"Famed local reporter, from the real gangland days. The Ca-pone boys shot him dead one day."

"Oh."

"There was a rule back then, never shoot three sorts of people: cops, judges, and reporters. Too much hear, you see. And what do you know but that Jake's paper raised a row that eventual!) did help bring Al down." He turned his head. "You know Capone's Four Deuces club-that was the street address, two-two-two-two- was just over there a couple of blocks."

"You will be careful, won't you, Lucius?"

"I haven't gotten to the punch line yet, Doc. Jake Lingle, mob martyr, was taking fifty thousand Depression dollars a year from Capone. It's an ill wind, eh, Doctor?"

He let Lucius off at the club, knowing that things were no better than they had been a week ago. Maybe worse. and the house barber had restyled his hair to conceal the wound and Doc's chopping.

That afternoon Doc went to Patrise's office, intending finally to ask what the lead mining was for. Once there, however, in the glare of light on wood and metal, with Mr. Patrise-who had never wronged him, never, so far as he knew, lied-seated calmly at a side table, reading an old leatherbound book, Doc choked on the question. He managed to get out, "There's something-I have to know. About, well, magic, I guess…"

Mr. Patrise shut his book. "Are you afraid of the sources of power?" He stood up, sat against the edge of his enormous desk. "Do you think that someday you will open a door, like Bluebeard's wife, and find the sort of place you saw under the streets?"

"I just want to understand."

"I know that," Mr. Patrise said gently, "and there is nothing more becoming to want. But would you ever be satisfied with an answer? I could give you all the keys I have, and you could still suspect I had left out the one key key. Now Bluebeard, on the other hand, gave out the master key first thing.

"Here is something you should recognize, Hallow: the True Blood is psychically bound to dominant modes of thought-in plainer words, slaves to fashion. This once was part of their power, when their culture was all the culture on Earth, and we huddled under trees because the sun and the rain made us afraid. The Truebloods said to the hominids, Do things in the way we tell you, and we did, because they were more frightening still."

"Trees," Doc said. "Elves are supposed to be tree people, in the old stories."

"Congratulations, Hallow," Mr. Patrise said, with what sounded like real pleasure.

"Eventually the Truebloods went away, and after-oh, who knows how long-we started to forget that they had been real. But we kept the inspiration: we continued to do things by rules, whether or not the rules made sense, to act as the group did, even when the group was insane, to enjoy making a pattern and watching the crowd squeeze into it. In time we technologized the process, industrialized it, networked it. It was, if you like, our magic."

Doc said, "And when the Truebloods came back?"

"They were bewildered at first by what they saw. There are hints that they did not recognize us as human-they thought we were some otherworldly species that had colonized the Earth.

"As anyone may in such a circumstance, many of them panicked. That led to the fires. To open warfare, in many places. Eventually you will learn about that… about Asia, and Africa, and the Silent Zones."

Why will IP Doc thought without saying.

"I often wonder," Mr. Patrise said, "what they saw in television that made them decide it must be erased utterly. Not that any of this saved them. They could not simply impose their rules on a race that changed its hemlines and heroes with the turn of the seasons. They were no longer the arbiters; they were just one more designer label. And as I said at the start, they were vulnerable themselves to the mass demand, as are all societies that rule by code and force. They began to ride motorcycles, pose with guns, wear stiletto heels and wide-shouldered suits and four-in-hand neckties. They can no more fight this than humanity can, so they must try to do it better than we do."

Mr. Patrise tilted his head, just slightly, and fixed his eyes on Doc's. "Suppose I told you that you could have any of them you wanted: a Highborn, Rhiannon or Stane Belle, the Kings of Elf-land's daughters, on their knees in front of you, dressed in spider gauze and cold iron chains, begging you to-"

"Stagger said the cold iron thing doesn't work," Doc said, trying to keep the image from getting any clearer.

Mr. Patrise looked surprised. It was not a typical expression for him. "Stagger Lee is a fine technician, but he will never be a great enchanter. Do you know why, Hallow?"

Doc almost said no, then waited. He had the feeling Mr. Patrise really wanted an answer. "Iron… doesn't have power over the Truebloods. But some of them believe it does."

"As I was saying, Hallow… they can be bound. Even b\ us. And why should that matter so?"

"I don't know."

"Because they are not mortal," Mr. Patrise said, his voice dead calm. "We are. Whatever we choose to be in life, that life ends. Whatever our condition, however hateful the ser\ iee we are yoked to-one day it will end, and we know it. Not so for them."

"All right," Doc said, his throat tight, "but, it's still not something I want."

"What you might desire and what you might do are two different things, Hallow. But I think you mean what you say. Making it very important that you know such power exists." Patrise went to a service table behind the desk, poured two small glasses of brandy. He handed one to Doc. "The first night we met, I told you to wait a while and ask me if I knew you. You haven't asked."

Doc sipped the drink and said nothing.

Mr. Patrise rolled his brandy glass, took a swallow. "There will be a party for the winter solstice-dress-up, naturally. Will you be sure to tell Ginevra that she is invited, and to visit Boris for a fit-ting?"

For days before the solstice party the staff were hanging ribbons, holly, ivy-"No advance warning where the mistletoe goes," one of the maids said happily-and setting out candlesticks.

Boris Liczyk provided Doc with a long-tailed cutaway coat of green broadcloth with velvet lapels, narrow trousers, and calf-high brown boots. The shirt was gauzy and ruffled, the tie a broad ribbon. At first he thought it was a repeat of his Halloween mad killer's outfit; but with the coat in place, he recognized the look from pictures in books. It was going to be a Charles Dickens Christmas.

He adjusted his tie and braces and went downstairs. Below, all the lights were out, and candles lit; hundreds of candles, in sconces and holders of iron and brass and glass, so many that their individual flickerings merged into an even, buttery light.

"Good evening, sir, good evening," Boris Liczyk said from a dim spot at the foot of the stairs. He was wearing a white curled wig and a butler's uniform that looked black in the light but must be blue: Boris was very insistent about who could and could not wear black. "You are dressing well tonight, sir. There's someone waiting for you." He gestured with his rod of office.

Ginny was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress of heavy satin in a deep, iridescent red. It outlined her body closely to the waist, then fell in a fluid cascade to the floor. Around her throat was a red velvet choker with a black cameo, and her black, black hair was curled and swept high.

Doc felt himself want her, that instant. He bowed, crooked his arm. She curtsied and took it.

All the regulars were there, naturally; Carmen Mirage in a black lace gown powdered with gold, Kitsune Asa in a pink kimono extravagantly embroidered with cranes in flight, Matt Black and Gloss White in rather less formal costumes that Ginny explained were two dancers from the Paris Moulin Rouge, as drawn by Toulouse-Lautrec.

Alvah Fountain's dreadlocks fell neatly over his high wing collar to the lapels of a steel-blue tailcoat; his handling of the coattails got him an ovation just sitting down at the piano. Phasia wore a white-on-white Empire gown, and a triple rope of black pearls.

The party wasn't, in fact, just Dickensian. It was about-elegance, Doc supposed was the right word; some high Victorian and some Regency and a touch of Edwardian. Doc greeted everyone, enjoying the play formalin.- of bows and "Enchanted" s and nods and winks. At Ginny's insistence he danced with Carmen, and Phasia, and struggled through a group dance without too much embarrassment. But mostly he stayed with Ginevra, and that felt very good.

About ten, Cloudhunter (who was dressed as elven nobility from an illustrated edition of Dunsany-it was so unlike anything real Truebloods wore that no insult could be implied) asked Doc aside. They went into an alcove, where Patrise was sitting, in ruffled shirt and violet coat, holding his silver-handled stick.

"We have a message," Patrise said. "A possibility of tracking down Whisper Who Dares. Do you think we should follow it?"

"You mean, right now?"

"That is what I'm asking."

Doc thought. "Is this going to be another-another like List time?"

— No."

"There's nobody else Involved. Nobody innocent."

"Not that I know."

"Then the hell with him for now," Doc said.

Patrise's fingers played with his cane top. "1 Agree, Hallow. It's too fine a party, too rare a night. Have you slept well?"

"I suppose."

"Then what we will do is this: when the party breaks up, be ready to change and move out. About one o'clock, I should think. Drink lightly."

"All right."

"And now, I think, we need another dance. Find your partner." Patrise bowed. Doc returned it and went back to Ginny.

Before long, he began to notice something different between them tonight. It seemed odd to call it warmth-hadn't they been warm? Her hands were tight in his, and her eyes seemed uncommonly deep.

A clock struck eleven. Doc thought of Cinderella, waiting for midnight, and thought perhaps he knew what the change was: she was feeling his tension, the energy winding up inside him, and reflecting it back, expecting Not expecting him to run away from her at one, to join the monster hunt.

Finally he took her into another room and told her what they were going to do.

"It's all right," Ginny said.

"No, it's not all right. Why should I want to run out and helpkill somebody-"

"That isn't what you're going to do, and you know it. Mr. Patrise and your friends are going out to do something important, to stop something terrible, and you're going because they may need your help. Where is Mr. Patrise?"

"Over in the-"

"Come on."

Patrise was speaking softly and rapidly to Boris Liczyk. He stopped, turned. "Yes, Hallow? Ginevra? Do you wish to leave us for a while?"

"No, sir," Ginny said, politely but firmly. "I wanted to say that, if you should need to leave early, I'd be pleased to help keep the party going." She smiled. "I have some experience there, as you know, sir."

"My very dear." Patrise bowed. "I am pleased more than you know to hear that, but you are a guest tonight. Boris and the staff will have no difficulties. But will you do one thing for me?"

"Of course, sir."

"Give me a dance."

Doc watched them, with just a spark of something he knew was jealousy, though knowing it made him feel sick and absurd. Then Gloss White tapped his arm, and he swallowed hard and danced with her; but of course Gloss could make a sack of turnips look like Fred Astaire, and it did go well, the four of them waltzing to Alvah's music. Then they changed partners, and all evil sparks cooled and died.

At a quarter to one, Doc hugged Ginny, and she pulled him behind an armoire and made it an extremely definite kiss. He left her and the candlelight belowstairs, went to his room to change into something more appropriate for the evening's late entertainment.

Doc drove with Cloudhunter in the Triumph's passenger seat. The cars didn't convoy, so Doc took meaningless turns at Cloud's instructions, until they parked in an empty loading dock, in a spot surrounded by broken pallets and snow-covered cardboard. Cloud opened a metal door. Beyond it was a dingy corridor, another door, and then space.

The building had been a shopping center, three or four levels connected by escalators, ramps, glass elevators; aisles and balconies lined with bookshops, record stores, fashion and shoe and jewelry stores. All the retail spaces were dark and empty 7, deserted or smashed in, with a litter of broken-heeled shoes and split-spined books here and there in passing. Snow filtered through broken skylights, down the open spaces between floors, and the greenery in the balcony planters had been overtaken by coarse wild vines with leaves like lizard scales.

Patrise was leading McCain and Stagger Lee across a stretch of mildewed carpet. More of his people were following at a distance. Doc and Cloud closed with them.

Stagger was holding a box of some heavy gray metal, perhaps lead, that had copper-colored rods protruding from each face. It was making a soft, high-pitched squealing that shifted tone as he twiddled and slid the rods.

"There," Stagger said, and there was a burst of red light from overhead. Voices, elf and human, screeched, and halt'a do/en pco pie came running from one of the second-level shopfronts. Two were Silverlords in padded gray leather, jacket and jeans, jacket and zippered skirt; the rest were humans of one sort or other.

McCain raised his Colts, fired from both hands. A human-a Loop Garou, Doc guessed-was hit in mid-leap and fell hard; the other shot brought the male elf down in a heap nearby. The Sil-verlord woman vaulted the railing, landed fifteen feet below in a snap roll, came up holding two long blades. McCain took aim.

There was a flicker of light behind the glass of one of the storefronts. Then the doors blew out.

Lieutenant Linn stepped through, light streaking out behind him. Lt. Rico came after, in a heavy dark-blue jacket with web straps and pouch pockets. It said POLICE in big reflective letters. She carried what looked like a midget Gatling gun in black metal.

The Silverlord spun to face them, leveling her blades.

Rico's gun coughed and spat a burst of vapor, and a six-inch metal arrow stuck in the floor between the Blood's shoes. The multiple barrels rotated with a click.

"Everybody," Rico said, "coolit\"

Patrise said aloud, "It's a big stadium, plenty of room for everyone to play," and quietly to the people near him, "Diffuse. Stay in touch, but spread out. Hallow, stick to Cloudhunter."

Rico said, "I don't think you're receiving me, Little Caesar. Nobody is doing any more playing."

One of the Silverlords' people above popped up with an automatic rifle; he sprayed half a dozen rounds in the general direction of everybody else alive. People scattered; Lt. Rico went for cover behind a counter and leveled her weapon. Lt. Linn moved his hands in a complex pattern that hissed and sparked with red light. The shooter screamed and folded over the railing; his arms were wrapped in metal and wood, bits of brass and powder spilling to the floor below. Linn had apparently turned the gun inside out around its owner.

Everybody was moving then, Patrise's people, Rico and Linn, the Silverlords and Vamps.

"This way," Cloud said, and Doc followed him around a sharp corner into a broad, dim corridor with dead stores on both sides. It was lit by a string of glass tubes, the pale cold light of half-dead magic. They got ten yards along, twenty, and Cloud kept going. Doc said, "Shouldn't we-"

"There's a focus ahead," Cloud said in Ellytha. The word the books translated as focus literally meant "seam of destiny": it could mean a concentration of magic, a battlefield, a sacred place. Doc had also heard Cloudhunter use it to speak of Patrise.

Cloud stopped.

Light from the corridor slanted into a broad, wide-open shop-front. It had been a clothing store, though there wasn't a rag of fabric left. The mannequins-all female that Doc could see-had been torn apart, hacked, savaged: here and there a blade was still stuck in the plastic, and a yard of cycle chain wrapped a headless throat. Slogans had been painted on the dismantled dolls and the store walls: Elvish obscenities, symbols.

"Did the gangs do this?" Doc said.

"Before gangs," Cloud said. "From the first days of Return. That sign means 'Give Mortals Their Destiny' That one, 'Leave None Whole.'

Something white sailed out of the darkness. Cloud's sword reached out and intercepted it; it hit the floor with a crack.

It was a skull.

"Get back," Cloud said, low and hot, and Doc took a step backward. Smoke boiled out of the far corridor. Cloud gave the skull a vicious kick to the side; he threw out a hand, and a handful of throwing stars flashed through the haze.

A shape came out of the smoke: a bulky black cloak, no face. no form, with a long thin sword extending from beneath it.

Cloud said, in Elvish, "I am somewhat amused. Whisper Who Dares." He inclined his head to the black thing. Then his hand moved again, and another spot of light crossed the space separating them. This time the throwing star came bouncing back out of the smoke, and spattered elf blood on the floor.

Another black figure, identical to the first, emerged from the smoke; as it passed, the first shape crumbled into air.

The cloak was thrown back. Whisper Who Dares the Word of Words in Darkness wore heavy boots, a thigh-length black coat of wool and leather set with steel rings. Bones hung from the rings on thin leather thongs; small ones, carpals and phalanges. A human radius swung from his waist.

Whisper's milk-white face was flattened and scarred. Something dangled from his earlobe that coiled and twisted.

Whisper and Cloud spoke to each other in Elvish, too low and quick for Doc to follow. They crossed swords. The air sang.

Doc realized they were paying no attention to him. He had no more part of this than in the war between wind and mountains.

Cloudhunter cut, and cut, and cut, and some of Whisper's bones clattered to the floor. Whisper didn't seem to have touched Cloud. Doc took a step away, wanting to go for someone else, McCain, Patrise, Rico and Linn, any kind of backup, yet not wanting to leave Cloud. He took another step back, and collided with something rubbery and cold and wet. His guts turned over. He turned.

There was nothing there: just air like gelatin. It distorted the hallway; somewhere down there were Patrise and the others.

Steel scraped. "Doc!" Cloud shouted. Doc turned. Whisper and Cloud stood a little apart, swords leveled. W r hisper had a hand to his throat, as if he had been wounded there. Then his arm snapped straight toward Doc. Doc tried to dodge, but the gluey air held him.

Cloud moved. His sword swept down. The creature that had been at W 7 hisper's ear struck the floor in two scratching and writhing pieces.

Whisper lunged at Cloud's back. Cloud stepped aside easily, swung again, severing Whisper's sword in the middle of the blade.

The swordhilt vanished into Whisper's cloak. Whisper took a step to the side, toward Doc. Cloud blocked him. Step, block. Step, block. Whisper snarled something in Elvish; Doc caught the word "dishonor," but he knew that the word had infinite shadings; it could not be understood out of context.

Cloudhunter cut again. The long bone on Whisper's clothing leaped and clubbed it aside. Whisper spun a butterfly knife into his hand, sliced at Cloud's arm, connecting. Cloud spat a few words, swept an arm, and knocked the knife away. He forced Whisper back with his sword. Whisper said something with "death" in it.

Cloud replied; "dishonor" was in it twice.

Whisper folded his cloak about himself, seemed to lose a foot of height. He backed away rapidly. Cloudhunter stood his ground. When Whisper was a dozen yards away, Cloud turned. "Doc," he said, "tell the others-"

Whisper had drawn a shotgun from beneath his cloak. Before Doc could speak, he fired. The blast ripped into Cloud's flank. He turned around. Whisper fired again, into Cloud's chest, and again.

Cloudhunter stayed on his feet. He raised his sword, pointed it at Whisper Who Dares, spoke a phrase in something that wasn't Ellytha; whatever the words meant, the voice pulled and tore like a dull razor over the skin.

Whisper fled.

The air was suddenly thin again, and Doc stumbled. Cloudhunter turned, and fell. Doc gathered balance and ran to him. He shouted "Patrise/" as loud as he possibly could, and knelt by Cloud, opening his bag, spreading Cloud's jacket. The wounds were awful: a load of tight-choked shot and two solid slugs, son of a goddamn bitch. Sponges, he thought. Pressure bandages. He had one unit of IV D-five in his bag, a couple more in the car.

Cloud's silver eyes were wide, staring straight up. His hands went blindly to his throat, unwound the blue Nancy-silk scarf. "Calm down. Cloud," Doc said, "don't move."

Cloud hung the scarf around Doc's neck. His arms dropped away.

Doc was aware that other people had come in. Without looking up, he said, "Can anybody here start an IV?"

Patrise's voice said, "Where is Whisper?"

Doc gestured with his head. "That way." More pressure. Clamp the bleeder. Tape.

Patrise said, "Lincoln. Katherine. See if you can follow the trail. No friendly casualties, understand?" He leaned on his stick, lowered himself to his knees. "What can we do. Hallow?"

"You got a trauma team in your pocket?" Doc said. "How about an intensive care unit?"

"We can get them."

Tie off. Bleeders every damn where. "Do it quick," Doc said, and then realized what he was laying. More pain, more cruelty, wasn't going to help anything. What they needed was-then it clicked. "Katie!"

The woman stopped on her way down the hall, gun and knife out. McCain turned as well.

Doc said, "You told me your father was a bloodstopper. That he showed you."

"Yeah, but I never…"

"You gotta try."

Mr. Patrise said, "Come here, Katherine. Lincoln, do not go on alone. Get Rudy. Or the two detectives, if they're not busy. " McCain nodded. Patrise said to Doc, quietly, "What is a bloodstopper?"

"Folklore," Doc said, breathing hard. He tried to explain, as he kept up the pressure on Cloudhunter's wounds.

Katie set her gun down, bent over Cloud. "I just don't know."

Mr. Patrise said, "I believe you can, Katherine."

She closed her eyes, tensed. "Seisote vert" she said, "Seisote verir

Cloudhunter heaved, gave a sigh that pulled tears into Doc's eyes. The hemorrhaging stopped as if a valve had been turned. Doc sponged again, groped in his bag for the IV set, knowing it was still hopeless.

No. Not hopeless. Not hopeless. If they can crawl to Elfland — "I can't do anything more here. If I can get him up to Division, maybe-"

Stagger said, "They'll never let you through."

Patrise said, "Try."

Stagger and Katie helped load Cloud into the Triumph. He made no sound. Doc unstoppered a vial of fairy dust, scattered it on the wounds, touched it to Cloud's lips. Cloud breathed it in. His face grew luminous, relaxed a bit. Doc pulled out of the alley and turned north. Away toward the lake, there was a hint of false dawn.

Pedal to the floor, Doc drove toward Division. He ran out of gears and kept pushing: he could always mend the engine, or Jesse could, or there would be other engines, other cars. He drove until the buildings to either side squeezed up and bent over before him, until the light turned purple ahead and red behind and the clocks ticked slow, and still Division stayed ahead. He thought he was seeing the same windows and doors and traffic lights pass again and again, like a chase in a cartoon; and then suddenly the road was broad and black and glossy, like the marble floor of his bathroom back halfway to the World. Ahead there was a vast Gothic gateway flanked by stone griffins. Elves stood all around it. Through the gateway was-nothing. Xot darkness, not any kind of door or wall. just a dully luminous grayness, the color of a fainting spell.

Doc pointed the car at it. She hummed, skidded just a little; Doc doubled her down, gripped the wheel and Cloudhunter's wrist And stopped, without sound, effort, or inertia; the car was simply standing still, engine idling cool, five yards in front of the gateway.

Cloudhunter breathed in audibly. That was all. His eyes were open but seemed to see nothing. Or maybe silver eyes could see through the blind spot.

Doc blasted the horn of the Triumph at the gates of Elfland.

Most of the elves seemed to be ignoring them. A few were looking on and the fuckers were smirking.

Doc opened his door, yelled at the nearest elf. "Let me through, dammit! I've got one of your people here, and he's dyingV"

"The mortal knows he may not pass," one of the elves said, "or else the mortal is a fool." The timbre was metallic; it scraped Doc's nerves. This is how they talk, he thought, when they're not talking to us.

"Then take him through! He's not stable here-dying, do you understand that?" Do you fucking know what that is? he thought.

"Gwaed gwir takes this risk beyond homelands," the inhuman voice said. "It is a risk honorably borne, honorably lost."

Another elf voice, a little milder than the first, said, "If the Trueblood wishes to pass through, then aye he may."

More of the Ellyllon turned to look. None of them moved a step closer.

Doc got out, opened Cloud's door. He couldn't get a pulse, but there was a faint trembling of the colorless lips. Doc pulled at his arm; Cloud fell on him, knocking him on his butt. Doc braced his feet against the car and pulled. He felt bone grate, and his heart flipped, but what was a little more damage now. a piss in the ocean: five yards awav was the deep water of healing, if only thev could crawl the distance.

He tried to lift Cloudhunter. Fresh blood welled up in the elPs chest, and he groaned aloud. The sound cut like a torch into Doc's brain, and his knees gave way; for a moment he was insensible, blind with tears.

Through water he saw one of the elves, watching them, hands pressed to his (or her or its) ears. Was it shock? Was it anything?

"Help me," Doc said, from his knees. "Please."

Nothing.

"Piss on you all," he said.

He tugged the Nancy scarf from his neck, got it under Cloud's arms and began to drag him. A dozen feet to go. Ten. Eight. He didn't know what would happen when he hit the barrier: would he just slam into it, bounce off, burn up, die? He would have to get behind, push A clear, sweet elven voice said, "How earnestly he doth shift the thankless burden. A thing almost noble 'tis, to bear a stone unfreighted of itself."

"You're lying," Doc said out loud, "You're lying, you want me to give up," but he looked into Cloudhunter's face and knew it was so; meat, that was all, elf meat.

He heaved one awful sob, and then stopped, because enough rage makes anything possible. He stumbled back to the car. Behind him, the elves began to move toward the body.

Doc brought up Cloud's sawed-off shotgun. "Get AWAY from him!" The elves stopped. He didn't know if the gun would fire, here, just on Division; he was ready and willing to find out. The Truebloods all drew back.

He got out the kit, carried it and the gun to Cloud's side. This was going to take a while. He hoped the elves hung around to watch. He hoped some of them got sick all over themselves.

An hour later, Doc threw what was his into the TR3's backseat, got in and slammed the door. The last thing he said to them, as he threw the car in gear, was "Okay, I'm a fool. And you know what you are."

Uoc took the elevator up to Patrise's office. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his coat, which had long thin streaks of Cloud hunter's blood across it. He was stained with dirt and snow. His fingers tightened and relaxed, bunching the cloth.

He knocked and entered. Patrise was standing in front of his desk, looking at a poster on the wall. It was a network of colored lines, the rapid-transit system of the city long before there was World and Shade.

"Hallow," Patrise said.

"I lost Cloud."

Patrise nodded once, slowly. He turned to face Doc, held out a hand, palm up.

Doc took a folded, bloody gauze pad from his pocket. Inside were the pellets and slugs he had dug from Cloudhunter's body, as he had taken so much lead from so many dead Ellyllon before this.

He had thought he would throw it on Patrise's desk, as… what? A statement? A demand? For what? Instead he just put it gently in the outstretched hand. Mr. Patrise's fingers closed on it, tightly.

"Was Cloudhunter taken through the gateway?" Patrise said.

"Yeah. After it didn't matter."

"It matters a great deal, Hallow."

"To who? Them?"

"Yes. This is a matter of what they believe, not what we want. I told you about that, about iron and faith. There is more to come of this, you may trust. Now, I believe Ginevra is waiting in your rooms." He turned, took a step toward the inner apartments.

Doc said, "About the bullets-"

"Another time, Hallow. I am selfish with my grief, and will not share it."

Doc lowered his head, turned toward the door. He stopped. "Did you get Whisper?"

Mr. Patrise paused. "No. As I say, there is more to come of this."

Doc went down to his apartment. Ginny was in the living room, asleep in a chair. She still wore her red satin dress; her shoes and stockings were placed neatly on the floor, her feet tucked up beneath her as she always sat. A book was open in her lap.

She had uncurled her hair, and it spilled down one cheek. He reached to touch it, then realized what he looked like, bloody and ragged, a nightmare for her to wake to. Moving as softly as he could, he hid the coat in the closet, went into the bathroom to strip and shower.

When he came out, wrapped in a bathrobe, Ginny was sitting on his bed, leaning against one of the bedposts. "Hi," she said.

"Hi."

"Boris let me in. You don't mind?"

"No, I don't mind."

"I like your place." She giggled. "It's big."

"I should have brought you here before."

She rubbed one foot against the other. "My legs went to sleep out there." She tilted her head. "Think I need treatment?"

He stepped behind her, found the zipper on her dress. She raised her hands to let him take it off. He touched the velvet band, close around her neck, and she purred.

"My God, it's dawn," she said, looking at the windows. "You were gone a long time."

"Yeah," he said, and then his throat closed up. He reached into his piled clothes, took out the blue Nancy scarf, wound it between his hands.

"That's Cloudhunter's," Ginny said. "He gave it to-" She pulled in a breath. "Oh, God, Doc, not Cloudhunter."

"We all fought it. Katie and-that's what I'm supposed to do." He was crying. It didn't matter. The toughest guys on the fire squad cried for this. You got handed somebody's life, and you held on to it with everything you had, and sometimes it still got away from you. If you didn't feel something then-"I'm not very good company right now. If you want to go…" he said, and let it trail off, not at all sure what answer he wanted.

"Where would I go?" she said plainly. "I love you. I've known it for… well, I know, okay? I've been scared to say it, because I didn't know what you'd do." She shuffled a foot. "Do you still want me to go?"

"I didn't. I just-"

"Then come here," she said, and held out her hands. He looked at her wrists, and the silk taut between his white-knuckled hands, and thought that it was good he was already crying. He unwound the scarf, folded it, put it carefully aside.

He needed to hold her so badly it hurt. And he needed to be in control. But if he said what was coiling up in his mind, and she pulled away-there weren't words for how bad that would be. There weren't even thoughts for it. And you fought the bad thing, right? Until you had nothing left to fight with. Like with any other life you were given.

So he just sat down heavily on the bed, and let her hold him, until the room blurred and faded into sleep.

When he woke, there was a note on the bedroom mirror: "I didn't want to wake you. If you want, I won't wake you New Year's Day either." meeting a Highborn. The one that concerns you most is this: don't speak unless I tell you that you may. Do not answer even if you are addressed directly. I'm sure that sounds arrogant, and I assure you it is."

"Is there anything else I shouldn't do?"

"Countless things," Mr. Patrise said dryly. "I would advise you not to look into the Urthas's eyes. You may find that difficult, and there isn't likely to be any real danger, but… If in doubt, look at the floor somewhere in front of our host."

They parked at a colonnaded building right on the lakefront, near the natural history museum.

"Are you fond of the Field, Hallow?" Mr. Patrise said.

Doc realized he had been staring at the museum. "I only went there once. With Cloud."

"Yes. I should have remembered that. This way, Hallow. Please."

Carved letters above the building entrance read JOHN G. SHEDD AQUARIUM. A pair of Ellyllon in green armor flanked the door.

"Do they own this place now?" Doc said quietly.

"The Aquarium is closed for New Year's Day. The Highborn has been courteously extended its use." Mr. Patrise pointed to the right of the aquarium building: a narrow finger of land extended out into the lake. A street down its centerline ended in yellow-striped barricades. "The breakwater was twice as long before the Shadow fell, and the Planetarium was on the end of it. Apparently our stargazing offended someone." He paused, looked into the distance. "The dome was bronze, on a marble base. It sank like a little Atlantis. The fire paused then-nobody remembers just how long; it might have been as long as five minutes. Then, suddenly, there were Ellyllon at the Art Institute, helping to save its contents. Draw what conclusions you choose.

"Now, we have an appointment. Remember your instructions."

One of the armored elves opened the doors for them. They entered a large, high-ceilinged space lined with aquarium tanks; in the center was an enormous cylindrical tank, clear all around. Inside were corals, and darting, brilliantly colored fish. There were halt a dozen Ellyllon in green Standing at attention around the room. They did not move. A weirdly Ugly, flat-faced elf-a Mam, Doe supposed-appeared from around the coral tank; he wore a metallic green robe that trailed on the floor twice his height behind him. He approached Mr. Patrise, bowed, then bowed again to Doc.

They followed the Mani down stairs and around a curving corridor to a wide, domed space, an open auditorium flanked by green plants, stepping down to an expanse of open water. The Mani bowed again and left them there.

Mr. Patrise stood quite still before the blue pond, looking straight out. Doc did the same.

The water rippled. Small waves broke on the pavement before them, making thin puddles around their shoes. A figure in green and white, blue and silver, rose into view.

The Highborn woman wore a long, floating cloak of deep green stuff, which spread out on the surface of the water for two yards in all directions; it was fantastically puffed at her shoulders and fanned high behind her head. Beneath it was a tight-fitting garment that seemed to be made of fish scales. Her white legs were uncovered, and her very small feet were in silver boots. Her hair, which was elven silver with streaks of green, was circled by silver hoops that trailed blue-green ribbons.

Her face was angular and beautiful-though among Truebloods it seemed only the Mani might not be-and her silver-coin eyes were tilted, shadowed with deep green.

"You are good to answer my request," she said. There was a rushing whisper under the music of her voice. Doc had never been to an ocean, but he had held a seashell to his ear: that was the sound. He started to make some polite reply, then remembered not to.

Mr. Patrise said, "My lady Glassisle, I present to you Doc Hal-lownight, my household's healer."

"Was it then the Healer's oath?" Glassisle said. "It was our understanding that death breaks such vows." She looked directly at Doc, and-carefully-he looked back. When he caught her eyes, the echoing whisper beneath her voice grew louder, and he looked down. "Or was it the patron's charge, which we know well is not broken?"

"My healer and my swordbearer were in company of battle, my lady. Which well we know, also, is unbroken."

As the water calmed around Glassisle, her reflection steadied. Doc saw that it did not match the figure standing on the surface: there was still a woman there, the same size and shape, but the image below the water wore a cloak of green seaweed and a breastplate of scallop shells, and her bare arms and legs were white veined with blue and silver, like marble.

Doc turned his head slightly toward Mr. Patrise. His reflection also showed full-length in the water puddled on the stone floor, though that shouldn't have been possible given the light and the angle. Patrise's image wore a deep blue cloak lined with red, and bronze armor over red cloth, like pictures of Roman soldiers Doc had seen in books.

Doc turned back to Glassisle, and fixed his gaze on her reflection, suddenly very afraid to look down and see his own.

The water moved and the reflection shattered. A long-nosed dolphin broke water by Glassisle's feet. It gave a screech, then a sound like high-pitched chuckling.

"This is a paladin of mine, Healer," Glassisle said. "He has a question for you. A reply would be gracious."

Doc looked at Mr. Patrise, who nodded gravely.

The dolphin swam to the edge of the pond. It spoke: the words were squeaky, but recognizably English. "Greetings, Dockallown-ite."

Doc leaned forward. "Hello." Okay, I've been a dinosaur, ami nam Vm talking to a fish.

"How long," the dolphin said, "do you carry your young?"

"Nine months," Doc said, then, "Three seasons; three-quarters of a year."

The dolphin nodded, chirping. "How do you teach them to breathe?"

Doc thought hard. "Before we… emerge, our lun«; s arc rilled with fluid. That must be drained out. Then we… touch the child, enough to wake it. If it makes a good, loud sound, we know that it is breathing well."

"And if no… loud sound?" The dolphin sounded intensely interested.

"We can push air in. Sometimes we have to do that foi a long time, with a…"

"Ma'sshine?" the dolphin said.

"Yes."

"Yes. We arrgga-" The dolphin ducked its head below water, came up making a gargling noise. "Argue over ma'sshines. But some are good. For life."

"Some of them are, yes," Doc said.

"Good thing to learn. Our thanks, Dockallownite."

The dolphin jumped, stood on its tail for a moment, then dove, splashing Doc with water. He stood quite still. Glassisle laughed loudly.

"We are pleased at you, Healer," she said, "and grant you the gift of an Ellyll's life. Use it well. As well we welcome you to visit us

… if you learn to breathe water."

She sank out of sight below the surface; in a moment even the ripples were still.

The Mani led them out of the building, and the doors were shut with a bang. Doc felt a shiver, and told himself it was just that he was soaking wet in the cold moist air and the lake wind. At the car, Jesse had a towel over his arm; he tossed it to Doc, then draped a blanket over Doc's shoulders. They got into the car.

Mr. Patrise opened one of the drawers beneath the seat, handed two paper parcels to Doc. "Dry clothing, courtesy of Boris. He said-I quote exactly-'I suppose you're going to see that damp woman again.' "

As Doc changed, Mr. Patrise poured a cup of hot chocolate from a vacuum pitcher. Doc took it gratefully.

"That was important, right?" Doc said. "The damp woman."

"It was."

"Did she give me, or you, the right to kill Whisper Who Dares? Or did I get that wrong?"

"You were given the life of an Ellyll. If you can think of more than one way to interpret that-well, the Trueblood certainly can."

Doc thought about it. He felt a hollowness under his breastbone. "Cloud's life…?"

"Is not anyone's to return. But thank you for the thought." Patrise leaned back and folded his hands. "Do you want to kill Whisper?"

"And then what? Cut the bullets back out of him?"

"You want to know about that, don't you, Hallow."

"Yes, I do."

Mr. Patrise said, "Do you know what alchemy is?"

"Turning lead into gold."

"Not really. Alchemy is a way of treating materials as if they had souls. Transforming matter by transforming its spirit. Gold does not tarnish or corrode, which makes it a metaphor for perfection, immortality, spiritual purity. All the alchemical processes are analogies of life processes, stages in the spiritual journey: birth, coupling, nourishment, fasting, shriving. Death and rebirth."

Doc started to speak. Mr. Patrise looked at him, plainly, placidly, and Doc was silent.

Patrise said, "Do you know who John Fitzgerald Kennedy was?"

"Sure."

"Yes. You are well educated for your age and time. The bullet that killed John Kennedy is preserved in a government archive. At least, it is supposed to be the bullet; it was found on a hospital gurney, not in a wound. And it looks barely damaged, perhaps un-fired. Yet it is supposed to have blown through the President's skull and then caused bone-shattering wounds in another man's body."

"You mean it isn't the real bullet?"

"Much effort has been expended proving that it could be. You know who Kennedy was: do you know that he was confused with Arthur of Britain? That people believed he really was the Fisher King?"

Doc said, "That was a long time ago."

"Not as long ago as Arthur, but before Elfland returned, yes. More than thirty years before magic became visible. How long does a spiritual journey take, Hallow?"

"And what… happens to the bullets… once they're changed?"

"I use them," Mr. Patrise said in a very deliberate tone, "aa Whisper Who Dares used those people you saw. in the red chamber."

Doc took a quiet swallow of hot chocolate. He didn't speak.

Mr. Patrise said, "I also offer the people around mc what Whisper offers those who follow him: security, the comforts power brings, in exchange for loyalty and the best work they can do."

Doc said, "If you think I can see no difference between the two of you, you are very wrong. Sir."

"I am very glad to hear you say that, Hallow. While I very much hope that you see the right differences." Mr. Patrise picked up the car telephone, dialed. "Good afternoon, Ginevra. Yes, all is well. I wonder if you would be free for New Year's dinner with a few of us at the house this evening? Formal, yes, but leave that to Boris. No, Hallow has something to attend to at the moment, but he will be there. Shall I have Jesse collect you in… ninety minutes? Excellent. I shall look forward to seeing you."

He put the phone down, smiled at Doc. "Sometimes the Gor-dian knot just wants cutting," he said. "But it shouldn't become a habit." wn the sixth of January, Patrise asked Doc to arrive at the Mirada a little after eight. When he did, he found an EARLY CLOSING sign on the locked door. He knocked; Pavel opened up. "Do come in, sir. Mr. Patrise is expecting you."

Patrise was seated at his usual table, and with him Stagger Lee, Carmen, Kitsune Asa, McCain, and-unusually-Lucius. Ginny was behind the bar. There was no one else in the room. Since that first, late night, coming in from the cold, Doc had never seen the club so empty. It was disturbing.

"Thank you for coming, Hallow," Patrise said. "Take your seat. Ginevra, bring Hallow a drink. Anyone else? This party, and the death of a dear friend, would come near to make a man look sad. Ah. How could I have missed it. Stagger Lee, would you tell Ginevra to set out flutes for everyone. Then go down to the cellar and bring up two bottles of Taittinger."

"Sir?"

"I trust you to find a good year."

When Stagger Lee had gone, Patrise said, "Now that the immediate presence of magic is removed, does anyone feel less tense?"

Carmen said, "If you could have spelled out what you want, you'd have done it."

"Would I? Perhaps I love a mystery as much as the next person."

Kitsune said, "You loved Cloudhunter rather more than that."

McCain turned to look at her.

"Be calm, Lincoln," Patrise said. "Calmness is a great human virtue. Lucius: the night Flats's place was bombed, you did see something a touch suspicious, didn't you?"

Carmen said easily, "Do you mean something the rest of us didn't?"

Kitsune watched Lucius. Her black eyes had a terrible intensity.

Doc heard himself saying, "Let Lucius alone. Carmen's right; if anything happened then, we all saw it."

Kitsune pushed her chair back.

Lucius said, "Fox, sit down."

"Birdsong," Kitsune said, "you may love what will not be loved, but you cannot protect what will not be protected." She walked to the head of the table, bowed deeply to Patrise. "You've given me every benefit of the doubt, oyabun" she said. Her voice was very small, sounding near to breaking. "Someday I hope you'll know how much that's meant to me."

She put her hand on Patrise's forearm. There was a metallic whir, like a clock spring. Patrise gasped, and blood sprayed from the touch.

Kitsune stepped back. There was a four-inch blade, not much thicker than a needle, at her cuff.

McCain was on his feet, a pistol out before his chair could crash to the floor. He fired.

As he did, Lucius threw his dinner plate into McCain's face, and the bullet tore up the tablecloth and exploded a wineglass. McCain wiped his face and aimed again. Kitsune had stepped well clear of Patrise, making herself an easy target. Patrise clutched his arm; his face was compressed, congested, turning blood-dark. Doc was trying to get up; his chair wouldn't move.

Lucius threw himself at McCain, who batted him away, nor so much savage as indifferent. The gun bore true. The Fox waited for it.

Fay sang out.

Only one note, not much more than a scream, but it was The Voice screaming. Once at the Biograph, Doc had seen the film catch in the projector gate; the image stopped still, then melted into light. This was like that, with the whole world.

The note stopped. McCain was standing with his arms limp at his sides, his face slack. Lucius was kneeling against the table, sobbing. Kitsune stood crookedly, staring into space.

A hand was on Doc's shoulder. He got up. Carmen shoved his bag into his hands.

Patrise's head rolled back. His face was gray, blotched with purple. Not coronary, though, Doc thought. Poison: something not of the World. Doc dove into the bag with both hands, searching for a tarantelle cap. He got hold of one, pressed it to Patrise's nostrils, hesitated. "Help me get him clear," he said to whoever was there. Fay and Carmen helped him pull the chair back. Carmen pulled Patrise to his feet, arms around his chest. "Do it!"

"Don't breathe-"

"Do it!"

Doc cracked the cloth-covered glass between his fingers. Carmen squeezed Patrise's chest in her arms and released it, forcing a breath. Patrise's body stiffened. His arms flailed. His legs twitched. Carmen dragged him down to the empty dance floor. And they danced.

Patrise jerked and thrust and shook and spun, staying impossibly on his feet. Carmen led him away from railings and stairs, mirrors and furniture. Now and again his arm struck her, with all the energy of convulsion. She kept dancing.

Kitsune moved, turning in place like a music-box doll. Doc went to her, grabbed her arm and held it out. He looked around. "Ginny! Help me here."

She dashed from the bar. "See if you can get that thing off," Doc said. "Be careful. Please-be very careful." He ripped the sleeve back, and Ginny unstrapped the spring blade. She dropped it into a glass, covered it with a saucer, as if it were a live scorpion. "Doc, look at this."

Kitsune's forearm was distinctly paler than her hand. Doc held her head as gently as he could, looked into her face at close range.

He put a thumb gently to her eyelid, stroked firmly.

The epicanthic fold came away in a curl of tape and makeup.

Doc looked at the stuff on his fingers. He remembered Carmen's eyes, Halloween night. He turned his head.

Patrise was on the floor, his arms and legs out ragdoll-limp, his head cradled in Carmen's lap.

Stagger Lee came out from behind the bar, holding a champagne bottle under each arm. "What the hell-"

"You tell me," Doc said, and showed him the woman he was holding, the eye makeup. "Who is this? This stuff couldn't have made us think she was Kitsune, not by itself."

"Glamour," Stagger said thickly. "This is-I mean, she's — a simulacrum."

Doc said, "A what?"

"A double, a copy."

"So where's Kitsune?"

"Linked to this one. You run one from the other, like selsyn motors. Puppets."

"And what happens if this one dies?"

Stagger gaped at him. He looked around, at McCain, at Lucius, who was sitting up unsteadily. "What do you think happens?"

"Hold on to her," Doc said, "take care of her," and he went to see to Mr. Patrise.

Patrise's temperature was normal, his pulse racing, his face back to its usual unhealthy color. He seemed to be recovering, just utterly exhausted. Carmen's face was wet with tears, and Doc could see the bruises developing on her cheeks and forearms where Patrise, in the grip of the tarantelle, had struck her.

Mr. Patrise said, "Not… our… Kitsune."

"No, sir."

"Someone should call Chloe," Carmen said, "and tell her Jolie-Marie isn't missing anymore."

"Whisper," Patrise said. "Can we… find him?"

Stagger Lee had his arms around the dazed Jolie-Marie, a champagne bottle still clenched in each fist. "With both doubles alive, it'll be easy," he said. "But he'll know that."

"Then… we must be quick."

"Pavel," McCain said, "get my gear."

"I'll be right there," Doc said, finishing the dressing on Mr. Patrise's gashed wrist.

Mr. Patrise turned his head, looking Doc directly in the face. They were both still for a second, locked like that, and the room quieted around them, but nothing was said.

Doc stood up. "Let's go."

Patrise said, "Stagger… we'll want the wine. Don't drop it."

3o where are we going?" Doc said to McCain, who was driving one of the big cars. "Back to Hell?"

McCain gave a short laugh. "Not quite so far down this time." He was wearing a leather jacket, bulky with equipment hung beneath it; on the seat between him and Doc was a black steel crossbow with a telescopic sight. There was going to be no question of powder missing fire.

"The next one on the right," Stagger said from the back of the car.

McCain pulled up in front of a ruined office building, tarnished metal and big smashed windows. There was a doorway onto the littered sidewalk, or at least a dark, square opening. From somewhere beyond, there was faint yellow light, pale as piss on the ice and broken glass. "What else are you getting?"

"Could be a few people close together, but there's no crowd."

Doc said, "Could he be alone with her?"

"Depends on what he wants to show his audience," McCain said, with no humor at all. "Like Stagger said: the Fox is alive, so he knows we're on to that, knows we can find him. So he must want to be found. That brings us to the hard part. Who goes in?"

"What do you mean?"

"The elf's crazy, but he's not so crazy not to know the spot he's in. He must want some kind of a deal."

Doc said, "What are the choices?"

"If I go in, I'm going to kill him before I do anything else. You understand that? Whisper goes down, and then we pick up whatever pieces are left." He turned to look at Doc. "You don't look like you like that."

"Okay, that's what happens if you go."

McCain said, "If he sees Stagger first, they'll probably witch it out. You know I'm not Touched, but I know you've gotta concentrate-and I know what I'd do if I had a hostage and I wanted to mess up somebody's concentration."

"Down to me, then." Doc opened the car door. McCain's hand clamped on his arm.

"Don't just walk out on me," he said. "Tell me to wait."

"Line-"

"Just say it."

"I'm going in first," Doc said carefully. "If the Fox doesn't walk out alive, then Whisper doesn't either. Right?"

"Yes, sir." McCain reached down, held out one of his automatics, grip first. "Katie said you did some shooting."

Doc picked up his black bag. "I'll play these."

McCain put the gun away. "You're gonna need more than luck," he said, his voice tight, "but luck anyway."

Doc went through the doorway. The source of the light was a stairway, maybe a hundred feet straight ahead through a glass-and-metal corridor; the stairs curved to the left and down, out of sight.

There was no place else to go.

The stairs ended in a tunnel, less than twenty feet wide, with an arched ceiling. McCain had explained that it was an old freight railroad, built forty feet under the streets to make downtown deliveries. Doc could see grooves on the puddled floor, and streaks of rusty rail. The light came from naked, dim bulbs dangling at twenty-foot intervals along the top of the arch. Cracks in the walls had grown spectacular icicles that twinkled in Doc's flashlight beam as he passed.

The tunnel curved around to the right. Reddish light shone on the wet floor, from somewhere still out of view. Doc got as close to the wall as he could and went on.

The red light came from a side door, framed in old brick. A derelict office desk and a couple of broken crates were to one side. Just beyond the door, the tunnel was blocked by a wooden wall- made of odd pieces of lumber nailed together, but not just piled debris: deliberately made and solid-looking.

The red light shifted, moved from side to side. Doc went to the door.

He was looking down a hallway some twenty feet long. At the far end was the shifting red light.

Hell again after all, Doc thought.

Doc waited a moment. His chest hurt. The tension, the damp and the cold, and the unsteady light were starting to make him sick, and if he waited any longer they surely would. He went down the hall.

A red bulb swung from a cord, throwing shadows back and forth. It did not seem to be an electric bulb, or an oil lamp, just a glass ball full of bloody light.

Kitsune stood just behind the light, her feet on a wooden stool, her arms outstretched. Her hair was brushed down straight, her head at a slight angle. She was wrapped in strips of gauze, spotted with what looked like bloodstains. As the light moved, it flashed on brass wires that came down from darkness overhead. They were twisted into loops around her neck and wrists.

There was a loud heavy flapping, and Whisper Who Dares appeared from the darkness. Instead of the Trueblood-sorcerer bones and charms Doc had seen in the ruined mall, he wore a rather plain black double-breasted suit, dark against darkness so that his face and hands seemed to float. His shining eyes were narrowed, and his face was shadowed below the winglike cheekbones. There was a single heavy silver ring, with a dull black stone, on his right hand.

"Put down your tools and conjures," he said. "Mischiefs abound in the levers of man."

Doc set his bag on the floor.

"You," Whisper said softly, "you are the one who carried death to the gates. And beat upon them. And now you come here, alone. Are you so terrible, then, in your courage? Or so steadfast in your vengeance?"

"All I want is her," Doc said. "After that-"

"You want her?" Whisper laughed, a bubbling hysteria that might have been funny in any kind of decent world. "Was the other a disappointment?"

"After that I don't care about you."

Whisper paused. His face twisted into a marble gargoyle's.

"This is no way to bargain! This of the pair is a trader, and the other goes for a price: what will either of them say to you, if you buy at the first offering?" He reached over to Kitsune. His foot bumped the stool, which wobbled. "Ah, cares, cares. Mortals are blind to beauty, but you appreciate the throat. So delicate, so vulnerable, so tight with wind and blood and nerve. Now. Here." He stood behind her, put his hands on her waist, slid them up to her breasts. "Oh, that's good," he said, and Kitsune's mouth mimed the words. He shook her. She groaned. "Yes, Whisper, again, please."

"Stop it!"

Whisper peeked from around the Fox's body. "Why? She can't stop you. "

Doc thought furiously. There was no useful threat here. Whisper certainly had no shame or guilt to play on. If McCain was right, there was a bargain still to be struck; but there was nothing to bargain with.

There was only nothing.

Doc said, "Because I'm not interested."

"In what? This body? No?" Whisper took a step aside, arm out, showing the woman off like a car salesman praising a $200 beater. "Not even in two such compact and elegant bodies? Joined to do whatever-"

"In you." Doc climbed up on the stool, stepping carefully around Kitsune's bare feet, and reached to the wire around her throat. "I'm taking her and going away. After that you can go play with yourself."

"What?"

Doc looked at Whisper. From the stool, he looked slightly down into the Ellyll's shiny eyes, which were quite wide now. He supposed they were reading everything he'd ever thought about a woman. And he found he didn't care. Cloudhunter was beyond all hurt. Kitsune was alive, with another life hanging on hers. Whisper Who Dares Whisper was his.

"I said you can go shit your little elfin pants."

Whisper snarled and kicked the stool away

Doc got his hand inside the brass noose with nothing to spare; it scraped his knuckles and cinched into the back of his hand.

At home, a farmer's wife had hung herself in the barn with fence wire. The stuff hadn't bothered to strangle her; it didn't stop until it hung up on her vertebrae. This stuff was thicker, but it would still be ugly fast if Doc lost his grip.

He clenched his teeth and pulled. Kitsune moaned, opened her eyes, looking straight into Doc's. "Hang on," he said.

Kitsune's arms pulled at the wires holding them, making a little slack in the strangling loop.

"Now you act like yourself, mortal! Dancing on air." Whisper applauded and stamped time.

Doc felt his heart twist, then pulled his brain back into Trauma Mode. He got both hands inside the loop-he was actually dangling from it, and his weight helped pull it wide. Kitsune pulled her head down, and Doc eased the noose over her head.

He let the wire slip away. His feet hit the floor, and his fingers started burning. He reached up to work at the wire binding Kitsune's right wrist.

Whisper leaned against the wall. "Not a bad show of faith, for a mortal," he said. "But somehow I don't feel my flesh burning at the touch of the Nazarite Christ."

"Didn't see any point in bothering him," Doc said, and freed Kitsune's other hand. She sagged against him. "Can you walk?"

"I'll try."

"Touching," Whisper said, and moved to block the doorway. "Moving, is that not what the mortals say, who have nowhere to go? I shall give her two thin knives, and let her dance on you: her sister will echo it to all your companions." He gave a wet giggle. "You'll like it."

It washed over Doc. He had a vision, now, of what he was: there was plenty of darkness in it, but there was none of this. He said in Ellytha, "There is something in our way. Remove it."

"What, all rage gone?" Whisper said. "Have you forgotten that I killed Cloudhunter Who Keeps His Sisters' Counsel?" He stepped aside. "Or perhaps the thought of the mortal whore in his arms has supplanted all memories of a dead Ellyll."

Doc felt the anger rise again. Kitsune squeezed his hand hard.

Doc said, "You did not kill him. He accepted his destiny beyond the gates. You were only able to strike a blow because he had ceased to notice a coward. I am taking what I came for, and in return you may continue to be afraid."

Whisper was entirely still physically, but he wavered, as with rising heat. Doc made the effort to look away from him, and led the Fox down the corridor, into the icy tunnel.

A few steps past the door, Kitsune's breathing went ragged, and she leaned against some of the ruined furniture. Doc held her upright. "I'll be all right in a moment," she said.

From the inner chamber, there was a hideous, trembling howl, and the slam of boots. Whisper emerged, walking heavily, a knife in his fist.

"Look at my reflection, coward," Doc said, pointing at the wet floor, hoping this was a live card. "See what Glassisle saw."

Whisper Who Dares froze, his arm raised. There was a green flicker in his silver eyes. The knife dropped from his fingers; he clutched at his ring as if it burned him, and he backed against the wooden wall that blocked the tunnel.

Doc's eye caught a shimmer of black on black from the opposite direction, and he dared to turn away from W 7 hisper. McCain raised his crossbow and pulled the trigger; there was a bass plunk and a hiss. The bolt nailed Whisper's right wrist to the rough wooden wall. Whisper Who Dares yelped like a kicked puppy and groped toward the arrow with his free hand. McCain pumped the bowstock, re-cocking it, and had another bolt loaded in five seconds. He placed it right below the elf's left collarbone, stapling his shoulder back. Blood splashed Whisper's cheek, his left arm went limp, and he groaned, a sound like tearing cloth.

McCain slung the bow, walked up to the pinned Ellyll. Whis-per's left hand came up, holding a tiny stiletto, its blade stained with something like tar. McCain's hand slashed, and Doc heard Whisper's forearm snap; McCain didn't seem to have thought about it. Whisper began sobbing, calling out in some Trueblood language, not Kllytha.

McCain's fist hit Whisper's jaw like a twenty-pound sledge. "Shut up, Tinker Bell,* 1 McCain said. "Nobody believes in you no god damn more." He took a step back, unbelted his coat. Metal gleamed underneath.

Doc turned away. "Let's go," lie said to Kitsune, and led her down the tunnel, helping her over the worst of the ice. They paused at the bottom of the curving stairway.

"Here's the hard part," he said. "I'd love to carry you, but…"

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," Kitsune said, and they climbed.

They found two cars at the curb. Stagger Lee opened the door of the new arrival. Inside, Mr. Patrise sat up against a pile of cushions, holding a slim delicate glass of champagne. "Konban wa, Kitsune-sama, " he said, his voice soft and a bit ragged. "Dozo, ohairi kudasai. "

"Domo arigato gozaimasu, oyabun Patrise-san. "

"Doitashimashite. There is tea hot. And perhaps a little brandy. Then Hallow and Stagger Lee must attend to you. And your sister-image."

"Yes, thank you," she said to Patrise, and then to Doc, "Gokuro-san, Doc. Thank you very much."

McCain stepped onto the sidewalk. He gestured. Doc went to him.

"You took him down," McCain said. "He's yours." He pointed to Doc's black bag. "Got everything you need?"

Doc nodded. McCain said, "I'll be at the car. Take your time, we got all night." As he went by, he said, much more softly, "If you need to think, think about Cloud." The doorway stood empty, lit dimly from below, just as it had before. It seemed like a much longer trip down this time.

Whisper Who Dares the Word of Words in Darkness was standing upright, arms outstretched. His chalk-white face was tilted, blood glaring red on his cheek and lips, a Pierrot puppet on wires.

He was held there by the two crossbow bolts, their steel fins quivering as he breathed, and maybe a dozen twenty-penny nails hammered through his clothes and his hands and one ear; some were driven through his boots into a slat of wood on the floor. On the concrete, little pools of gwaed Ellyll were glazing over.

The brass wire noose that had been around the Fox's neck was now around his, its trailing end twisted around another nail high up on the wooden barricade.

Doc set his bag down on the broken desk.

Whisper's eyes went wide open, looking at Doc and then away from him, semaphoring pain and fear. Doc took hold of one of the crossbow bolts, pulled it out. Whisper shuddered.

Doc wrapped the bolt in a gauze pad, tucked it away in his bag. He took out another small object. He held his hand in front of Whisper's face, turning a tarantelle cap over in his fingers. He pressed the cloth-covered ampule against Whisper Who Dares's upper lip, which trembled. The elf's pupils looked as big as silver dollars.

Doc thought of the flaying rooms, of all the abuses and the sufferings. He thought very hard of Cloudhunter.

He closed the cap in his palm, turned to replace it in the medical kit. As he did, his fingers brushed a thin edge, an object Doc had forgotten was still in the bag. He pulled it out, held it up in the bad light. Whisper saw the movement and whimpered in absolute terror of whatever might be worse than the tarantella dance: he tried to shuffle backward, in spite of the nails.

"Ace of Clubs," Doc said, hearing his own voice rumble and echo in the arched hall, "not worth the effort." He threw it down at Whisper's feet, closed his bag, and climbed back up to the street without looking behind him.

Mr. Patrise's car had already gone. He slid into the front seat of the remaining car, beside McCain.

"Give me the phone," Doc said.

He waited for the connection. "Get me Lieutenant Rico. No. Officer O'Gara, I won't wait. I said get her."

When he finished delivering his message and put the phone down, McCain said, "No, huh."

"No."

"Everybody tries to guess, and nobody knows. Not till you got the motive and the weapon and the target in your sights. You just can't know till then."

As he started the car, the flare of blue police lights was visible far behind them.

IVitsune and Jolie-Maric were lying side bv side in the surgery Stagger Lee had put them both deeply under with spells, copper bands around their foreheads, lead set with amber at wrists and ankles. He had also explained how the operation was to proceed:

"There are five amulets placed beneath the skin of each double. The incisions may be well healed, but there will probably be wheals, and a mark will be visible. When you find and remove an amulet, go to the other double-the scar will be in the same place- and remove its mate. Try to remove them all intact; especially try not to break one inside the wound."

"And do you want them kept?" Doc asked.

"No," Stagger said quietly.

Phasia was there as well, sponging the sleeping women's foreheads, and Doc's, holding a coffee cup for him to sip from, bringing clean gauze.

The first cut was in the upper left arm. Doc reopened it with a scalpel, used a small retractor to spread the insertion channel. He shone his headlamp in. There was a disk of gray metal, the size of a quarter. A hemostat brought it out easily. It was carved with symbols. He dropped it into a basin and went to remove its duplicate.

The second amulets were of lacquered wood. Adhesions had formed, and he got a small ophthalmic scalpel, called for Stagger to retract and irrigate.

The third, under the left breast, uncomfortably near the heart, were of bone; finger bones, apparently. Oh, the fearful wind and rain, his mind sang.

The house shook somewhere deep down, and the lights went out. Doc's battery-powered headlamp made huge shadows on the tile walls. Stagger got out another lamp, and Fay brought in spirit lamps.

The fourth, over the right shoulderblade, were metal disks again; a different metal, badly discolored, with necrosis and pus around them. Doc had to open an area the span of four fingers, flush and cleanse and dress the wounds. Stagger adjusted the trance bands and stood away. Fay carried away the soiled sponges without a flinch. Doc argued with himself about putting in a rubber drain. They might heal more neatly if he just cleaned and closed, but… it was so damned dark… He decided to trust to goldenrod and careful observation.

The last cuts were inside the right thigh, and the probe led to thumb-sized lumps of waxy white stuff, smelling faintly of camphor.

Doc held one up to Stagger's lamp. There seemed to be something buried inside them. Doc didn't ask what, or cut one open. He didn't care. He threw them into the basin, cleaned up and dressed his incisions.

They moved the patients into the infirmary bedroom, turned the lamps down.

Stagger Lee stripped off his gloves, said, "I really need a drink."

"Why don't you go get one, then."

"Good night, Stagger. Thank you."

"Yeah, Doc. Good night." He bowed slightly to Phasia, left the infirmary.

"Flesh leyell ins'ta?" Fay said. "Kissna Kissna verdet well." Her face, lit from below, looked unreal. Doc thought she seemed near collapse with the effort of making words. He felt exhaustion like a hand rearranging his guts.

He made a sleeping gesture. She nodded. He took both of her hands and held them, not knowing how else to say thank you. There must be ways, he thought. Had they done enough with sign language?

She went out. Doc went to look at the sleeping women again. He should stay here tonight. He couldn't possibly watch them even an hour longer, but at least he would be here if something happened.

He called the kitchen. As they were connecting, the door opened and Lucius came in. Doc said, "I was just calling for some coffee and a sandwich. Would you like something?"

"Never to refuse free coffee, that is the Law, are we not men?"

Doc smiled and made the order. They sat down. Doc found himself nodding off in the chair. "What… brings you here?"

"Just a couple of things to say. One is thank you. For getting Kitsune out alive."

Doc thought about what the simulacrum had been made to say. "You love the Fox, don't you."

"Birdsong on love in one paradox: Nothing is more perfect than the unattainable," Lucius said. Crying to make it sound like I joke. "See, the audience all knows that the lady's supposed to fall in love with the hero, even though she's running a clue short. So the hero has to go into the fire, or the ice, or the generally bad place, and come back with the plot coupon that says Good for One True Love." He shrugged. "We don't do that anymore. Not if we're really heroes."

"What's the other thing you wanted to say?"

"Wait till the butler's come and gone. It's only for you."

After the coffee came, Doc said, "Well?"

Lucius looked at the bedroom.

"They're asleep."

"I should have told you this before. Or maybe I shouldn't. I didn't know what was going to happen when you found her. I suppose I thought things didn't need any more complication. And that, if she died, it might as well stay unsaid."

"What you mean is," Doc said, "she did sell Mr. Patrise out."

"Ah. I see you love a mystery too. But that isn't what I've got to say. Kitsune did try to deal with Whisper Who Dares, but it wasn't anything to do with street fights and gwaed gwir bootlegging. She wanted something she thought Whisper might be able to give her."

"Which was?"

"Truebloods lie about magic, did you know, Doctor? They know that in the Shades the spells that can reshape the stuff of reality itself work like a two-stroke lawn-mower engine with grubby plugs and bat guano in the fuel line. But magic's part of elf style. So they lie about what they can do. Or can't do."

"Okay…"

"The Fox is a consummate deal maker. I'm sure she expected Whisper to deal tough. But she probably didn't count on pure-quill Ellyll crazy. So she got caught. I wish I knew just when she got caught, when it started being the copy. Information did pass Whis-perward after that, but that was different. I'll never know, though, because I'll never ask. Will you?"

"I don't suppose it matters."

"No," Lucius said, suddenly very still, "I don't suppose it does." He stood up. "Good night, Doctor. Thank you for the coffee and the attentive ear. And thank you again for my friend's life." He stood up, got his hat, went to the inner door and looked in on Kitsune and Jolie-Marie in their beds. His hands clutched the hat tight to his chest. Doc turned his head until Lucius came away from the women, headed for the exit.

"Lucius."

Birdsong stopped.

"Will you tell me one more thing?"

"Knowing that it will surely make none of us happy, why, yes, Doctor, I should be delighted."

"What did you see at the Rush Street, that night?"

"Remember that there was gunfire, before the explosion?"

"Yes."

"Were any windows broken when you got out to the front room?"

Doc thought back. "No, there weren't."

"I saw the bullet marks. They were all high and outside. Nobody's that bad a shot, except on purpose. All the gunshots were supposed to do was bring somebody out of the back room, just in time for the blast to get him."

"To get who?"

Lucius looked infinitely sad. "Someone who'd dash right out to help the shooting victims, without thinking twice." He opened the door to the hallway, smoothed his lapels and tilted his hat to hide his eyes. "It shouldn't be possible to forget, given all the strings round our fingers: Hammett, Chandler, Crumley, Macdonald and McDonald. Not to mention Oedipus the King. But we do. Something in the genes, in the winds of DNA, that says The Answer is Good. I really cant be trusted, you know, Doctor. Good night."

And he was gone.

Doc sat down heavily, and just stared at the wall for minutes on minutes, thinking.

There must be some reason for a thing like that, he thought; people didn't just kill each other for the amusement value. Another part of his mind answered back. Wanna betf

But if there was a reason, what was it? What did he know: What could he do? He wasn't any threat to Whisper Who Dares, certain]) not before the meeting with the Highborn Glassisle. Even afterward, he'd only used her gift as a bluff.

Unless the reason was something that Doc didn't know, and wasn't supposed to live long enough to find out.

Kitsune had wanted something from Whisper, wanted it so much that she had ended up selling herself out. What could anybody want quite that badly? What, Doc thought, would he do such a thing for?

So the hero has to go into the fire -

Birdsong on love in one paradox.

Of course. Not a what at all.

Doc checked on his patients: still sleeping quietly. He went around the room snuffing the lamps, until there was only the circle of illumination from his headlamp. He reached into his bag, took out the crossbow bolt he had pulled from W 7 hisper's body.

The metal didn't look transformed, but neither had all those bullets. Did it have to be death that brought the power? Surely not.

He had no solid idea how to proceed. Where he had come from, there wasn't any magic, but people believed in it anyway-any of your neighbors might be bribing the Devil to blast your crops, sicken your stock, dry up your women. Nobody ever said exactly what the formula was for calling up Mister Scratch, but the evidence after the fact usually included blood and sharp objects.

Doc looked in on the sleeping women again. This was no place to experiment. He put the arrow back in his bag, called one of the house staff to watch the patients, and carried the bag down to the firing range next to the basement garage.

He had to assume that Kitsune had followed the right clue. He had to guess that there was something to the rule of fairness in magic, that no pain or sacrifice was ever wholly empty. He had to try, dammit.

What could the Word of Words be, anyway? The Word that commanded all others? That told language to flow, or be silent-or be confused? In darkness…

He turned out the light.

There was nothing at first. Then he saw a light from the arrowhead: not the cold blues or elemental reds of the magic he had seen, but a warm, peach-colored glow.

Maybe this was it. He felt dizzy, put his hands on the table. What next? Think. His fingers arched, as if he were probing the throat for a tracheotomy. No, that couldn't be right. It wasn't a structural blockage.

He didn't have any psych training, beyond holding an accident victim's hand while his partner pulled glass and metal out of the wounds. He had to heal a mind, and a mind was never meat In Darkness, the Word of Words.

The glow from the arrowhead warmed his hands, and in a slow flare sweeping through his brain he knew the Word that ruled all others, that commanded all tongues to speak or be mute. But it wasn't enough to know it.

He stumbled upstairs, seeing but not sure what light he was seeing by. He entered the dining room, which was lit by one oil lamp on the sideboard. A butler was there at once, asking what she could do to serve Doc.

"I would like not to be disturbed here," he said, and the woman nodded once and disappeared through the kitchen door.

McCain had taken orders from Doc, too, just outside Whisper's lair, just as if Doc had some sort of authority over him.

Doc put the lamp and his bag on the dining table, pulled up a chair to sit near them, facing the hallway entrance. This was the place, and the hour, he had first met her. Things like that were never insignificant, in the Shade.

He took the crossbow bolt from the bag. His fingers were unsteady, and he held it tight, trying not to cut himself with the bloodstained point. It looked ordinary in the lamplight.

He was horribly tired, and afraid he'd fall asleep just a moment too soon. Then he felt her approach-didn't hear, but knew it. She stepped around the corner.

Once again, the force of the glamour's physical aspect struck him like lightning. Again she smiled, and her eyes widened curiously.

A thought spun in Doc's head, of how much Mr. Patriae must need her, tonight especially. Bad timing. But it was too late to reconsider; he barely understood how he'd gotten this far.

He reached for the lamp. The last thing he saw before the light went out was Fay's face, and the expression there froze his belly. Bad timing -

But the Word was already in his mouth. Whisper Who Dares. wnce long ago in the land of Iowa, someone-probably Robin- had told Doc that the French phrase for hangover translated literally as "My eyes are not opposite the holes."

How literal, Doc thought. His vision seemed to be rolling in the dark, with occasional flashes of brilliance as the pupils lined up with the sockets. Where the heck was he? He'd been in the dining room

… he must have come back to his apartment. Which meant he needed his key, if he was going to get into the room, fall onto the bed, and.. that was enough advance planning for now.

Where was the key? Here, key, key, key…

There it was, in his palm. No wonder he couldn't find it. Couldn't have been there long, though-it was cold, colder than a something's whatsit. He shoved the key forward, and punched air. Then he felt pressure against his back, all the way down to his heels. He'd fallen down.

This was a swell hangover; he hoped the party had been worth it.

Still clutching the key, he put his left hand to his eyes and fingered the lids open. Blazing whiteness poured into his brain. Then something eclipsed the light.

"Doc? Are you there?"

"Ssssurrrrrre."

The shape got closer. Hair fell across Doc's forehead, familiarly. Lips pressed his cheek.

"Ginny…"

"Glad to have you back," she said. It was filtered through the sound of tears, and Doc was suddenly a lot more awake. He levered himself up and fell straight back down. His bedroom started to take shape around the two of them. "Oh, wow."

Memory began to click in. "Fox. Jolie… I gotta see…"

"They're doing all right," Ginny said. "The staff's taking care of them. And Stagger. And me."

"An'… Fay?"

"Fay's just fine."

"Really?" He waved at his mouth.

"Yes. It worked, Doc. Now relax."

"Who… called you?"

"Mr. Patrise. Two days ago."

"How'd'e know- ok"

"You know I'm a good babysitter," she said, but the weeping edged back into her voice.

"C'mere," Doc said, with a gluey tongue. "Hug."

She wrapped her arms around him. It brought a much pleas-anter dizziness.

"Ouch," she said, and pried the key ring out of his fingers. "What are you doing with these?"

"Uh? Oh. I got the Touch now, I guess. I wanted 'em, and they came."

She put the keys on the nightstand, gingerly.

Doc said, "I ought to get up. See some people. What time is it?"

"About four."

"What four?"

She laughed. "In the afternoon. Don't get in a hurry. Stagger Lee says you could have died."

"Now he tells me. I want to see Fay"

Ginny was quiet for a breath. "Fay's not here. She's-staying at my place for a few days, and I'm staying down the hall here."

"Why? I mean… why isn't she…"

"Things are changing, Doc. Fay wanted to be by herself, just now. And Mr. Patrise said he thinks I should move in here. It doesn't have to be with you, if you don't want that. Do you want that?"

"I don't know… you might not want me. All the time, I mean."

"I think I want all the time you've got. Doc. But… I have to ask you something."

He tumbled the possibilities over in his head. "Go ahead."

"Something's not there between us. 1 love what von do with me-I love you, Doc-but it\ like there's something you're dodg ing, or afraid of, or-I've been wanting to ask for so long, but I was scared you'd just run away." She leaned over him. "You can't run now," she said. "I've got you prisoner."

He started to laugh. Then his ribs ached, and it finished in a long cough.

"What's wrong, Doc?" she said, alarmed.

"Not wrong. I think. It's…"

And he told her.

For at least half a minute she was perfectly still, looking down at him with her mouth open and her eyes wide. "That's it? I mean, that's really it?"

"Yeah."

"But… why didn't you just ask me?"

"I didn't want to…"

"Do it? That doesn't sound right."

"I thought maybe I could just not… be that way."

She said gently, "Your friend Robin, who can't get away from home, and doesn't even have you to talk to anymore-do you think that means he's not gay now?"

"It doesn't matter what I am, if you run away. You are not… a prisoner."

"No," she said, and her smile melted into the Gioconda's. "Unless we both agree that, for a little while, I am."

"There are things I won't do. I've seen… a lot of stuff. I saw Whisper Who Dares. And whatever I am, I'm not that."

"Do you think I didn't- Whisper? Do you think I could have believed that}"

He felt suddenly very small.

"And I know there are things you won't do," she said. "You won't ever do anything that makes me feel bad about myself, or about you. I trust you on that. Because trust me on this: you won't get the chance to say 'That'll never happen again'."

He nodded slowly.

"We got some kind of a deal, lover?"

"Deal," he said, and pulled her against himself for, oh, who cared how long.

Finally she said, "So do you want to get up and start the day? Your scraggly red beard is, I gotta say, pretty scratchy."

He rubbed his chin. "Yuck." He let her help him stand up. "I'll get cleaned up. And all of a sudden I'm really hungry." "I'm not surprised. What would you like?" "Uh… some eggs over very, very easy. And coffee." When Doc got out of the bathroom Ginny was standing beside the service tray. Her face was taut. Without a word, she held out a copy of the Centurion, folded to Lucius's column.

THE CONTRARIAN FLOW

by Lucius Birdsong

It has been a while now that I have been writing this here colyum (as some of you choose to call it) and there is a question that many of you have asked, one way and another, and one way and another I have not ever answered it.

The question is not what you would call a stumper. It is Why do you call that column of yours what you call it? And since this may well be the last time I write it and you read it, things being what they are and all, your correspondent would like to finally let the thing out of whatever the thing is in.

You see, there are all these other questions. The ones you didn't ask.

You never asked why I have not taken you sculling down the old blood stream in a little paper boat, and pointed out the heaps of skulls that shoal its banks, nor the vacant eyes of those who troll it, nor the pale viscid nature of the so-called life it supports.

And you never wanted to know why children come here as if drawn by that cheeky chequy chappie with the woodwind wail; you don't know that story, because in the commercial version the children arc a warrior and a wizard and a bard and a thief and a fledgling dragon, and they not only defeat the entrepreneur but get a bag of gold to boot; you never asked win the onl\ ones to leave this place can never, age regardless, again be called children.

And corollary to that, no letter has ever arrived from the World beyond inquiring of your correspondent why the only children left out there are the damaged, the crippled, the already too lost to find their way, who are now confronted with the unspeakable possibility that they may be the children of fortune after all.

Indeed you never demanded why I have told you of this and that but never the other thing, of the rainbow but not the pot of gold, the dance but not the steps, the singer but not the song.

In this great city, we are supposed to have made a river run against itself. Now, while the water does indeed counter the tendency of the Continental Divide, no such thing happened, nor has it ever happened. What we did, at great trouble and expense, was adjust the river's circumstances: to lay down a red carpet strewn with rose petals and good intentions, and hope the stream would choose to go our way. We didn't command the river, because one cannot tell water where to go, and if the attempt is made the torrent will take a revenge that is even more awful for being without passion.

Your faithful reporter has tried to coax a trickle in a thirsty land, but he knows better than to strike the rock.

I am leaving you now, for an uncertain while, and hope to get just a peek at the place I shall not be going.

Doc dressed, kissed Ginny, and drove to the club. Pavel took his coat. Stagger Lee was in the lobby as well.

"Sorry I'm so late."

"Almost the late," Stagger said. "Next time-" He shook his head. "Excuse me. I've got to get the show going."

Patrise was at his table with the regulars; everything seemed normal, except that Shaker was on the bar and Ginny was nowhere in sight. Neither was Lucius.

"Glad to see you, Doc," Shaker said, setting a dark beer down in front of him. "I'm sure they'll be glad to have you over at the table. Unless you'd rather sit here? Show's about to start."

What kind of question was that? Doc wondered. He went to Patrise's table. Patrise and Carmen stood. She hugged him, Patrise gestured toward an empty chair. McCain sat quite still. Then Carmen sat back down. The lights dimmed.

Doc said to Carmen, "Aren't you-"

"Not tonight. Sssh."

The spotlight hit the stage. Stagger's voice came over the speakers, spoke a name Doc didn't recognize.

It was Fay that came onstage. She was wearing a pearl-gray suit with long trousers and a low neckline. Doc swallowed, wiped his damp hands on a napkin.

She sang. With words: clear, intelligible, certain words.

The evening descends The radios on A voice in the air And solitudes gone But who have you got on That favorite spot on The dial

The next voice you hear

Whatever its source

Will be coming through clear

No static of course

Lets close the request lines

Since all of our best times

Are gone

She had a good voice, a very good voice, sweet and warm. Doc felt a warmth on his hand. Carmen was holding it. She was watching the woman on stage, and smiling.

The next voice you hear Will take you right back To flutter and wow

'l'hat our broadcasts lack

Its strange how the cold hands Warm up to the old bands Once more

"Alvah wrote it for me," Carmen whispered. "But I never could sing it. Nor ever can, now."

A wonderful voice. But it was just a song, after all.

We now leave the air Here's station ID We bid you good night With hopes that she'll be Forever the right choice Whoevers the next voice

… You hear

The patrons applauded. Someone called for an encore, but Fay had already vanished through the curtains; she did not reappear. The room was rather quiet after that, and table by table began to clear out.

Mr. Patrise said, "You'll have to excuse me, Hallow. It's been a long day." He stood up. "Coming, Lincoln?"

"Yeah," McCain said, but he just sat there staring at Doc.

Doc said, "Have you seen Lucius, Line?"

"I guess he's around," he said.

Slowly, quietly, Doc said, "If you'd rather not talk to me-"

"Anybody can talk" McCain said, in a dull, metallic voice. Then Doc understood, and knew there really wasn't anything to be said, not now, anyway. McCain got up and walked heavily out.

"I'd better go too, Doc," Carmen said. "Line-well, when he sees his lord survive this loss, he will forgive you."

"I suppose… I didn't think she'd leave."

Carmen looked at him, her face soft. "Do you think she could have known it herself?"

Doc said, "Wasn't it what everybody wanted?"

"Oh, no," she said. "You did what was right. Big difference." She stood up, looked after McCain. "But you did make her happy. Some of us have to work hard for a lot less. Good night, Doc."

He was alone at the table, looked up and saw he was alone in the room, except for Shaker industriously wiping a glass.

Doc went backstage. Stagger Lee was unplugging some cables. He looked up. "Evenin' Doc. What can I do for you?"

"Is… um… she still here?"

"She left just after she finished the set. Didn't even change." Stagger put down the stuff in his hands. "You don't remember her name, do you?"

Doc opened his mouth, tried to think.

"I'm sorry, Doc. That was mean, and you've been through plenty. The lady's Shadow name is Phasia; changing it would take- well, acts of substance. That's one of the reasons she's gone. And that is your lesson in magic for this day, young sorcerer." Stagger gave a crooked grin.

"Thanks. Can I have one more?"

"Ask away. Just remember that we wizards are subtle and hard to light."

"Under Wacker Drive. Cloud said it was for power, so did Mr. Patrise. But-power for what? To do what?"

"You read Orwell, Doc? 1984V

"No."

"You should. It's in the library. The phrase you're looking for is 'The object of power is power.' You don't gather power because you want to cash it in for something. You do it because of how it makes you feel. It's a feeling you want more of. And if you get power the way most people do, you get scared that someone else might have more than you.

"As far as I know, Whisper Who Dares didn't have some kind of supervillain doomsday plot that needed derailing just as it counted down to zero. No reflection on what you did, Doc." He pulled some switches, and the lighting room went dim and silent. "Any more questions?"

"Not now."

"Yeah. Not now. Poker Monday. See you there."

Doc went back to the empty main room.

"Another round?" Shaker said.

"Is Mr. Birdsong's typewriter still back there?"

"Sure is. Doe," the elf said. His voice was light, solicitous. read\ to listen. The perfect bartender. He set the typewriter on the bar. "He said you'd ask for it."

There was a note in the machine: UNION STATION PLATFORM 8 12:15 P.M. sharp

Doc groped for his watch. 11:35. "Where's the Union Station?"

Shaker gave him directions. "Do you want me to close up, sir?"

"Didn't Mr. Patrise-"

"No, sir. Mr. Patrise was quite specific. Your decision."

"Wait fifteen minutes," Doc said, unsure where the words were coming from. "If nobody's come in by then, call it a night."

"You got it, sir."

"Shaker, it's been a little bit-I mean, this evening hasn't been the happiest."

"They're mortals, Doc. They don't always take well to a change in fashion."

Doc turned the car into the station lot at twelve minutes after midnight. He ran up the steps, nearly falling twice, followed the signs to track eight.

Under the dark expanse of the train shed, a pair of red lights were just disappearing in the distance, and a whistle blew long and sad.

Lucius stepped out of the shadows, holding his coat collar up against the cold. "The train left at midnight," he said. "On time, but I wanted to leave a little safety margin." He looked down the platform, along the empty pair of rails, pointing away west.

Lucius said, "She didn't really want to say good-bye. But people have changed their minds about that. She did leave a kiss for you. You won't mind if I only tell you that."

"Where's she going?"

"There are only two ways you can go, relative to Elfland: toward and away," Lucius said, very patiently. "She's going away. To be somebody different from Phasia. Someone more like the way she is now."

" 'Elfland?' You didn't call it Our Fair Levee."

Lucius didn't laugh. "I never have, except on paper."

"Yeah." He looked at his feet. "Would you like a ride… somewhere?"

"No." The word was heavy, very final.

Doc said, "You're not leaving too."

"Leave Chicago? Not likely, Doctor. I'm taking a sabbatical from the Centurion, but I doubt it'll last. Ink and sawdust know where they belong. Hold on to my typewriter, will you?"

"I'll tell Shaker."

"A good fellow. He's still got the Fox's money, now that I recall."

"Then what do I do with myself?"

"You get to find out. A voyage of discovery, isn't that a wonderful prospect?" He looked up at the platform roof, a glimmer of moon above it. "Your era may be better than Patrise's. Kinder. Built on care instead of just control."

"My… what?"

Lucius said, "Will you take a last piece of advice from the pulp-wood Indian?"

Doc started to protest, then just said, "Of course I will."

"Hold on to Ginny. You can do it. And you've got to. The Great Spirit made you out of better stuff than us, true clay with hot breath in your nostrils. But you weren't fired as we were. That's your power, as clay can shift when brick breaks, but clay needs a form. Ginny's your potter's wheel, Doctor. Lose her and you'll shift away to dust."

"Lucius… who are you?"

Then Lucius laughed, loud and ringing through the empty station platform. "Man flesh and Man spirit in Shadow time," he said. "And therefore part what I am made, what my will makes me, and what I might become."

"Lucius, please-"

"See you around, medicine spirit man." He reached out and fingered Doc's lapel, then turned sharply around and walked away, down the platform into fog and hard darkness, colorless as the ending of a Biograph movie. Part of Doc wanted to run after him, but a greater part knew that there would be no more running after.

Doc looked at his coat where Lucius had touched it. Thrust through the buttonhole was an eagle feather.

He got into the TR3, leaned over the dashboard, and said, "Go where I am going. Go. Go. Go."

It didn't work. Whatever higher powers had been slumming on the Levee had packed up their dates and gone home. He had to drive.

As he walked past the switchboard, Lisa said, "Mr. Patrise left word that he would like to speak with you, sir. At your convenience."

Doc dashed straight to the stairs, not waiting for the elevator. Mr. Patrise was sitting behind his desk, in black silk pajamas and a long black dressing gown. For the first time Doc could recall, Patrise looked old.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"I asked to see you, Hallow. But we'll let the distinction pass. Do come in."

Doc approached the desk.

Mr. Patrise said, "Did you speak with Phasia, before she left?"

"No, sir."

"That's too bad. She must have had remarkable things to say, after all this time. But then, you did speak with her, didn't you? Every chance you could?"

"I… tried."

"The best of mottoes. Perhaps you will have it engraved on your signet, when this office and this house are yours."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Oh, I'm not handing you the keys yet, Hallow You have a great distance to go before, like Alice, you reach the eighth square. And the Shade is a dangerous place: we may lose you before your ascension. But you've survived-what is it, three direct attempts to kill you now.…"

"Three?" Doc thought of the roadway ambush, and the attack on the Rush Street Grill. And- In a small voice, he said, "Cloud-hunter? When he fought Whisper…"

"Truebloods are hard to kill, unless they're throwing themselves in the way of destiny. Grieve, Hallow, as is proper, but do not make grief your master: I think Cloud was happy to give his life for you."

Doc wanted to vomit.

"A question, now, before the night passes," Patrise said. "What is the secret of the Shade?"

"Secret…" Suddenly it was obvious; it should have been obvious the first time he'd met Mr. Patrise, traveling with a Trueblood miles from the Shade. "Magic… doesn't end at the Shadowline. It works everywhere."

"Just so. Terminus non est: There is no line of division. The Shadow, like all buffer states, is a political fiction meant to keep both sides comfortably separated. We of the Shadow Cabinet have made mistakes; you will make your own. But there will be no more Miami Craters. And when the time comes to conclude the secret- for people to understand that things have genuinely changed-well. Perhaps it will come on your watch."

"But how can that be a secret?"

Mr. Patrise tilted his head to one side. "Absolutely correct, Hallow. It cannot. That is, it cannot be secret from anyone who cares to think and ask questions. It is the second of the three great secrets-the one you keep from yourself."

"What are the others?"

"The first is the one kept from others. You tell me what the third is."

"The truth."

"You see, Hallow? How could you ever say that we did not know one another?"

"But I don't want the house. I wouldn't want your job, even if I could do it. I don't want-"

"To be consumed by the desire for power in itself?" Patrise said, with barely a flicker of emotion. "To become Whisper Who Dares?"

Doc stared at the carpet.

"I think you have been asking hard questions ofStaggef Lee. Read Maehiavelli after you finish with Orwell; you'll see yourself there too, but remember that the mirror never shows the person whole.

"You risked your life for someone else's, without the hope of gain. You were given the power of life and death, and left your prize to the judgment of others. With Ginevra… while I would not embarrass you, Hallow, what happens in my house is known to me."

"And… when I tried to summon the Word?"

"That too."

"But if you knew I could do that-if you even knew I had the Touch-why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know. But I also didn't ask you to try. As I did not ask Cloudhunter, or Stagger Lee, who I knew very well did have the Touch." He looked Doc directly in the eyes. "In no small measure you succeeded because you did not know any better. Think about it, Hallow: if you knew that night what you know tonight, would it have been as simple?"

"No."

"And you still, even now, cannot face the reason that I never asked anyone to do the thing."

"I don't know what that is."

"Yes, you do." Mr. Patrise stood up, leaned across the desk. "You can lie to Ginevra for as long as you like, Hallow, but you cannot lie to me. Not in my own house. Not about the fear of losing what you love with one, wrong, loving word."

Doc took a step backward, then another.

Patrise stood, walked toward his inner rooms. "Good night, Hallow. May it be pleasant."

"Good night, sir."

He waited for the elevator. When it arrived, Doc was startled by its occupant: a figure in a long dark cloak, hood raised.

"Good night, Doc," said a voice from within the hood, and the cloaked figure moved into the hall.

"Good night, Carmen," Doc said softly, as the doors closed.

The lights were on in his apartment. He started to throw his coat on a chair, then carefully removed the feather and carried it with him.

Ginny was sitting up on the bed, her legs tucked beneath her. She must have had the habit for years, but he had never seen her do it in front of anyone else. It was as if it were a pose just for him.

She was wearing one of his shirts, a few buttons done, and a tight, very short skirt of silk black as her hair-no, it was a scarf, black and shining with stars, silk that nothing mortal could damage. He knew it well enough. It could only have passed as a gift. From one lonely woman to another.

She turned, just slightly. Leather cuffs cinched her wrists to her upper arms, high and tight against the sweet curve of her back. She leaned back, falling against the pillows; turned to look at him, her hair spilling out in a dark halo. Her eyes were luminous and endlessly deep.

She was strong, he knew that, but from that position there was no leverage; she was all but helpless. Unless he did something about it.

Doc felt himself stiffen, his own breathing grow thick.

Quietly but firmly, she said, "Call the turn, dealer."

Then he knew. If he ever demanded more power over her than she held from him in return, she would be gone. And as Lucius said, he would fade to dust.

The Wild Hunt was gathering, and he could not stop it. As if he wanted to.

So here was the chance to do something right. Not that he knew what it was. He only knew what he was going to do, to hold her as she would be held, tonight with leather and silk and heat and pressure: she was trusting him, as she had been all along, and he had to stop rejecting that trust. Whatever happened in the morning, he was the master of the house tonight. And the monster. And maybe even the hero.

He leaned over her, spoke into her ear. "I will never harm you," he said, "and you will not ever allow me to harm you. Understand?"

She nodded once, slowly.

"Then give me your safeword."

She shut her eyes tight and whispered it.

He stroked the feather across her lips. She pulled in a convulsive breath.

He bent to kiss her bound wrists. She sighed from deep down. Her cheek was hot to the touch.

Enough, perhaps, for the two of them to keep out the cold.