"It was an experiment. I was trying to learn if crabby old people will kick a door shut before they start complaining about it having been left open. Of particular interest are crabby old men who live in a household where their status more closely approximates that of a guest than something more eternal. So you tell me. Do you have any idea? Where's the girl?"

Dean doesn't have much of a sense of humor. He offered me the full benefit of his hard, gray-eyed stare. As always, he was rock-confident he could demonstrate to the world that my second greatest flaw is my frivolous, incautious nature.

He believes my greatest failing to be my persistent bachelorhood. That from a character who never got within rock-flinging range of matrimony himself. I put up with him because he is a wonderful cook and housekeeper. When the mood takes him. And because he's cranky enough to hold his own with the Dead Man—though when he has his druthers he has nothing to do with Old Bones at all.

"Let's not fuss," I told him. "I have a client here."

Bad word choice. That brightened Dean right up. Little pleases him more than knowing that I'm working.

I ground my teeth a bit, then continued, "So let's get this sorted out quickly. I've got to catch up with Katie." Before she developed an attitude toward me that I was sure to regret.

Dean scowled as he headed toward the kitchen. Katie isn't one of his favorites. He doesn't approve of Katie. He hasn't been able to charm her the way he did my few other, occasional female friends.

I fear Miss Shaver will have to wait, Garrett.

"No. Not hardly. Right now there's nothing more important than Miss Shaver."

Playmate and Kip appeared startled. Old Bones hadn't included them in his message. Though Kip did look baffled and kept rubbing his head and looking around like he knew something was going on.

I have exceeded myself somewhat, ethically, in reviewing the boy's memories. There being so many questions accompanied by so few answers it seemed possible that the best course was to see if he might not know something without being aware that he knew it.

Plausible, if prolix. I had used that argument on him a time or three, trying to prod him into becoming a little more aggressive in mining the thoughts of visitors and suspects. "And what did you discover?" You have to give him his line or he won't communicate.

Very little, to tell the truth. This boy has no more than two toes anchored inside our reality. His head is occupied by a totally eclectic jumble of fantasic nonsense and it is amidst that that he lives most of the time. He is always the hero in his own tale.

Well, aren't we all?

Some of his fantasies recall well-known epics and sagas. Some have their genesis in common storytellers' tales. Some are mutant versions of historical events. And even a few things might possibly have some basis in truth —behind the fantasy stuff he has built on top of genuine events. Inside his head it is impossible to discern the real from the imagined.

"If most of it concerns girls it sounds like the inside of a normal boy's head."

You would think that way. And you would be incorrect. While it does concern girls, some of it, it does so principally in the clever and daring methods by which he rescues the enchanted princess or other damsel in distress. While there are several of them I have yet to discover any of his fantasy women less than chastely clad or treated.

I gave Kip a quick glance consisting of about eighty percent worry and twenty percent accolade. Though I suspected that respect for women was not a real part of the equation. Naïveté would be the real culprit.

The Dead Man continued, He is acquainted with creatures he knows as Lastyr and Noodiss. They are not human but the boy has not cared enough about the answer to find out what they really are. The images in his mind are not familiar to me.

The image that appeared in my mind, then, was unfamiliar to me as well. "Inbreeding? Or interbreeding?" You need only stroll around TunFaire a few hours to see the incredible range of Nature's artistry and her bottomless capacity for the cruel practical joke.

Perhaps. And, perhaps, they are something never before seen. In this world.

"Let's not turn alarmist!" I growled. Alarmed. Once upon a time not long ago I got into a head-butting contest with something never before seen at that time: very nasty, never-brush-their-teeth and talk-back-to-their-mamas foul, elder gods who thought that the god racket would be a lot softer if they could bust out of the dark place where they were confined and could come set up shop in our world.

There was nothing supernatural about the watcher in the alley, Garrett. Quite the opposite, I think. There was no magic in it at all. It seemed as though it stood entirely outside the realms of the magical, the metaphysical, and the supernatural.

I gobbled a couple pints of air while I tried to make sense of that, trying to sort through the countless implications. A world without magic! A place of order and predictability, with all evil fled!

Darker possibilities occurred to me as well.

Playmate began to poke and prod me with a singletree forefinger. "Garrett, I know it's a big, empty wasteland without many landmarks but how about you don't get lost inside your own head right now?"

I shook the gourd in question. The waste space was anything but empty right now. Most of that speculation seemed to be leaking over from the Dead Man's secondary minds. Suggesting that the puzzle had him sufficiently intrigued that he had become incautious where his thoughts strayed.

"Sorry. Chuckles got me going for a minute."

" 'Twould seem that he's gotten Kip going, too."

The boy was as rigid as a fence post. All the color had drained from behind his freckles. His eyelids were closed. When I lifted one I found his eyeball rolled up so that he seemed to have no pupil. "What did you do here, Smiley?"

The Dead Man launched a long-winded paean of self-exoneration. I sensed its complete lack of substance right away and focused on Playmate. "So cut the bull and tell me what you want from me."

"I suppose what I really want is for you to look out for him. Kip's a royal pain sometimes, Garrett, but that's mostly because nobody ever taught him how to get along with people. He befriended a couple of strays. Lost souls in the physical sense. He took care of them. They were grateful. That made him feel important. Same as I feel when I take care of him and the horses. He shouldn't get hurt for that."

Playmate was right. The world needed more helpful and considerate people. But I was looking at something else. Some very complex things seemed to be going on inside Playmate right now. He was taking this more personally than he should.

"You wouldn't be the missing father here, would you?" That stunned Playmate. He chomped air a couple of times, in a way that left me wondering if I hadn't somehow struck nearer the mark than I'd thought possible. One glance and even the most cynical student of human folly would understand that Cypres Prose was no kin to Playmate.

"Don't try to provoke me, Garrett."

"Huh?" Provocation isn't my style. Not with my friends. Not very often, anyway. Not the ones that're three feet taller than me and strong enough to hold a horse under one arm while using the off hand to change the monster's shoes.

"I'm sorry. I apologize. This mess is keeping me on edge."

"Why is that?" By now I had resigned myself to not being able to make peace with Katie anytime soon. "Why don't you just lay this whole thing out so we don't have to pick you guys apart just so we can assemble enough information for me to start?"