“I know all about the cameras,” Hernandez said. “That’s why I brought a guide.”

Hernandez raised his hand slightly and the young Latino sauntered to the middle of the room. He was wearing a baseball cap and loose athletic clothing that advertised various sports teams. Although he tried to swagger, he looked nervous and eager to please.

“This is my nephew, Nazarene Romero. He works in the maintenance division of the New York Transit Authority.”

Nazarene adjusted his extra-large pants as if that were part of the introduction. “Most people call me Naz.”

“Good to meet you, Naz. I’m Hollis. So how are you going to get us to Grand Central?”

“First things first,” Naz said. “I’m not in my uncle’s church. Understand? I’ll get you out of the city, but I wanna be paid. It’s a thousand for me plus another thousand for my friend Devon.”

“Just to travel to a train station?”

“You won’t be tracked.” Naz raised his right hand as if he were swearing an oath in court. “I guarantee it.”

“That’s not possible,” Maya said.

“We’re going to a station with no cameras and traveling on a train with no passengers. All you gotta do is follow my directions and pay me when it’s done.”

Hollis stood up and approached Naz. Although he held the shotgun with his left hand, he didn’t need the weapon to be intimidating. “I’m not a church member these days, but I still remember a lot of the sermons. In his Third Letter from Mississippi, Isaac Jones said that anyone who takes the wrong path would cross a dark river to a city of endless night. Doesn’t sound like the kind of place you’d like to spend eternity…”

“I’m not selling anybody out, man. I’m just gonna be your guide.”

Everyone looked at Maya and waited for her to make a decision. “We’ll take you and the child up to the farm in Vermont,” she told Sophia. “After that point, you’re on your own.”

“As you wish.”

“We leave in five minutes,” Maya said. “Each person can bring a knapsack or one piece of luggage. Vicki, distribute the money so that you’re not carrying all of it.”

Alice remained on the floor, silent but watching as they quickly sorted through their belongings. Gabriel stuffed two T-shirts and some underwear into a canvas shoulder bag along with his new passport and a packet of hundred-dollar bills. He didn’t know what to do with the Japanese sword that Thorn had given to his father, but Maya took the weapon from him. Carefully, she placed the talisman in the black metal tube she used to carry her Harlequin sword.

While the others continued to get ready, Gabriel brought a cup of tea over to Sophia Briggs. The Pathfinder was a tough old lady who had spent most of her life alone, but she looked exhausted from the cross-country trip to New York.

“Thank you.” Sophia reached out and touched his hand. Gabriel felt like they were back in the abandoned missile silo in Arizona and she was teaching him how to free his Light from his body.

“I’ve thought about you a great deal in the last few months, Gabriel. What’s been going on here in New York?”

“I’m all right. I guess…” Gabriel lowered his voice. “You taught me how to cross the barriers, but I still don’t know how to be a Traveler. I see the world differently, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to change things.”

“Have you done any more exploring? Did you reach the other realms?”

“I met my brother in the Realm of the hungry ghosts.”

“Was it dangerous?”

“I’ll tell you about it later, Sophia. Right now, I want to know about my father. He sent a letter to New Harmony.”

“Yes. Martin showed it to me when I went to his house for dinner. Your father wanted to know how the community was doing.”

“Was there a return address? How did he expect Martin to contact him?”

“There was an address on the envelope, but Martin was going to destroy it. All it said was, ‘Tyburn Convent. London.’”

Gabriel felt as if the shadowy loft was filled with light. Tyburn Convent. London. His father was probably living there. All they had to do was travel to Britain to find him.

“Did you hear that?” he told the others. “My father is in London. He wrote a letter from a place called Tyburn Convent.”

Maya handed the.45 automatic to Hollis and took a handful of bullets for her revolver. She glanced at Gabriel and shook her head slightly. “Let’s get to a safe place and then we’ll talk about the future. Is everyone ready?”

Reverend Hernandez agreed to stay in the loft for one more hour, using the stove and the lights as if someone were home. The rest of the group crawled out the window to the fire escape and climbed up onto the roof. It felt like they were standing on a platform above the city. Clouds drifted over Manhattan, and the moon looked like a smudged chalk mark in the sky.

They passed over a series of low walls and reached the roof of a building farther up Catherine Street. The security door had a dead-bolt lock, but Maya didn’t see that as an obstacle. The Harlequin took out a thin piece of steel called a tension wrench, inserted it into the keyhole, and turned the plug slightly. Then she forced a locksmith’s pick in above the wrench and used it to push the upper pins into the housing. When the last pin clicked into place, she pushed the door open and guided them downstairs to the ground floor of a storage building. Hollis opened the door and they stepped into an alleyway that led to Oliver Street.

It was about ten o’clock in the evening. The narrow streets were filled with young men and women who wanted to eat Peking duck and a few egg rolls before they spent the night dancing at clubs. People got out of taxis or stood on the sidewalk examining the menus displayed in restaurant windows. Although Gabriel and the others were concealed in the crowd, he felt as if every surveillance camera in the city were tracking their movements.

The feeling got stronger when they followed Worth Street to Broadway. Naz led the way, Hollis beside him. Vicki was next, followed by Sophia and Alice. Gabriel could hear Naz explaining how the subway system was being converted to a system that used computer-controlled trains. On some lines, the motorman spent his entire shift sitting in the cab of the front car, staring at the controls that worked without him.

“A computer in Brooklyn makes the train start and stop,” Naz said. “All you gotta do is punch a button every few stops to show that you’re not asleep.”

Gabriel glanced over his shoulder and saw that Maya was about six feet behind him. The straps of her shoulder bag and the sword carrier crossed like a black X in the middle of her chest. Her eyes moved slightly back and forth like a camera that was continually scanning a danger zone.

They turned left onto Broadway and approached a triangular park. City Hall was a few blocks away-a large white building designed with a wide stairway leading up to Corinthian columns. This fake Greek temple was only a few hundred feet from the Woolworth Building, a Gothic cathedral of commerce with a spire that reached into the night.

“Maybe the cameras have been tracking us,” Naz said. “But it don’t make no difference. The next camera is down the street. See it? It’s on the lamppost near the stoplight. They got us walkin’ up Broadway, but now we disappear.”

Stepping off the sidewalk, he led them through the deserted park. There were a few security lights on the asphalt pathways, glowing with a feeble energy, but their little group remained in the darkness.

“Where are we going?” Gabriel asked.

“There’s a deserted subway station right beneath us. They built it a hundred years ago and closed it down right after World War Two. No cameras. No cops.”

“How do we get up to Grand Central Terminal?”

“Don’t worry about that. My friend is gonna show up in about fifteen minutes.”

They passed through a cluster of scraggly pine trees and approached a brick maintenance building. A ventilation grate was on the west side of the building, and Maya smelled the dusty odor of the underground. Naz led them around the building to a steel security door. Ignoring the various warning signs-DANGER! AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY!-he pulled a key ring out of his knapsack.