He ignored it for the moment and pulled aside one of the heavy curtains, letting light spill into the apartment. Kyle then cautiously entered the next room, the dining room, turning right and following the path of the cat. It was nowhere to be seen, and the room was unremarkable. The kitchen to the left was the same, except that the trash can showed signs of having been rifled and raided. The cat's empty bowls were near the door to the rear stair, next to its obviously used litter box and a compacted bag of trash.

Kyle walked across the room and into the short hall that led to the bathroom at the end and the bedroom across from it. He checked the latter first. The bed was unmade. A small fan on a nearby night stand blew warm air across the sheets. The room, except for its furniture, was empty. A pair of dull eyes stared at him from under the bed. Grendel.

A quick sweep of the rest of the apartment: the bathroom and various closets revealed nothing. He filled the water and food bowls in the kitchen, and Grendel, needing no coaxing, attacked them with renewed energy.

Except for some sad-looking plants in the living room, that cat, Kyle suspected, was the only living thing that had been in that apartment in close to a week.

Of the seven messages, six were from Bern. The seventh was a wrong number.

He searched the apartment and found little, save a small cache of secreted Universal Brotherhood literature and chips in a small box in the closet. Then, in a plastic tray in me topmost drawer of the dresser, he found Ellen's house keys and wallet, with her credstick slipped neatly into its holder in the wallet's spine. Also stuffed in there was a small wad of about a hundred and twenty dollars' worth of paper money. Unless these were all spares, Ellen Shaw had gone out a week ago without her money, her ID, or her keys, and never returned.

Kyle poked through the apartment for another hour or so, eventually refusing to feed Grendel after the cat begged for a fourth bowl of food. When he finally left, Kyle could do little about the door lock, so he used his magic to warp the wood slightly once the door was closed. The door would open, but someone would have to use his shoulder to do so. He'd let Beth know about the cat.

Outside, the kids had moved closer to this end of the street, and an Eagle Security patrol car had pulled up alongside a white minivan parked in front of a fire hydrant near where the kids had originally been playing. One officer, a young Chinese man, was obviously scanning the license plate and running it through his portacomp. His partner, a woman, Kyle suspected, though he couldn't tell much more about her, was on the driver's side talking to someone he couldn't see through the tint on the windscreen. As he came out, they both turned and looked at him.

His pocket phone rang.

Kyle let it ring twice more as he slipped into astral perception and carefully scanned the area. It looked normal, completely and utterly normal, including the van, the patrol car, and the two officers. He reached into his pocket on the fourth ring and slowly extended the interface cable and plugged it behind his left ear.

"Yes," he said to the caller, eyeing the white minivan.

Hanna Uljaken's voice echoed in his ear just as the plug clicked home in his datajack and her image sprang up in his view.

"Kyle, it's me." She was obviously still in his hotel room.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She seemed puzzled. "I'm fine. How about you?"

"So far, so good."

She was suddenly alert and cautious. "Devress just called me. I'm wanted back at the Truman apartment immediately. He wouldn't say, but something was definitely up. He asked where you were. I told him I'd let you know."

Still listening, Kyle watched the two police officers casually move away from the van and climb back into their own car. Though the street was two-way, the police car went in reverse until it reached the end of the block, then backed into a turn before moving forward again and out of sight. The minivan didn't move.

“I’ll be there as fast as I can, but it'll be about twenty minutes," he told her. "I'm at the edge of the city." For some reason, he didn't feel like telling her even generally where he was.

He saw her nod. "I'll let them know," she said, "Oh, and I found-"

He cut her off. "Wait and tell me when you see me. And ask the front desk to put extra security on my room. Have them bill your boss."

She nodded again. "I will."

"Copy any information you might have off the room's computer and take it with you. If the search is finished on my datapad, take that with you too."

"I will."

"And have Knight Errant come pick you up. Call Facile right away, even before you start copying files."

Hanna was obviously disturbed by his tone and the content of his requests, but she agreed. "I'll see you in twenty minutes at the Tower."

She disconnected.

Kyle did the same, got into his car, and quickly pulled away, making a U-turn so as to drive past the minivan. He couldn't see inside as he went by, but he did note the registration plate.

The van did not follow him.

"Kyle Teller," said Daniel Truman, "this is Captain Anne Ravenheart of Knight Errant. She's a personal security expert sent in to help with the situation."

Kyle stepped forward and took the offered hand of his former classmate and accidental lover of a decade ago. She hadn't changed that much, but some differences were noticeable. The long black hair that he remembered so well had become a ragged, ear-length military cut. Gone, too, were the dangling earrings she'd favored, replaced by a pair of chrome datajacks below each ear. Her eyes were still green, but they glistened differently, oddly. Kyle didn't think they were real. But when she smiled, that was exactly as he remembered it.

"Hello, Kyle," she said, squeezing his hand.

"How've you been, Anne?" He tried to keep his tone utterly casual. "This is quite a surprise."

She shrugged and widened her smile. "For me too."

Anne Ravenheart's arrival signaled some other changes that Kyle had noticed even before entering the building. Changes mainly to do with beefed-up security and a much more visible presence for Knight Errant. It had been a Knight Errant officer rather than the usual doorman who met his car. Kyle had also noticed a perimeter drone about half the size of a man sitting under a gray tarp in a niche near the doorway. At the elevator bank the guards were obviously armed and cybered, their body armor equally evident. Then the elevator had asked for re-verification of Kyle's vocal pattern by repeating the random words it said to him. There was even an armed guard in the hall outside the Truman apartment.

Anne Ravenheart and two other Knight Errant officers were with the Trumans on the patio near the pool, Mr. Truman looking tense and Mrs. Truman tired and distracted. Melissa and Madeleine were there too, both showing visible relief at Kyle's arrival. Hanna Uljaken looked just as relieved. The other assistant, Devress, who had hired Kyle, was also present. He gave Kyle a slight smile when their eyes met. No other staff members were present. Nor was Lieutenant Facile, who Kyle had not seen anywhere on the way up either.

The three Knight Errant officers were garbed in what he took to be casual field dress. One-piece gray and white urban camouflage jumpsuits and darker bulky jackets bearing their rank insignia and red and black corporate logos. Each carried a heavy sidearm, and Kyle guessed that the tall, thin, hawk-faced man with thin brown hair peeking out from under his black beret was, like Anne Ravenheart, also a magician.

"You know each other?" Daniel Truman asked, glancing from Kyle to Anne and back.