So this ritual-circle drek was similar to the stuff the mystics use for summoning-similar, but not exactly right. If I'd known more about magic, maybe that would mean something to me. It's unfortunate, in a way. Unlike a lot of people I know, I'm not a magophobe-how the frag can you be magophobic in the Sixth World, tell me that?-but I'm certainly no spellworm. I guess the most time I've ever spent with a real-and-for-true practicing spellworm was when I worked alongside Rodney Greybriar back in Seattle… before he was geeked, of course.

Well, magic or no magic, the laws of logic had to stay more or less the same, neh? Maybe all I needed was a little common sense.

What must you do to summon a spirit, or whatever? No, take the question one step further back. Where do spirits and their ilk hang when they're not being summoned? Somewhere else, obviously. On the astral plane, maybe, or on one of the "metaplanes" (whatever the frag they are…). Bringing them across takes effort. It takes magical jam, and- from what I've heard-to drag the big boys, kicking and screaming, into the material world, it can really harsh a spellworm out.

Why? Obviously-well, it's obvious to me, at least- there's some kind of barrier between the material world and the other planes. No, let's call it something pseudo-mystical-say there's a curtain between this world and the others, or maybe a veil. Okay, some kind of curtain. Sure, that made sense, otherwise people might just stumble from this world into some freaky metaplane without intending to do so, or even knowing it happened.

So, to summon something, logically you'd have to break down that barrier-pull back the curtain-or it just wouldn't work, neh? Could that be what the weirdo circle was for? To open-or maybe weaken-the curtain between what we laughingly call the real world and those other places? An interesting hypothesis… and, now that I thought about it, not a particularly comforting one.

Oh, drek… combine that nasty thought with another one that had just struck me. When the cop-kahuna said he wouldn't conjure anything using that circle, could he have meant that (meta)humans couldn't use something like that? Who could?

How about the friends of Adrian Skyhill? The fragging insect spirits. They were involved somehow-if I was to believe Barnard, and I had no reason to disbelieve him at the moment.

Great. Hadn't I read somewhere that certain sites on the earth-typically ancient "places of power"-had high mana "background counts" that made magical activity easier? Mount Shasta, apparently. Crater Lake possibly. Why not Puowaina?

Could the insect spirits be trying to use the power of the Hill of Sacrifices to do to Hawai'i what they'd done to Chicago? To bring forth hordes of their kind from whatever hell had spawned them?

Or was I a paranoid slot getting his exercise by jumping to really out-there conclusions? (Go back, go waaay back…)

I shook my head. It was a dead fragging certainty I wasn't going to figure it out just by standing here and pummeling my brain. Who knew, maybe the kids-the ones that sumo-Saito had been questioning-had seen something relevant.

But the kids were gone when I looked around. The forensic boys had finished their work, and were piling into the car with the still-sulking kahuna. Saito was standing by the open driver's door of his car, watching me-and almost concealing his impatience-in case the "deputy" might want to waste his time with more dumb-hooped questions. I waved to him and gestured that he could take off if he wanted. He wanted, and I was left to breathe in the dust of his departure. With a sigh I started walking to the Bus stop.

I felt eyes on me, that creepy feeling that the academics say doesn't exist but that every nonacademic has felt many times. I stopped and looked around.

He was standing, totally motionless, leaning casually against the trunk of some kind of flowering tree, watching me. Rapier-thin, he seemed to radiate a sense of pent-up energy, explosive movement. He was an elf, I was almost certain. From this distance I couldn't see his ears, but the morphology looked right. His eyes were hidden behind those radically styled shades that advertise they can stop a 12-gauge shotgun blast-reassuring only as long as the slag busting caps on you confines his aim to your sunglasses- but I could feel his gaze on me. I raised an eyebrow questioningly.

He stepped away from the tree and jandered over toward me-slowly, casually-yet purposefully. (A contradiction, true enough. But that's exactly how he moved-with the lethal casualness of a predator.) I gave him the top-to-toe scan as he approached.

Thin face, high cheekbones, a nose that an eagle would kill to possess. He wore his hair-red, streaked with silver gray-long, pulled back in a ponytail that reached the middle of his back. He was dressed in dark clothes-a slate gray synthsilk shirt, black pants wide at the thighs and tapering to the ankle. Expensive, high-quality clothing, but anachronistic in style. When was the last time you saw a shirt buttoned to the neck with no tie, and bloused cuffs? It was almost as if the elf had stepped right off the virtual pages of Gentlemen's Monthly Online, but from an issue twenty years old. Instinctively, I played "spot the heat." No luck-if he was packing anything larger than the smallest of hold-outs, he'd found a damn fine way of concealing it.

He stopped a short distance away, and it was his turn to give me the once-over. It took no more than a second, and then he smiled.

Suddenly, I realized I feared this elf.

It was a disturbing realization. Hell, there was nothing overtly threatening about him. His smile seemed to be genuinely amused, not a power smile intended to impress or intimidate. His body language was, well, I didn't know quite what to make of it, but it wasn't threatening either.

Yet the fear was real, chummer. For some reason, it chilled my guts like an ice-water enema. Some people you automatically like at first glance; others you automatically despise. Never before had I met someone to automatically fear. I think I managed to keep my thoughts from showing on my face, however.

The elf nodded a greeting-a gesture with an Old-World formal air to it. "Mr. Montgomery," he said. His voice was a musical instrument, almost inhumanly perfect in timbre, tone, and resonance; any trideo personality would gut his mother for a voice like that. "I rather thought I might find you here."

"Then you know more about it than I do," I told him truthfully.

He found that amusing, and his smile broadened. "Well, there is always that possibility, isn't there, Mr. Montgomery? Or may I call you Derek?"

"Why don't you call me Brian Tozer?" I said. Then- what the frag anyway-"But Dirk will do. Your turn."

The elf nodded again, almost a bow, this time. "Quentin Harlech, at your service. But you can call me Quinn."

I ignored the obvious opening.

Harlech removed his bullet-proof shades-blue eyes, sharper than a monoblade-and looked pointedly around the area. "Quite fascinating, isn't it?" he remarked lightly.

I shrugged. "If you understand it, I suppose."

He laughed then, Harlech did. Not the sinister cackle that part of my mind had expected, but a full-throated, free rush of genuine mirth. "Oh, of course, Dirk, of course. Will you be returning with interesting reports?"

"Huh?" Not overly witty, of course, but it was all that occurred to me at the moment.

Quinn chuckled again. "Reports, Derek, you know. To those who sent you. Give them my greetings while you're at it, will you? But then, of course you'd do that even without my urging, wouldn't you?"

Slowly, I shook my head. "Pardon the dumb question, but are we both reading from the same script here? Or maybe you're confusing me with another Dirk Montgomery."

The elf sighed and made a disapproving tsk-tsk-tsk sound with his tongue. "Basely spoken, Mr. Montgomery," he said. His tone of voice sounded more disappointed than anything else. "Dissembling so clumsily? It suits you ill, sir."