"He's smart," Billy agreed. "Friends with my son." I let the rest of their conversation fade away as I turned my gaze to the snow-littered steps and yard.

Anybody else and I might've thought she'd slipped on the stairs and cracked her head, but I knew Mandy Tiller hadn't received a gash-toothed bite on her arm that morning. I'd have healed it if she had. So the thing had come after her, and somehow, it had failed to walk away with her life. I was less certain about the safety of her soul.

There were imprints in the snow on the uncovered porch, just like the ones I'd seen yesterday morning. I didn't touch them this time, afraid I'd flatten them into nothing and destroy any chance of a lead. I'd seen, that morning, how far this thing could jump in a single bound. And it did jump, traversing space like it was real. But then, so did I, when I separated from my body. I didn't float through walls or fly up to rooftops. I walked through the doors and climbed stairs, treating the astral world essentially like the real one.

It was a paltry thing to go on, but at least it was something. I stood up and followed their imprints' potential trajectory, scanning the yard and sidewalk and street without finding a hint of where the thing might have landed. Neighbor's yard, across the street, empty. No trees bigger than bushes to ricochet off anywhere in easy sight.

A quick wash of snow, unsettled by the rumble of ambulance engines, slid off the roof and poofed into the yard, narrowly missing the porch. I flinched, reminded of the avalanche.

More snow flopped down, less vigorously than if someone had shoveled it, but with a certain amount of enthusiasm. A ghost of forensics training came back to me and I crouched again. There was no kickback in the imprint, no spray that suggested the beast had jumped forward. The indentations looked like it had squatted, just as I was doing now. My gaze strayed to the roof.

Well. Just because I'd never tried floating up to a rooftop didn't mean I couldn't do it. I pressed my spine against the house, propping myself against it, and for the second time in an hour, slipped the surly bonds of earth.

My subconscious had a mean sense of humor. It had let me float through a closed door, but not a wall, because one was meant for walking through and the other wasn't. But that had been nearly a year ago, and I had more control now. Gravity was permitted, I decided, to exert the smallest influence over me, just enough to keep me from floating into the stratosphere and beyond. I weighed in at a little over one-sixty, but there was no reason my astral form couldn't be light as a thought.

I stayed firmly stuck to the ground in both body and spirit. I bared my teeth at the sky, willing to admit that thoughts could be depressingly weighty. Better to be light as a bird, with hollow bones and an ability to fly. I could break free from gravity's pull and soar up to the roof on an impulse of will.

My astral self, it seemed, was absolutely unimpressed with my puny logic. Eventually, swearing silently, my astral form crawled up a drainpipe and swung onto the roof. There was no way I could've done that physically. Neither the pipe nor my dignity nor my hand strength—which was pretty good, but not that good—would have let me. Astrally, though? No problem. It made no sense at all. On the positive side, it didn't have to make sense. It just had to work.

And up there on the rooftop, the monster was waiting for me.

By all rights I should've woken up dead. I'd thought the thing would've been scared off. It was only once I was up there on the roof, nose to nose with a stinking beast, that I wondered why I thought an invisible ravening magic cannibal would be frightened by a kid with a cell phone or a few police sirens.

While I was standing there stupefied, it raised a lazy paw and backhanded me so hard I flew off the roof and slid across Mandy's front yard to smash up against her white picket fence. Little peaks of snow fell off the fence and right through me, making tiny lumps on the frozen lawn.

I couldn't remember anything ever doing that before. I tended to think of my astral form as a pretty safe place for me to be. Sure, a god had stuffed a sword through me once when I'd been incorporeal, but we'd been traveling through time and space, too, so under those circumstances it seemed fair that I could be hit. I'd fought another god in a kind of dreamscape, but dreams were a little different. I didn't remember anything ever flat-out belting my astral self while it was just standing around in the Middle World. But this thing had, and I didn't like that at all.

It hadn't come after me. I pushed onto my elbows and scowled at the roof, where its form was barely more than a glimmer against white snow and gray skies. It stood on two legs, but its shoulders were hunched forward, like it was devolving toward four legs. It hadn't moved beyond hitting me.

A clear, unpleasant thought unfurled itself. Maybe it hadn't come after Mandy. Maybe it had just used her to draw the more powerful agent to it, so it could get another look at me. Size me up, study me. Decide if I was a threat or a tasty morsel.

I figured lying on my back in the snow wasn't at all threatening, and got to my feet. The thing watched. Warily, I thought. Hoped. I wanted to be scary enough to set it on edge. That would be a definite score for my side.

It had hit my astral form. That suggested maybe my astral form could hit it. All I had to do was get close enough, but I was pretty sure it wasn't going to give me another chance to climb the drainpipe.

Which meant I had one chance to convince my recalcitrant brain that the laws of gravity and physics didn't apply to a soul set loose to wander away from its body. I'd crossed great leaps and bounds effortlessly in other planes of reality. I could do it in this one, if I had to.

And I had to. The monster on the rooftop was still watching me, and I didn't want its attention to land on anyone else. I muttered, "There is no spoon," took three running steps, and jumped.

The creature vanished, I smashed into Mandy's house, and warm fingers touched my face as Morrison said, "Walker," drawing me back into my body.

I opened my eyes disoriented and confused. The world had tipped over sideways, and a puddle of slush had crept up to envelop my left cheek. Rather a lot of weight seemed to be pressing the slush into my jaw and shoulder, and enough blood rushed to my head to make my nose itch.

Morrison was perpendicular to me, feet planted in the same icy water that was crawling over my face, and his forehead was wrinkled with concern. "You fell over, Walker."

That explained a lot. The pressure, for example, was my own body weight resting on my head and shoulder, which were at the foot of the stairs, while the rest of me was angled down them. It was profoundly uncomfortable, and I was beginning to fear it might be embarrassing, too. On the other hand, it distracted from the dull ache running from head to toe, which I suspected was the physical response to psychically smacking myself into Mandy's house. I'd been so sure I could make it, too.

Morrison offered me a hand up, which proved to be more like putting his hands under my armpits and bodily hauling me to my feet. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Sorry, I thought I'd propped myself up well enough that I wouldn't fall. I was…" I made a feeble gesture, which was apparently enough to remind Morrison he was holding me up. He let go and stepped back. I was kind of disappointed.

No, not disappointed. A little sad, maybe. I liked being close to my boss; he smelled good. But I'd blown it on that front, and was working on living with the consequences. "I was trying to follow the killer. Hang on a second, okay?"