"Jumpin' Jack Flash!" the fireman gasped.

The ace put a finger beside his nose. "It's a gas-gasgas," he said, and darted into the heart of the fire.

JJ Flash was on fire.

But his flesh didn't blacken and crackle, his eyeballs didn't melt. His blow-dried hair wasn't even mussed. In the midst of hell, he was in heaven.

E J. O'Rourke heaven, in fact the fire felt like sitting in a Jacuzzi with a couple of lines up each nostril and a teenage girl by your side eeling out of her string bikini and getting ready to audition as a sword-swallower for Barnum amp; Bailey. This was fine.

Best of all, he could still hear the little girl crying. "Where are you, honey?" he yelled. She didn't seem to hear, just kept bawling, but that was enough. He went down a short hallway wallpapered in big batts of flame, gave a wall a jolt so hot the inferno around him seemed tepid. It went away in a puff of yellow incandescence.

She was sitting in about the only square yard of the whole fucking building that wasn't on fire, a little girl in pigtails and smoldering pj's with Yodas all over them. He walked up to her, knelt, and smiled.

The roof fell in.

Even the firemen gasped when they heard the thunderous series of cracks and saw a fresh spray of sparks shoot up through the column of smoke. Sprout screamed, "Daddy!" and threw herself forward.

A Puerto Rican cop in a riot helmet grabbed her arm. "Hold on, little lady," he said. "Your daddy'll be fine." The wet lines on his cheeks made a liar of him.

JJ Flash lay on his side with the little girl beneath him and an elephant on top. He moved, felt the raw ends of ribs grate against each other.

The girl was still alive, sheltered by his body. A miracle she hadn't seared her lungs. He looked up. There was still more building to fall on him, and while the flame couldn't harm him, a structural member could damn well snuff his lights. And there was only so long before the little girl breathed in the flames that were crowding around like teenyboppers at a Bon Jovi concert.

"As Archbishop Hooper said," he grunted, " `More fire' " Hugging the girl to him, he reared up. The flame rushed in with a joyous greedy roar. He thrust his arm down its throat.

It wasn't fire that almost nailed the poor son of a bitch working his futile hose from the end of the ladder. It was a jet of incandescent gas and vaporized cement and steel, bright as the sun and a couple degrees cooler. For a heartbeat the inferno died back to a few stray flickers.

A man flew out of the hole the jet had made. Flames wreathed his body and the little girl he hugged against him. They were absorbed into his body as he landed lightly next to the frantic family.

"Here you go, ma'am," JJ Flash said, handing the girl to her mother. "Better let the medics look her over before you hug her too tight."

He turned away before they could try hugging him, scanning the crowd for Sprout. All Mark's personae shared his overriding imperative love for her; they couldn't help it. Plus he just plain liked the kid.

"Madre de Dios," the Puerto Rican cop said, staring at Flash.

Kimberly Gooding reeled away. Her mind was spinning. Unraveling as it went.

And then she saw him. Standing at the end of the block, immaculate in his camel-hair coat. He caught her eye and nodded.

For the first time since she'd known him, St. John Latham was showing something like emotion. He was showing… triumph.

She knew, then, what she had been a party to. Kimberly put her hands to her cheeks and dug in, slowly and deliberately, until the nails drew blood from just beneath her eyes.

"Mr. Latham," Judge Conower asked gravely, "where is your client?"

"She has been released to the custody of a private mental-health clinic."

"And her condition?"

Latham paused just a sliver of a second. "She is in a fragile state, your honor."

"Indeed. Mr. Latham, Dr. Pretorius, kindly step forward."

The house was packed today, and Pretorius was expending lots of effort not to have hackneyed thoughts about bread and circuses. He glanced aside at Mark, who sat beside him wearing a lightweight buff blazer over the bandages wrapped around his upper body. JJ Flash or Mark A. Meadows, his ribs were cracked just the same. Mark only had eyes for his daughter, sitting at the table in the center between the opposing camps, directly facing the bench.

"This court is compelled to find that Ms. Gooding is clearly too unstable to be entrusted with custody of Sprout Meadows."

Pretorius caught his breath. Could it be-

"On the other hand," the judge said, turning to him, your client is in fact an ace-perhaps several aces, whose names have been linked to extremely risky and irresponsible behavior. Moreover, he seems still-and in spite of his sworn testimony-to be a user of dangerous drugs, if the preliminary tests conducted on the vials recovered from the street at the site of last night's fire are any indication. In fact, at the close of these proceedings, Dr. Meadows will be remanded to the custody of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

"With these facts in view I cannot in conscience award him custody of the girl either. Therefore I declare Sprout Meadows to be a ward of the state, and remand her to a juvenile home until arrangements can be made for a foster family."

Pretorius slammed down his cane. "This is monstrous! Have you asked the girl what she wants? Have you?"

"Of course not," Conower said. "We are acting on the advice of a qualified expert in children's welfare. You could hardly expect us to consult a minor in matters this important, even if the minor in question were not… special." Sprout leapt to her feet. "Daddy! Daddy, don't let them take rne away!"

With a wordless bellow Mark jumped onto the table. Bailiffs with sweat moons under their arms were on him like weasels, pulling him back down. A couple of men in suits stepped off from the rear wall and began making their way purposefully through the crowded courtroom.

Mark managed to get a hand inside his blazer. It came out with something, darted to his mouth.

"Stop him!" the judge screamed. "Cyanide!" Another bailiff threw his bulky body across the table at him. And through him, into the front row, scattering TV cameras and onlookers and a portable spotlight array. The two bailiffs who had been wrestling with Mark fell against one another and rolled back to the floor.

In Mark's place a glowing blue man stood atop the table. He wore a black hooded cloak; stars seemed to glow within its folds. He shot the court the finger, wrapped the cloak about him, and sank with all deliberation through the table and the floor.

Dr. Pretorius thumped the bottle of Laiphroaig down on the table and measured by eye how much of it he'd killed at a shot. About a quarter, he thought; about right. He passed the bottle across the desk to Mark.

"We fucked up," he announced as Mark's prominent Adam's apple worked up and down.

"No, Doc," Mark said breathlessly, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. "It wasn't your fault."

"Bullshit. I told you to run; I should have stuck to my guns. Now you're on the run without the girl… sorry; shouldn't have reminded you."

Mark shook his head. "It's not like you did remind me," he said quietly.

Pretorius sighed. "You know what we did, Mark? We compromised. You cut your hair. I went against the wishes of a client because I thought it was for his own good. An aging hippie and an old libertarian: we sell out and for what? To screw the pooch."

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The door opened and lee Blue Sibyl came in to massage his shoulders with her blue-ice fingers.

"What will you do now, Mark?" he asked.

Mark gazed out the window at the darkness that lay over Jokertown. "I have to get her back," he said. "But I don't know how"