And there, staring at him from the screen, was Gaby.

Again she was against the stony background and wearing the slinky dress he was really beginning to appreciate. He had a sudden urge to see the whole costume. He had another urge to help her take it off.

“Hi.” He moved closer to the set, afraid with each step that she’d disappear. “Are you talking to me now?”

“Do you really know me?” Her expression was somber, tense.

“I thought so, yeah.” Bitterness gnawed at him. “I guess maybe I didn’t.”

“Tell me what you know—”

Harris heard Doc open the bathroom door. Gabrielle heard it too, looked startled . . . and her picture faded to a little white dot. Harris cursed.

Doc emerged. He wore the clothes picked out for him; his hair, drawn back in a braid, concealed his ears. He looked no stranger than some musicians Harris knew. He gave Harris a curious look. “Who were you talking to?”

As Alastair drove them back to the rented house where the conjurer’s circle lay, Harris told Doc about the conversation. Doc looked briefly annoyed that he’d missed Gaby—rather, that she seemed to have deliberately avoided him.

At the little estate on Heinzlin Corners, Alastair walked around the conjurer’s circle and, consulting one page of Duncan’s book, adjusted the placement of some of the rocks; he told Harris that he was performing corrections. “Someone who knew what he was doing has meddled with this,” he said. “Made a trap of it. If I’d left it as it was, gods only know what you’d have been when you got there.”

Meanwhile, Doc checked over his gear. A small, brassy-looking revolver worn in a shoulder holster under the shirt; a leather pouch full of little devices on his belt; the assassins’ “volt-meter” in his hand. “The charge on you should wear off as soon as we reach the grim world,” he told Harris. “But with study I may be able to key it to find Gabrielle. It seems evident that the kidnappers used something of the sort to find her originally. And this device was a little antiquated. I’ve made some ­improvements to it.”

Harris wore Gaby’s fanny pack with her possessions in it. Alastair solemnly offered him a pistol like Doc’s, but after a moment’s thought Harris shook his head. “I’d just shoot myself in the foot,” he said.

A chime later Alastair got things under way. First, he asked, “You’re sure you don’t want me along? Or the others? Or some troops?”

Doc shook his head. “If we haven’t returned in eight bells, we have both failed. You are the only one left who understands Duncan’s work well enough to try again. You have to stay. And the more of us who go, the more we will be conspicuous. So, no.” And that was that.

Doc and Harris waited in the center of the conjurer’s circle. Alastair, his face lit from below by the oil lamp that rested beside the book, hovered over the proper page. He began reciting words in a language Harris did not understand—thick, gooey words that put Harris in mind of a preacher trying to cough up a peanut butter sandwich stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The recitation went on and on, long enough for Harris to become bored and restless . . . until he began ­noticing things.

Such as the way the pines nearest the conjurer’s circle were beginning to shed their needles—they’d already looked a little bare, and now even more needles began raining down on the ground.

Such as the way the wind was stirring, tugging at Harris’ clothes and hair, feeling almost like tiny, delicate hands playing with him.

Such as the way the moon and stars suddenly felt like eyes staring down on him.

Harris brushed away the gooseflesh rising on his arms. Then, all over Neckerdam, clocks mounted high in ­impossible skyscrapers began solemnly bonging off six bells, not quite in chorus.

When the nearest tower chimed for the third time, it happened: the world changed shape. He saw the trees growing tall, the kneeling Alastair stretching all out of proportion.

The first sensation of dizziness touched him. Harris didn’t wait for it to worsen; he dropped to one knee and put his hands on the ground for balance. Alastair, still chanting, his words deepened and coarsened by what was happening, was suddenly twelve feet high and still growing. Doc awkwardly dropped to sit beside Harris, dizziness and annoyance clear on his face.

Then the pop.

The trees were suddenly gone, and Alastair with them. The stars above were gone, obscured by clouds and haze, but somehow the sky was friendlier—there were no malev­olent eyes staring down at them.

Central Park.

It was as if Harris had been wearing a heavy weight of tension around his neck on a cord . . . and the cord were suddenly cut. He felt light, and light-headed. He was home.

The old man felt the faintest chill, like a cold trickle of water down his neck and back. He rubbed his neck to be rid of the sensation.

He didn’t like that. His instincts were very good. It didn’t pay to ignore them. “Bill, check to make sure she’s still there.”

Phipps obligingly picked up the tracing device and switched it on. After a minute, the little screen glowed green.

“She hasn’t budged. Wish she’d go to sleep. I . . . ” His voice trailed off.

The old man waited an impatient moment. “Yes, what?”

“Nothing, I think. Caught a faint blip way off at the edge of the screen. Just a spike, faded in and out. Sort of like the way the neopagan festival we scanned kept futzing with our readings. It’s gone now.”

The old man sat back, scowling. He had to fight back a sudden urge to take the tracing device and go roaring off in the direction of that phantom blip. But as close as he was to finishing this long, long stage of the plan, it wouldn’t do to go running off like a reckless youth.

The chill faded, but his unease did not.

During the cab ride, Doc was fascinated by the sights and sounds of Manhattan. His head whipped around as he stared at the clothes people wore, at the cars, at the skyscrapers—buildings no taller than Neckerdam’s ­tallest, but very different in style and construction. He said ­nothing, though at several times he seemed to want to.

At Gaby’s apartment building, Harris pressed the buzzer for her apartment, but no one answered. However, her keys gave him access to the lobby, and three flights of stairs later he and Doc stood outside her door.

Or, rather, her brand-new door. That’s right, Mr. Crenshaw had said that somebody had smashed her door to pieces. The new one didn’t open to their knock. Worse, her door key didn’t open it.

“She sure got it fixed fast,” Harris said, grumbling. “Any reason we need to go in? I can make the calls from my apartment.”

“We need to go in. I want to see if her kidnappers left any sign behind.”

“Can you pick the lock or something?”

“Something.” Doc wrapped his hand in his handkerchief. He looked back and forth along the hall, then gripped the knob and tried to turn it.

Nothing happened for a long moment—except Doc’s arm trembled almost invisibly, and a vein stood out on his wrist. Then, with a sharp cracking sound, the lock turned in his hand. Broken. He pushed it open, glanced nonchalantly at Harris, and entered.

Harris found the light switch by feel but didn’t turn it on until the door was closed behind them.

Gaby’s tidy one-bedroom apartment. Her furnishings were old but clean; her walls were decorated with framed prints and posters, some of which he’d given her. Harris walked Doc around, explaining things to him: TV Guide and bug-bombs and junk food leftovers and why the TV received but didn’t call out and dishwashers and blue toilet drop-in tablets and clocks with LCD displays; the list went on and on. Partway into it, Harris realized that this was just the sort of stuff he’d been asking during the month-long day he’d spent in the fair world.

Finally Doc settled in to look over the traces of ­intrusion—signs of violence in the living room, footprints that were too large to belong to anyone but Adonis. “Make your talk-box calls,” he said.