“Sure. It may take a while. It’s one a.m.—uh, nearly seven bells—and I’ll be waking people up. Conversations won’t be too friendly.”

Doc tried not to show his irritation. He couldn’t make his thoughts run in the same direction, couldn’t focus them. Each one wanted to go its own way, to marvel, to deduce, to condemn.

The grim world. He supposed he’d always believed in it. So many of the legends of his youth had their bases in scientific truths. But this world was nothing like he imagined it to be.

Animals didn’t befilth the places where they lived, but the men of the grim world did. His nose was sharper than most men’s, but surely they couldn’t all be immune to the bad mechanical smell the automobiles spat out.

He wished he could read the writing that decorated the ground-floor exteriors of so many of the buildings, but the cursive script was difficult to decipher and so many of the words meant nothing. Did these scrawls act as wards against bad devisements, appeals to the gods, simple territorial markings?

And the buildings themselves—the men of the grim world must not have come from a tradition of defensive buildings. So many of their structures had windows on the ground floor; some of the high-rises seemed to be made entirely of windows. He resolved to look into their techniques of construction; not many of the architectural styles he’d seen here had appealed to him, but that one had.

The grimworlders’ technological achievement was amazing. Talk-boxes that people could effortlessly carry, in singles, doubles, and triples. He hadn’t yet seen any portable quadruples—no full-picture send and receive in a hand-carry device. But shows from all over the world came in on the triples.

Harris had said they had aircraft that surpassed the speed of sound, and he desperately wanted to see one in flight.

Human skin colors he’d never seen before. Browns so deep as to be almost black. Yellow tones. But as on the fair world, the darks and duskies of the grim world didn’t seem to have all the advantages of the lights.

The language. Harris had been right. Doc recited poetry to himself to test its rhyme and scansion. His words were the same they had ever been; no mystic translation had taken place. So Low Cretanis and English were dialects of the same tongue. He’d also heard dusky men of the grim world shouting in something like Castilian.

It made no sense. He could think of no way for languages to stay so similar if they hadn’t been in constant contact in the centuries since the worlds drifted apart. Yet somehow they had.

Other similarities. The cars were as related as the languages; he was certain that he could drive one of the automobiles of the grim world, even if they did have only one gear. Dwellings here were broken down by familiar human needs: parlors, bedchambers, kitchens, privies.

So much iron. He’d burned his hands half a dozen times since he’d arrived, as if every other thing he touched had just been resting on a hot stove. No use letting Harris know; there was nothing he could do about it. Doc hadn’t thought to carry gloves—a careless error; he was annoyed that he hadn’t given it more thought. Now he just let Harris precede him everywhere. He’d pick up gloves as soon as he could.

So much to learn . . . but for now, the only thing he could afford the time to learn was the nature of Gabriela Donohue’s attackers.

Harris had to use the phone in the bedroom; the one in the living room had been torn free from its old-­fashioned wall connector. The bedroom was stuffy, so he opened the window over the fire escape and looked out on the sparse 11th Street traffic while he called.

“Hi, it’s Harris. I’m looking for Gaby. It’s kind of an emergency. Are you sure you don’t? No, sorry, I wasn’t implying anything. I know it’s late, I’m sorry, bye.”

But the third call was to Elaine’s, and a second later Gaby was on the line. “Harris, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I almost got my leg cut off but a magical doctor put me back together. “How about you?”

“I’m okay. I’ve been so worried. Did the police find you? Where are you?”

“Your place. No, I haven’t talked to the police. They’re kind of low on my priority list.”

“Did you talk to Leo next door? I asked him to kind of keep an eye on my place. If he hears something suspicious he may call the cops.”

“We’ll keep quiet.”

Doc appeared in the doorway, the volt-meter in his hands. Harris said, “Doc, I have her.”

“So do I, I think. I rekeyed this to show myself . . . and I read another signal, probably hers. She’d be nearly due east of here, ten or fifteen destads, I think.”

“Who’s Doc?”

“A friend, Gaby. Wait a minute—you mean you don’t know him? Doc, with the Sidhe Foundation?”

“Huh?”

Harris looked up at Doc. “She says she doesn’t know you from Adam. What’s a destad?”

“Two thousand paces—ten stads. If her signal strength is similar to yours, she is—”

“Ten or fifteen away. Right.” Harris did a rough conversion: one pace would equal about one yard. That made her twenty to thirty thousand yards. Sixty to ninety thousand feet. Divide by five thousand . . . “Yep. That puts her out somewhere near New Rochelle, all right. Gaby, Doc here has a gizmo that you have to see. It shows that you’re at Elaine’s.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“No . . . Oh, shit. If Doc has this thing working right, then the old guy . . . Gaby, the old guy has to have one of these, too. He probably knows where you are right now.”

He heard her hiss of breath, then: “Stay there. I’ll get there as fast as I can.” And she hung up.

“Dammit.” Harris slapped the handset down in its cradle. “She’s coming here, Doc. It’ll be a little while.”

Doc nodded. “That will give me more time to collect scrapings and measure aura traces. There was something very ugly in these quarters a few hours ago . . . and if I read the signs right, Adonis was not the ugliest.”

Doc closed his right eye and returned to scanning the living room. It wasn’t easy; though his Gift was very strong and well trained, ever since he’d come to the grim world it had been very hard to call upon.

It was too bad Alastair wasn’t here; the doctor’s good eye was so much better than Doc’s. Alastair might have been able to make more of the faint haze of aura that still hung in the apartment. All Doc could see was traces of two aura presences. One was obviously “Adonis”—dim, channelled anger and animal spirit.

The other, almost washed away by Adonis’ trace, was dark and very complex. Someone with the Gift. Maybe even a deviser. Doc had seen the auras of many of the Gifted and a few devisers . . . and this aura trace was starting to look familiar.

Almost as familiar as his own. Doc found himself swallowing as his stomach rebelled. It was different from the aura he remembered, but not more different than could be accounted for by twenty years of profaning the spirit.

Duncan’s aura. Just older. Bleaker. Purer. He’d started to suspect when he studied the tracing device, but it had been easier not to believe.

These thoughts held Doc’s attention so completely that he never heard the faint creak of footsteps out in the hall. He didn’t recognize danger until it was on him: the door slamming inward, two men in street clothes and coats pointing guns at him, shouting words in angry tones.

Solemnly, he raised his hands, with a little prayer to the gods that this gesture was universal.

“Lights going out, sir.”

The old man started out of his doze and looked over at the Carpenter house. The porch light was now off, and as he watched, the last of the bedroom lights went out. “Ah. Very good. We’ll wait a few minutes and then go in.”

“Sir . . . Things would be easier and safer if we just eliminate her.”