Doc’s hand closed around her arm, bringing her up short. She looked around in surprise. She was halfway across the lobby, halfway to that set of doors, and couldn’t remember getting that far.

“We don’t want to go in there,” Doc said.

Wrong, he was wrong. She could feel something pulling at her from beyond the doors, something very demanding and exciting. “Yes, I do. Why shouldn’t I? What’s in there?”

“A dance. A dance from the Old Country. Very ­potent.” He drew her toward another doorway; she could see stairs through it.

She hung back, trying to pull free. “What’s wrong with just taking a look?”

He smiled thinly. “Nobody just looks, Gaby. You join in. And if we were to join in . . . well, I would have a very good time. Alastair would probably die. And you would become pregnant.”

“Oh, not likely. Even if I were interested, which I’m not, I’m on the pill. It’s the wrong time of the month anyway.”

He shook his head. “None of that matters.”

“I’ll just take a peek.” She tried to pull away, but his grip was like metal. Protesting, she found herself pulled into the narrow stairwell and up dimly lit wooden stairs.

After a couple of flights, she realized that her breathing was slowing. It startled her; she must have been practically panting before. And the appeal of the dance going on beyond those closed doors was suddenly lost on her.

She gulped. “Doc, I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me—”

“I do. Don’t concern yourself. It’s the usual reaction. One good reason why people with a lot of grimworld blood shouldn’t come into neighborhoods where the old customs are kept.”

“On the other hand,” Alastair said, “when I’m old and I’ve decided to die, this is the place and that’s the way I’ll do it.”

After eight flights, Gaby swore to herself that she was going to start running again. And that she’d never again wear the damned heeled pumps Noriko had found for her. Her toes felt as though mechanics had been at them with pliers and her back was already giving her trouble.

In the narrow hallway up nine, Doc knocked on an unmarked door. It opened to reveal a woman who couldn’t have been more than three and a half feet tall. She was middle-aged and heavily built, with a round, florid, happy face. She wore a bright red shawl and a dark green dress. Gaby decided that she looked like a large rose sprouting from an unusually hefty stem.

She beamed up at them. “Doc.”

“Hedda.” Doc stooped to kiss her. “I bring you Gabriela Donohue and Doctor Alastair Kornbock.”

“Gods’ graces on you.” She stepped back to allow them entry. “You are the young lady with the troublesome Gift?”

“I’m afraid so.” Gaby decided the woman sounded German.

“We will unwrap it for you.”

The flat beyond was dim, its inadequate electric lamps illuminating age-darkened walls, but clean. Chairs, tables and sofas were drawn away from the center of the room, and a rug was rolled up against one wall. A dented platter painted with apples sat in the floor’s center, loaded down with little pots and jars.

It was all very homey and charming, but there was something about the place. The shadows were thick against the walls and seemed darker than they should have been; Gaby fancied that she saw deeper blackness rising and ebbing within them. She smoothed down the hair on her arms where it tried to stand.

Hedda shut the door behind them. “We will do this very slow, with tradition and care. But first, there is something important I must know.”

“What is it?”

“Would you like xioc? Tea? There is fresh pastry.”

Kneeling, Gaby read the words aloud, the ones Hedda had spelled out phonetically on the piece of paper ­before her. She kept her thoughts focused on the words, on the smell of jasmine incense, on her contented state of mind.

Around her was the conjurer’s circle she and Hedda had made together. The diminutive woman had told her to hold each piece of chalk, each little pot of paint. Only when Gaby had warmed it in her hands would Hedda take the item and begin working on the circle. The outer circle was of yellow chalk and an unbroken stream of yellow sand; the inner, the same but in red. The symbols between, carefully chalked in by Hedda and then painted by Gaby, each in a different color. It had taken nearly an entire bell to complete.

She reached the end of the last page. “Think of him as a smiling man,” Hedda had said. “The eyes of a wise man, the smile of a lover. Light shines from his face. Call to the light. Beg it. Ask for the wisdom behind it.”

She did, effortlessly holding the image in her thoughts, relaxed, clear-minded, waiting.

Nothing.

She heard Doc sigh. She opened her eyes. He and Alastair stared at her from their chairs outside the conjuration circle; Doc shook his head.

She looked at Hedda, unhappy. “I did it wrong.”

“No, sweet. You did it right. Every step true.” The woman looked apologetic. “What confused Doc confuses me. I could feel your strength when we put the circle together. You have Gift. I wish I had your strength. But it does not come out.”

“You’re having the exact same results someone like Harris or Noriko would,” Doc said. “But unlike them, you’re full of the Gift. Your well of power just seems somehow capped.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He rested his chin on his hand and stared morosely at her. “We’ve learned some things, today and in my tests. We know what you can’t do.”

“Such as?” Her tone was sharp.

“Don’t be annoyed.”

“I just don’t like being told what I can’t do.”

“So I gather. Gaby, your Gift doesn’t follow the traditional patterns. You have no Good Eye; you can’t see the residue of devisements. You don’t see the future. You don’t see events imbedded in the objects that have exper­ienced them. There’s no sign of a cord between you and some twin, real or mystic. You can’t melt your flesh and reshape it.”

“People do that?”

“Not many. It’s a dying art.”

Hedda smiled. “Which is sad. It can be such fun.”

“Today, we learned that you can’t project your voice to the ears of the gods. You make no links between ­objects or places, even with conjuration circles. You do not weave patterns of your Gift into things you make with your hands. You do not send your sight away from your body. You do not affect fire, water, air, or earth.”

“Does that leave anything?”

Doc didn’t answer. Alastair said, “Well, yes, countless things. But they are so rare, and often—I will be frank—so irrelevant that there are no tests devised for them.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “For example, a few years ago, I tested a woman who showed sign of Gift but didn’t follow the usual patterns. I found that her Gift was directed inside her. All her sons grew up to look just like her father. Identical, to the last mole and birthmark. Except for the one who looked like Kiddain Ohawr, the star of stage and screen. You can’t imagine the trouble that caused with her family.”

She laughed, then sobered. “You’re saying that this Gift could be something totally useless.”

Doc nodded. “Yes. That would be a waste. You have so much of it. But you should prepare yourself for that possibility. Hedda, I’m sorry. I’ve taken up your whole afternoon.”

“But not wasted. You are always good company. And the young lady likes my pastries.”

On one Neckerdam broadcast channel, the talk-box showed square dancing. Not too different from similar stuff he’d seen on the grim world. On the other channel, it was the game they called crackbat—part baseball, part jai alai. Harris settled on it and concentrated on trying to figure out the rules.

The little talk-box, the one that acted as his telephone, rang. He picked up the handset without taking his atten­tion off the screen. The runner in his padded suit, still holding the flat bat with the net at the end, charged the base and whacked the ball out of the net of its defender. He crashed into the defender and both landed on the base. “Hello.”