Then he could see, swimming out of the blur, the tops of trees surrounding him. Normal-sized trees. But the nearest trees were only twenty feet from him, scores of yards too close—and they were now evergreens.

The trees were illuminated by old-fashioned oil lamps hung from their lower branches. And overhead, though a few thickening clouds promised rain to come, the sky was full of stars like a velvet carpet sewn with diamonds, when moments ago it had been hazy.

He didn’t have time to wonder. A figure moved into his line of sight and stood over him.

This was a man, the most beautiful man Harris had ever seen. He was lean, with short, curly hair that was golden rather than blond. His eyes were the bright blue of the daytime sky. His face was a Greek ideal of sensitivity and youthful, masculine beauty, and shone as though lit by internal fires. He wore a dark suit, nearly black in the dim light, that looked years out of date, with its high waistline and too-broad lapels and tie, and yet didn’t manage to detract from the startling impact of his physical presence. Harris thought, When I’m a soap opera hunk, this guy can be my blond rival.

He stood by Harris’ knee, leaned over and asked, in a rich, controlled voice, “Where is Adonis?”

Harris grimaced, letting his confusion show. “Where the hell am I?”

The golden man’s expression changed, losing its seren­ity, growing angry. “When I ask, you answer. It’s time for your first lesson. I think I’ll take your thumb.” He reached the long, delicate fingers of his right hand into the sleeve of his left arm and extracted a knife—a long, thin, two-edged blade on a slim golden hilt. “Give me your hand, you bug.”

Harris just looked up at him, amazed. Another ­maniac. He kicked out with his good leg, slamming his heel into the beautiful man’s kneecap.

The golden man’s face twisted and he fell beside Harris. Harris lashed out, cracking his fist and forearm into the man’s temple once, twice, three times . . . and the golden man’s eyes rolled up into his head. He was out for the moment.

Harris stood. The burning in his injured leg made it difficult. He took an uneasy look around. No, this sure as hell wasn’t Central Park. He stood in a good-sized lawn filled with trees; the clearing in the center was barely large enough to accommodate the circle-and-X of white stones, similar to the one back in the park. He could see, in gaps between the trees, a wall, nine or ten feet tall, bounding the property on three sides. On the fourth side rose some sort of house, hard to make out in the darkness, but massive and taller than the trees.

Where was Gaby? And how had he gotten here? Had he passed out and been brought by Adonis and the crazy old man? No, that just wasn’t right. There were no breaks in his memory from the time he arrived in the park. But even the air was different. He took a deep breath, and it was richer than he was used to, like the air of a greenhouse.

And now was no time to think about it. From the ­direction of the house came a voice, low and rumbling and thickly flavored with what he recognized as a Scottish accent: “Sir? Clock belled six. Did Adonis come?”

No time to stay around, either. As quietly as he could manage, he walked toward the wall and directly away from the source of the voice.

Within a couple of limping steps his thigh began to burn with pain. His leg trembled as he walked.

Not ten feet ahead on the ground was the duffel bag Adonis had used to carry Gaby. Hanging half-out of it was her fanny pack. Harris grabbed it, buckled it on, and continued.

The clearing narrowed into an earthen pathway ­between the trees. A few yards further, he reached the wall itself: ten feet high, made of beautifully dressed stone assembled without mortar. Expensive and classy. The gate to the outside was just as tall, heavy hardwood with metal hinges and edges—they looked liked tarnished brass—and closed with a wooden bar set into brackets. There were lights beyond.

Yards behind him, the Scottish voice sounded again: “Sir! Who did this? Where is he?” And Harris heard a faint reply; the golden man had to be conscious again. Grimacing, Harris put his shoulder to the bar and shoved it up out of the brackets. He juggled it but couldn’t keep it from falling to the ground; the impact was loud.

He pushed against the heavy gate and it swung slowly outward; as fast as he could manage, he ran out onto the sidewalk beyond.

Broad sidewalks with trees growing from them, wide streets with tree-filled medians, roadways made up of brick instead of asphalt, flickering streetlights set atop what looked like tall, narrow Greek columns—where the hell was he? He turned right and trotted, fast as the pain in his leg would allow, along the concrete sidewalk.

The first car that passed him was like something out of a classic car show, a golden-brown roadster so vast that its hood alone stretched as long as an entire compact car. The spare tire, the spokes and hub of its wire-wheel assembly painted incongruously white to match the other wheels, sat tucked firmly in a notch at the rear of the car’s running board. The driver’s seat was an ­enclosed, separate compartment of the car, with the steering wheel to the right, like a British auto; the driver, his lean face pale in the glow from the streetlights, was a liveried chauffeur all in black.

And the car was driving the wrong way down the street, left of the median. Harris fought down an urge to shout after the driver.

He stared a moment after the classic automobile, then stepped out to cross to the median—and immediately leaped back as a horn blared to his right. He stared as a second car drove by, also traveling on the wrong side of the street. This was a narrower, boxier car, resembling a Model T with its black body and high carriage. In the seat were a young couple, he in a broad-lapelled suit jacket in glaring red, she in a green, high-neckline dress like something Harris had once seen in pictures of his grandmother. The steering wheel on this one was also on the wrong side. The woman, smiling at the driver, was oblivious to Harris. Both of them were lean, delicate of ­appearance.

Then they were gone, taillights fading into the dark. Harris shook his head after this parade of classic cars; then he checked both directions for traffic before trotting to the median as fast as his bad leg would let him.

It wasn’t fast enough.

“You, there!” The shout came from the way he’d come; it was the Scottish accent. Harris spun around to look.

The man who stood at the gates looked like a wrecking ball: short and squat and heavy. He couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. But he was built like an inverted triangle, his shoulders huge, his body narrowing down to his waist and incongruously lean legs. His clothes were brown, baggy, and featureless, his leather boots heavy and thick, like workmen’s garments from decades earlier, and were set off by his wiry gray mass of hair and heavy beard. On his head he wore a bright red beret.

As he shouted after Harris, his eyes seemed to glow red in the streetlights’ glow . . .

. . . and his teeth, long and white, were sharp. Pointed.

Harris felt a shudder across his shoulders. Of all the strange and wrong things he’d seen this night, sharp, pointed teeth on a squat man weren’t the worst. But they were his limit—one thing too many for him to accept.

“You, there!” the man called again. “You’re dead!” And the squat man with the beret bent over, dug his fingers in the gap between two concrete paving blocks . . . and pulled one block up, the effort breaking it away from its neighbor. He hefted it one-handed as though it were a paperback book.

Harris felt his world reel around him again. He heard more automobile traffic driving the wrong way on the street behind him, felt his injury burning along his thigh, tasted the unaccustomed sweetness of the air, but all he was aware of was the man in the beret and the huge block of concrete he handled.