Conscious that he had sweated himself rank inside his coat and shirt despite the cool of the morning, Paul stood inside the lobby elevators, full of terrified indecision. Did this mean they had heard him after all, talking the J Corporation equivalent of treason with the master's daughter? Or might it just be a fluke?

He had to see Finney. If he didn't, if he simply did as he wanted so desperately to do, returned to his room and got shatteringly drunk, he would be admitting that he deserved this treatment. He had to act innocent.

Finney's assistant kept him waiting twenty-five minutes. The spectacular view across to the city—a city now heart-breakingly out of reach, although it seemed so close he might reach out and prick his finger on the Riverwalk Spire—did little to soothe him.

When he was finally allowed in, Finney was finishing a call. He looked up, his eyes as always strangely hard to see behind his spectacles. "What is it, Jonas?"

"I . . . they wouldn't let me leave the island. Security."

Finney looked at him calmly. "Why?"

"I don't know! Something wrong with my badge. They said there was a security hold on it, something like that."

"Leave it with my assistant. We'll sort it out."

Paul felt a gush of relief. "So . . . I can get a temporary replacement or something? I've got some things I have to do in New Orleans." In the silence, he felt the need to make it more compelling. "My mother died. I have arrangements to make."

Finney was looking at his desk, although the desktop appeared to be bare. He nodded distractedly. "Sorry to hear that. We can make arrangements for you."

"But I want to do it myself."

Finney looked up at him. "Fine. As I said, leave your badge with my assistant."

"But I want to go now! Go off the island, deal with things. I mean . . . you can't keep me here. Not just . . . keep me here."

"But, my dear Jonas, what is your hurry? Surely you can make arrangements by net more efficiently. And these procedures might seem silly to you, but I promise you they're deadly serious. Deadly serious. Why, if someone tried to get onto the island—or off it, for that matter—without a valid badge, I wouldn't even want to think about the kind of terrible things that might happen!" Finney gave him a slow smile. "So you just sit tight, will you? Be a good boy. Entertain Miss Jongleur. We'll straighten everything out . . . in time."

Back in the elevator, Paul could hardly support his own weight. He stumbled to his room, turned off the lights, carefully and definitely shut off the wallscreen, then sat in darkness broken only by a pane of light tilting out from the crack between window and blind and tried to drink himself into oblivion.

He could see his own fingers touching the button of the elevator, see the dawn light bleeding into the corridor disappear as the doors swished shut behind him—he could see it, but he could not quite feel it. The drunkenness was still on him, a twisted, feverish disconnection. He did not know what time it was, only knew it was morning, only knew he could not take another night of such monstrous dreams.

The door hissed open, revealing the inner door. He leaned against it, resting his head on the cool frame while he clumsily entered his code and pressed his hand against the palm reader. Dizzy, he remained leaning for several stupefied moments after the lock had clicked.

One of the parlormaids looked up in surprise as he stumbled through. In her wide-eyed gaze he saw an entire factory of deceit. "You're real," he said. "So you must be a liar."

"Where are you going, sir?" She took a careful backward step, as though preparing to turn and run.

"Important business. Miss Jongleur. We're going out." The spectacle he must be presenting finally sank in. He tried to assume a slightly more dignified manner. "Sorry. I'm not well. But I need to give Miss Jongleur her lessons—she has to have her lesson plan for today. I'll be gone in a few minutes."

He continued down the corridor, trying to walk a straight line.

I'm not drunk, he thought. Not really. I'm bloody well coming apart at the seams.

He knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again.

"Who is it?"

"It's me," he said, then remembered the no-doubt listening ears. "Mr. Jonas. I have to give you your lessons for today."

The door flew open. She wore a white nightgown, soft but opaque, and had pulled her dressing gown on without tying it closed. Her dark hair, unbound and surprisingly long, spilled down past her shoulders.

Angel, he thought, remembering the ghost-thing's words. You're beautiful, he wanted to say, but retained enough sense to lift his hand and push his own sweat-damp hair from his forehead. "I need to speak to you for just a moment, Miss Jongleur."

"Paul! What's happened to you?"

"I'm ill, Miss Jongleur." He lifted his finger to his lips in a clumsy admonishment to silence. "Perhaps I need a little air. Would you mind coming outside with me while we discuss your work for today?"

"Let me . . . I just need to dress."

"No time," he said hoarsely. "I'm . . . I'm really not very well. Can you come out with me?"

She was frightened, but trying not to show it. "Let me get my shoes, then."

It was all he could do to refrain from pulling her down the hall by the arm. Two of the maids were standing in the doorway of the sunporch, for the moment not even counterfeiting work; they stepped aside as Paul and Ava approached, casting their eyes down.

"But I insist, Mr. Jonas," Ava said brightly for their benefit. "You are looking very poorly indeed. A turn in the garden while we talk will do you a world of good."

He could almost feel the maids' shocked propriety and was embarrassed for his pupil. His own floating, hapless confusion was such that he did not remember until they had reached the garden path that whatever else they might be, the Jongleur servants were not young women from two centuries past.

This time Ava did not hurry toward the wood, but walked with care, asking solicitously about Paul's health as they went, insisting that immediately upon leaving her he should drink a cup of chamomile tea and go straight to bed. It was only when they had reached the ostensible security of the mushroom ring that she turned and threw herself at him, clutching him so tightly he had to struggle to stay upright.

"Oh, Paul, dear Paul, where were you? When you did not come yesterday, I was so frightened!"

He did not have the strength to hold her off, did not have the strength to do much of anything. He had no plan, no solution. He was not entirely certain he was not going mad himself. "Your ghost friend. He came to me. Showed me . . . children."

"So you believe me?" She leaned back, staring at his face as though she might never see it again. "Do you?"

"I still don't know what to believe, Ava. But I know I have to get you out of here, somehow." A heaviness settled in his chest. "But I can't even leave myself. I tried to get off the island yesterday and they wouldn't let me."

"An island?" she said. "How strange. Are we on an island?"

The hopelessness of it all came crashing down on him. What did he think he was going to do? Kidnap and hide a girl who had never even left this building, the daughter of the world's richest man? A man with his own army, with tanks and helicopters? A man with half the world's leaders in his pocket? His knees weakening, Paul let himself slide down to the ground. Ava came with him, still clinging, and for a moment they were tangled together, the girl half atop him, her slim, uncorseted body pressing against him.

"I don't know what to do, Ava." He was light-headed, almost stoned on despair. Her face was very close, her hair surrounding both their heads like a canopy so that for a moment they were in half-darkness.