"The ribs are bruised but not broken," he said, adopting the traditional doctor's manner of talking about a patient as if she were somehow deaf or an imbecile. Even street docs still did that. "Everything else can be cleaned up with a little antiseptic. I think she might need a stitch or two in that torn earlobe."

Kristen hadn't even been particularly aware that her earring was missing until he mentioned it. Her hand went up automatically to feel it, but she managed to stop it before her fingers actually touched the open wound.

"I can pay," she said weakly. He nodded and looked at her expectantly. She reached into her bag and took out some dollars, but by the time he looked satisfied, her treasure had been reduced by more than half. The luck truly was beginning to turn sour. But the price was fair, and she knew, as he asked for hot water and took his own antiseptic from a tattered old bag, that she could count on being patched up and clean by the time he was finished. But all of a sudden she was angry about her torn earlobe; her ears were small, delicate, and perhaps the prettiest feature she had.

Then again, maybe things couldn't be all bad if she could afford to worry about her looks at a time like this. As she watched Sunil hook some gut into his needle, Kristen clenched her teeth and waited for the pain.

Kristen slept long, almost until ten, her body craving sleep to recoup from the exhaustion of her injuries and the strain of all that had happened the night before. Waking up stiff and groggy, she raised an arm to rub her eyes, then groaned at the pain in her ribs now that the effects of the sedative had worn off. She blinked and looked around, at first not remembering where she was. Then it all came back to her. This was Indra's place, though Kristen was surprised the Indian woman hadn't turfed her out by now. She fumbled her way out of the unfamiliar surroundings of the bedroom and tottered downstairs.

The club was not yet open for its midday business, and Kristen found Indra and her girls breakfasting. The girls looked haggard, even in their gaudy robes and wrappers, and an eerie red light permeated the dingy interior of the club, which reeked of last night's smoke and sweaty dancing. It was the kind of place where anyone without a hangover would wonder why on earth he didn't have one.

"Come and eat," Indra commanded. Kristen wouldn't have been able to face the rich food on Indra's plate, but there were also poached and scrambled eggs and toast and pitchers of orange juice and pots of soykaf on the table. She didn't need a second invitation.

"We found them," Indra told her, with grim satisfaction. "The boy in yellow Netzer knew him. And we've evened the score. I am pleased that you came to me."

Kristen hardly remembered blurting out her description of the gap-toothed kid who'd chased her up the stairs of Manoj's shop. That yellow jacket had probably been the one thing of style or worth the kid could call his own after he'd blown his money on booze and dagga and street

girls. His only possession of value had been his death warrant, and not in the usual way of Cape Town's streets. Indra would have been able to call on a hundred family members to deal with the tsotsis. It was the reason no one ever tried to rob the club.

"Eat all you want. When you're healed up, I could take you on," Indra offered.

Not wanting to offend this powerful woman, Kristen chose her words carefully. "Thank you, Indra. I'll keep that in mind," she said. "But maybe you can help me in another way. Do you know someone who might be able to do me a favor? I can pay." It was the necessary underlining to any request for help.

Indra's black-lined eyes narrowed a little. She knew it was the girl's clever way of asking her for help, and she was wary.

"What is it you want, girl?"

"I just need to make a call. To someone with a fax machine. I want to leave a message for him to phone me, and I need a number where he can call me back."

"Who is it?" Indra asked suspiciously.

When Kristen answered, "An American," the Indian woman looked even more suspicious. Kristen couldn't think of any clever way of justifying the request, except for the one ace she had to play.

"I called him from Manoj's last night. Manoj said it was all right to use his number for the return call. Now I can't do that anymore. I need another number."

Indra looked uncertain. If it had been chill with Manoj, maybe it wasn't so great a risk. Then, suddenly, she smiled.

"All right, girl. Netzer, he's got one of those hand phones. Picked it up from some drunk causing trouble, beating up on one of the girls." Which meant the ork had in turn beaten the slag senseless and taken everything he had, including the phone. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind your borrowing it for a while."

Indra was obviously amused at the prospect of ruffling the ork. Maybe Netzer had got on her bad side for some reason. Kristen didn't care as long as they gave her what

she wanted. That Indra also allowed her to use her fax was just a bonus.

Serrin was awakened by the bleeper in the middle of the night. He'd reprogrammed the unit to alert him whenever an incoming fax was received, and quickly got out of bed to lock the unit into Michael's fax units. The message chuntered out. This time there was a number to call and a name. It hadn't come exactly twenty-four hours later, but then he hadn't expected to hear anything at all. Manoj Gavakar was dead, after all.

He tapped in the telecom code, but when he connected, got only a girl's voice, not her image. Excited and breathless, she spoke with an African intonation that made her dark-skinned in his imagination. He had to ask her to calm down and speak slower.

"You're in danger. Someone is trying to kill you," Kristen said more quietly.

"Kill me?" he said, thinking she must have misunderstood something. It was a snatch, not a hit, that he feared. But maybe she'd heard or seen something more. And that list she'd mentioned, he wanted to find out what was on it.

"The names," he went on. "Can you read them to me?"

There was a pause. "Just a moment," she said uncertainly, somebody else will have to read them to you. After a short delay another woman's voice came over the line. She reeled off half a dozen names, which Serrin frantically scribbled down. It was the fifth one that sent ice down his spine. Shakala, the Zulu mage.

"Kristen, this is important. Do you hear me?" he said urgently when she was back on the line. "Tell me what you saw."

She gave him the story of the kidnapping and he realized that she'd gotten confused. She'd thought the man who'd been shot was the target. The crucial thing to Serrin was the man who'd been snatched. She remembered his name from the news, and it was one of those on the list. Serrin underlined it.

"Can you come here?" she said simply. Serrin paused; he hadn't even contemplated that possibility.

"Kristen, why are you doing this?" he asked, suddenly suspicious again.

"I saw your picture in the paper," she said. That was no explanation. Not, at least, one with any logic behind it. Michael would certainly have sniffed at it.

"I don't know if I can," he said slowly. "I have friends trying to help me find out what's going on. They have a lot of searching to do. I don't know where we're going next."

"Oh," she said, conveying a world of disappointment in that one small syllable.

"Can I call you again at this number?" he asked. "1 don't think so. It's a friend's phone. I don't have one," the voice came back. "It's not easy."

"Is there somewhere I can find you if we do come over?" Serrin asked. She gave him the name and address of Indra's club and told him to ask for her there.

"Look, I'm grateful for this," he said. "Really grateful. I'd like to reward you in some '