Martin opened his eyes.  At this time of year, nearing the Autumnal Equinox, the sun didn't stray near the north windows, and the curtains were open so the view across the bay was unimpeded.  

             Martin had felt overexposed earlier this morning when the sun flooded the east-facing bathroom.  Ann hadn't laughed, but had been quick to conjure some opaque curtains over the glass.  This afternoon he could even appreciate her walk-in shower, with its shoulder-high picture window.  Looking east he could make out the movement of cars on the Bay Bridge.  

             He checked his leg.  Being a vampire, he knew he would heal completely, eventually.  He had not expected to have a scar, but he was still bemused by how quickly the burn had vanished.  There was no residual pinkness and not a trace of soreness.  When he considered some of his exertions of the previous twenty-four hours he was pleasantly surprised.  As he dried himself, he heard Ann return to the bedroom.  He ambled out of the bathroom:  "Ann?  Where did my clothes end up?"

             "There's a closet behind the mirror on the far side of the bed,"  Ann said, waving towards the interior wall.  "They're in there.  Breakfast is ready, so when you've dressed, come down to the dining room."

             Martin crossed the oriental carpet.  Was this the Ardabil that Dmitri Romanov had asked about?  He didn't know that much about carpets, but this one was beautiful, with glowing reds and golds, accented by dark blue, purple and black.  He looked up and saw his image in the mirror.  That was unusual, but then the whole day had been magical.  He slid the door and looked inside.  

             The small and well lighted space was fitted with a narrow six-drawer upright chest of drawers in a pale fruit wood.  There was also a hanging rod high enough for a tall man's long coat.  His pants, tie, belt and jacket were on hangers.  His watch, wallet, crystal sphere, cell phone, keys and change were in a tray on the dresser top, along with something new:  a small decagonal change purse.  It was leather, tanned to a silky finish in a rich black, and folded in on itself to a stable configuration.  He'd had one just like it, back when he started Boston Latin and had to ride the old Boston Elevated Railway trolley over to Warren Avenue.  He rubbed his thumb over the smooth leather, smiled, and slipped the coins in the purse.  

             He found his underwear, socks and folded shirt in the dresser.  Everything looked as it had never even been worn.  He glanced around.  There was a chair, just where it was most convenient to both the bed and the closet, with his shoes beside it.  Right.  He dressed.  His clothes were mostly the same-they were the same style, the same color-but everything fit just a little bit better, was just a little bit more pleasant to touch.  

             Dressed, he slid the door shut and looked at himself in the mirror again.  He knew what he looked like now, photography had been around since long before he was born after all, but a mirror was different, a mirror was live.  He looked roughly the same as he had when he was killed:  just short of thirty; just over six feet; always too thin according to his mother and aunt; brown eyes; straight, longish hair like freshly weathered cypress wood-he'd gone gray early-but now with a vampire's pale skin.  He tried to get his broad, satisfied grin under control, failed completely, and gave up.  Widely smiling, he went down to the dining room.



             "Where are the parakeets?"  Martin asked as he joined Ann.

             "They eat somewhere else in the afternoon.  They keep to a routine, and I'm one of their morning feeding stations.  There's a selection of Cambells in the kitchen."

             The kitchen, on the east of the house, was efficient and well equipped.  It was small, but still looked as if it could produce feasts for a dozen or more. There was a three-door refrigerator, a four-burner stove with a grill, a griddle and down-draft ventilation, two wall ovens, and two sorts of counters:  granite and butcher block.   The kitchen also looked as if nothing had ever been cooked in it, Martin thought.  He eyed the eight types of Cambells in a long line, with a cut crystal old-fashioned glass at one end.  He picked the AB negative and returned to the dining room.  

             She had set a small table just inside the doors that opened out to the deck.   Martin saw the same style of table setting that had come out of the picnic basket:   White linen, real china with a simple gold rim.  Each place was set with orange juice in the same old-fashioned glasses.  

            On the table there was a round covered casserole and a silver beverage set consisting of a cream pitcher, a sugar bowl, a cigarette urn holding cinnamon sticks, a narrow glass-lined dish holding thin lemon slices, a hot milk jug, a coffee pot and a tea pot.  Ann set down two square covered serving dishes she had just taken from somewhere and took her seat.  

             "How did you manage this?"  Martin asked, sitting opposite her and setting his blood down by his orange juice.

             "Stasis spells.  I cooked everything earlier and stored it.  Coffee or tea?"

             "Coffee,"  Martin said.

             "We have smoked trout, homemade chicken-apple sausage, hash browns, oatmeal, and Eggs Benedict,"  Ann said, removing the covers.

            Martin smiled.  "Pullet eggs?"  he asked, seeing the very small poached egg on top of the small round of toast.

             "Yes.  There's an organic farm over in Marin where I get a lot of my supplies.  They offer fresh quail eggs too, but pullet eggs fit the batârd croutes perfectly, which makes presentation simple."

             "Presentation?"

             "Very important, my teachers said."

             "Teachers?"

             Ann smiled.  "A few years ago I needed to update my cooking skills for here and now.  I sampled a lot of expensive and well reviewed meals. That was interesting and sometimes it was fun.  I started with a long series of basic lessons at some local commercial cooking schools and adult education classes, here and some other places in California.  Eventually, I even took some courses over at the California Culinary Academy, including Beginning California Nouvelle Cuisine, Modern Menu Planning, and Setting the Contemporary Table.  They take presentation very seriously over there."

            "You're very thorough,"  Martin said.

            "Starting from zero, I have to be."  

            Martin smiled again as he took a small dish of oatmeal, then helped himself to Eggs Benedict and a smoked trout.  

            "So how was Julia this morning?"  Ann asked.

            "Tense, but coping.  She stuttered a little at breakfast and she asked twice how my leg was,"  Martin said.  "I told her I was fine, both times, but I'm not sure she was reassured.  Are you planning on mentioning that soon she'll have an unspecified number of infant aunts and uncles?"

            "Not immediately.  I think we must say something at some point, preferably sooner rather than later, though.  If Helen could find Emily, certainly Julia can find any extant blood kin of hers whenever she looks for them.  I think not telling her would be a mistake."

            "The witch bit bothers me,"  Martin admitted.

            "At the moment, that power is not expressed.  Helen was an active witch, but Julia is not.  At the moment,"  Ann repeated,  "Julia is busy with school and new friends.  I don't expect it to stay that way forever."

            "This is proving more complex than I thought it would be,"  the vampire complained.

            "At that,"  Ann laughed,  "it may be easier because our fosterling is sometimes fifty years old and a reasonable adult.  Other times, when she's the fourteen-year old adolescent bounced around by a constantly changing stew of new hormones, it may prove to be more difficult.  She and I are going for a long walk, and maybe a picnic, day after tomorrow.  Lots of time for a talk, if anything is bothering her."

            "Good."

*

            Having delivered Martin to his office, Ann considered where the Inn was today.  Ah, not that far, just over in North Beach.  She would walk.  She left the house and gently climbed south and a little east through Compass Park, heading for the steps on Greenwich.   

            Compass Park was directly across Chestnut and a little uphill from Compass Place, which took its name from it.  The central feature was a large steel compass rose at the north summit of Russian Hill.  Every twenty years or so, since the creation of the park in 1886, the ground under the rose eroded enough to be a problem.  Whenever enough people started tripping on it, the rose had to be disassembled, the ground leveled and the rose reset.  It was due for another restoration soon and Ann stepped over a jutting edge as she walked.

            The famous Russian Hill Gardens were more to the south and east, where the slope was sheltered.  Compass Park had more low shrubs than trees or flowers, especially on the north and west sides, where the wind was steady and harsh.  The shrubs, both foreign and native, and the exposed rocks, were twisted and carved into interesting shapes.  Ann was crossing Lombard Street, which bisected the park, when she became aware that someone was following her.  Well, what was this about?  She picked a bench and appeared to observe the sunset.  

            The follower kept his distance.  It seemed he-and there was no doubt in Ann's mind that it was a he-was willing to wait as long as she did.  If she had more time, she would have played him; as it was, she had things to do.  She rose and resumed her walk.  As she turned onto the top flight of pedestrian steps that led down to Greenwich Terrace, and was briefly hidden from anyone behind her, she ported into the lobby of the Inn.

*

            "We managed to send the Huruvians home,"  the Innkeeper said.

            "Thank you,"  Ann said, with a warm smile.

            "Travelers' Aid,"  the Innkeeper said.  "They sent an agent to the house the Huruvians, and the human they called 'the master,' were using here.  The agent found a journal the human kept, which helped locate the Huruvians' dimension.  They seemed happy to be going home."  The Innkeeper shook his head.

            "Not my idea of home either,"  Ann agreed.

            "Zuri looked at your blaster rifle."

            Ann turned to Zuri, the manager for security, who nodded silently.  

            Ann waited.

            "U.S. Army."

            Ann nodded.

            "Tell him?"

            Ann understood that Zuri was asking if he could tell his contact, who could be anyone from a  radar operator at Pillar Point AFS who knew someone in Intelligence to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who knew everybody.   "Tell him the SFPD may have one or two of them.  If your source needs to speak with me, keep me nameless."   

            Zuri nodded again.  "Want it back?"  he asked.

            "Yes,"  Ann said.  "Please drop it at Wayfinder's."

            "Right,"  Zuri said and left.

*

            "Where are you going to send it?"  the Innkeeper asked.  

            "A friend of mine will enjoy playing with it,"  Ann said.  The Innkeeper was walking with her as she moved unhurriedly across the lobby.  Apparently his schedule was not too hectic today.

            In this locus, the Inn had an irregular cruciform vault-and-dome lobby, with the main pedestrian entry at the end of the widest and longest arm.  The banks of elevators and an arcade of shops leading to a side entrance faced each other across the main desk, which was directly under the dome.  Ann turned into the arcade.

            All the goods and services necessary for a comfortable stay were available:  Healers, barbers, hairdressers, cleaners and tailors, sellers of souvenirs of Earth and San Francisco, the Concierge, a very expensive florist who had one partner who was jeweler and another partner who was a confectioner, and Wayfinder's Messenger service, which was Ann's destination.

            "Your friends have strange hobbies,"  the Innkeeper said.

            "Boredom is always a problem,"  Ann said.

            "For many of us," the Innkeeper murmured.

            "For the past couple of centuries some of the yunü have been fascinated by human technology.  They enjoy playing with it and I've found some of their results interesting or helpful or both."  

            "I had heard that Taz's grandmother has cable,"  the Innkeeper said.

            "More or less.  When they were with me, the shouyu cubs started following a TV series.  When they returned home, the yunü figured out a work-around so they could keep up with Josh and everyone.  The process involves opening a dedicated dimensional portal to a cable relay station.  The Palace gets television, radio and internet.  The Eldest enjoys, or at least watches, 'Footballers' Wives', which is a little unexpected."

            "I don't remember yunü using portals."

            "Some portals can be described as originating in a human technology,"  Ann said.  "A magical technology is still a technology."

            "So complicated.  But then complications help alleviate boredom.  String, knots," he ended, which was the short form of a popular proverb.

            Ann laughed.

            They entered Wayfinder's where Ann filled out an address label and tied it to the blast rifle on the counter in front of  the waiting clerk.  

            The clerk glanced at the tag.  "The yunü Liangde, Household of the Eldest Dragon, Kunlun Mountain.  OK.  No message?  No return address?  Will she know who it's from?"

            "Oh, yes,"  Ann said.



            "One thing more, Anna."  The Innkeeper touched Ann's arm, halting her before she turned to the side pedestrian exit.  They were alone, and could see up and down the empty hall.   "Rumor says your committee are milling around."

            "Oh?"  Ann kept her voice as soft as his.  

            "Half of them seem to be more worried than the other half, but it's not the usual division."

            "Oh?"  Ann asked again.

            "Some factions of one tripartite side seem to be allied with a few factions of the other three against the remainders of both sides this time."  

            "Really?"  Ann thought for a moment, then:  "How do you come to know this?"

            The Innkeeper nodded.  "That was especially interesting.  The rumor path was very short.  I saw two junior aides huddled together in a conspicuous corner of the bar, like a drawing by Prohias."

            "Ah,"  Ann said, slowly smiling.  "Complete with smoking bomb?"

            "I would not have been surprised to see one, but no, not this time.  They do know better.  They whispered for a time, then they ostentatiously slunk out in opposite directions.  One of them slipped into Egil's office, while the other got into the same elevator as Yerodin."

            "There isn't any special reason for them to come here at all,"  Ann said.  "Beyond, of course, the surpassing excellence of your Inn."

            The Innkeeper smiled.  "They do know that at the moment you have access only to this Inn."

            Ann nodded.  "So why do they want me to know that?  They are certainly aware I do not support any side in that mess, no matter how they shift around."

            "That I can't help you with, although the suggestion of cooperation between the factions may indicate how seriously they regard their current problem."

            "Whatever it may be,"  Ann agreed.  "Thank you."

*

            Ann walked home, backtracking through Compass Park.  The watcher did not re-appear.  Ann didn't miss him, she had enough on her mind.  One immediate action suggested itself:  she left a message for her lawyer before checking her assignment board and departing on her midnight litter patrol.  

{}{}{}{}{}

            In Oceanside, California, Mrs. Russell Corbin opened the door of her condo and exclaimed happily:  "Lois, how nice.  And who is this?"  Her extravagant surprise was so blatantly false, it would fool no one.  Certainly neither her daughter nor the caller were fooled.  

            "Diane,"  Lois said impatiently,  "this is my nephew.  You said I should bring him."

            "Come in and meet Sylly."

            Sly Corbin smiled politely as Lois's visiting nephew was presented to her.  Honestly, mother, she  thought.   

***

            In Berkeley, Glen Merrill, Bookseller, had a routine with Atico Mazlish, his regular Bookquest delivery man:  Atico called when he started up the hill.  The custom had begun when Mazlish made his first run into the Berkeley hills.  Not even the USPS could figure out all the twisty little passages that the strange inhabitants of the Berkeley hills called streets.  Keeler Avenue, for example, was interrupted in the middle of its length by Keeler Park, which had no signs and no roads, only a two space parking lot and some narrow pathways.  If you didn't know that Keeler Avenue continued on the other side of Keeler Park, you could easily become frustrated.  Published maps were only vaguely helpful, and not often that.  Atico, more sensible than many men, called the phone number listed on his Delivery Information Acquisition Device and received directions on the correct route to Merrill's Rare Books-by Appointment Only.  

            Today, Glen was waiting on the driveway as Tico pulled to a stop on Keeler, which ran east of Merrill's house in a roughly north-south line, at least on this block.  Tico unloaded three cardboard boxes.

            "Books,"  Tico said, offering the hand-held DIAD.  

             "Good,"  Glen said.  He signed for the packages as Atico moved the boxes from Bookquest's handcart to Glen's.



            Finally, Glen thought.  He didn't know why Bookquest had sent him a notice that his expected delivery would be delayed, he was just glad it had finally gotten here.  His sister was getting impatient and he himself had been awaiting the arrival of the latest grab-bag.  He trundled all the boxes off to the garage and opened the biggest one first.  He removed a mailing tube he didn't remember ordering and put it to one side, then began unpacking the books.  A rainbow stack of color-coded albums and co-ordinated journals were put aside uninspected while the mixed inventory was spread out individually and carefully unwrapped.

            Tales of a Scandalous Administration by Anonymous not only had the signature of the former president on the flyleaf, it boasted marginalia on nearly every page:  True, but not that enjoyable, was scribbled on page 3; Not true, I never hit on her, on page 4. Wow!!!!!  occurred on page 7 and Five Stars!!!, with no further comment, on page 16.  A quick flip revealed many more.

Excellent.  Just as good as Ian Fleming's own copy of Birds of Jamaica. Almost as interesting as Ho Chi Minh's personal 1910 Larousse Guide de Paris, which had been a true find.  Glen sighed, running his hands over the cover.  Reluctantly, he put aside his new treasure and turned to the birthday presents for his niece.  

            The Art Magnet school his niece attended was offering a course in Scrapbook, Memorabilia and Keepsakes.  Apparently shoe boxes under the bed were passé.  Sixteen was, in Glen's opinion, too young for organized memorabilia; he also favored memoirs over blogs or diaries.  But the books were excellent:  the acid-free paper in the journals smooth and receptive to ink, while the albums had thicker and slightly rougher paper, to support trinkets, menus, and concert programs, and to receive the glue.  The red journal was a little more magenta than the red album, while the two blue books were perfectly  matched.  

            He put the fourteen books on the new book shelves.  Then he frowned.  The violet journal was fully 3/8 of an inch shorter than its fellows.  Now that he looked more closely at them, the grain of the leather was also different.  He opened it.  

            Oh, dear.  His sister was going to be angry.

            The paper was rag, and while aged, was not brittle.  The leather binding was still supple.  It had been cared for by someone who knew what to do with a fine book.  He checked the back.  It had a colophon with a date of 1658:

*

A History of Apocryphal Texts
Being a compendium of antique
ESOTERIC TEACHINGS
in the main Hindustani, but also including
Nepaulese and Nipponese
writings
and the histories thereof
from the earliest times to the present.
***
Presented in synoptic form
and
including extended
Commentaries
by learned Fellows of the Antique Text Society
***
London
*
Anno Domini 1658
*

            He scanned some of the synopses.  Dull and difficult.   He checked the commentaries.  Duller and harder.

            He turned to the unexpected mailing tube and examined the contents:  A narrow, but long, scroll, about ten inches across.  He unrolled about three feet of it very gently, then rotated it 90 degrees.  That put the illustrated human beings right side up, the text in horizontal lines and the unrolled scroll to his left.

            He could see the scroll was fashioned from at least two layers of narrow...what?  Split reeds?  Inner bark of mulberry trees pounded together?  Something like that.   On the inside, where the writing was, the narrow splits ran up and down, across the length.  On the back, they ran lengthwise.  Whatever it was made from, he estimated the roll contained at least four feet yet to unwrap.

            The text and the illustrations seemed to have been painted, rather than drawn.  Yes, a brush and not a pen had been used.  A wavy line, a jagged line, a square and what might be a frog were depicted.  Human figures, wearing long robes with their sleeves over their hands, each carrying a draped bundle, were moving towards a common center.  Glen had no idea what action or occasion was illustrated.

            He considered the text:  Neatly arranged in blocks, but not in the Latin alphabet, which complicated matters further.  He put the scroll down and picked up Ballhorn, Alphabete orientalische und occidentalishe Sprachen, and leafed through the illustrations.  Ah.  Ballhorn seemed to call it Karosthi.  He switched to the 1904 English translation of Bühler, Indian Palaeography.  Hmm.  Third century BCE; in north-west India.  

            Well, since he did not read Hindustani or Sanskrit, the scroll was not very interesting.  One of the many dangers in buying mixed lots was the erratic quality of the goods you sometimes received.  Glen's only remaining problem was to locate another violet journal for his niece, quickly.  It would be nice to dispose of the useless--to one who specialized in Marginalia--inventory and at a profit, if possible.  He was, after all, a book dealer.  Hmm.  

            If he listed the stock in Acquisitions he might receive a higher price, but not soon.  He decided to list it with his other discards on Alibris.  Simple, direct and fast.  He would get around to that.  First, of course, he had to find a new violet journal.  Possibly Samuel's, out in Walnut Creek, might have one; or failing that, a complete matching set.

***

            At the Inn at San Francisco, on a private floor, Hilarion the Scribe was working late.  Well, he wasn't actually working, but he wasn't totally playing either.  He was ahead of the rest of the Scribes, who were still working on the Tequila Cocktail subset.  He had advanced to Vodka, and was sipping a Flying Grasshopper as he did Google Searches.  A search for Etana gave interesting results, few of them accurate. The results from a search for 'Inn at San Francisco' were few and totally inaccurate.  Searching his own name had revealed an Hilarion who had been a Pope.  The search for A History of Apocryphal Texts, which in his mind he had abbreviated HOAT, to rhyme with goat, on the other hand, had yielded '1-10 of about 244,000' but no exact match.  He shrugged, checked The Complete Bartender, discovered his next drink should be a Frozen Russian Apple and left the computer room for the café-bar next door.

***

            Also at the Inn at San Francisco, but in the staff quarters, Chasen nursed a hangover on his day off.  

            Nothing had gone well recently.  He disliked dusting.  However, given that he needed to dust to remain in the Inn, and he needed to remain in the Inn to be safe from Mekonnen, he dusted.  He did not always dust to Chaldun's exacting standard.  Chaldun, who was in charge of maintenance, which included housekeeping, would point out his lapses, then set him to do the task over.  And over.  And over, until he got it right.

            The immediate future looked even worse.  The Inn was hosting a trade convention of magical manufacturers and suppliers, officially opening the day after tomorrow.  Yerodin, the reservations and events manager, had announced that the convention set-up crew and some far-traveling attendees would begin arriving tonight and very early tomorrow.  Chaldun wanted his staff finished with the daily routine by 1200 hours, to be ready to deal with the complications he expected.

            There had to be a way out of this.  He just couldn't think of one at the moment.

***

            Ann was passing as human, mostly.  That meant she performed a number of normal human tasks, especially when her neighbors and other humans could see.  Saturday morning, she shopped.  

            Since she was not traveling out of San Francisco, she left the Jaguar with Tom Rivera and drove the ugly but practical Urban Utility Vehicle that was in parked in her basement garage.  She drove down the hill.  No one paid much attention to her.  Where was the watcher?  Possibly he was working alone and was a late riser, possibly he had moved on.

            Just before seven she arrived at the local Farmers' Market.  Taking her string bags and a folding shopping cart, she moved slowly along the rows of stalls.

            She bought a jar of black radish jam; krouchnik, korj, and a dozen vatrouchki; two bunches of beets, a quart of yogurt and a jar of pickled plums.  She covered about half the market, then stopped for blini and tea at the centrally located tea stand.  



            "No, I don't think so.  I don't argue with the quality, just with the fact that there are less than thirty sturgeon left in the Caspian Sea.  I'll take the American farmed caviar, two cans."  Moving on from the caviar stall, she filled her cart with two bags of sunflower seeds, three different sorts of honey, half a dozen cucumbers and several white onions.  On top of all that, she placed a bunch of flowers.  Lastly, she bought a bag of potatoes.  With the potatoes over her shoulder, she returned to her ugly utility vehicle.

            As usual, the UUV had attracted attention:  A crowd of shoppers and vendors, with a leaven of police and truckers, were inspecting it.

            "Is this thing street legal?" one of the cops asked skeptically.

            "It's a Phaeton, their Urban Utility Vehicle; and yes it is,"  Ann said.  "When it was licensed it was inspected by no less than three DMV officials, who all agreed it is."  She went on to explain that it was a hybrid, that it came in a kit, that it got almost 70 MPG, around 45 miles between charges if she wasn't using the internal combustion engine, and that she had put it together with a socket wrench.  

            "Funny looking car,"  one of the vendors said.

            "So most people say.  It takes me and three friends to and from the opera and it carries groceries very well, however.  Here's the dealers' card."  Ann put the last of her bags in the cargo area, carefully placed the sweet williams in the passenger seat, and drove off, passing Jennifer Reed, who lived at Nine Compass Place just coming to market.  

*

            As Ann put the vase of sweet williams on the table, Taz came down the stairs.  

            "Ah," the long said,  "vatrouchki.  Excellent.  Demons yesterday, vatrouchki today.  I'll miss this when I move to the dorm.  Dorm food sucks."

            "It's all part of the current university experience."

            "Actually, that's a constant, I think.  The beer at Wittenberg was great, but I hated the food in Paris."

            "Which time?"

            "Both.  Well, more last century than the first time."

            "You complained about the food but you also complained about how small the portions were.  I thought tea, with the vatrouchki,"  Ann smiled.  

            "Fine.  Jingwu..."  Taz began.

            The house phone appeared on the table and chimed.  Ann smiled at her foster son and answered it, touching the large crystal, which cleared at once.

            "You wanted to talk?"  Nancy Polias asked.

            "Something I heard last night."

            "Come in, then."

            "Nancy,"  Ann told Taz.  "I won't be long."  She ported into the offices of Coronis and Polias.

            "Have you heard anything about why they might be annoyed with me?"  Ann asked.  She didn't bother specifying who might be annoyed with her.

            "Beyond the usual?"  Nancy didn't need any clarification.

            "Apparently.  Also, I'm being watched.  At least I was."

            "Beyond the usual?"  Nancy repeated.

            "Yes."

            "I will make some quiet inquiries,"  the lawyer said.  

            Ann ported home to discover Taz had gone out.  He had left her the last vatrouchki.

*

            The number of magical disruptions Ann dealt with varied according to several cycles:  the lunar cycle  was one, the planetary year was another, and since Ann's task was focused on human magic, the human calendar was a third.  A full or new moon on a Friday or Saturday night coinciding with a solstice or a human anniversary garnered the greatest number of hits, while Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with any phase of the moon other than full or new were generally the quietest.

            Ann arrived home from her noon patrol after 5:00.  There were always more hits on her assignment board on the weekends.   Whether that was due to an increasing number of attempts at magical processes (simply because more people had more free time) or due to a slacking off of attention (since it was the weekend) with more screw-ups as the result, Ann couldn't tell and didn't think it mattered.  She did know the number would probably peak tomorrow morning and drop into the single digits by Monday afternoon.  She stripped off her clothes and walked into her shower.

            Walking out on to her bedroom deck afterwards, she found Nancy Polias sitting at the small table, watching the changing light and shadows.

            "Nancy, good evening.  Wine?"

            "Yes, please.  I had tea with Chiyou and Huangdi."

            Ann produced glasses and a bottle of Hecker Pass Winery 1998 Zinfandel and poured for the lawyer.  "Ah, how are they?"

            "This is very pleasant.  One of yours?"

            "Local.  I came across the place last spring,"  Ann said.  

            "Well,"  Nancy said.  "They seemed a little abstracted, although it's always hard to tell with all the ceremonial posturing that attends having tea with them.  I apologized for troubling them, they apologized for receiving me in a hovel.  Eventually, they offered me tea.  I presented the almond lace cookies and the mincemeat tarts.  That took two hours."  Nancy sipped her wine.  "After tea, they talked.  I think the subject was bookstores."

            "Bookstores?"  Ann asked.

            "I think so,"  Nancy said.  "Have you noticed anything unusual to do with bookstores-bookstores that are owned and patronized by humans, that is-recently?"

            "I haven't been in a bookstore in several weeks.  I've been buying a number of specialty books, yes, but Meri ordered them for me."

            "Did you do anything unusual?  When you were last in a bookstore, that is?"

            "Not unusual, exactly.  I did expound at some length on the folly of perfection binding,"  Ann admitted.  "But that's not unusual.  I have done so before and undoubtedly will do so again.  It's one of the silli..."

            "You didn't set the shop on fire, by any chance?"

            "No."

            "Any unusual fires?"  Nancy asked.

            "None that I've noticed."

            "And your board?"

            "Hasn't shown any fires,"  Ann said.  "Or signaled any magic occurring in bookstores."

            "I don't know any more,"  Nancy said.  "You've been remarkably restrained in your dealings with the others.  So far."

            "Don't louse it up?"

            "Inelegant, but apt.  Oh, and they know nothing about any increased surveillance."



            That was all very interesting.  Ann was always conscious of the delicate balance she maintained.  So far.  She smiled as her thoughts echoed Nancy's comment.  

            She sipped her wine and watched the night grow.  Fires.  Bookstores.  She wandered down to the office and called Dave, over in Berkeley.

            "Other Change of Hobbit."

            "This is Ann Grove.  Got a minute?"

*

            Ann picked out some books for Julia while Dave was on the phone.  She greeted the shop cat, Shelob, who allowed her to scratch its ears before slipping away on some feline errand.  Eventually, Dave produced a list.

*

            "Hey, Ann,"  the night manager at the Kearny Agency said.

            "Hi, Roberta,"  Ann said.  "Is Alice in?"

            "Yes."

            "Excellent."



            "I need to know about fires."

            "Fires in general?"  Alice asked.

            "Specific fires,"  Ann said.

            "Which specific fires?"  

            "Let's start with these,"  Ann said, handing Alice Dave's list.

            Alice read it, then:  "Time frame?  and how are these ranked?"

            "I don't know about the time frame and the first six came from the first phone call, the seventh from the second call and the eighth from the last."

            "Why do you think these are special?"

            "They may be arson."

            "There's a lot of arson in the Bay Area," Alice said.  "It works out to 2 or 3 fires a day."

            "These are bookstore fires,"  Ann offered.

            "Are these all?  Are they open?  Have they been solved or not?"

            "I think those are things I need to know."

            "Do they have the same MO?  The same insurance company?"

            "I don't know."

            "Let's go see Vikran."



            Vikran looked like an intelligent cherub.  Slightly plump, round faced, rose-lipped, with tousled curly black hair, he listened as Ann, with many clarifications from Alice, explained what she needed.  After Ann stopped, he frowned at her for a long moment, then moved over to the computer and sat down, all in silence.

            Ann glanced at Alice, who nodded at her.  "It's fine.  Come on,"  she said, heading out the door.

            In the break room, she offered coffee.

            Ann shook her head.  "No, thanks."

            "We may have tea around somewhere.  What exactly are you looking for?"

            "I'll have some water.  I don't know yet.  With any luck, Vikran will spot an anomaly or even a singularity,"  Ann said.

            "That would be nice."

            Ann nodded.  "Tell me the basics."

            "Starting where?  Motives or means?"

            "Means.  I have no idea what the motive is, and, in fact, motive may not matter.  I may be interested in the means, so let's start there."

            "Since we won't get anywhere if we don't start somewhere,"  Alice agreed.  "Physical means often include accelerants..."



            "Now,"  Vikran said,  "I've accessed 9Cs, that's not a shoe size, it's the Nine County Co-ordinated Crime Computer.  I omitted everything that wasn't arson, everything that's already solved, everything that has an obvious, well, obviously human, motive even if it can't be proven,  and everything that isn't a bookstore."

            Ann nodded.

            Apparently Vikran had only two modes of conversation:  either extremely taciturn or overly verbose:  "Now ordinarily I would list the data according to time and also according to location-I wrote my own program which ranks distance from this office, which makes coordinating travel...."

            "Don't worry about that, Vikran,"  Alice said.  "Just give us the results."

            "Sure, OK.  I just hope you won't be disappointed.  What's left is the California Noir fire and the one at The Well Read Jabberwock.  You can't do much with two data."

            "No,"  Ann agreed,  "you can't."

            "There are about three arson fires a day.  Now, the data filing lags, which is to be expected, but we'll know when the next bookstore fire gets reported."  Vikran fell silent and smiled wordlessly at Ann.

            "Thank you,"  Ann said.

            "Thanks, Vikran,"  Alice said.

            Vikran nodded silently, and Alice opened the door for Ann.  



            In Alice's office, Ann said:  "Are you free to help me tonight?  California Noir burned ten days ago and I don't want to wait any longer to look at it."

            "I don't know what we could find now,"  Alice said,  "but sure, I'm available."

            "I have litter patrol,"  Ann said.  "After that, we'll go look around."

{}{}{}{}{}

            In San José, Sly Corbin walked into the crowded homicide department.  Her desk, left undefended for only three days, had already been covered with stacks of papers.

            "Hey, Sly, you're back early.  Everything OK?"

            "My mother invited her best friend, and her best friend's visiting nephew, over for barbecue.  I left early. The lieutenant in?"

            "Yep."

*

            "Get out of here, Corbin,"  Lieutenant Martinez said.

            "I'm back, I'm bored."

            "I am not a cruise director.  You're scheduled for two weeks vacation.  Go home."

            "I won't get in the way.  I'll just tidy up some limboed cases."

            Martinez frowned at her.  On one hand she was tenacious.  On the other hand she was very tenacious.  Finally he grunted.  "OK.  You said it:  don't get in the way.  Chang's busy on a high-profile double death, don't bother him."

            "Right,"  Sly said.  She returned to her desk, slipped the bottom five files out from under the pile, got a cup of coffee and began to read.  The third file was the bodies in the book warehouse that she had worked last month.  Loose ends were so annoying, she thought.

            The security guard, Walter Sheppard, had had no personal enemies, according to a couple of his friends and several of his acquaintances.  Which went along with the first theory all the investigators on the scene had:  Sheppard had been killed by intruders during a robbery or other invasion.  He had shot one of them,  and the other, his killer, had escaped.  No murder weapon had been found.  No other trace of the killer had been found.  

            She turned to the other body, the first intruder, and read over her own notes:  an interview with the clerk at the car rental, which wasn't that helpful.  He couldn't find the paperwork for the car and hadn't seen the driver, since he worked days.

            There was a transcript of her interview with the other clerk, the one who had been on duty that night and who had rented the car.  This second clerk couldn't remember anything about the body and had not rented a car to two men.  He had known where the paperwork was.  The paperwork was the most helpful of all, giving the body's name, Francisco Naoko Guzman; place of residence, Lima, Peru; and Guzman's passport number and international driver license number.  

             Airlines had been contacted.  Guzman had traveled alone.  For some reason, he had switched planes in Los Angeles.  The stewards of both planes couldn't remember him.

            The Peruvian embassy had been contacted.  Eventually, the embassy had forwarded their answer from Lima.  The hard copy letter, in Peruvian Spanish( which had been translated by the official SJPD translator, DV, complete with footnotes and brief digressions into local idioms), included a copy of the passport photograph and fingerprints, which established that the body was Guzman.  The translation continued, saying Guzman was a librarian at the University of Lima, and that they, the Lima Homicide Squad, had no idea what, beyond Guzman's stated purpose of travel, he had been doing in California.  The signatory, Sr. E. Rodriques, offered to the police department of San Jose his most sincere, refined and respectful sentiments.*  (*Polite formula only, don't take it seriously.  DV.)

            Hmm.  Librarian.  Warehouse full of books.  Hmm.  

            There was a report from the lab:  The local map, supplied with the rental car, had a dot, apparently on El Camino Real.   The ink on the dot was compatible with the ink in a pen also found in the car.  The finger  prints on the inside of the map and on the pen were Guzman's.  The model number of the pen was...  The CSI techs were sometimes helpful, always thorough, and frequently a little strange.  

            Sly decided to look into the dot on the map. However, since she was still officially on vacation, she took time to have a late lunch before driving out to El Camino Real.  

            Near the area of the dot, she stopped and inspected the options.

            Well,  Sly thought.  A used car lot, a gas station, a breakfast place.  She thought none of those likely.  That left the motel.

            Highway Hacienda.  It had flaking stucco, an empty swimming pool, and shaggy palm trees.  Right.

*

            "Last month?  Come on, that's..."  The motel manager was unenthusiastic.

            Sly was patient:  "That's not that long ago.  Let me talk to the cleaning staff and see what they know."

            "If he never got here, what do you expect to find out?"

            "Oh, depends."

*

            "Senora Cordenas, did anyone, that whole week in July, any one at all, have any books?  Did anyone even mention books?  Or libraries?"

            "No."  The head of the cleaning detail was unenthusiastic.  

            Sly persevered:  "Librarians?"

            "No."

            "Where there any card games here?"

            "No.  You can always tell from the cigarette burns in the carpet."

            "Did one of your cleaning crew find any books?  Anything left behind?"

            "Nothing important.  I would know.  The girls bring me anything left, and there was nothing important that night."

            "How do you remember that?"

            "That was the week we were short a woman, the whole week.  We were all over worked and we none of us found anything worth anything."  Maria Cordenas glanced at Sly who shook her head:

            "I'm not interested in any little profit sharing scam you're running.  What was left behind?"

            "Half a card, but you couldn't cheat at cards with only half a card."

            "No, you couldn't.  What was it?"

            "A face card, I think."  

            "What room?"

*

            "It was rented by Raymond Karpinsky, Vallejo.  Credit card number..."

            "Did he just drive in?"

            "No, it was reserved for that one night and pre-paid.  By e-mail, from the Anglo-Sanskrit Theological University at Vallejo."

            "Thanks,"  Sly said.  

*

            Sly arrived home to find her answering machine had been filled.  She listened to the first message, which was from her mother.  It cut off in mid-word.  The second message had been recorded three minutes after the first.  She thought it probable that the rest of the messages were also from her mother.  She left them and called the Anglo-Sanskrit Theological University at Vallejo, where she reached a recording.  Apparently the University was on break.  She pondered briefly on technological advances, which were useful when she wanted to dodge her mother and annoying when she wanted to talk to Raymond Karpinsky.  She listened to all her mother's messages, erased them, and then washed all her windows in an attempt to regain her calm.

***

            Glen Merrill compared the violet journal the Harrison's clerk offered with the set of rainbow journals, then with the violet album.  The size was right, but the color didn't match.  "Not quite,"  he decided.  "I'll need the violet album, too."

            "Very good."

            "And this gift-wrap and ribbon and the card.  No, no bag.  Everything just in this suitcase."

            "We do gift-wrap, sir, and we deliver,"  the clerk said.

            "Not to Seattle by this evening, you don't,"  Glen said.  

            "Afraid not,"  the clerk agreed.  "Sorry."

            Now, Glen thought, down to the Airporter and with any luck, the 3:00 flight to Seattle.

***

            At the Inn at San Francisco, Guiscard frowned at the notice on the door of the café-bar.  "It's not supposed to close."

            "Closed for the opening ceremonies?"   Hilarion read.

            "What ceremonies?"

            Jere shrugged.  "Let's go to the Pacific Lounge.  I guess they can do a Prado."

            "OK,"  Guiscard said.

            "I'm up to a Kremlin Colonel,"  Hilarion said.

            "Ground floor,"  Imbert told the elevator.

            The elevator shut its doors and descended.  

*

            Now the Inn's main pedestrian entry was in the long arm of the cross, situated between the banks of elevators  and the arcade of shops.  The open public areas on the ground floor was directly across the dome from the main entrance.  This, the fourth arm of the cross, contained various conference rooms and the main exhibition areas, freight elevators, the guests' private elevators( including the Clansmen's) and escalators to more public rooms on the mezzanine.



            The Convention was really two Conventions.  

            There was the scholarly meeting, with seminars, presentations of papers or demonstrations of spells by grave and serious wizards, both human and non-human.  For excitement, there was the occasional induction of a new member into a College or an Order, full of pageantry, ritual and long, long speeches by all the senior members.  All that was happening behind closed doors up on the mezzanine.  

            That was not the Convention the Scribes saw when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor.

            The Scribes saw the other Convention, the one combining a trade show, an art gallery happening, a carnival midway and an auction.  This one was staffed by hucksters with all the worst habits of telephone solicitors and auctioneers working on commissions.  

            On an elevated stage there were demonstrations of magic mirrors, miniature fireworks, magic fountains and cornucopias.  There were pens, display benches or perches, and simple cages for the herds, flocks, packs and prides of familiars.  There were booths of programmable magic garments, cups, jewelry, chairs or swords, that could pick out the true heir or the real champion or the chaste spouse, out of a group of contenders.  There were pyramids of crystal balls, with colors moving up, down and around as each ball lit briefly, changed color and lit again.  Racks of amulets rippled in mystic breezes.  Beautiful nymphs in gossamer shifts and handsome jintong bare to the waist offered passers-by samples of everything from magic monocles to winged sandals.

            The attendees were as diverse as the vendors:  Dmitri Romanov was walking from booth to booth, buying this, haggling over that, and handing his purchases off to his attendant sputthe, while Dai the Tinker (also known as and often doing business as:  Gypsy Dai, Tinker Dai and Cheery Dai) who supplied computers to Ann, Taz and Julia, was blocking the pedestrian flow while he talked about the latest remodel of the Ganesha web site with an equally intense apprentice mage.  The buyer from Everything Magic was down from Seattle, looking totally human today.  Most of her entourage were already carrying laden baskets on their heads as they followed her in a long line.



            Imbert eyed a gilt that approached the elevator and snuffled.  It jerked its head back as if its snout had been rapped.  A young swineherd followed the gilt and tapped it with his herding staff.  

            "None of them."

            "Well, we'll keep looking,"  the swineherd said.  They walked away.   

            "Yeah, well, if he's a guest, we may never get close enough to him.  There's a spell on that elevator, too,"  the young pig grumped.

            "Suppose I sell you to a guest?"  the swineherd said.  "Would that get you in?"

            "Might work,"  the gilt agreed.



            "It seems to be a party,"  Guiscard said.  

            "Or something,"  Jere said.  He was watching a nymph, who was watching him through a monocle and smiling.  

            "I'm not in the mood,"  Imbert said.  

            "Me neither,"  Hilarion agreed.

            "Uhmp.  I'll give it a look,"  Jere said and left the elevator.  

            "Up,"  Guiscard said.



            The doors opened.

            "Hey, hey, hey,"  Ethan said.  "I hear there's a party."  He shoved past the exiting Scribes.  "Down,"  he ordered the elevator.

            "How'd he know that?"  Hilarion wondered.

            "It's a talent,"  Imbert shrugged.  

            "MMORPG anyone?"  Guiscard asked.  

            "Sure."

            "Yeah."

***

            "Chasen, Wahl and Vaasiny's child is absent."

            The deputy for security must be worried, Chasen thought.  That was a complete sentence.  He glanced at the Insa couple standing beside Zuri.  

            Wahl and Vaasiny were currently staying in a very expensive suite on a very expensive floor.  They were clearly non-human, although they were bipedal, brachiate, and bilaterally symmetrical, with strange scaled scars on their faintly gray and purple skin.  He turned to Zuri.  

            "I have not seen..."  Chasen began.

            "His baby colors are very, oh, vibrant, I think it is in English,"  Vaasiny said.  "And he has not shed his first skin."

            "Which means he still has four feet and a tail,"  Wahl said.

            "Oops,"  Chasen said.

            "Where?"  Zuri asked.

            "I thought it was a pet,"  he said very softly to Zuri.

            Zuri said nothing.  

            "It was loose in the hall!  It growled at me!"

            Zuri said nothing.

            "I wrapped it in a dust sheet and took it to the kennel," Chasen whispered.

            "We'll fetch the boy from the crèche,"  Zuri told the couple.  

            Chasen's eyes widened a bit, but otherwise he did not react.  "From the crèche,"   he repeated.  "I'll do that right now."

            "No.  You, clean,"  Zuri said.

            "I'll dust,"  Chasen agreed.  On some other floor, he thought, and wheeled his cleaning cart away.

***

            Long Dianchi, also called Taz, arrived home and went looking for his guardian.  He climbed the stairs and found Alice Kearny with Jingwu in the library.  He'd hoped to find her alone.  There was no real reason for hurry, though.  His news was not good, but certainly there wasn't anything urgent either.

            The second floor of the townhouse was divided into the office on the south and the library on the north, and, in the middle of the east side of the house, a full bath and a powder room. The south-east end of the office could be converted into a guest suite via two sliding doors.

            While the public area of the house was Chinese Chippendale, the library was Chinese Craftsman.   The furniture, still graceful, was more massive than the living room's and evoked a less formal ambiance.  The walls were lined with shelves of books and tall cabinets, which held computers, various sorts of music players, and a television.  One end of the room was for serious study or work.  Under a pair of chandeliers were large and sturdy tables with upright chairs.  On a glowing Isfahan rug at the other end of the room, there was a large globe  in front of a pair of Morris chairs featuring ornate lattice work sides.  Close by was a matching asymmetric den-couch.  Floor lamps supplied individual reading light.  

            Jingwu was seated at a library table of pale quarter-sawn lizimu with a dark marble inset top.  She had  maps of some Bay Area cities in front of her and Alice looking over her shoulder.  Jingwu had her hair tied back.  Alice was wearing a dark navy pantsuit, in a dull cotton double knit.  Jingwu wore green so dark it was nearly black, in a fine wool flannel that was also non-reflective.  The clothes weren't exactly stealthy, but they were conspicuously inconspicuous.  Alerted, Taz eyed them suspiciously.  They looked up and smiled at him.

            "Now what?"  he demanded.

            "Excessively discreet communications, possibly warnings, possibly friendly, about fires at bookstores.  On the other hand, it could be part of an elaborate trap.  I'm not sure,"    Jingwu said.

            "I worry about you two,"  the long said.  "So what are you going to do?"

            Jingwu laughed.  "We're just going to take a quick look at the scene of the crime."  She stood up and stretched.   

            "Or crimes,"  Alice said, picking up a gray metal hoop from the table.  It was about the size and shape of a ping-pong paddle, but hollow in the center. The edge was about an inch and a half wide with a number of holes evenly spaced over the two-thirds of the circle opposite the handle.  Each hole was surrounded by inset glyphs in different metals.

            "Or crimes,"  Jingwu agreed.  Alice also picked up a bell jar containing something that might be either a ripe dandelion seed head or a starched angora pom-pom.   Jingwu put her hand on Alice's shoulder, and they vanished.

            Taz sighed, and went up to bed.

*

            Alice spoke the activating word, waved the hoop through the air, along the walls, the floor and at arm's length above her head, then examined the glyphs.  "OK, no accelerants.  What about magic?"

            "Well,  there's no human magic residuum.  There is something, though."

            Alice inspected the angora pom-pom, still stiff under the glass dome.  "Right.  Any point in asking what sort of something?  Because nothing is registering over here."

            "Just a minute,"  Ann said and ported out.

            Three minutes and forty-seven seconds later, she returned.

            Alice was fingering her teley charm.  Ann smiled.  "I wouldn't forget you."

            "I was a little worried,"  the detective said.  

            "I needed to be alone,"  Ann said.  "Humans can't stay quiet enough."

            "During my naming vigil I maintained stillness for..."  Alice began.

            "There's a footprint,"  Ann interrupted.  "Here and back in the first shop."

            "Oh."  Alice was silent for a minute.  "Really?"

            Ann nodded.  "It's not really a footprint, but it is present, even if it's not easily visible."

            "How do you know?"

            "Did you meet Roujin, back when Darcy was staying with us?"

            "She was one of the yunü, right?  One of the boy's baby-sitters?"

            "Yes, and when she wasn't looking after Darcy, she was investigating the portals around my home."

            "Portals plural?  How many were there?"

            "Usually only two.  Roujin went on to Hove, where there's a human portal travel industry, with a large research library.  She learned a lot.  When she came back, she and I made these,"  Ann held up a circle and an octagon, each made of crystal with beveled edges, one in each hand.  "Look over there."  She handed Alice the circle.

            Alice took it by the edge and held it in front of her.  She saw nothing different.  She glanced at Ann, who nodded.

            "That one shows active portals,"  Ann said and handed her the octagon.  "This one is more sensitive."

            Now Alice saw a palely glowing ring, still whole but very faint and irregular, slowly rotating in place as it changed and bent.  She glanced over the top.  Even knowing what she was looking for, she could not see it.  "Huh.  So what am I seeing?"  she asked.  

            "That is an eddy."  At Alice's exasperated glance, Ann grinned and continued:  "Some apportations are accompanied by a sonic boom."

            "Sloppy ones,"  Alice said.

            Ann nodded.  "And some transdimensional apports are accompanied by eddies."

            "It's not a portal?"

            "No."

            "But it is the residuum you sense?"

            "Yes."

            "So is the fire arson or not?"

            "Oh, it's arson, sort of natural arson.  Not human natural, though."  The disk vanished.  Ann took the octagon and it followed the roundel.

            "Oh.  What way's that?"

            "Mice chewing insulation off electrical wiring, or the like,"  Ann quoted back at Alice.

            "That does happen,"  Alice agreed.   "But, Ann, if it's not a natural fire, magical arson or physical or chemical arson, what is it?"

            "Natural fire, but from an unusual source."

            "Silent lightning bolt, fireball, fire breathing dragon, salamander, or weird little girl who doesn't get invited to the prom?"

            Ann nodded.  "Or your generic, all purpose, powerful demon."



            "I want the police reports, if you can get them for me,"  Ann said.  She put her hand on Alice's shoulder and moved them to Alice's office.  

            "Why?"  Alice asked.  "We just ruled out human action."

            "I may be able to detect a pattern even if the police can't.  They can openly collect data, whereas we are a little handicapped in that regard.  I'm going home for a nap.  When should I come back?"

            "Make it about 10:00.  I'll get them to you before I leave work."

            Ann nodded, then blinked out.



            Later that morning Ann returned to the Agency's office.

            "Here's what we have now,"  Alice said.  "Questions or suggestions?"

            "Not yet,"  Ann said, taking the printout Alice offered.  "I wish I had some.  I wish I had any."

            "All right,"  Alice said.  "I'm going home before Hilary starts on another rant."

            "Hilary's here?  On Sunday?  What's exercising her?"

            "We're losing our main office manager, so we're moving Roberta dayside to replace him, which means we need a replacement for her.  It's not going well.  The last applicant said 'apocalyptic' when I think he might have meant 'apocryphal', and when Hil asked if he actually meant 'revelatory' or 'eschatological', he said he didn't care for language like that.  She bounced him."

            Ann laughed and knocked on the senior partner's door.  

            Alice waved and hurried out the main door as Hilary yelled  "Come in!"

            "Good morning,"  Ann said, opening the door.  "What are you looking for?"

            "True love and a good lay.  Whichever comes first."  Hilary Kearny was a little shorter than her younger sister, with a slighter, more slender build.  She had lightly tanned skin with a few freckles, amber eyes and very short dark auburn hair.  She put down her coffee mug-royal blue with Go Bears! in gold on one side and Cal in script with an elaborate flourish on the other-and smiled at Ann.  

            "So are we all.  More practically?"

            "Office help, urgently; our manager is moving in three months, and we need a replacement trainee, now.  Also, an apprentice operative, but that's not as urgent."

            "Are you prejudiced against English majors?"

            "Not unduly,"  Hilary said.  "How recent a student?  What sort of English?"

            "Acceptable.  I can read her e-mails without wincing."

            "Does she say  'She invited him and I'?"

            Ann thought.  "I never heard her use that construction.  She has always used the objective case, even in the first person, both singular and plural, appropriately in her writing and her speech."

            "Does she find events or circumstances 'concerning'?"

            "I beg your pardon?"

            "I will quote:  'These events are very concerning.'  I think it's being used as a synonym for troubling or disturbing."

            "By whom?  No, she's never said anything like that."

            "So what's wrong with her?"  Hilary demanded.  "It must be something major."

            "She's a vampire."

            "Umm."  Hilary frowned, then asked:  "How much of a vampire, exactly?"

            "She's one of Claire's specials."

            "Which means?"

            "All she drinks is Cambells."

            "Fine.  Tell her to stop by.  What's her name?"

            "Sarah Thompson.  She'll be in town in about ten days."  

*

            After Ann left, Hilary called Claire Galen, in Seattle.  "Hi.  Are you free for a quick word?"

            "Ah, Hilary.  How are you?  How are Jillian and your father?"

            "I'm fine, they're in Vermont.  I get the idea they may settle on the East Coast, certainly for the fall color and possibly until the first real snowfall."

            "That's right, your great-aunts and all your cousins are still there, aren't they?"

            "Yes, the whole family coven.  Look, I'll be interviewing Sarah Thompson for a job at the office and I've never met her.  Ann says she's one of your specials and drinks from a can, never from a neck."

            "Well,"  Claire, settling into her lecture mode:  "That's quite true.  Without violating patient privacy or giving away the conclusion of my latest paper, I will say that if the new vampire is given her first meal from a glass or a can, a different imprinting occurs and the total range of the classic vampire syndrome never is established.  The physical difficulties are for the most part still present, but the violent mental changes are not."  

            "Interesting.  Thanks."  

            "However, the new vampire is non-reactive to holy water in about fifty percent of cas...."

            "Can you send me a reprint?"  Hilary asked, but Claire talked on:  

            "...and with no correlation with the subject's original religion, if any.  That led me to postulate..."

            Damn, Hilary thought.  She was fond of Claire, but for her it was just another work day.  It took her twenty minutes to ring off without hurting the healer's feelings.

***

            Ann made some arrangements, did her noon litter patrol, then picked up Julia.  They appeared by the windmills at the west end of Golden Gate Park.

            "Do they work?"  Julia asked.

            "Not everyday,"  Ann said.  "In the Spring there are beds of tulips, here and there and over there and down that way-there are a lot of tulips, it manages to be very colorful and also very monotonous-and the windmills operate then."

            "I meant with real water?"

            "Yes, with real water.  We have some choices,"  Ann said.  "We can cross the Great Highway, walk north to Cliff House, and have dinner; we can walk south to the car and have a picnic, or we can walk east through the park to the Japanese Tea Garden and discuss where we'll have dinner."

            "Let's go up,"  Julia said, waving north, where Cliff House sat on Sutro Heights.

            On the beach, Ann removed her shoes and walked in the shallow waves.  After a moment, Julia did the same.  They walked in silence for a while, then, Julia said,  "Uh, Ann?"

            "Yes?"

            "Can I be taller?  Am I taller?  All of a sudden, I mean?"

            That wasn't what Ann had expected, but she answered readily:  "Yes.  Your diet is much better and you're catching up with your genetic optimum."

            "Fast?  I mean really fast.  Can I be taller in the morning?"

            "At your age, growth spurts are normal.  A teenager can wake up a quarter inch taller than when she went to bed."

            "The girls at school say it's weird."

            "Your own growth spurts are more noticeable than theirs are, but that's because you were semi-starved for the last several years.  Now, you're having them more frequently and with a greater increase in height each spurt than most girls experience.  As I said, you're catching up."

            "Oh.  So I'm really just getting normal?"

            "Yes."

            "OK."

            "Are your clothes all right?"

            "I had to sew!"  Julia announced.  "I had to re-hem a pair of pants.  And it sounds like it can happen again any time."

            "For the next couple of years, yes, it can.  Sewing doesn't do you any real harm, you know."

            "That's what Martin said."

***

            Taz walked through one of the smaller side arches in the covered walkways around the Main Quad.  Ahead of him he could see the Burgers of Calais, slightly larger than life-size in bronze, but no humans.  He moved to his left, putting the wall of the arcade between him and anyone who might be behind him.  Unobserved by human eyes, he ported to the house on Russian Hill.

            Jingwu was on the deck outside the dinning room.  She was at a small table, drinking a local wine and reading a stack of loose pages.  "Good evening,"  she said.  She jigged the stack of papers together and put it aside.  "You're back early. How was your day?"

            "Shopping, surfing, and a party, a picnic, on campus,"  Taz said, taking the chair beside her.  

            "Shopping for what?"  She poured wine into another glass and passed it to him.  

            "Some clothes.  Jeans, and a couple of jackets.  The closet is a little formal and the campus mostly isn't."

            "Just hang them up or put them on the shelves.  After a while it will take the hint."

            "And I wanted a case for my notebook, and a backpack.  Everybody has one."

            She nodded.  "And the party on campus?"

            "Student mixer.  I met my roommate.  I think it was to see if we can stand each other or if we need to be re-shuffled.  I guess we'll do."  Taz thought that over, and added:  "He's a freshman, Richard Larsen, from Seattle.  A normal human, as far as I can tell."  Now that he had her attention and they were private, he wondered how best to begin his news.

            "Sarah Thompson is coming to stay for a while,"  Jingwu said.  "She intends to interview for an office job with Hilary and Alice.  If she gets it, I was wondering if you would let her live at the condo."

            Taz was silent, considering, then:  "Sure.  It doesn't look as if  'William Parker' will be using it any time soon."

            "Oh?"

            "I checked down south,"  he said.  "Late last month, once I was sort of settled again.  He left towards the end of May, and hasn't been seen since."  He looked over at her.  "He left anything we could track:  Keys, phone, suitcases.  He even left the Viper, and you know he loved that car."

            "Um,"  Jingwu said.  She looked at her wine, then regarded him seriously:  "The presence of artifacts we gave him is not a guarantee of his continued existence on this plane.  I would wager that anything we make would remain even if he had been carrying them when he was staked."

            "He left everything with a friend, then vanished."

            "So his departure was voluntary."    

            "Yeah, I think so.  He's gone, anyway; so, sure, Sarah can have the place."

            "Thank you.  I was thinking that the private door into the Muni station from the parking garage will be useful for her."

            "What about the other end?"  Taz asked.

            "There's a station exit on the north side of the Agency's building.  The stairs and the stretch of sidewalk she'll have to cross aren't in direct sunlight except at noon in high summer, when I doubt she'll be walking there."

            "I wonder where he went?"  Taz reverted to the question that really interested him.  "And why?"

            "Something personal, I would guess, or possibly secret.  If it's secret, it may be secret from other people, as well as from us.  Also, it may not be totally safe."

            "Ah."  Taz thought about that for a moment.  "I shouldn't look for him?"

            "Apparently he doesn't want us to find him."

            "If we meet by accident, possibly I shouldn't know him?"

            "I would guess not; unless, of course, he gives you the secret handshake,"  Jingwu said gravely.

            Taz smiled.

             "If he's still incarnate we'll probably run into him here, eventually, and if he's not, we'll  meet him elsewhere, even if that takes a little longer.  That's just as true now as it was last year."

            "And it's not any less true just because I know he's missing,"  Taz said.  "I do realize that.  It's only... I had just seen the school calendar.  I get nearly ten days off for Thanksgiving vacation and I'd been thinking about getting together with him, for some fun and relaxation."

            "Ah,"  Jingwu said, as if she were suddenly enlightened.  "Vacation excesses, in groups.  Typical student behavior.  I see."

            "Indoors, since he can't go to the beach.  I thought Vegas:  Girls and gambling.  Circuses and fine dining."

            "Stand up comics,"  she said dryly.

            "They're avoidable."

            "You and some friends could go watch football,"  she said.  "I was given four tickets for the game, probably because of that scholarship, I would guess.  If we don't use them, I should turn them in or give them away."

            "What game?"

            "Football, with the University of California at Berkeley.  The 105th Annual Contest, held over in Berkeley this year.  The Ax?  The Big Game?  Complete with pep rallies, mascot theft, band interference and flashcard sabotage."

            "Oh, that."

            "Think about it."

*

            When Taz left her, darkness had fallen.  Ann gathered the stack of paper and her wine, then moved up to her library.   She settled at a table and continued to read the stolen police reports on the fires at the Well Read Jabberwock and California Noir.  

            The reports were less helpful than she had hoped.  Yes, there were similarities, but they seemed erratic.  Ten years ago, a clerk moved from Jabberwock to Noir.  So?  They were both independent bookstores.  Was that important?   Each store had a variety of wholesalers.  Four of them were the same.  Did that matter?  Should she see if she could get a complete inventory from each of them?  Since Jabberwock specialized in children's books and Noir in Bay Area crime authors, would there be any overlap?   She mused for a moment on the idea of a lost children's book by Dashiell Hammett.  Amusing, but probably not helpful.  She finished the reports, checked her map, and departed on her evening litter patrol.

{}{}{}{}{}

            The familiar exertions of house cleaning had left Silvia Corbin's mind free to think.  After washing the breakfast dishes, she went off to work and found her way down to Translation Services.

            The door read Dr. Donald Vance.  Sly knocked and went in.  

             Behind the desk was a skinny male, with short untidy dark brown hair, huge-lensed glasses and a large nose over a small mouth.  He had a prominent adam's apple and wore a short sleeved shirt.  As he rose to his feet, Sly saw he was wearing pleated tropical worsted slacks.

            "Dr. Vance?"

            "Call me Naldo."

            "Hi.  I'm Sly Corbin from upstairs.  I'm working the Guzman murder, the librarian from Peru."

            "Is there a question about the translation?"

            "No, no.  I need help with an English to Spanish letter to our contact down there."

            "Sure.  What do you want to say?"

            "I want to know if anyone down there knows why Guzman was going to visit someone from the Anglo-Sanskrit Theological University at Vallejo."

            "OK."

            "And any other reason why he was here.  And were there any thefts or other crimes or anything unusual happening in the library down there.  And any thing else they can tell me."

            "OK.  Come back in an hour to check the English."

            "It takes that long?"

            "First I write it, then I translate it, then I translate it back.  Prep avoids rep."

            "Say again?"

            "Preparation avoids repetition.  Also misunderstanding, but that doesn't rhyme.  It's also known as do it right the first time, which doesn't rhyme at all."

            "OK.  I'll be back in an hour."

*

            "That's pretty much what I wanted to say,"  Sly agreed.

            "It helps that it's jargon to jargon,"  Naldo said.  "Literary translations are art, but work related communications are just good dictionaries and effort.  Now, the way things are working out Sr. Esteban Rodriques may not get this before 7:00 our time."

            "It's not ten AM yet."

            "Different time zone, different customs.  Lots of people go home for lunch.  It may be that Esteban works a weird schedule or eats at his desk and goes home early or usually investigates in the afternoon, or needs to collect your answers-I don't need to tell you that there are a lot of variables in any investigation,"  Naldo explained.  "Possibly he'll go back to work tonight.  We can't know until it happens.  We could get an answer before lunch or not until tomorrow afternoon.  In any case, I'll send it off to you as soon as I translate it.  That is, if you have email?"  

            "Yes; and thank you,"  Sly said.

***

            "Now a picture for the yellow album,"  Ashley Hartley announced, pointing the camera at her uncle again.

            "And which one is that?"  Glen asked.

            "Relatives."

            "The green one is?"

            "Celebrations.  They're really nice.  Thank you."

*

            "Have a drink,"  Glen Merrill's sister said.  "Everyone's gone home."

            "They're very nice girls,"  Glen said.  He had retreated to the library and closed the doors.  His sister had tracked him down with a tray of nightcaps.

            "They are,"  Marcia Hartley agreed.  "Try this brandy.  Michael just bought a case."

            "It's just that there were a lot of them.  Wonderful,"  Glen said, sipping.

            "A dinner party for 16, for Ashley's sixteenth birthday,"  Marcia said with great satisfaction.  "The first dinner party for the younger set."

            "And you chose excellent caterers."

            "Yes, I've used them before."

            "What are you going to do for her twenty-first?"  

            "First comes her eighteenth,"  Marcia said.  "I start planning that tomorrow, after I take you to the airport."

***

            At the Inn at San Francisco, Ethan was still at the party.  He was talking to some vendors:

            "Ethan Singleton, because I'm the only important Ethan."

            "Sign here,"  the sale representative said, offering a contract, a pen and a small knife.  "Excellent,"  he said, inspecting Ethan's signature in three versions of X and a bloody fingerprint.  "We'll deliver later today or maybe tomorrow."

            "So where are the new girls?"  Ethan asked.

            "Through this door,"  the sales rep said.



            "How did you get him to buy a gross?"  

            "I don't think he knows how many that is.  I pointed out that it was the only box left.  Obviously, it was meant for him,"  the sales rep said.

            "Is it the only box left?" the junior sales representative said.

            "Of course not."

            "I wonder what he'll do with them?"

            "No idea."

***

            After the fiasco of the missing child, Chasen was doing time in the kennel.  He began clearing the food dishes, preparing to mop the floor.

            "Hey, you,"  a small pig in the next cage said.  "I'm done eating."

            Chasen read the care and feeding card on the front of the stall.  He eyed the piglet.  "You got crevettes sautées aux whisky for lunch?"  He'd had meat-loaf.  He hadn't liked it.

            "Flambées,"  the gilt said.  

            "How was it?"  Chasen said.

            "Excellent.  I thoroughly enjoyed them."

            "I guess,"  Chasen said, eyeing the pieces of shrimp shell scattered all over the floor.

            "You're new, aren't you?  Now I get my trotters and dewlaps wiped and then I'm taken back up to my room on the 17th floor."

            "What the hell are trotters?"

            "My front feet."

            "All right, but after I mop."

            "They're dirty now,"  the piglet said.

            "After mopping."  Chasen insisted.

*

            "Come on, I'm going to be late,"  the pig said.  She was dancing in front of the service elevator.

            "For what?"  Chasen asked.

            "The four of us play canasta."

            "Not poker?  Well, since they need a foursome, they can't start without you,"  the mercenary said, letting the pig enter first and following it in.  "Seventeen,"  he told the elevator.

            The elevator hesitated, then the doors closed and it went up.

            The little pig smiled.

            The doors opened, and the piglet exited.

            "Wait a minute,"  Chasen said.  

            The piglet snuffled the air, then said,  "I know my way,"  and marched off, chuckling quietly.

            Chasen shrugged, said  "down,"  to the elevator, and descended.  

***

            Ann had an appointment with  Dr. Curtis Gordon, principal of the Woodside Academy.

            There were a few exceptions to her immortal unhurried view point.  Immortals could part and meet easily after millennia or lay plans that would take a century or more to mature; at least adult immortals could.  "Too soon" was not a concept juveniles understood.  Children, human children or immortal children, didn't believe in  "just a minute" or "it's not ready yet".  When they wanted something, they wanted it now.  

             On the other hand, especially with children or soft-cooked eggs, being too unhurried could result in an eighteen year-old lifer with three strikes or an exploded very hard-boiled egg with its green, sulfurous, yolk spattered on the kitchen ceiling.  Neither result was especially desirable and at least one of them entailed a fair amount of clean-up.

            Today, it was time to remind Logan Powell Turner she had her eye on him.

***

            Logan Powell Turner ignored the faint trill from his teacher's desk.  

            His math teacher touched his computer and frowned at the screen.  "Pol, the Head wants to see you."

            "Why?"

            "He didn't say.  Go.  Leave the problem set.  Take your books."

            "I'm not done."

            "I'll make allowances.  Go."

            Pol zipped his back-pack and slouched out the door.  He wondered what the Head wanted and why Dr. Gordon insisted on being called the Head.  Probably the same reason he wore tweeds, Pol decided.  With leather patches, yet.  At least with the new No Smoking Anywhere On Campus policy, the student body was spared the smell of the pipe Gordon used to smoke.  And the gross noises it made.  

            He hadn't pulled anything recently and there had not been the nearly inaudible rustle of texting that accompanied unannounced searches, not that he was stupid enough to keep anything in his school locker. He hadn't stood anyone up for the Fall Frolic, hell, he hadn't even gone to the Fall Frolic, so he wasn't being sued by a vindictive and disappointed date like poor Austin Blair.  

            As for the matter he privately called 'The Spring Blow-Up', nothing had really happened, except for his heart breaking, and no one knew about that.  He had smoothed things over, and, apparently, things were staying smoothed.  His parents and the police had accepted his story that the Boxster must have been stolen, and ended up somehow in San Francisco.  The car had been gone when he came out of the, uh, mumble, liquor store, and he had no idea how what happened had happened...  The last part was actually true.

            How had Ann Grove immobilized him?  How had she sent him away?  How did he know her name?  How did he know how to find her?  How had she known about the Green Door Liquor Barn?  He had found himself in the Vodka aisle, a familiar and often frequented place.  He made up a cover story that accommodated the facts he had known:  He had left his keys in the car and he hadn't seen anyone take it.  He added that he was sorry about the vodka, and, anyway, everyone bought it.  

            There had been some minor difficulties:  The Green Door was shut down, which was an inconvenience to all his peers at school who had become very annoyed with him when his part in the affair had been known.  He lost his fake ID and he hadn't been able to get a new one.  He had been sent to a summer penitentiary where he had been subjected to physical and mental torture; and his parents had stopped his allowance and all his driving privileges.  Actually, being driven to and from school and anywhere else he needed to go was not so bad at this moment, since it meant there were no traffic cops after him.

            He had no idea why he'd been called to the Head's office.

            Simple bad news wasn't likely.  Not here, not from the Head.  His mother was in Milan or maybe Rome.  Pol forgot where exactly she was, but she was watching skinny models with funny hair in ugly clothes on runways somewhere.  His father was in either Afghanistan or Jakarta, unless by now he had moved to the job in Singapore.  News from his parents as well as news about his parents usually came from the Housekeeper, the Secretary or the Lawyer.  The Gardner/Chauffeur never heard from his parents directly and the Personal Assistant and the Wardrobe Manager weren't around at the moment since they traveled with his father and mother respectively.

            There was a small (all right, a vanishingly small, but still maybe real) possibility that one of his parents had made a lightning visit back to San Francisco and had nothing better to do this afternoon than visit him.  Which, he decided, might be nice.  Maybe.



            "You wanted to see me, Dr. Gordon?"

            "Ah,"  the Head said,  "here's Turner now.  Come in, Logan."  Naturally, Logan Powell Turner thought, the Head had never realized he'd always used his middle name.  All right, he still spelled it the way his Swedish au pair had taught him, which had given him a certain Continental cachet in kindergarten and primary school, but by now he was just used to it.

            Pol walked in and stopped in surprise.  

            There was no doubt at all that it was the same woman he had met in the spring, even though this time she wasn't dripping wet.  Ann Grove wore the same black pantsuit and green blouse and her hair was long and smooth down her back, fastened with a simple silver clip at her neck.

            She smiled at him.

            "Turner, Miss Grove was just saying she would be joining you for Parents' Day next week, since your mother and father are away."

            "Like hell!"  he started to say, and found he couldn't say anything.

            She rose, thanked Gordon, and shook his hand.  Her voice was the same, yet different:  deep and calm, with a hint of laughter this time.  The Head's mouth was open in a silly smile.  Logan made sure his own mouth was closed.  The woman turned to him:

            "Walk me to my car, Logan, and you can tell me if you prefer chicken or salmon for the picnic."  She turned and walked out of the office, leaving Dr. Gordon smiling after her.  

            Pol stood still, trying to protest, to sit down, to yell something.

            "Come along,"  Ann Grove said from the doorway, and he found himself following her.



            She made no attempt to talk to him until they were outside in the visitors' parking lot.  "Did you think I'd forgotten about you?"  she asked.

            Turner found he could speak again:  "Are you kidnapping me?"

            "Whatever for?"  She glanced over her shoulder and kept walking.

            He followed.  It was not something he had any choice about.  "Money."

            "Logan!  How disappointingly unimaginative.  No, I am not kidnapping you.  I'm here today so you won't panic all over the place next week and so you can tell me whether you prefer salmon or chicken.  I'm coming to Parents' Day next week and I'm bringing a picnic, with, as the Head said, only discreet alcohol.  Which I gather means none for you.  Too bad, I make good cider."

            "Why are you here?"

            She leaned back against her car and smiled.  "Because you are an irresponsible juvenile with some money and some power, and you may cause trouble.  I don't like trouble."

            He was able to stop walking.  "That's not any sort of answer.  Why are you really here?"

            "That will become obvious.  Now, do you want me to bring chicken or salmon?"

            "I don't want you here at all!"

            "You don't get to make that choice.  By your own actions, you've lost much of your freedom of choice.  You've abused your autonomy and as a consequence, your freedom has been curtailed.  Not as much as it would have been if you were arrested for attempted murder, of course, but then any limitation is annoying."

            "I'll tell the Head you're trying to kidnap me!"

            Ann Grove smiled again, and, straightening up, reached out.  

            He'd grown more than an inch since last spring and while she was still taller than he was, she didn't have to look as far down to meet his eyes as she had last April.  Once again, he found he could not avoid her touch.  

            She put the tip of one long finger on his forehead.  "Sorry, Logan, but you can't tell lies about me.  You can tell anyone you like the truth about me, as far as you know it, but you can't make up any stories.  Chicken or salmon?  No?  Then you'll eat what I bring or go hungry."

            He opened his mouth, then shut it.  She nodded.  He stepped back from her.  

            "It may relieve your mind to know that your parents know I'm here.  They even think it might be a good idea.  See you next week.  Oh, and don't cut school that day or I'll fetch you."

            She got in the car, which Turner finally noticed was a Jaguar Racing Green XKR convertible, with dove leather seats, waved cheerfully, and drove away.  

*

            Ann left the Jag with Tom Rivera and ported home from his garage in time to receive her litter patrol assignments.  There were only a few, and, after the last (a mis-spell designed to bring back a wayward lover had instead created a loop in a one-way traffic grid that kept the caster's ex-lover driving in circles from morning rush hour until just after 2:00 PM, when Ann interrupted it) she looked around.  She was near the coast, south of San Francisco, between San Gregorio and Santa Cruz.  She had a number of things to think over and she decided to walk home, at least part way.   

            She was in one of the rougher stretches of the Santa Cruz mountains where sunny rocky ridges separated cool fog-haunted valleys.  Humans had acted to safeguard some of the original beauty of the land.  The boundaries of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Cascade Ranch State Park, Butano State Park, Pescadaro County Park and Portola State Park were within a ten mile circle of each other.

            She followed the irregular jogs of Big Basin-Redwoods State Park North in a east-by-north-east direction, first down into the central valley and eventually up towards the north ridge.  She made poor time, but then, she was in no hurry.  The north ridge fell away abruptly into a steep and narrow gully, complete with a small stream and riparian forest.  She descended, with slips and skids but no falls; crossed the seasonally low stream and started up.  She headed for Portola State Park, situated on the ridge after next.

            Off to the east, she could see the backs of a few new houses on the recently denuded hills.  She thought the owners would have trouble long before the next earthquake or wild fire.  It was already September, the winter rains were coming, and nothing had been planted to keep the disturbed soil in place.  Well, at least the buyers and inhabitants could observe erosion in action, which would be instructive.  Nature was endlessly patient and didn't mind repeating a lesson time after time, until humans understood it.

            On her left, to the south and west, was fenced land, a mix of rocky outcrops and logged terraces.  The old coastal redwood stumps were moldering, with maturing regrowth in rings around them.  She passed an abandoned cabin, a sort of bastard stone, stucco and half-timbered construction as if it were  which looked as if it might be classified as Rustic Hacienda Tudor, and used its rutted driveway to gain the penultimate crest.  She noticed a For Sale or Lease sign where the driveway met a somewhat larger rutted dirt road that ran along the crest.  She used the road for a short time, then abandoned it when it turned east.

            She walked north, her current problems very much in mind.

            If she was correct in her suspicions regarding the probable arsonist, investigating the bookstore fires would be delicate.  

            Her soi-disant controllers eyed askance any contact between her and anyone powerful, friend or enemy.  

            There were three major factions represented on her committee, each with its own viewpoint and personal version of their mutual history.  There were also additional tensions within each faction.  Since she had declared herself non-partisan, all the factions had joined to constrain her.  For good reasons, at least they seemed so at the time, she had protested only verbally.  She was not sure she would stop at words again.

            Balancing that many competing demands, sometimes overt but often unspoken, was time consuming.  Ann sighed.  The only position worse than her own was the President's.  Poor Chiyou and Huangdi.

            Well, delicate was not impossible.  She knew where, in general, and she had an idea how, and therefore who, in general.  She didn't know when or why, but she could work around the first and if she was successful, she would discover the other.   What she did next would depend on who exactly she found.

            Let's do this, Ann thought.  She checked for human witnesses, found none around, and ported off to Dai's workshop.

*

            "Hi."

            Dai looked up.  His seal-dark hair was longer than usual, and he hadn't shaved recently.   His workshop was an electronic lab today.  He had been bent over a three dimensional web of fine lines floating above his workbench.  When he looked away from it, it disappeared.  "Hi, how's the little girl like her computer?"

            "She complains her guardian likes it too much."

            "Get him one."

            "An excellent idea.  Can you set one up for him?"

            "Sure."

            "Do you need anything?  Anything I can do for you?" Ann asked

            "We're fine.  Oh, wait.  Eventually, I'll need some crystals."

            "Of course.  Give me a drawing and specifications.  Balancing accounts is not why I'm here, however,"  Ann said.  "I came about my assignment board."

            "Your board giving you trouble?  It shouldn't!"

            "There have been some things which make me wonder."

            "Oh?"

            "Some Orcas were having problems with loose magic and I didn't even know about it until one of them showed up to complain in person.  That can't be what the Committee intended."

            "Tell me about that,"  Dai said.

            Ann told him about the ocean dumping of magic ingredients and what had resulted from that.

            "I want to see the board,"  Dai said.  

            Dai picked up a tool kit, then glanced around as if deciding what else to take.  Seeing the way his eyes touched nearly everything in the workroom, Ann took his hand and moved them to her living room.  She left him to inspect the map behind the painting while she made tea and set out cups and a plate of tiny quiches in several varieties.  She carried the tray out to the deck where, a short time later, Dai joined her.

            "There's nothing wrong with your board,"  he said.  

            "Would you care for tea?  This is Jade Breath."   Ann poured a clear, pale green tea into an eggshell cup.  As she handed it to Dai, she said,  "I have always assumed it has works perfectly."

            "Of course it does."

            "I'm not so sure about its programming, specifically how it determines what is an incident."

            "Yeah, it's maybe a little too specialized.  What you told me, that wouldn't register.  That wasn't human magic."

            Ann nodded.  "Apparently, I am also responsible for certain instances of non-human magic."

            "And they didn't tell you?  Typical.  Well, you're going to need a different board for that."  

            "Can I adapt my board to display non-human magic?"

            "Bad idea.  Don't even try.  It would be simpler just to make a new one."

            "Suppose I do make a new one?"

            "Don't do it here,"  Dai said.  "Two boards that close can heterodyne with each other, explosively."

            "All right.  What sort of detectors are involved?"

            "Sort of a mix.  Your committee screwed that up, too."

            "How?"

            "They all insist any magic involving half of them is totally different from any magic involving the other half."

            "It's not."

            "You know that and I know that.  They believe otherwise.  What this means is that each side has set up independent monitors, some of them side by side and all of them reporting pretty much the same events."

            "Oh."

            "Yeah.  On top of Mount Tamalpais, and Mount Livermore, which was a touchy situation that included a missile battery for a while, and Mount Hamilton, where we had to integrate the sensors into one of the buildings, the monitors are nearly touching.  On both Mount Diablo and Mount Madonna, there are monitors in separate loci.  Mount Davidson and Mount Saint Helena have one each, but I forget whose is which.  Mount Vaca and Mount Umunhum got two each just this century, along with their new TV-station radars."

            "When were the others put in?"

            "The locals didn't really need monitors.  It wasn't until the European strain began settling here in big numbers, five centuries or so ago, that the rest of us even noticed the place.  One cult led to another and about two hundred years ago, the population popped.  After that, everybody wanted monitors, I think just so they could keep track."

            "Are they all yours?"

            "I made the two on Mount Tamalpais and one of the pair on Mount Hamilton, a hundred seventy and a hundred fifty years ago.  The others were all manufactured in house, and not very well.  None of them are as clever as you are."

            Ann was silent for a long moment, sipping her tea.  Dai noticed the quiches and ate two, then two more. It seemed likely he hadn't eaten recently.  Ann added a bamboo steamer of shrimp and spinach dumplings, a plate of melon bits wrapped in prosciutto, and a small platter of miniature blini with creme fraiche and salmon roe.  

            "Ah,"  Dai said, and began on the melon.

            Ann resumed considering what he had told her.  Finally she said:  "If you were going to do it over, do it now, how would you go about it?"

            Dai swallowed and nodded.  "Hypothetically speaking, if I wanted a base line, just to get a better idea of what was going on here, for the local stuff, I'd use a couple of the new Doppler radar towers and maybe the big TV tower.  Three monitors, complete ones, modern ones, like this,"  Dai handed Ann a strange sphere, "in those spots, would do the same job as all theirs put together."

            "Your work gets more and more elegant,"  Ann said, examining the sphere. It was a little larger in diameter than an American half dollar, with swirls of color and texture moving around it.  One of the colors was an amber gold, shading from pale to dark.  It was faintly sticky and gave off an elusive, pleasant odor.  The other color was pale gray pockmarked ice, shading to dark gray pockmarked ice. The two sections fit together rather like a baseball designed by Escher.  The formal name, she remembered, was a three-dimensional monad.  It was very light for its size, if one assumed it was either solid ice or amber.

            "Thanks.  This model is invisible to humans, and paint and bird droppings slide right off it."

            "That's important for any outdoor installation.  Can I borrow this for a day or so?"

            "Sure, just let me disarm the traps."   Dai brushed blini crumbs off his hands and took back the sphere.

***

            "Boss?"  Galley said.

            Martin looked up from the multi-colored schedule he was attempting to organize for the next month.  It was not going well.  "What?"

            "We got a guy here, heard we're looking for a bartender."

            "Vampire?"

            "No, mostly human.  I think."

            "Did you tell him what kind of bar we are?"

            "Yeah.  That's OK, he worked for Wilhelmina Wilson, down south some place."

            "Willy?  Very well, I'll talk to him.  What's his name?"

            "Apparently he goes by Jesse."  



            Jesse was shorter than Martin, about 5'8".  He had dark brown hair with a faint curl and golden brown highlights combed back from a straight hairline above a smooth forehead and coming long down his neck; dark blue eyes under straight brown brows, and medium tan skin.  He had a long upper lip shadowed by a curving roman nose, and small neat ears, flat against his skull.  His long jaw flowed into an abrupt square chin.  He wore flat-front black chinos and a gray turtle-neck sweater, which made an elegant background for a dramatic platinum pendant on a heavy snake chain.  He wore a white denim cropped and fitted jacket over the sweater.  

            "What's the main ingredient in a Villeneuve's Hat?"   Martin asked, after reading the recommendation from Willy Wilson.

            "Calvados,"  Jesse said.

            "Speak any non-human languages?"

            "Zelwash, Bonyia and some Yalit."

            "We get a fair number of humans in here, too.  Any problems with them?"

            "No."

            Martin eyed Jesse.

            Jesse elaborated:  "I won't say my best friends are human, but most of them are all right.  Thrill seekers are always a problem, no matter what they are."

            "We try to get rid of them quietly, even if we don't manage to do it gently,"  Martin said.  "Why did you leave Willy?"

            "I had a premonition."  Which was one way of describing it,  Jesse thought.

            "Oh?"

            "I'm psychic,"  Jesse said.  "Bad things were coming down there.  Are coming.  Here seemed safer."

            "No smoking, of course.  We're in San Francisco and it's gotten weird in recent years.  I have a firm rule:  No coats or blankets on the floor or over the backs of chairs and certainly not at the bar.  That's what the cloak room is for.  I hate a messy bar."

            "OK."

            "And an unruly bar.  Brawling is not allowed in the Lounge.  That's for the downstairs Bar and that's why you'll have a baseball bat."

            "I'm not exactly a brawler myself.  The last time I tried, I got shot."  One hand briefly stroked the center lump of the pendant.  

            Which was, Martin saw, a slug-like blob of metal, surrounded by black faceted gems and inset gold stars.  Interesting.  "Your premonitions are erratic?"

            Jesse nodded.  "Yeah, in strength, immediacy, and accuracy.  That little incident took me totally by surprise.  My latest was pretty scary, though."

            "In any case, here you'd have backup.  You'd be the one to make the call, though."

            "Well, OK, then."

            "How do you make a Green Martini?"

            "Never heard of it,"  Jesse said.  "I'd have to look it up."

            "What do you think of Scott Beattie?"

            "Ginger simple syrup is a great idea, but I think importing branch water from Kentucky is a little extreme."

            "Do you read Bartending Today?"

            "Only for the cartoons."

            Martin nodded:  "OK.  We work on the book and tips are divided amongst all the staff.  I'll give you a quarter's trial; in three months we'll both know what to expect and we can go from there."

            "Thanks."

{}{}{}{}{}

            Sly did not want to appear as if she was overeager or nagging, so she spent the morning washing her car.  That was done by 10:00.  That was still too early.  She decided to clean her refrigerator.  

            Eventually, after washing the lunch dishes and all her floors, she called Naldo.

            "Yes, it's here.  I'm working on it."

            "I'll come in."



            "Well, it's interesting.  Apparently when he looked into the situation at the library, Sr. Rodriques was stonewalled.  That 'aroused my investigatory  instincts.'  He broke out of jargon, he was so excited.  Of course, he fell straight into literary clichés, but that easily can happen under stress."

            "What else does he say?"  Sly asked.

            "The digest is that Guzman appears to have stolen two books from the early or rare section-Steve-Esteban said to call him Steve-uses both names for the group of books he also calls the locked room collection.  He didn't spend a lot of time proofing this."

            "Naldo,"  Sly said,  "what else does he say?"

            "Ah, yes.  Steve's techs  accessed Guzman's computer and read  his emails.  It would appear that Guzman was suborned by Dyami Chandrapanthi, a Reverend Professor at the Anglo-Sanskrit Theological University at Vallejo, to steal the books and bring them to California."

            "Not Raymond Karpinsky?"

            "That wasn't the name used,"  Naldo said.  "Although Dyami Chandrapanthi sounds like a fake name, one part American Indian, the other Hindu Indian."

            "You sure about that?"

            "Hey, I do words."

            "Sorry.  Please continue."

            "Steve sent the emails, which are in English.   I haven't bothered looking at them.  You want them?"

            "Oh, yes.  What else?"

            "That's as far as I got.  Whenever he slipped out of jargon, the translation got a lot slower.  I'll keep at it, probably have it for you by tomorrow."

            "I'll take the emails and get out of your hair."

***

            Glen Merrill was waiting for his sister to drive him to SEATAC.  

            Marcia was frequently late.  Actually, she had always been late.  His mother maintained that her daughter was a ten-month baby, but Glen didn't remember about that.  

            Over the years, he'd developed means of dealing with the problem.  He had told her his plane left two hours before it actually did and he was not yet worried about catching it.  He had also booked a sleeper on the Los Angeles Express, known to local gourmets as the Avocado Special.  One way or another, he was going home tonight.

            Still calm, he opened his lap-top and looked at his to do list.  

            Hum.  The discards from the grab-bag hadn't been added to his Alibris inventory.  

            Well, things had been hurried.  He would do that now, and it would be one more thing he wouldn't have to do later.

            Moments later, Alibris offered A History of Apocryphal Texts and the anonymous scroll to anyone with $1250.00 for HOAT and $600.00 for the scroll.  If either of them sold at the declared price, he would have made a profit which would fund his next mixed-bag purchase.  A dealer on e-Bay was rumored to have a copy of Bonfire of the Vanities with marginalia by Donald Trump.  Interesting, if true.

***

            In the Inn, a delivery had been arranged and was taking place:

            There was a knock at the door.  Three of the Singleton Clan's Scribes, Guiscard Singleton, Jere Singleton and Hilarion Singleton looked up.  Mildly surprised, Jere Singleton walked over and opened it.  All the other Singletons just walked in.  Not that many of them visited the computer center.  

            There was a strange man, not Inn staff, carrying a rectangular carton.  The man had an embroidered badge on his shirt which started totally black, then changed to dark red streaks on a forest green background, and slowly resolved to hot pink letters on bright green:   Dahji, Senior Sale Representative.  The words shifted to:  Valex Farimang, Suppliers to Discriminating Mages, in bright green on pink.  The whole badge slowly darkened to black again, after which the cycle repeated.  "Who signs for this?"

            "What is it?"  Jere asked.  

            Guiscard and Hilarion came over and looked over his shoulders.

            "Caps,"  the sales rep said.  "Sign here."

            "I didn't order this," Jere said.

            "The big guy did,"  the sales rep said.  "But you're the only ones up over here, so I guess you can sign for it.  Here,"  he handed the box to Imbert.  

            "Oh.  OK.  So what is it?"  Jere asked again, signing.

            "One gross TarnCap^TM?"  Hilarion read.

            "One size fits all,"  Guiscard read the other side of the box.

            "Hey,"  Jere asked,  "when did Ethan order this?"

            "At the party, yesterday sometime."  The sales rep handed Jere a copy of the invoice and left.

            "What's a TarnCap^TM?"  Hilarion wondered.  He and Guiscard began opening the two foot long box.  Inside were two identical columns of stacked billed caps in separate plastic bags.  Beneath them were two more plastic bags, also full of caps.  

            "What?"  Jere asked.

            "Yeah," Guiscard agreed.

            Hilarion opened one of the bags and removed a normal-looking baseball cap.  It was very ordinary.  The cap was made from a lightweight black twill, the initials V and F were intertwined on the front in the bright green embroidery, there was an adjustable clip in the back, and that was it.

            "Why would Ethan want one of these?"  He slapped it on Guiscard's head.  

            Guiscard disappeared.

            "Hey,"  Jere said.  

            "What?"  Guiscard asked.  He reappeared, holding the cap in his hand.

            "Interesting," Hilarion said.  He put on a cap.  "Am I gone?"

*

            Lorant, Maks, and Nansen, the Librarians, and Imbert the Scribe, met with Ranon, Produs and Stap, the Priests, in the quiet dining room on the roof.  Earlier this morning, Ethan had been retrieved, carried back to his suite and put to bed.  He was still asleep.  With that worry taken care of, the literate group were meeting to ascertain if adequate progress had been made to begin actively searching for pieces of the Cosmic Egg.

            "I say we send out a search group now just so we have a base line on how long it may take to get all 41 of them,"  Ranon said.

            "We'll have bloody marys all round,"  Imbert told the waiter.  "With a cucumber spear, not celery."

            "I say we send out Ethan just so he doesn't go off on any more weird tangents,"  Stap said.

            "If we alarm the piece holders,"  Maks said,  "they may start avoiding Earth, which will make our job just that much more difficult."

            "Only the ones who know what they have,"  Nansen objected.  "Many of them have no idea they hold a piece of the Egg, and therefore, they won't be alert."

            "We have to begin somewhere,"  Lorant said.  "Sometime.  Now seems as good as any I can foresee."

            "If Ethan goes, one of us must go with him,"  Produs reminded the other Priests.

            "We can't go,"  Maks pointed out, meaning the librarians.  "Neither can the Scribes.  And we need at least one of you here as we move into refining the ritual."

            "And apple ginger sangrees with the crêpes,"  Imbert finished.  

            "Most of the hunters aren't literate."

            "An obstacle to be overcome,"  Maks agreed.  "But if there aren't enough of us to accompany each hunting party, and there aren't, the hunters either must be able to read maps or be willing to accept another guide."

            "I think we should send them through the Inn's How to Survive in Modern Society Course,"  Hilarion said.

            "The Innkeeper may know some good teachers,"  Ranon said.

            "Good idea,"  Nansen said.  "Let's ask him."

*

            "Well,"  the Innkeeper said.  "If the hunters want to sharpen their tracking skills, they will need to be literate in here and now signs.  Fewmets are not what they were.  At the very least, your hunters must be able to read maps and to use a GPS."

            The elevator came to a smooth halt and the doors opened.  

            A bone china serving dish of home-style gravy abruptly froze in place in front of the Innkeeper.  

            Ranon, who had been listening gravely to the Innkeeper, eyed the gravy boat in some surprise and looked up in time to receive a plate of home fried chicken and mashed potatoes in the face, slightly off center, so that Maks was splattered over the priest's shoulder.  

            "Hey,"  the Librarian yelled.

            "Enough,"  the Innkeeper said.

            There was a final "Oops,"  then everyone was still and quiet.

***

            Chasen had been removed from kennel duty abruptly and with no explanation.  Once again he was working under the direct supervision of the head of maintenance.  He and the rest of the shift's crew were standing around the service elevators when the Innkeeper arrived.

            "Chaldun, there's a clean up on the Clansmen's floor."

            The assistant manager for maintenance was surprised.  The Innkeeper rarely micro-managed.  "I'm trying to get the convention bedrooms done before tea.  Will it wait?"

            "No.  They were playing with a box of TarnCaps.  A few of them started out in the computer room, but as others joined in, they needed more room.  The play expanded to the café-bar next door where they discovered that if one is invisible, one is still discernible if one is covered in marinara sauce."

            "Oh."

            "While if one is covered in marinara sauce and then puts on a TarnCap, one is entirely invisible.  However, in that instance, one should expect to be hit by a dish of gravy.  Other experiments were conducted."

            "I'll get right on it."

            "Thank you.  Their playground eventually included some of the corridors and the elevator."

            "You three, Dayj'lle, Chasen, Yaniz, to the Clansmen's computer room floor.  With full kit."

*

            "We're calling it a day,"  Guiscard said.

            "Where are we drinking?"  Hilarion asked.  

            "We're heading for the quiet bar,"  Jere said.  "But don't let any of the others know."

            "I'll be along,"  Hilarion said.  "I need to ask Maks something."

            Entering the library, the Scribe courteously detoured around one of the cleaning staff.  "I have news,"  Hilarion told the Librarian.

            "You mean something was actually accomplished today?"  Maks asked.

            "Sarcasm doesn't become you,"  Hilarion said.

            "So?"  the Librarian asked shortly.

            "That book we went to San José after?  The one that librarian Guzman was bringing?  A History of Apocryphal Texts?  Remember?"

            "What about it?"

            "It came up on my Google search today.  It's here, it's locally available.  I found the address just before the fun started.  If we still want it, we could go get it tomorrow."

            Chasen didn't stop sweeping.  Guzman, he thought, sweeping the same area for the third time.  The book Mekonnen wanted.  If the geeks left the Inn to get the book, he could follow them.  Once outside, the Innkeeper's prohibitions against violence would not apply.  He would take the book, give it to Mekonnen, get the demon off his back and so be able to stop dusting forever.  How could he work this?  His eyes fell on the TarnCaps scattered where they had been dropped.

            He carefully gathered them up and put all but one on the nearest table.  Then he continued cleaning the floor.

*

            Chasen wasn't certain how observed he might be, so he left the TarnCap in the pocket of his dirty jumpsuit until he returned to his room after dinner.  Casually, not looking at it, he tossed the cap in the open drawer of the armoire.  He tossed the dirty jumpsuit into the laundry bag and nudged the drawer closed.

{}{}{}{}{}

            Well, Dai's comments were always interesting.  Ann handled her midnight litter patrol, then returned to the deck outside her bedroom.  

            Not here, he'd said.  Ann assumed he meant not just the living room, but the whole house.  She sipped some wine and thought about that.

            That could be a problem.  She could not use Taz's condo for this purpose.  Ann had no difficulty asking Taz to shelter one of her dependents and no intention whatsoever of involving him, however remotely, with her personal troubles, which, after all, arose entirely from her own actions.  Where then?  She went to bed, still undecided on her next act.

*

            Just after sunrise, she ported back to the dilapidated cabin with the "For Sale or Lease" sign.  

            Inside, it was small, filthy and cluttered.   It consisted of two rooms, a kitchen-dining room-living room and a bedroom; there was a small bathroom, reached via the porch, with a shower in a rough wooden stall and a primitive hole in the ground.  Outside, there was a derelict windmill, mostly rusted and lying on the ground where it had collapsed and the burned skeleton of a log barn.  She'd lived quite comfortably in less.  It would need some attention, but she decided it would do.

*

            Ann appeared in her lawyers' offices at nine.  

            "Hi."

            "What now?"  Nancy Polias asked warily.

            "I need a country retreat,"  Ann explained.

            "I was wondering how long you could endure city life.  You're so rustic.  However, your committee disapproves of excessive habitation."

            "Excessive how, exactly?"  Ann asked.  "I have no property here, not within the fifty mile limit."

            "The Russian Hill house was mentioned."

            "But that's their house,"  Ann said.  "I just live there."

            Nancy waved one hand, disclaiming the committee's logic.

            "In any case, they'll be happy with this little cabin.  Very modest, very isolated."

            "Oh, all right,"  Nancy said.  "Tell me about it."

*

Ann spent the rest of the morning examining the small sphere.  Nice.  Even the traps were elegant.  She sent it back to Dai, with a warm thank-you surrounding it.  She went out on patrol and returned to find a message from Nancy.  She called the lawyer.

            "Come to lunch,"  Nancy said.  "There are complications."

*

            "It's an historic site."

            Ann was in Nancy's office.  They were at a table on a small balcony, looking down at City Center San Francisco.  Lunch had been lobster salad, followed by fruit.  

            "Landmark status?  Why?"

            "The Smith-Ysidoro feud, in 1837.  The climax took place there.  Twenty-seven dead."

            "Humans,"  Ann murmured.  "Celebrating murder.  So what are the limitations?"

            "Now, what was listed was the original log cabin, which was destroyed by a fire in 1994."

            "The burned one?  I thought that was a barn."

            "Cabin.  Yes.  You can't alter it."

            "I just leave it there and let it quietly compost?  Fine."

            "You can't clear it away and you may be obliged to have a plaque.  The standing house, which dates only from 1908, can't be enlarged by more than 66% of the current area.  At least two of the current exterior walls must remain in place and there is a height limit.  At the same time, if you want to live there, the house must be brought up to current county seismic standards.  You must pay for your own infrastructure improvements-any new roads, electric connections-things like that.  You must dig a new well, and you must meet more stringent disposal restrictions."

            "What's wrong with the current well?  Using that would be simplest."

            "Yes, but it's relatively shallow and goes dry about every 15 or 20 years for a couple of seasons.  It has always come back, but they worry."

            "Fine.  Can I put the windmill back up?"

            "Yes."

            "Then I see no problems at all."

            "Well,"  Nancy said,  "I do.  Looking ahead to possible conflicts, I think we all will be happier in the long run if you buy some of the surrounding land now."  The lawyer gestured and an image of the stucco and stone cabin in glowing white and gray appeared above one of the empty chairs.  The image quickly shrank to a bright rectangle, while surrounding it came up an irregular rectangle tinted pale green.  Around the green rectangle, other lines and colors came into being.  East, across a red line that appeared to designate the rutted road Ann had walked along, were five pink squares, bordered on their far side by another unlabeled red line.  The first red line curved to join the second, which intersected a third red line, this one labeled Shingle Mill Road.  West of the cabin was a long narrow triangle, also in pink.  "This one,"  Nancy said, and the long triangle brightened briefly, "is isolated by cabin's lot and the boundaries of the surrounding parks.  Currently it lacks an easement and the most direct connection to an extant road is through the cabin's land.  I think you should buy it, before the owner pesters you for access."

            "Oh, yes.  I agree,"  Ann said.  

            "If you also purchase these five lots on the other side of the road, you will be able to maintain more privacy.  These are scheduled for clearing and development, but everything is held up by a civil suit filed by a conservation group, the Sempervirens Fund, against the developer."

            "The terrain isn't really suitable for the ditto style of development,"  Ann murmured.  

            "Now, I've talked with both parties, and if you agree to keep the land undeveloped, which will satisfy the Sempervirens Fund, they will drop the suit and permit the developer to sell the land to you, which will satisfy him.  I believe he has a problem with his cash flow.  The Sempervirens Fund will be happy, the developer will be happy, or at least less unhappy, you will have more privacy at a cost of only some human money, which doesn't really matter, and I don't have to worry about you alarming your human neighbors."

            "So, urban sprawl doesn't sprawl there; these hills aren't stripped, so wide spread erosion does not occur; and I get a quiet retreat.  Excellent, let's do it.  When can I take possession?"  Ann asked.

            "Now, if you wish.  Sign these."  Nancy gestured and a pile of paper appeared in front of Ann.  "The single lot will take some more research.  I'll let you know when you need to sign for it."

            "Thank you,"  Ann said.  She placed her right hand at the stack of paper for a moment, then took the keys Nancy held out to her and disappeared from the lawyer's office.

*

            Ann returned to her cabin.  

            She banished the trash and the dust.  Small, definitely small.  She would ask Shen I and O Luchad to oversee the addition and improvements.  She wanted another bedroom, power, water and an improved waste water system.  That was for later.  Now she needed to construct some detectors and a readout device.  To start that, she needed new maps.

            She ported to Berkeley, arriving in an out-of-the-way corner in the downtown BART station.  She took the escalator up to Shattuck Avenue and walked east and south.  She found the Map Store near the UC campus, and purchased a dozen medium U. S. Geological Survey maps covering the Bay Area from north of Calistoga to south of Gilroy and from the open ocean west of the Farallon isles to the central valley east of Tracy.  She sent her purchase off to the new cabin, then walked east through the campus, unremarked by the students, and uphill, eventually arriving at a viewpoint above the city.  She sat quietly for a couple of hours and watched the sun set, noting the birds quieting in the trees and the increasing and then decreasing flow of traffic on the roads below her.   

            As the darkness grew, she brought her mind to bear on her problem.  At midnight, she ported to the house on Russian Hill, checked her assignment board and attended to the few unsettled magic operations her assignment board showed.  

            From her last task she went directly to the cabin.

Banishing her clothing, she walked around the area, feeling the slow, slow surges of the earth and the quicker movement of water.  The breeze stirred her unbound hair.  Here, she decided, stopping on a flat rocky outcrop.   The emerging rock was on the west side of the cabin, with the stream unseen below and the ocean far off in the distance.

            She stamped her bare foot, then turned slowly in place.  Around her, the soft animal sounds quieted.  She took the roll of her unused maps in one hand and an old diamond tipped wooden compass in her right.  Crossing her arms across her chest, she focused her mind on the land that was her charge and her prison.

            After a long moment's thought, she flicked both hands up and open as she rose in the air.  The maps swirled around her and arranged themselves on the bare rock.  The compass descended more slowly, resting one arm at the Marin end of the Golden Gate Bridge, the other extending out into the Pacific Ocean.

            Ann stretched out in mid-air, guiding the compass along the shore line of all the Bay.

            As she ended, she moved to the center of the map.  Whispering softly, she pressed her free hand into the center of the representation of San Francisco Bay.  The map changed:  The colors of the map inside the line brightened, while the area outside dimmed.  She folded the compass and put it away.  

            She shifted to a cross-legged posture floating above the map and crafted four monitors, not three.  This would be her system, not Dai's.  Everyone had a different specialty and a different way of magic.  Her monitors looked more like sea urchins, or maybe hedgehogs, a contrast to his sleek, elegant, almost Art Deco, artifact.  They were almost spheres, with a flat bottom like a glass paperweight, about as big as her hand, with many short rods, each as slim as a dance-card pencil, radiating from the surface.  Each rod was tipped with a small crystal hemisphere:  Clear, chatoyant and opaque; in red, green, blue, yellow, brown, gray, black and some bicolors like antique swirl marbles.  

            Ann stretched out above the map and placed the monitors:  One on the Mount Sutro TV tower, one on Mount Tamalpais, one on Mount Diablo, and one on Mount Wilson.

            She suspended a small diamond sphere just above the center the irregular area for which she was responsible, then positioned herself over the sphere in lotus posture.  Softly, she chanted a long and complex bonding spell.

            She spoke the final word and bent over to pick up the sphere.  She griped it with both hands and twisted, separating it into hemispheres.  She placed one half on the map's center, where it first slumped flat, then flowed out to the borders of her territory.  Like an ink wash, it sank into the map, leaving only a faint crystalline glitter

            Ann wove a net of platinum strands over and around the remaining diamond hemisphere, creating a single earring, which she slipped into her earlobe.  Standing for the first time in several hours, she stretched.

            She gathered up the monitors, dismissed the map-which rolled up and vanished-and ported north, to the Mount Sutro TV tower.  Working in the same order as she had placed them on the map, she installed the monitors.  The east was paling as she finished.  From Mount Wilson, she ported to the cabin and stretched out on the floor.  Conjuring a blanket and a small pillow, Ann slept.

{}{}{}{}{}

            Glen Merrill woke very late in his own bed.   He enjoyed meeting fellow collectors and dealers.  He enjoyed his family.  He also enjoyed waking up in his own bed, in his own home, with his permanent books around him.  There were a number of minor tasks to accomplish today-checking on his Alibris account was one-but first breakfast, or more properly, lunch.  

            He wandered out on the main patio, which faced west and south.  His lot was steeply sloped.  Over the years, he had adapted to the multi-level living the East Bay Hills demanded.  He went down the railroad tie steps to the first terrace to check his automatic watering system.  He had cane-stemmed orchids and tomatoes growing in a sheltered southern exposure.  Picking several of the ripest tomatoes and some young lettuce, protected from the ubiquitous deer by plastic netting, he made a salad.  A spray of scarlet orchids went into a tall vase on the table.  

            Ah, the civilized life.  

***

            Sly Corbin slept late, too.  Admittedly, she had been up late reading the emails between Guzman and Chandrapanthi, but forgetting to set her alarm was unusual.  She didn't wake until nearly ten AM.  Umph.  At that, she felt better than she had for a while.  

 After breakfast, she called Dyami Chandrapanthi, at the Anglo-Sanskrit Theological University at Vallejo, and again was answered by the machine.  Damn.

            On the other hand, Naldo had emailed a complete translation of Steve's report.

            A History of Apocryphal Texts?  The Scroll of Orpmal?  She googled the titles.  Eventually, she arrived at Alibris.  Sly frowned at the Alibris display.  A History of Apocryphal Texts, and an anonymous scroll.  Seller store:  Merrill Rare Books, Berkeley, California.  

            OK.  She called the directory and was given the phone number and address.  She smiled.  Merrill Somebody, or Somebody Merrill, had the stolen goods that had been in the possession of one of her bodies, if not on the day that body died, then soon before.  She needed to ask Merrill some questions.  She decided not to call for an appointment, but to just go.

***

            "So we go get it,"  Maks said to Ranon.

            "Taking the money,"  Hilarion said.

            "Are we still sure we need it?"  the Priest asked.

            "I have no idea,"  Hilarion said.

"We should get it,"  Maks said.

            "I have the directions ready,"  the Scribe said.

            "Why not?"  Maks said. "It's handy, and the asking price is a lot less than we were prepared to pay."

            "Oh, go ahead,"  Ranon said.  He went off to the library and Maks and Hilarion headed for the elevator.

***

            Only two geeks this time, Chasen thought, watching Maks, Hilarion and Ranon talk briefly and separate.  He pushed his cleaning cart into the service elevator and said:   "Garage."  

            Mekonnon might be watching the Inn.  Despite its mobility, the Inn's position was always known.  He might be tracking the book.  Given that the demon hadn't known the title of the book back when he hired Chasen, that would be unlikely.  However, given that Mekonnon had access to diviners and tracers, it might also be possible.  Here and there, Chasen thought.  It looked as if the most dangerous times on this expedition would be the beginning and the end.  Mekonnon had no reason to be watching the streets in San Francisco or Berkeley.  He fingered the TarnCap in his pocket.  Put on the cap, get a car, follow the Clansmen, get the book, call Mekonnon and make the exchange-the book for his safety.  You could call that a plan, Chasen thought.  Ah, and remember to remove the cap once he was safely away from the Inn, since the SFPD might panic at a driverless car.  Right.  Now it's a plan.

***

            Ann woke late, and, after a walk-around-breakfast, eating and inspecting the walls and layout of her new home at close range, she ported back to the Russian Hill house in time to receive the day's assignments.  After a quick shower, she dressed, then departed to soothe the few mid-week magical surges and knots.  When that was finished, she went on to the offices of Shen I and O Luchad, where she explained the situation to the current O Luchad.  "Small,"  she ended,  "and private."

            "Any humans around won't even know it's there, and they won't want to explore,"  the O Luchad said.  He wore a mature countenance, appearing a weathered and sun-stressed 40, with lines on his forehead and around his blue eyes.  His hair was sun streaked auburn, and fell untidily from a center part.  "Water?"

            "We need to dig a well, I don't know how deep.  There's a wide seep down slope from the cabin a little.  Violets and miners' lettuce are already growing there, and I've seeded some rocket and cress.  Please avoid that area.  What I want is sleeping space for me and for Taz, a mostly open bathroom along an outside wall, with a hot tub, and a kitchen-dining-living room; all in less than six hundred square feet."

            "Small,"  the O Luchad agreed.  "What sort of kitchen do you have in mind?  We've been working with induction stove tops.  Now, we know you like to have something over fire, a spit or a grill..."

            Ann stopped listening:  Her earring was sounding.  "Sorry,"  she said to the O Luchad.  "Fire in a bookstore.  I have to go."  

***

            "Turn here,"  Hilarion said, reading the odometer, the compass and the directions at the same time.

            "Here?" the Librarian demanded, turning.

            "Yes."

            "We're on Poppy something, not Keeler anything,"  Maks objected.

            "You missed a signpost back at the big curve.  Park,"  the Scribe said.  "Now!"  Hilarion clicked his stopwatch.  "Forty minutes over.  Damn.  I wonder if the map program assumed we would be traveling alone?"

            "There was a lot of traffic,"  Maks said.

            "Anyway, we got here."



            "Are you sure about this?"  Maks asked.  

            "Yes,"  Hilarion said,  "the directions were explicit."  He pointed at the very small sign:  

Merrill's Rare Books
by Appointment Only

             Glen heard the bell.  Now what?  He hadn't finished lunch yet.

             "Mr. Merrill?"

             "Do you have an appointment?"

            "Since we're here now,"  Maks said, with one of his warm smiles,  "we may as well come in."

             "No,"  Glen tried to say.  He found himself smiling back at the tall blond man with the crewcut.

            The other man, with the queue of long blond hair down his back, also smiled at the bookseller.  "We want to buy a book."

             Somehow, the door was wide open.  "I can help you with that,"  Glen said.  "This way."

            The Scribe and the Librarian followed him through the house to his garage office.  "What book are you looking for?"

             "A History of Apocryphal Texts,"  Hilarion said.  "You listed it on Alibris recently."

             "Oh, that thing."   The garage was hot, dim and stuffy.  Glen flipped on the lights and the roof fan ventilation system.

             The office fit into the south-east corner of the house. The Heroes and the bookseller entered from the house and faced the roller garage door in the east wall slightly off to their left and the side door to the driveway directly ahead of them.   Glen opened the windows on the south side and opened the small door to get some cross ventilation.

             The office had two interior walls:  The one with the door to the house supported a floor-to-ceiling bookcase for its entire length, and the wall to the left of the door, as one faced out of the house, had two tall bookcases at right-angles to it, with adequate space between all three bookcases for a large industrial wheeled ladder, now shoved against the left wall between the two free-standing bookcases.

             There was a T-shaped desk against the southern outside wall, with wrapping supplies and a computer.  There were three fire extinguishers, two on either side of the house door and the third on the file cabinet at the far end of the desk.  

             "So are you interested in all antique texts or do you specialize?"  Glen asked.

             "We tend to specialize at the moment,"  Hilarion said.

             Glen opened the cabinet at the north end of the interior wall.  He took out two folding chairs.  Maks took one, and detoured around Hilarion, who was glancing at a bartenders' guide from the 19th century.  

             Glen arranged the chairs, then took the book from the Odd Lots shelf.  The strange scroll was beside it.  He took that, too.  

*

            And why had the Heroes stopped here?  Was this where they were going?  Chasen wondered.  It certainly didn't look like a store of any sort.  

             He drove passed the driveway, then pulled over and parked.  He settled the TarnCap firmly on his curly hair.

*

             Very quietly, Chasen got out of the Honda and approached the front door.  He found it locked.  Damn.  He glanced around, looking for an open window or door.  The noise of a fan drew his attention to the garage.   Very obligingly, someone opened the door beside the large roller door and left it open.  How nice.  He heard the two geeks and a human male.  He could handle them easy.

*

             Maks the Librarian, Hilarion the Scribe, and Glen Merrill sat the table on the south wall of the garage.  Maks carefully unrolled the first few feet of the scroll the human book seller had offered.

             Maks blinked.  "Oh, my.  'Ghling, one of the First, told me, Aoital the Scribe, to write this history.'  This is the Scroll,"  the Librarian told Hilarion, seated across from him.

             "You read Karosthi?"  Glen asked.  The bookseller was seated beside Hilarion, with his back to the outside doors

            "I'm a Librarian, I read everything,"  Maks exaggerated. He gently closed the Scroll, placed it beside HOAT, and took up his aluminum briefcase.

             "I was wondering,"  Hilarion said.  "How much are you asking for this?"  He held up the 19th century bartenders' guide

             "We can offer cash."  Max said.

             "Please, accept that as a gift.  What I'm asking is eighteen-fifty, but we'll call it eighteen hundred."

             Maks and Hilarion both frowned.  Maks inspected his briefcase.  "Is that 18 Franklins, McKinleys, or Clevelands?"

             "Franklins,"  the bookseller said.



             Chasen, standing silent and invisible at the end of the T, decided to go just for the book and not attempt taking the scroll, too.  The garage was cluttered, with ladders, chairs, dollies, and he had to avoid knocking into anything which would give his position away.  As Maks began counting out eighteen Franklins, Chasen picked up the book

             It did not disappear.  Speed, then, Chasen thought, and moved around the human bookseller heading back for the open door.



             Chasen had overlooked two data:  Yes, the Librarian and the Scribe were geeks.  However, that was just their subset.  Firstly, and most importantly, they were Heroes.  

            The other overlooked datum was that the food fight could have been classified as a live-fire exercise in the use of TarnCaps.  Maks, who had missed the food fight, was briefly bewildered, but Hilarion, who had survived the encounter session relatively un-sauced, yelled and grabbed at the invisible mercenary as Chasen passed him.  He managed to catch Chasen by the arm.

            Chasen dropped the book, which was caught up by Glen, who rolled under the table with it .

             Maks, though slow off the mark, dodged around the table and grabbed here and there, attempting to locate the invisible man who was trying to steal HOAT.  

             Hilarion and Chasen fell to the floor, knocking over chairs.  

             Glen rolled out the other side of the table, stood and watched his two customers writhing on the floor.

             With a loud bang, Mekonnen materialized across the garage from the fight.

             Glen, who was the first to see the demon, said, "Yeep."

             Chasen looked up for a moment.  Maks grabbed one of the mercenary's arms, allowing Hilarion to free one of his own hands and tear off Chasen's TarnCap.



             "Chasen!"  the demon said, and threw a fireball at his former employee.

             The mercenary flattened on the garage floor.  The fireball sped over him.  The Heroes dodged to either side.

             "Wait, wait,"  Chasen said.  "I found the book!"  The south side of the garage started to burn.

             "I know.  I've come for the book,"  Mekonnen said.  "My haruspices tell me that it is here.  Where is it?"

             "There,"  Chasen pointed at Glen, who was standing on the other side of the table with his mouth open.  "He has it."

             "Give me the book!"   Mekonnen said.

             "Yeep,"  Glen whispered.  He dropped the book, which landed on the table.

             "Fool human!"  Mekonnen gathered fire in his hand and threw it at Glen, who dived back under the table.  



             Ann was surprised when she arrived on Keeler Avenue.  This didn't look like a bookstore, but it was where her new map marked the appearance of a fireball.  Certainly, there was smoke, and also sounds of fighting, both coming from behind the garage door.

             She had planned on arriving outside the bookstore, since porting into an enclosed place she didn't know was risky enough, and this place was full of people.  Rather surprising people, actually.  She could sense a human, two Heroes-both of them Singletons apparently-and what's his name, a mostly human immortal she'd met a couple of hundred years ago.  Xe, that was his name.  And of course, there was also a demon.  As she had predicted to Alice, it was your typical general all purpose powerful demon. What was this particular demon doing in a bookstore?  What were the Heroes doing in a bookstore?  She'd be sure to ask.  

             She raised the large roller door suddenly and completely.  As she entered the now open garage, her sword appeared in her hand.



             Mekonnen glanced around as the large roller door on the east side of the garage seemed to vanish.  He recognized the woman with the sword.   



             So did Chasen, still on the floor.  What was Andrée doing here?   Well, better her than me, he thought, as the demon focused on her.

             "Urmit! Noch dre dindren."  The demon added a muttered  "Teg, vant."

             "Mekonneth!"  Ann said.

             Mekonnen gathered fire into its hand and threw it at the latest interruption.  

             Ann sliced the fireball into uneven fourths.  The fragments fell to the cement floor and sputtered out.

             Xe flattened himself on the floor, but Maks and Hilarion caught each other's eyes and readied themselves to jump the demon.  Not now, Heroes,  Ann thought.  She paralyzed the Heroes, en passant, and focused on the demon again.

             "Hey!"  Maks said.  Ann ignored him.  



             Maks saw the demon step back.  The woman with the sword moved after it.

             The outline of a portal suddenly flared.  The demon slipped back into its portal.  The woman came to an abrupt halt.  "Rabiston, Mekonneth. Implax!"  There was a soundless shuddering throughout the garage, and the portal abruptly disappeared.  The almost-shaking stopped.  The woman nodded.  "And stay out!"  she said.

             "Hey!"  Maks said again.

             "Yeah,"  Hilarion agreed.  "We could have taken him!"

             The woman turned back and glanced coolly at them.  They were still frozen in their ready-to-leap poses.  "Heroes."  She shook her head:  "If you're still here in a thousand years, you can challenge him to a re-match.  Just not around other people.  By-standers can get hurt."  She put her sword away.



             A thousand years, Chasen thought.  If that's what she said, that was probably what would happen.  Well, by then Mekonnen may have forgotten all about me.  He saw his TarnCap on the floor where Maks had dropped it.  He reached out for it. I've done enough dusting.  He put it on, stood up and... discovered his feet were frozen in place.  Hell!  His TarnCap was removed from his head, and Andrée moved around in front of him.  Her voice was as calm and as cool as those hard green eyes.  "Xe, did you have anything to do with any recent local bookstore fires?"

             He was glad he didn't even have to consider lying to her:  "What?  No, nothing, no fires."

             "And what are you doing here?"

             "I was going to steal that book-"  He pointed to the book on the other side of the table.  "-and give it to Mekonnen so he wouldn't kill me."

             "Why did he want it?"

             "No idea, he never said.  He just hired me to get it."

             "Did you summon him here?"

             "No!"



             Ann considered Xe.  What am I supposed to do with him?  Well, since he wasn't mentioned at all in that vague and less than helpful warning, and since he hasn't tried to lie to me, I think I'll let him go.  "I live here now.  Try not to come to my attention again."

             "No, Andrée."

             She freed his feet.  "Go."

            Xe went.

            Ann frowned at the baseball cap she was holding.  There was tomato sauce, with a hint of anchovies, smeared on its crown.  She tossed it on the nearby table.

            "Hey, that's one of our tarncaptims,"  the long haired hero said.

             "Your what?"  she asked.  She freed the two heroes and watched them leap up with athletic grace.

             "Tarncaptim,"  the hero said.

             "Spell it."

             "t a r n c a p t m."

             She thought.  On the table she found a piece of paper and a felt-tip.  "Written like this:  Tarncap^TM?"

             "Yeah, but the C is majuscule too."

             "The ^TM is silent,"  Ann said, keeping her face calm.  She handed the hero his modern tarnkappe.

***

             Sly Corbin parked her red and white Mini-Cooper on the other side of the street, across from Merrill's Rare Books.

             Sly was well trained, even if she was occasionally impatient and sure she knew best.  She took the time to record, both in writing and by leaving a message on her home phone, where she was and what she was planning to do.  She closed her cell, locked her car and crossed the street.

             She passed a vintage Mercedes roadster and saw that the garage was totally open.  There was a smell of burned wood and a faint acrid order that might have come from a home fire extinguisher.  

             A man, wearing a grimy bathrobe, was seated in a folding chair at a table inside the garage.  There was a fire extinguisher lying by his chair and yellow powder everywhere.  The south wall of the room was burned in two or three places.  The man's hands shook as he took up a glass filled with a pale pink, opaque, slightly opalescent fluid, that fizzed gently as he raised it.  There was no one else in the garage.

             "Mr. Merrill?"  Sly asked.  

             "Yes."

             "I'm a police officer.  Is everything all right."

             "I guess.  At least the fire's out."

             "So what happened here?"

             "It's a long story."

{}{}{}{}{}

             Partial realignment?  Major pieces?

             If Ann had been in the habit of tearing her hair, she would have done so now.  

             Once she had told Martin Stevenson she always assumed the worst, and she thought she had:  She had a piece of the Egg and someone, possibly Adan's advisor or one of the other players who seemed to be gathering on Earth, would sooner or later come after her, offering combat or seduction or alliance.  She had assumed she could deal with any of those, which was undoubtedly true.   She had not assumed, because she hadn't known the possibility existed, that whoever had control of the Egg would be content simply to remodel the world into a jerry-rigged...what?

             Something Adan had said, last year, surfaced in her memory:  "I should have drained him.  It may not matter, when we adjust the ratio..." That sounded as if Adan, at least, was hoping to be alive and possibly with his memory intact afterwards.

             Now Ann had her reasons, selfish ones, for preferring the world as it is.  Some of her friends, including some vampires, on the other hand, liked chaos and were always prepared to take advantage of it.  A little societal disorder, and even strict reform vampires could slip and start viewing crowds of humans as a kind of self-propelled smörgåsbord.  Beyond her personal reasons for saving the world, Ann did not want to see her helpless human friends treated like food animals any more than she wanted her vampire friends hunted like mad dogs.  

             And by sequestering her piece of the Egg-a pigeon blood ruby in a flat table cut irregular square about 2 by 2 inches-she had insured that the first case could not occur.  Whether the ruby was one of the twenty-one major pieces, it was a piece of the Egg and by hiding it, Ann had blocked any attempt by anyone to complete a turn of the Wheel.  All that anyone could do without the ruby was create the aberration of a partial realignment.  That was a temporary situation according to HOAT, but in any case, probably a disaster for humans.

             Not, Ann thought bitterly, what I intended.

             Which didn't really matter at all.  

             Well, before she washed her hands of the matter and abandoned the ruby where three roads met, Ann would attempt to discover more facts.  HOAT was only one book, and the next one she read might offer proof that it was nonsense.  

Back to home page.