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* * *

"We were all very worried something dreadful had happened to you," Mrs. Rizzo looked at him, her sparkling black eyes narrowed in what might indeed be worry. Or suspicion. Though that wasn't fair, because she'd never been suspicious of him.

A small woman, so short that she made Tom feel tall, she stood in front of her desk in the little, musty manager's office at the back of the apartment complex. Every possible inch of space on her wall was covered up in pictures—pictures of smiling brides, pictures of babies, and pictures of children looking sticky and sweet in equal measures and displaying mouths with a varying number of teeth in unguarded smiles. A set of pink booties, half knit, lay on her desk, with a gigantic ball of pink yarn and two green plastic knitting needles.

Tom had often wanted to ask her if the pictures were all her children, but he was a little afraid of the answer, and not quite sure if yes or no would be the scarier reply. Instead, he threw back his head to move the hair out from in front of his face—he really needed to find something to tie it soon. A rubber band would do—and smiled at Mrs. Rizzo. "Fortunately I was staying with a friend."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "A girl?"

"Yes. She works with me."

Mrs. Rizzo grinned, suddenly. "Well, and isn't it about time you found someone to settle down. Is she a good girl?"

"Yes, a very good girl," Tom said. Or at least he'd thought that until today, and finding out about the sugar. But he wasn't about to discuss that with his apartment manager.

The lady nodded. "Good, maybe you can stay with her until we get your place fixed. It should only be a couple of weeks. Or we could move you to number 35, if you want. I talked to the owner, and he said it would be okay to give it to you. It's a little bigger, but he said you could have it for the same price."

A few hours ago, this would have been an offer for Tom to snatch with both hands. He could have got into the new apartment without paying a deposit, and with no real inconvenience. Oh, his furniture and utensils were gone, but he hadn't had all that much, and he could always replace them in a month or less from thrift shops and garage sales. A sofa first, until he could afford a bed, and a pan and a frying pan would do for cooking in, till he could get more complete utensils. And . . .

But he stopped his own thought, forcefully. He would have been very happy to do that a few hours ago. It would have made him nonhomeless again. But a few hours ago, he now realized, he'd still been under the mistaken impression that Kyrie was some sort of ideal woman, something to aspire to. Someone whom, even if he could never have her, he could imitate and hope to be more like. Now . . . "I don't know what I'm doing, yet, Mrs. Rizzo. I'll let you know in a couple of days, if that's all right." Of course he knew perfectly well what he was doing. He was getting heck out of Dodge before nightfall. He might come back later—if he could—for the . . . object in the water tank of the Athens's bathroom. But he wouldn't come back to live. He wouldn't go back to working there—with Kyrie. No way, no when, no how. And no one could make him.

Mrs. Rizzo sighed. "You're staying with her, right? Well, I hope it works. But if it doesn't, remember we have number thirty five. I'll hold it for you for another week." She smiled. "It's the one with the bay window." And sounded exactly like someone holding out a sweet to a kid.

Tom nodded. "I'll be in touch. But Keith said you had some of my stuff . . ."

She reached behind the desk and brought out a box that was larger than Tom expected. Protruding out of the top were his boots, and he gave a deep sigh of relief upon seeing them. Then, as he dug through, he found a couple of pairs of jeans, one black and one blue, three black T-shirts, and—carefully folded—his black leather jacket. He felt suddenly weak at the knees. It was like losing half of your identity and then retrieving it again.

At the very bottom of the box was his ATM card, and he found himself taking a deep, relieved breath. He wouldn't need to wait till the banks opened to get out his money before he got out of town. Next to the ATM card was a library book—The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges. He could drop that off at the library depot on the way out of town. Good. The library was unlikely to make much of a search for him on the strength of a single hardcover book, but it was best to get out of town with as few things hanging over his head as possible.

Between the book and the ATM card was a red object, which at first he couldn't identify. And then he realized it was Kyrie's red plumed earring.

He should take it back. He should . . . His hand closed around it. Or not. Or not. He couldn't see facing her. He couldn't imagine her reproaching him for getting high and destroying her sunroom. He would have to tell her, then, that the least she could have done was tell him that the sugar wasn't exactly sugar. She must keep the real stuff somewhere. After all, they'd had coffee the night before to no ill effects. So, why didn't she tell him where it was? Tom would much rather have had it.

His hand closed on the plumed earring and he shoved it into the pocket of his jacket.

"You can change in the bathroom," Mrs. Rizzo said, pointing to a little door at the back. "If you want to."

The bathroom was a continuation of the office. Oh, there were no pictures on the walls, which was a very good thing. Tom would have hated to undress completely in front of a mass of staring babies and prim brides. But the hand soap was pink and shaped like a rose, and, on the toilet tank, a much-too-tall crochet angel with a plastic face, squatted contentedly over three spare toilet paper rolls, as though hoping they would soon hatch into chickens.

Tom had to watch that, and the mirror, and the vanity, because the bathroom was so small he could barely move in it. He removed Kyrie's jogging suit, folded it carefully, and put it beside the toilet paper angel. Then he put on his jeans and T-shirt with a sense of relief. He wished some of his underwear had been preserved, but if absolutely needed he could do without it a little longer.

Socks were something else—as was the need to put his boots back on. He hadn't felt any pain from his feet recently, but then he'd been . . . busy. He sat down on the closed toilet lid, to look at his feet. And was surprised to find he'd shed most of the glass shards. Only a couple large ones remained, embedded in his skin, but his skin seemed to be . . . He stared at it. Yep. His skin was pushing them out, forcing them out and growing behind them. The other cuts were already closed, though angry red and likely to leave a scar.

This was one of those changes that arrived when he started shifting into a dragon. All of a sudden, he could cut himself or scrape himself and it would heal in a day, or a few hours, depending on the depth of the injury. It was just about the only change that wasn't completely unwelcome.

He washed the bottom of his feet with damp toilet paper, and looked again. Nothing really. Just rapidly healing cuts. He slipped his boots on, wishing he had socks, but it couldn't be helped. With all his belongings still in a box, he went back to Mrs. Rizzo. "I'm sorry to bother you, but could I borrow a plastic bag? It's easier to carry than a box." Meaning, it would actually be possible to carry while he was in dragon form. Which was how he'd kept most of his belongings, while moving all over the country.

She nodded, and bent to get something from behind her desk. Tom wondered what exactly she kept back there, just as she emerged with a backpack, not a plastic bag. The backpack was pale blue and made in the sort of plastic that glistens. "The Michelsons left it behind, when they vacated number 22," Mrs. Rizzio said. "It used to have wheels, but they're broken. They left a bunch of the kids' old clothes, too. Ripped and dirty." She made a face. "When people do that, I wash them and fix them and give them to charities in town. Such a waste. People throw everything away these days. But the backpack I kept, if someone moved in with a school-age kid and needed it."

"It's all right," Tom said. "I only need a plastic bag."

"No, no. It's okay. You can have it. There will be two or three others by September, when school opens. People throw them away."

Well, the backpack was more practical because it closed. Though, in dragon form, he would still have to carry it the same way—by wrapping the straps around his huge ankle—the backpack zipped shut. And there was less chance of losing stuff. "Well, thank you then," he said, reaching for it.

Up close, as he stuffed his remaining belongings—and Kyrie's jogging suit—into it, he realized the full extent of his problem. The backpack had a little orange dragon with stubby wings on the back, and it said underneath, in fiery orange-red letters, "Scorchio." He scowled at it.

"Kids these days like the weirdest things, don't they?" Mrs. Rizzio said.

"Yes," Tom said. And then, with everything in the backpack, he had to say good-bye somehow. Only he'd never said good-bye to anyone or anything, and certainly not to anyone who liked him and whom he liked. "I'll be back," he lied. "In a few days."

"You do that, dear," she said. "I'll hold number 35 for you, okay?"

As he headed out, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window of the next door apartment. Against the dark drapes, he looked like something out of a horror movie—unruly hair, tight black jeans, black leather jacket. Even with the stupid pale blue backpack on, he didn't look like anyone that someone would want to bother.

He stalked off, down Fairfax Avenue, away from the Athens and toward the nearest ATM that way. He had a vague idea that he should go back and pay Kyrie for the mess. He would have done it the day before. But now he told himself there was simply no way. Not any way in hell. She should have told him about the sugar. It was all her fault. Yeah, he probably still owed her for the car—but because of the sugar he was now headed out of town, with nothing but a handful of possessions. He was going to need all his money.

He realized he was holding her responsible for the fact that she wasn't perfect. And that was fine, as far as he was concerned. Wasn't there someone—one person—in the world he could look up to?

* * *

"When is your break?" Rafiel asked. He'd been sitting at one of the small tables in the extension room that used to be the sun porch of the Athens and had been enclosed, sometime decades away, to make more space for tables.

Like a sun porch, it was informally furnished. Just plastic tables and chairs, of the type people used outside. On a Friday like this, and when the dinner hour was in full swing, it filled up fast.

A family group or a gaggle of laughing and screaming students surrounded every other table. Only Rafiel sat alone.

She'd smiled at him when first serving him, and the rest of the time she'd avoided looking too closely at him, as she served the noisy groups around him. But now she was pouring a warm-up of coffee into his cup, and he said, "Come on, please? I need to talk to you."

She would believe him a lot more and talk to him with a far clearer conscience if she couldn't detect, as an undertone to his soap and aftershave smell, the lion's spicy-hot scent. She didn't trust herself around that smell. She behaved very stupidly around it. Instead, she made a big show of looking around, as if mentally counting people. "No way for the next hour or so," she said. "I have to keep refills and desserts and all coming. They allowed me to work because they were two people short. There's no way I can take a break."

To her surprise, he smiled. "Okay, then. I'll have the bowl of rice pudding. A la mode." He lowered his voice, "And then I want to talk to you. There's some very odd autopsy results."

* * *

Stealing the car wasn't hard. Tom walked along the darkened working class neighborhoods first, looking at all the old models of cars parked on the street.

It had to be an old model, because his way of starting a car without a key wouldn't work on the newer models. And in those streets, around Fairfax, with their tiny, decrepit brick houses, the cars spotted with primer on the front, there was a prospect on every corner. He could steal a dozen cars, if he wanted to.

Half a dozen times, he walked up to a sickly looking two-door sedan, a rusted and disreputable pickup and put his hand on the door handle, while he felt in his pocket for the stone he'd picked up from a flower bed near his apartment. The only other piece of equipment necessary to this operation was a screwdriver, which he'd bought from a corner convenience store.

He had everything. So, why didn't he just smash the window, break the ignition housing, start the car, and drive away? Most of these houses looked empty and people were probably still at work or already asleep.

But he'd put his hand on the handle, and reach for the rock, and remember how hard it was to make ends meet from his job at the Athens. How he had never been able to buy a car, but used to read the Sunday paper vehicles for sale ads with the relish of a kid looking through a candy-store window.

From those ads, he knew many of these cars would be a few hundred dollars, no more. But a few hundred dollars was all he had in his pocket, and it had emptied his account. And accumulating it had required endless small sacrifices, in what food he ate, in what clothes he wore. Hell, he didn't even shop the thrift stores at full price. It was always at half-price or dollar-day sales.

Oh, he wasn't complaining. He was lucky to have a job, given his past work history and his lack of training. Correction. He'd been lucky to have a job. Now it was over and he'd be lucky to ever have another. What were the owners of these cars employed at? What did they do?

Fuming, he turned away. Damn. This going-straight thing was like some sort of disease. You caught it, and then you had the hardest trouble getting rid of it. They probably didn't sell honesty-be-gone tablets at the local drugstore.

He walked down one of the cracked sidewalks that ran along the front of the pocket-sized lawns, kicking a stray piece of concrete here and there, to vent his anger. Damn. He couldn't walk out of the city on foot. And he wasn't at all sure he could start flying from inside the city. What if someone saw him? What if . . . they saw him?

He walked along as a thin rain started trickling down on him from the sky above. The rain felt . . . odd. He'd been living in Colorado for six months and this was the first time he'd seen rain. There was a feeling of strangeness, at first, and then, despite the warmth of the night, discomfort at water seeping everywhere and dripping from his hair onto the back of his neck, running down the back of his jacket.

He walked a long time on his still-tender feet and passed a roped-in car dealership. But it was the sort of car dealership you got in this kind of area—selling fifth-or sixth-hand cars. Of course, he thought, as he walked past, his hand idly touching the rope that marked off the lot, he could probably break into those cars far more easily than into any others. But . . . he stared at the wrecks and semi-wrecks under the moonlight. What were the chances that the owner of this lot was living so close to the bone that the theft of a car would really hurt him?

Tom looked at the facade of the dealership proper, and it was a well-known car dealer. Chances were they'd never feel it. His hand weighed the stone in his pocket.

On the other hand . . . On the other hand, the theft of a car—or one more car, as Tom doubted this would be the first—might be what caused the dealership to close doors at this location, to give up on this neighborhood, perhaps to give up on this level of car, at all. And then people in this neighborhood would find it harder to get a car. Perhaps harder to find jobs.

Tom dropped the stone out of his jacket pocket and kicked it violently aside. Then he dropped the screwdriver after it. He walked down the road, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

He would have to walk, as far as he could out of Goldport. He'd go south, toward New Mexico. Lots of empty space that way, less chance of someone seeing or noticing a dragon flying against the sky. But damn, he could get much, much farther if he could ride. As it was, he'd almost surely get caught by the three dragons. And this time he would have to face them alone.

He realized he was chewing on his lower lip, as he walked down the street where the dilapidated houses gave way to houses in even worse state but divided into apartments, and then to warehouses tagged with the occasional gang graffiti.

He pulled the collar up on his leather jacket. Even with the ridiculous backpack on his back, he didn't think anyone would challenge him. Not for a moment.

Knowing this trip was likely to end in his death, he wished he could buy something to make it easier. Not a lot. Probably nothing to inject. Just some pot to smoke, to ease his nerves. He was going to die, he might as well go easy. Besides, he'd seen there was no point trying to escape the grip of drugs, if even Kyrie did them.

In his six months in the city, he'd seen plenty of drug dealers standing around in shady corners, waiting. This was the type of neighborhood to attract them. But perhaps the rain, unaccustomed in Colorado, had driven them indoors. Tom couldn't see anyone, and certainly not anyone with that pose of alert shiftiness that identified a dealer. He had money. He was willing. But no one was selling.

"Damn dealers," he muttered to himself under his breath. "Just like cops. Never around when you need one."

Wide awake and hopeless, he headed south and west while the sun set and the breeze grew cooler, ruffling at his damp hair, his soaking jeans.

* * *

"Frank, do we have rice pudding?" Kyrie asked, coming near the counter.

Frank looked up with a frown, from a talk he'd been having with three customers seated at the part of the counter where you could get food served. His girlfriend wasn't around again, tonight, so he was in a mood. "I just came in and I haven't made any. If there's any, it's leftover from yesterday."

Well, it was all gone, then. But before Kyrie could turn to go give Rafiel the bad news, Frank added, "Is Tom coming in later?"

"Tom?" Kyrie didn't know what to say. She honestly had no idea. And for just a moment was startled that Frank would ask her about Tom. Except that of course, last night she'd taken time off to take medicine to Tom. Or at least that was what she had told Frank. And then she'd told Frank that Tom was in really bad shape and she had to take him home with her and watch him.

"I don't know," she said. "He left my place a few hours ago."

"Do you know where he was going?"

She shook her head. "He was with his friend. The guy who lives downstairs from him," Kyrie said, as she pulled a stray strand of hair behind her ear. And as she did, the customers at the counter looked up. And she froze.

They were the three from the night before. The three dragons. None of them permanently injured, as far as she could tell, though she was sure she'd got the eye of at least one of them in the battle.

But they sat there, at the counter, uninjured, and the middle one even had his hair arranged, as artificially perfect and smooth as before. They all wore tight jeans and satinlike shimmering jackets, with dragons in the back. They looked like something out of a bad karate movie, and Kyrie was so shocked at seeing them here, in . . . well, the glare of the fluorescent lights, that she didn't know what to do.

Two Dragons was the one sitting next to where Kyrie stood. He backed away from her, his eyes wide, and said something in Chinese that sounded like a panic attack.

The middle one said something in return, something she couldn't understand, and put his hand into his pocket, pulling out a sheaf of notes, which he laid on the counter. And then, the three geniuses, in massed disarray, started toward the door. A process only slightly hampered by the fact that not one of them was willing to turn his back on Kyrie. So they moved backward as a group, bumping into tables and booths, snagging on girls' purses and men's coats, and muttering stuff in Chinese that might be apologies or threats.

Clearly, they were rattled enough to forget their English. Clearly, they thought that Kyrie's panther form was too dangerous to anger. Although why they thought she would shift into a panther right then and take them to pieces in front of the diner patrons was beyond her.

Pulling and shoving at each other, they got to the door, then in a tinkling of the bells suspended from it, out of it, tumbling onto the sidewalk where the lights were starting to show, faintly, against the persistent glow of the sunset.

"What was that all about?" Frank asked. "Did those guys know you?"

"I have no clue," Kyrie said, choosing to answer the first question. And this was the absolute truth. She couldn't figure out why they would be scared of her. After all, even if she had been so stupid as to shift here, in the middle of the diner, they could have shifted too, and then they would have had the upper hand. There were three of them, after all.

Unless . . . She smiled faintly at the thought. Unless the total idiots thought this was a shifter diner and that everyone here would be shifters. If Tom was right the shifting was ancient, well established in their culture, and perhaps passed on in families. They had a lore and a culture. For people like that it must be utterly bewildering when strangers shifted. Perhaps they think we too band together.

Frank was glowering at her, and she realized she was still smiling. He reached for the plates and cups the guys had left on the counter and pulled them down, near the cleaning area, by the dishwasher, glowering all the while and banging the utensils around so much that, if they weren't break-resistant, they would probably have shattered.

"What's wrong?" Kyrie asked.

But he just glowered at her some more, grabbed a dish towel from the counter, and wiped at the serving surface with it. "Oh, nothing. Everything is fine and dandy. You and Tom and . . ." He lifted his hands, upward, as though signifying his inability to understand any of them.

Kyrie skidded back to the sunporch, to give Rafiel the distressing news about the rice pudding.

"There's no rice pudding," she said. "And the three dragons who were at Tom's apartment were just here."

"The dragons?" he said and started to rise. "Here?"

"In human form," she said. "They left." She frowned. "They seemed afraid of me."

He looked at her a long moment, then shook his head. "I don't know what to do. I wonder why they were here."

"Looking for Tom," she said.

"Oh." He looked out the window. "We could follow them, but there's only two of us—"

"And neither of us can fly," Kyrie said. "Besides, there's only one of us. I'm working. But since there's no rice pudding, you're free to follow them."

He just grinned up at her. "Oh, bring me pie à la mode, then. I don't care. I'm in it for the vanilla ice cream." And he winked at her.

"What kind of pie?"

"I told you I don't care," he said. "Just bring me a wedge."

"Green bean pie it is, then," she said, and walked away. To bump into Anthony, the last of the day shift to leave. He was in his street clothes, which, in his case were usually elaborate and today consisted of a ruffled button-down white shirt, red vest and immaculate black pants. "Hey," he said. "What's up with Frank? He's acting like a bear with two heads."

Kyrie shrugged and Anthony sighed. "What that man needs," he said, as if this summed up the wisdom of the ages, is to get laid. He seriously needs to get laid. His girlfriend hasn't been in for too long." And with that, he twirled on his heels and made for the door. Kyrie had often wondered if in his free time he was a member of some dance troupe. At least that would explain the bizarre clothes.

Kyrie went back to scout out the pie, though the only choices were apple and lemon. She chose lemon, figuring he would like it less, and put two scoops of ice cream on the plate with it. It wasn't so much that she wanted to thwart Rafiel—but a man who ordered with that kind of complacency did deserve green bean pie. Or at least Brussels sprouts. Too bad they didn't have any on the menu.

She took the plate of pie in one hand, the carafe in the other, set the pie in front of Rafiel and went off, from table to table, warming up people's coffees.

Despite her best efforts to banish it, the image of Frank getting laid was stuck in her mind. She looked across the diner at Frank, behind the counter, his Neanderthal-like features still knit in a glower. She shuddered. There were things the human mind was not supposed to contemplate.

* * *

Edward Ormson's first thought was that they couldn't be in Colorado. Not so fast. Even by airplane it took over three hours. And they couldn't be flying at airplane speeds. Well, they could, but it would have left him frozen as a popsicle sitting astride that dragon.

And he hadn't been frozen, nor gasping for air. The temperature around him had remained even, and he'd felt perfectly comfortable. Only twice, for just a moment, light seemed to vanish from around them. But it was such a brief moment that Edward hadn't had time to think about it. Now he wondered if some magic transfer had taken place at that moment.

Oh, Edward didn't believe in magic. But then he also didn't believe in dragons, he thought and smiled with more irony than joy while the dragon circled down to a parking lot in a street of low-to-the-ground buildings.

They landed softly on the asphalt and the huge wings that had been spread on either side of him, coruscating and sparkling in the light like living fire, closed slowly.

"Down," the dragon said. Or perhaps not said it, because Edward didn't remember sounds. Just the feeling that he should get down. He should get down immediately.

He scrambled off, sliding along scales that felt softer on the skin than they should have.

But once he stood, in the parking lot, holding his briefcase, he realized that the front of his suit had tiny cuts, as though someone had worked it over with very small blades.

He frowned at it, then looked up at the dragon who glowed with some sort of inner fire, in front of him. The beast opened its huge mouth, and all thought of complaining about damages to his clothes fled Ormson's mind.

"Find your son," the dragon said, in that voice that wasn't exactly a voice. "Make him give back what belongs to me."

And, just as suddenly as he'd appeared at Edward Ormson's office, the dragon now stretched its wings, flexed its legs, and was airborne, gaining height.

Alone in the parking lot, Edward became aware that it was raining, a boring, slow rain. Behind him, a little Chinese restaurant called Three Luck Dragon had its open sign out, but there were no cars parked. So either it catered to a local clientele, or it had none.

Did the Great Sky Dragon mean anything by dropping Edward off here? Or was it simply the first convenient place they'd come to?

Edward saw the curtain twitch on the little window, and a face peer out. The lighting and the distance didn't allow him to see features, but he thought it would be the proprietors looking to see if he intended to come in.

Well, today was their lucky day. He'd go in and order something, and get out his cell phone. He would bet now he knew where Tom had last been seen, he would be able to find the boy with half a dozen phone calls.

One way or another, he always ended up cleaning up after his son.

* * *

Western towns don't taper off. Or at least that was what Tom had seen, ever since his drifting had brought him west and south to Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. You walked down a street, surrounded by five-floor brick warehouses, resounding with the noises of loading and unloading, of packing and making of things resounding within.

And then, a couple of blocks away, you were in the middle of a high prairie, with tumbleweed blowing around. Looking back, you could still see the warehouses, but they were so incongruous that they seemed to be part of another world.

Tom turned to look at the dark edge of the warehouses. He stood on what had abruptly become a country road, its asphalt cracked underfoot. Looking just beyond where he was standing, he saw nothing but an underpass, just ahead. Why there was an underpass was a question he couldn't answer, as it was just two country roads meeting. Perhaps this was what people complained about, with public projects that made no sense.

But right then Tom was grateful of the underpass. In this landscape of brown grass and blowing tumbleweeds, there wasn't much cover, otherwise. He made for the underpass and stripped quickly, shoving all his clothes and boots into the little backpack with the happy dragon on the back. The boots were a tight fit into the small space, but he got them in, and zipped the thing. Then he loosened the back straps to their outmost, and put them around his wrist.

Willing yourself to shift was like willing yourself to die. Because the process of shifting, no matter how easy, always hurt. It took desire to do it, but it needed something else. He got out from under the overpass, and stood—naked in the moonlight, willing his body to shift, willing.

A cough shook him, another, heralding the preliminary spasms that often preceded the shape-shifting. Pain twisted in his limbs, wracked his back, as his body tried to extrude wings from itself. He opened his mouth and let the scream come—something he never did within a city—the scream of pain of his human self, the scream of triumph from the ancient beast once more let forth.

A car drove by, toward the outside of town. One of the tiny SUVs in white. A Kia or a Hyundai or one of those. Tom's confused senses were aware of its turning around and then zooming past again. But no one came out. Worse comes to worst, his still rational mind thought, as his body shifted. They'll just call 911. And good luck with convincing a dispatcher they just saw a dragon.

In the next moment it no longer mattered. The dragon was him. He was the dragon. His body fully shifted, Tom spread his wings fully, feeling the caress of wind and rain on them. He opened his mouth and roared, this time in triumph. His vision sharpened. He was in a vast noncave. And the dragon knew they should go to ground, they should find a cave.

No, the human part of Tom said. No. Not to a cave. We're flying west. Deep west, until we come to a town. We'll follow the highway that will take us to Las Vegas, New Mexico, by early morning. Then . . . cave.

The dragon blinked, confused, because the image in its mind, for a cave, had mattresses and pillows and other things that made sense only to the human. But it had learned, over the years, to trust the ape cowering away at the back of its mind.

It trusted it now, even when it found something wrapped tightly around its front paw. The human mind said they were clothes, and that they shouldn't be discarded.

The dragon harumphed, loudly. Then spread its wings again, sensing the air currents. Half of flying was coasting. If you needed to beat your wings the whole time, you were going to die of tiredness soon.

He felt the currents. He flapped a little. He gained altitude. He headed out of town.

* * *

"Break?" Rafiel asked.

Kyrie was about to shake her head, but stopped. The dinnertime crowd had thinned. Students had left for concerts or movies or whatever it was that college students did with their evenings. And the families, too, had vanished, probably home to their comfy chairs and their TVs.

The only two people in the diner were a man at the back, who seemed to be signing the credit card slip that Kyrie had dropped on his table. And Rafiel.

Kyrie looked at the wall clock. Ten-thirty p.m. That meant there would be a lull till eleven or thereabouts, when the late-night people would start coming in. And she only needed ten minutes.

She backtracked to the counter and put away the carafe she'd just used to give Rafiel a warm up. "Frank, is it okay if I take ten minutes?" she asked.

Frank turned around. He was still glowering. "Fine. It's fine," he said, as if he were saying that it was all completely wrong.

"Is there a problem?" Kyrie asked taken aback.

"No. I just wish your boyfriend had given us some warning before he decided to disappear."

"He's not due for an hour or so. I came in early," Kyrie said. "And he's not my boyfriend."

But it was hardly worth arguing. And Frank looked to be in a worse mood than she'd ever seen him. "I'll take a break now," she said. "If Tom doesn't come in, it's going to be a hellish shift, and that way I'll be able to stay till five a.m., okay?"

Frank shrugged, which looked like consent. He was grilling a bunch of burgers, though Kyrie had no idea why, given the deserted look of the diner. Perhaps he was precooking them a bit to allow him to cook them faster later on. It wasn't any of her business, in any case.

She backtracked to the enclosed-porch addition. Rafiel must have heard, or watched her conversation. He was standing as she approached. "Ready?"

She nodded. And gestured with her head toward the door at the back of the extension that led to the parking lot. She didn't want to go to the parking lot again. Truly, she didn't. On the other hand, neither did she want to talk to Rafiel in front of Frank. Frank was likely to decide that Rafiel was also her boyfriend and hold her responsible for whatever the policeman did in the future.

She had no idea what had gotten into her boss. He was usually grumpy, but not like this. And then there was Anthony's idea, which made her make a face, as she led Rafiel out the back door and onto the parking lot.

This time the parking lot was deserted, there was no smell of blood, and she took care to stay in the shadow of the building, out of the light of the moon.

Rafiel made a sound that seemed suspiciously close to a purr as he got outside, and he stretched his arms. "Do you feel it?" he asked, giving Kyrie a sidelong glance. "Do you feel the call?"

"No," Kyrie said, as curtly as she could. It was a lie, but only in a way. Yeah, she could feel the call, but she could feel the call every night. And it seemed to her Rafiel was speaking of another call. And there, as if on cue, she noticed his smell again. No, not his smell. His smell was soap and a little aftershave, nothing out of the ordinary. But the smell exuding from him right now was a thick, feline musk that made her think of running through the jungles, of hunting, of . . . "You said you had news that pertained to the corpse?" she said, turning her head away.

"Yeah," he said, and looked away from her, as though her turning her head to get fresh air, slightly less tainted by his musk, were an insult. "Yeah. We got a chemical analysis for the green stuff we found."

She looked at him. He nodded as if she'd asked a question. "The . . . Well, the lab thinks it's of insect origin, although not quite like anything they know from any insects they know."

"And?" Kyrie asked.

"And those things . . . the white stuff on the lungs?"

"Yeah."

"They think it's eggs."

Kyrie frowned at him and he shook his head, looking impatient and annoyed, as if resenting that she couldn't read his mind. "Not chicken eggs," he said. "They're insect eggs. They don't know what type yet, but they're getting in an entomologist from the Natural History Museum in Denver tomorrow. He's someone's brother-in-law or brother of a brother-in-law, and he's driving down day after tomorrow. He's supposedly one of those guys who can tell on sight what kind of insect laid eggs where. He's used for investigating crimes by all the local police departments."

"Okay," Kyrie said. "And why did I need to know this right now? Why was this so urgent that I had to take a break to hear it?" His smell was growing stronger. It seemed to fill her nose and her mouth and to populate her mind with odd images and thoughts. She found herself wondering what his hair would feel like to the touch.

"Because I think there was the same powder on your porch last night," he said. "Where those windows were broken."

"My porch? Insects?" she asked. "But Tom said something about dragons and his friend was going on about aliens."

"Well, yeah," Rafiel said, and shrugged. "But I don't think those two were exactly in the state necessary to testify in a court of law. Or for that matter anywhere else."

Kyrie conceded. And yet, she wondered what had happened in the porch while they were gone. Had bugs broken the window? In her mind was an image of masses of bugs crawling out of the loam, pushing on the window, till the sheer weight of their mass broke it. Yuck. Like something out of a bad horror movie. "Any dead bugs, or other pieces of bug in that powder?"

"No," he said. He looked directly at her, as if her face were a puzzle he was hoping to decipher. His eyes were huge and golden, and his lips looked soft. The musky smell of him was everywhere, penetrating her nostrils, her mind.

He leaned in, very close to her, and asked in a voice that should be reserved for indecent proposals, "So, can I come by? After your shift?"

The tone and the closeness startled her enough to wake her from the trance induced by his scent. She stepped back. "No. Why would you? No."

He took a deep breath as though he, too, had been affected by something, and stepped back. "So I can see if you have that powder in your porch or not. And to have it analyzed if you do." He shook his head. "What did you think I meant?"

"All right," she said, reluctantly. "If you want to come. But not when I get off work. Come later, around one or so." She wanted to get some sleep tomorrow. And besides, she was not absolutely sure about Rafiel Trall yet. She'd rather face him in the full light of noon, without the effects of whatever this smell was. "I'd better go back in. Frank is in a mood and I have repairs on a porch to pay off."

* * *

Edward Ormson got out of the taxi in front of the diner where he'd been told Tom worked. Finding this information had been a fast job.

He, himself, had found Tom's address on the Web, and his secretary had then called—from New York, that much more impressive—the boy's landlady and asked questions.

Closing the taxi door and waiting till the driver pulled away, Ormson frowned. In fact, in the whole story there was only one thing he didn't understand. And that was that his secretary had told him the landlady seemed fond of Tom.

Oh, it wasn't at all strange that a woman should have some interest in Tom. Even at sixteen, when the boy had left home, there had been to him that roguish charm that attracts a certain class of females. What was odd, though, was that he had reportedly been living within the apartment complex this woman managed for about six months, and she said he'd never been late with the rent, didn't have loud parties, hadn't given the neighbors any cause to complain. He didn't, in fact, seem to have any life beyond going to work and—according to the woman—reading out on the steps of the building when the weather was warm. Reading? Tom? Perhaps it was the wrong Thomas E. Ormson?

But no. It wasn't that common a name. And besides, there had been the dragon. Edward swallowed, as he headed toward the gaudy facade painted all over with the prices of specials in what appeared to be a full pack of primary color markers. It wasn't just that "Fresh Rice Pudding" was scrawled in vivid red that offended Ormson's sense of aesthetics. It was that above it "Fries Always Fresh, Never Frozen" was done in at least five different and mutually clashing colors.

And above the door, something that looked very much like a pink pig wearing a cook's hat and apron was tossing a succession of pancakes up in the air. The whole was so horrendous that it might very well be considered kitschy chic if it were in the right place. But around the diner, head shops, used record stores, and closed warehouses clustered. This was the type of area that would never be fashionable.

It stood as a bulwork against the fern bars and lofts proliferating just a few blocks away. Here dingy and strange would hold the line against quaint and overpriced

Wondering about the hygiene of the place, and if it was quite safe to go in, he opened the door. A clash of bells greeted him, and a rough-looking, dark-haired, bearded man glared at him from behind the counter.

Ormson had intended on approaching the first person he saw and asking for Tom. But this man didn't look like the greatest of prospects. His eyebrows were beetled low over his dark, sunken eyes, and he looked positively murderous, an impression not improved by the fact that he held a very large knife in his right hand.

Hoping that his hesitation hadn't been noticeable, Edward made for the most distant of the many booths upholstered in dark green vinyl. He was about to slide into it, when the man behind the counter barked, "Hey, you." Edward looked up, not even daring to ask what he'd done wrong.

"That booth is for groups, Mister," the dark man said. "Take one of the smaller ones."

Edward obeyed, though wondering why the booth was being held for groups when, clearly, there was no one else in the place. But he really didn't want to argue with the man.

Instead, he slid into the smaller booth and made a big show of picking up the menu and studying it. Normal diner fare, all of it, as far as he could see, with a few Greek dishes thrown in. And though he wasn't sure he wanted to eat here, or even that the food here would be safe to eat, the place didn't smell bad. Greasy, sure. There was an underlying smell of hot oil, as if the place were used, day and night, to fry stuff. Which it probably was. But there were appetizing smells of freshly grilled burgers and fries riding on the sheer greasiness that put a sticky film on every vinyl booth and table. And those were making his stomach clench, and his mouth start to water.

It had been too long since he'd eaten anything. Since lunch the day before. The clock on the wall here showed eleven o'clock, which meant it was one in the morning back home. No wonder he was starving. And he'd eaten in diners when he was in college. To no ill effects. Of course, he'd been younger.

He looked around the still empty diner, hoping that the very angry man behind the counter was not the only person here, hoping that a waitress—or, for a choice, his son—would materialize somewhere, out of the blue.

Not that he had any wish to see Tom. Not really. He had no idea what he would tell the boy, or what the boy's reaction to him would be. Their last parting had been far less than amicable. But if he saw Tom and convinced the stupid boy to give back whatever it was to the dragons—and what kind of an idiot did you need to be to steal from organized criminals?—then he could go back home in the early morning flight. And wash his hands of the boy. And resume his lonely life. Lonely, yes, but at least untroubled by the stream of acts of self-destruction that was Tom's way of living.

He looked around enough, and no one came, and rather than order from the guy behind the counter, Edward thought he would leave. Leave now. The man would probably curse him, as he left, but it was obvious Tom wasn't here. And if Tom was the reason the man behind the counter was so furious, then what would happen if Edward mentioned Tom?

He'd started rising when a couple came in through a side door that seemed to lead to another part of the diner—the covered porch he'd seen from the outside. He first thought of them as a couple—tall, blond man and slightly smaller girl, with multicolored hair. But then he realized the girl was wearing an apron with the logo of the diner, and that the blond man was just following her. In fact, he headed for the door as the girl rushed toward Edward.

"Hi," she said, and smiled. "My name is Kyrie. What can I get for you?"

He thought of asking her for Tom right away, but . . . no. He was hungry, anyway. "I'll have coffee," he said. "And your souvlaki platter, and one of the large Greek salads."

"What dressing on your salad?" she asked.

"Ranch is fine," he said.

She nodded, and went over to the counter. He watched her, from behind as she went. She was quite an attractive girl, probably in her early twenties, with a trim body, hair dyed in an elaborate pattern, and the sort of face that reminded him that America was supposed to be a melting pot. Seen in a certain light, he supposed she could be Greek, or perhaps Italian, or maybe even Native American. . . . Or, he admitted, some other, far more exotic combination. He wondered what the truth was. He also wondered if anything was going on with her and Tom and if that was what had the cook's nose out of joint.

The girl came back in a moment, set a cup in front of him, and put down a container of sugar and another with creamers. She filled the cup and he—ignoring the sugar and the creamers—took a sip.

His surprise at the quality of the coffee must have shown, in raised eyebrows or some change in expression, because the girl smiled at him. And, oh, she had dimples. He grinned back. She wasn't that much younger than him, really, and besides, he went out with girls her age every other week. But was she involved with Tom? Or how did she feel about Tom? He had to ask about Tom, but was it going to ruin everything?

"Excuse me?" he said, before she could turn away. "I don't suppose I could ask you a question?"

She tensed. He saw her tense, as she turned around, even if her face didn't show anything as she said, "Yes?"

"I'm sorry to bother you," he said. "But does Thomas Ormson work here?"

For a moment her face stayed absolutely frozen, and he thought she was going to tell him to go to hell or something. Instead, she put a hand on the table, and it trembled. Oh, no. What was going on here? Was she Tom's girlfriend.

"I thought you looked like him," she said. "But I thought . . ." She swallowed and didn't say what she thought.

"I'm his father," Edward said, low enough that the gorilla behind at the grill wouldn't hear him. "My name is Edward Ormson. Do you know where he is?"

She opened her mouth.

"Kyrie," the gorilla said. And she looked around, as if wakening. People had come in while they were talking, and there were five tables occupied. And she was alone. Also, his dinner was now sitting on the counter, ready. She went to get it.

"I get out at five," she told him. "It might be easier to talk then."

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Framed