"Nat, you madman! This is absolutely bugfuck. What have you gotten me involved in?"

"Everything's happening right on schedule. You should have been expecting this. The return of the king is a big deal. All this fuss was foreseeable.'' In his most reassuring manner, Nat said. "This is the great game, kid. It's like Aesop's nettle. Approach it timidly and seize it gently and it'll sting like fire. But grasp it boldly, like a man, and it will be painless and as soft as silk to your hand. Also, keep in mind that none of them knows what either of us looks like."

Will had his doubts about the nettle-seizing strategy, whether taken literally or figuratively, but he kept his silence. They were in this thing too deep for quibbles. So he followed Nat to a vantage point in a narrow alley across and down from their brownstone. "They're desecuring the area," Nat said. The emergency vehicles were starting to pull away and the scarecrows were one by one being doused and dismantled. Only the most important players remained to see the operation through to its conclusion. "I don't recognize anybody on the street," Nat said. "How about you?"

"Actually, yeah." Will pointed with his chin. "The one with scarlet lipstick and a warrior's posture. That's Zorya Vechernyaya. She's pretty highly placed in the political police, I think."

"Damn. I've got a rap sheet as long as the Fisher king's dick. She might recognize me." Nat scowled and muttered. "Hey, babe. I need you on deck. You're a better judge of character than I am. Take a look at this dame and tell me what you think."

"Huh?"

"Not you," Nat said peevishly. "Yeah, that's what I think, too. You want to take over here?"

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"I've got to step out briefly, kid. There's someone I want you to meet. Tell her everything. Trust her as you would me."

"But I don't trust you." Will followed in Nat's wake down the street to the storefront temple at the corner operated by the Cult of Profane Love.

"Smart-ass." They ducked within the temple. The interior might have been an educational tableau demonstrating the cult's varieties of worship: the flagellators with their whips curled in cryptic arabesques above their backs, the self-abusers in a circle about the altar, heads thrown back in ecstasy, and finally the virgin sacrifice strapped down upon the altar, about to receive the priests chastising instrument. "Watch closely. This is my best trick."

Nat slowly bent over double. For a long moment he writhed as if within the suit, his body were changing form. Then he straightened.

There was a stranger's face in the helmet.

"So you're the kid. I heard a lot about you." The stranger quirked a sardonic smile. She was one of those women who were beautiful at first glance, then showed their age, and then were beautiful again. Her hair was red and cropped. Her features were sharp and Asian. "I'm an old associate of Tomba's," she said. Then, when Will did not respond, "St. John Malice? Mullah Nasreddin? Tom Nobody? Liane the Wanderer? Nat Whilk? Let me know when I'm getting close."

"Who are you?" Will asked. "And what are you to Nat?"

"He didn't tell you about me? The rat. He'll pay for that." She stuck out a hand. "I'm Victoria il Volpone Sheherazade Jones. Don't call me Vickie. I'm Nat's partner."

"You're the vixen," Will said. "The one who rescued him in Whinny Moor Landfill."

"So he did tell you about me. The bastard. I told him not to."

"You, uh, share Nat's body with him?" Will flushed. "I mean—"

"Fast on the uptake, too." She tapped her chest. "I caught a shotgun blast right here—it pretty much pureed my heart—and had to go to earth for a few months to heal. Let's not get into the specifics about how it's done—they're a little intimate. Bring me up to speed here. What's Nat been up to in my absence?"

Will gave her the short version. How they had met in Camp Oberon and traveled to Babel together. How Nat had saved him from the political police but then, through his disdain of official documentation, made Will an illegal. Lastly, how they were working the Missing Prince scam together.

"Yeah, I know all about the scam." The vixen fleered. "This is another of Nat's overcomplicated schemes. The classics always work best when done simply. But he's an awrtist—he needs to rework em. Give him a pocket watch and he'll take it apart to see it he can add a few more cogs and maybe a stick of butter to it." Going up to the altar, she said, "Hey, let's give these guys a miracle!" She dipped a finger in a censor of scented charcoal that hadn't yet been set afire, and wrote the rune of celibacy on the sacrifice's stomach. Then she smartly slapped the celebrant's tool between her hands.

"What was that all about?'' Will asked as they left the building.

"The priest's dick goes limp, he screams, and the sacrifice is suddenly labeled off-limits." The vixen had a short, barking laugh. "I just created the cult's first sacred virgin."

"You and Nat are two of a kind."

"I'll take that as a compliment." They resumed their posts at the alley. "Not everybody would."

A gong sounded and the mages lowered their arms. Time resumed.

Will and the vixen removed their hoods and gloves and lit up cigarettes while they waited for Zorya Vechernyaya to finish an interminable conversation with a Teggish agent. The mages dispersed in waiting limousines. Not long after, Esme came running up. "Unca Will! Is this my Auntie Fox?"

"Yes, I am, hon." The vixen picked her up and held her upside down until she squealed with laughter." Pop-Pop told you I was coming, huh?" When she set Esme down, they were both standing in the alley's shadows, out of sight. "We have to be careful here. I don't have Nat's luck."

"Is that how he gets away with all the crap he does? It's all good luck?"

"No, it's strange luck. Not good, not bad— just unlikely. Nat must've inherited it from you, eh, little grandmother?" Esme shrugged. "I guess." "Wait. Esme's literally his grandmother?"

"Why do you think he was in the refugee camp in the first place? He had a premonition that his mother was going to die, so he went to see her." The vixen pulled a five-dollar bill out of Esme's ear and swatted her on the rump. "Run along and buy some ice cream, sweetie. We'll play later." She peered out onto the street again. "They're breaking up at last. What does it say on the back of my moon suit?"

Will looked. "ATF."

Zorya Vcchcrnyaya strode down the sidewalk, looking grim. She passed by the alley just as the vixen was stripping off her suit, almost but not quite showing more flesh than might be expected. Behind her, Will doffed his suit more circumspectly.

The vixen thrust her bundled suit into the policewoman's arms. "Hey, babe. Be a doll and hold this for me for a sec."

"Do i know you?" Zorya Vechernyaya asked in a tone that said that she did not.

"Kim Freydisdottir. Alchemy, Tobacco, and Firearms." She jerked a thumb toward Will "This is Dan Picaro. My intern. And today's your lucky day."

The policewoman glanced once at Will, and then glared at the vixen. "Is it?"

"You betcha. You just met me. And I'm a gal like nobody you ever met before." "How so?"

"I lead your quintessentially charmed life. All these years in ATF and I never been shot. Never been ensorcelled. Never been hurt in love."

"Oh?" Zorya Vechernyaya said. A small, cruel rosebud of a smile bloomed on her mouth. "Let me buy you a drink."

Le Wine Bar's interior was overgrown with jungle vines through whose foliage green and yellow snakes slowly twined. A satyr led them through the foliage to an orchid-strewn table beside a pool of black water from the depths of which corpse-pale faces peered up at them.

"Boodles martini, very dry, straight up with a twist," said Zorya Vechernyaya.