“Isn’t that tactic kind of ancient?”

Rausch twitched. “Bigend says that’s the point. He says it’s a double-reverse, so corny it’s new. Well, not new, but comforting. Familiar.”

“Is that why he’s always with them? They’re Blue Ant clients?”

“He’s tight with their father,” Rausch said, lowering his voice, “all I know.”

“Who’s their father?” It seemed odd to her that the twins had a father. She’d thought of them as having been decanted from something.

“Big deal in Iceland. Seriously, Hollis, he really didn’t send you?”

“Who decided they’d come here?” She’d spotted one twin’s silver hair across Les Editeurs, but she’d already forgotten which one Rausch had said was here. Seated at a table with a tall broad-shouldered young man, very pale, one eye concealed by a heavy, dusty-looking flop of black hair.

“I did. It’s not too hip. Looks like they chose it at random. Won’t detract from the narrative.”

“Then unless one of the people I’m having dinner with is a Bigend plant, it’s a coincidence.”

Rausch glowered at her, which actually meant, she knew, that he was frightened. “Really?”

“Really.” Maitre d’ hovering now, impatient. “Overton,” Hollis said to him, “table for four.” When she turned back to Rausch, he was gone. She followed the man through the crowded restaurant, to where George and Meredith were seated.

George half rose, doing the air-kiss thing. He was wearing a dark suit, no tie, white shirt. A small triangle of ultradense chest hair, at the open collar, made it look as though he were wearing a black T-shirt. She thought his stubble had lengthened, since she’d last seen him. He smiled ruefully, white teeth seemingly the size and thickness of dominoes. “Sorry about this. I had no idea. I actually chose the place so we could talk, and not be distracted by the food.” He sat back down as the maitre d’ held her chair for her.

When he’d gone, leaving thickly bound menus, Meredith said, “We could have been across the street, at Comptoir. That would have distracted us thoroughly.”

“Sorry,” said George. “The food here is rather good. Unfortunately, it looks like poor Bram’s the main course.”

“You know him?”

“To speak to. He’s talented. There but for fortune, I suppose.”

“Studio time with Reg not looking quite so dire?”

“Not since our conversation this afternoon, really.” Big solid teeth appearing again. She could certainly see why Meredith liked him. Indeed, she could see that Meredith very definitely did. They gave off that contact-pleasantness she expected from couples who liked one another in some genuine but nonmanic way. She wondered if she’d ever been half of one of those. “Your friend is with Fridrika Brandsdottir,” she said, the name coming back.

“Evidently,” George agreed.

“Not in any biblical sense, I hope,” said Meredith, peering over her open menu at the Bram/Brandsdottir table.

“None whatever,” said George. “He’s gay.”

“That must make it even more embarrassing,” said Hollis, opening her menu.

“He’ll do what he has to,” said George. “He’s looking for a way out of the vampire thing. Tricky.”

Milgrim appeared, his hair looking damp, the maitre d’ fussing officiously behind him.

“Hello, Milgrim,” Hollis said, “have a seat.”

Assured that Milgrim was meant to be there, though clearly none too pleased to have him there, the maitre d’ retreated. Milgrim unslung his shoulder bag, lowered it to the floor by its strap, beside the remaining chair, and seated himself.

“This is my colleague, Milgrim,” Hollis said. “Milgrim, Meredith Overton and George. Like you, George has only the one name.”

“Hello,” said Milgrim. “I saw you at the clothing show.”

“Hello,” said George. Meredith looked at Hollis.

“Milgrim and I,” Hollis said to Meredith, “are both interested in Gabriel Hounds.”

“Unidentified flying objects,” Milgrim said, to George. “Do you believe in them?”

George’s eyes narrowed beneath his unibrow. “I believe that what appear to be objects, flying, sometimes appear to be seen. And may be unknown.”

“You haven’t seen one?” Milgrim leaned sideways and down, to scoot his bag farther under his chair. He looked up, from very close to the tablecloth, at George. “Yourself?”

“No,” said George, with careful neutrality. “Have you?”

Milgrim straightened up. Nodded in the affirmative.

“Let’s order, shall we,” said Hollis, quickly, hugely grateful for the arrival of their waitress.

32. POST-ACUTE

The waitress was departing with orders, taking the hardbound menus with her, when a disturbance broke out at a table on the opposite side of the room.

Raised voices. A tall, broad-shouldered, black-clad young man, pale features grimly set, suddenly standing, knocking over his chair. Milgrim watched as this one swept for the door, slamming out of Les Editeurs. To be met by a tide of electronic flash, flinging up his arm to protect his eyes or hide his face.

“That didn’t take long,” said George, who was buttering a round of sliced baguette. He had elegantly hairy hands, like some expensive Austrian stuffed animal. He bit off half of the buttered bread with his large white teeth.

“All he could stand,” said Meredith, someone whose intelligence protruded through her beauty, Milgrim felt, like the outline of unforgiving machinery pressing against a taut silk scarf.

Craning his neck, Milgrim made out one of the Dottirs, silver hair unmistakable, at the table the young man had deserted. After the liquid metal penguin, this didn’t seem so odd. He felt as though he were on some kind of roll today. She was collecting her things, he saw. She checked the dial of her enormous gold wristwatch. “Saw them,” he said, “the Dottirs. On the river. In a video.” He turned back to George. “I saw you, too.”

“It’s about an album launch,” said George. “They have a new release. We don’t, but share a label.”

“Who was that who left?”

“Bram,” said Hollis, “the singer from the Stokers.”

“Don’t know him,” said Milgrim, picking up one of the rounds of bread in order to give his hands something to do.

“You aren’t thirteen,” said Meredith, “are you?”

“No,” agreed Milgrim, putting the slice of bread, whole, into his mouth. Oral, his therapist called that. She’d said he was very lucky to never have taken up smoking. The bread was firm, springy. He held it there a moment before he began to chew. Meredith was staring at him. He looked back at the Brandsdottir table, where someone was holding whichever Dottir’s chair as she rose.

That person was Rausch, he saw, and almost spat out the bread.

Desperately, he found Hollis’s eye. She winked, the sort of effortless wink that involves no other features, a wink that Milgrim himself could never have managed, and took a sip of wine. “George is in a band, Milgrim,” she said, and he knew that she spoke to calm him. “The Bollards. Reg Inchmale, who was the guitarist in the Curfew with me, is producing their new album.”

Milgrim, chewing and swallowing the suddenly dry bread, nodded. Took a sip of water. Coughed into his crisp cloth napkin. What was Rausch doing here? He glanced back, but didn’t see Rausch. The Dottir, reaching the door, triggered a second wave of strobing, a raggedly cumulative brilliance, the color of her hair. He looked back to Hollis. She nodded, almost invisibly.

George and Meredith, he guessed, were unaware of her connection with Blue Ant or, for that matter, of his own. The Dottirs, he knew, were Blue Ant clients. Or, rather, their father, whom Milgrim had never seen, was some kind of major Bigend project. Possibly even partner. Some people, Rausch included, assumed Bigend’s interest in the sisters was sexual. But Milgrim, from his intermittently privileged position as Bigend’s conversational foil, guessed that not to be the case. Bigend cheerfully squired the twins through London as though they were a pair of tedious but astronomically valuable dogs, the property of someone he wished above most things to favorably impress.