"Don't look to me like she's all here right now." Maybe she was mentally allergic to the Dead Man. She seemed to be aging before my eyes, taking on that lost look you sometimes see in stroke victims. She had a firm grip on the cherub. I doubt I could have beaten it out of her hand.

Easy, Garrett. Calm yourself.

Sometimes you stumble without seeing it coming. My mother suffered a series of strokes. A stroke finally killed her. In between the first and last, my cousins took the brunt because my brother and I were in the Cantard. She outlived my brother, but I got home often enough to see it at its worst.

It will tear your heart out when your mom all of a sudden can't remember your name.

Easy, I say.

" ‘The pain still remains,' " I told him, quoting a popular soldiers' poem. He would be hearing that a lot if he kept up his interest in current politics. The Call had set it to music. When the fighting is done and the long night is gone, the pain still remains.

Manage it, Garrett.

"Getting short-tempered, are we?"

We have an opportunity here. This child is the stone at the center.

"The fruit outside looks pretty tasty, too."

Mental sneer. She cannot be reached. Not at her heart. And now I see that it is not of her own choosing.

I'm a normal, red-blooded TunFairen boy, so I wasn't much concerned about her heart when I looked her over. I grumped, "You manage your own pain."

Cat was drifting, but she was not catatonic. She knew we were talking about her and probably did follow my half of the conversation. She did not appear to resent it. Assuming the Dead Man was right about her birth, she undoubtedly had had plenty of experience being an outsider.

Ah. A plan presents itself. Inasmuch as you find Cat such a delectable morsel, you might try doing what you do so well. Charm her. See where that goes. She may lead you to valuable information.

"Like we have that kind of time?" He dwells entirely in the realm of fantasy when he pictures my abilities to understand and communicate with the opposite sex. Old Bones, they are way too opposite for me.

And it was not like him to give up on himself so easily. Let Garrett do it? Not when he thought so much of his own ability to get inside another mind. Either he overestimated Cat or he was sneaking around to get an angle on me. This news could break his heart, but it seemed to me that, as is the case with so many young ladies her age, there just wasn't a whole lot in Cat's head to find.

Faintly, faintly, like the remotest, most tenuous whiff of weed smoke drifting from an alley, gone in a blink: Nog is ines...

I shuddered.

That was not pleasant.

"You ought to smell him."

Not a problem for me anymore.

"Nice to know there are advantages to being dead."

The watchers have begun to move in slowly as members of each pantheon try to stay a few feet ahead of their competitors. I need Dean to send the bird out again.

From the kitchen came an uncommon construction blurted in response to the Dead Man's touch. I heard Dean stomp toward the front door. I heard him say something very unpleasant to Mr. Big. The Goddamn Parrot did not respond. Maybe he had discovered manners.

Maybe there were blizzards in the hot place and all the young devils were sharpening their skates.

Dean stuck his head into the Dead Man's room. "Mr. Dotes is headed this way."

"Morley?" It had been a while since I had seen Morley Dotes, my sometime best pal. He was trying to go high class, which apparently meant scraping old buddies off the soles of his shoes.

"Do we know another Dotes?" Dean does not approve of Morley. Of course, he doesn't approve of much of anything but marriagable nieces and his friends Tinnie and Maya. But not many other people approve of Morley, either. Morley is what discreet, gentle folk would call a thug.

In the real world Morley is known as one badass bonebreaker.

Who has developed delusions and illusions.

Please await Mr. Dotes at the front door, Dean. Bring him straight here. I am certain we will find his news enlightening.

36

Morley Dotes is part human, part dark elf. His elven side dominates. His choice. He seems embarrassed by his human side. Can't say I blame him.

He is short and lean and so damned good-looking they ought to jail him and lose the key. So the rest of us get a break. I have known him a long time. Sometimes we are best pals. Sometimes he does stuff like give me a talking buzzard that is possessed by an insane demon that causes diarrhea of the beak.

"Mr. Dotes," Dean said, showing Morley into the Dead Man's room.

"Egad," I said. I've always wanted to say that. The opportunity never presented itself before. "Your boys knock over a tailor shop?"

He was dressed to the nines. Maybe even to the tens or elevens. He had on a silver-trimmed black tricorner hat, a heavy, bright red-, black-, and silver-trimmed cutaway over a white shirt wild with lace and ruffles at throat and wrists, a skinny sword cane, natty cream hose, and incredibly shiny shoes with huge silver buckles. He even had a little twitch of a black mustache coming in.

"Some high-class Hill couches must have died to make that coat."

Morley removed a white silk glove, took out a scented little hanky, held it beneath his nose. He sniffed and eyed Cat speculatively, wondering if there was something between her and me. That is the one line he never crosses.

"Really putting on the airs now, isn't he?" I asked the Dead Man.

A man has got to do what a man has got to do. The Dead Man's sarcasm would have rattled the windows if the room had had any windows to rattle.

Morley took it in stride. We peasants could not be expected to appreciate his improved, refined station. "As you requested," he told the Dead Man, flouncing that damned hanky like he belonged in the West End, "I inspected the site you specified. In fact, I soiled a perfectly beautiful... "

Nog is inescapable.

This one was a lot stronger. Nog was close. And his thought did not touch just the Dead Man and me. Morley lost his color.

I told him, "That's not just another Loghyr. That's a for sure howling petty pewter god whose specialty is hunting people down. Right now he's looking for me."

Cat had caught it, too. She started moving around nervously. "I need to get out of here, Garrett. If Nog finds me here... "

Show the young lady to the small front room, please, Dean. Miss Cat, I wish to speak to you for a moment privately before you depart. In the interim, I need to consult with these gentlemen.

"Where will I be able to get ahold of you?" I asked Cat, as though I believed the Dead Man really did plan to cut her loose.

"I'll find you."

"Sure you will. Good-bye, then. Behave yourself."

She gave me a funny look, then went with Dean. She failed to take Fourteen with her. That had to mean something to somebody.

In the background Nog faded away, but he left no doubt that he was not far off and in a foul mood besides. His pals were bound to be around, too, and I couldn't see their tempers being any more pleasant.

I fear it will not be long before they come visiting.

Morley asked, "Are you into something weird again, Garrett?" He stared at the cherub like he half expected it to come to life and snipe an arrow right into his black heart.

"Me? Into something weird? The gods forfend." I told him all about it. And concluded, "It wasn't my idea."

"But then, it never is. Is it? I take it that was some other clown named Garrett who went chasing the skirt up Macunado."

"Here's the pot calling the kettle. You never saw a skirt you wouldn't chase."