"Grays," Roger murmured. The Greens, and the Grays. This was starting to make an unpleasant sort of sense. "What did they look like?"

"I don't know," Caroline said. "They seemed short and squat. Sort of like the way you described our visitor last night."

Roger nodded. "And like the two who shot at me just now."

Caroline looked up sharply. "They shot at you?"

"With a gun that appears from nowhere and fires invisible bowling balls," he said, gingerly rubbing his sore chest. "Knocked me straight across the room."

"Let me see," Caroline said, hurriedly setting down her cup and unzipping his jacket. "You didn't tell me you were hurt."

"It's nothing," Roger assured her as she got through the jacket and started on his shirt buttons. "Like I said, it was like getting hit with a bowling ball."

"Well, there's no blood, anyway," Caroline said, peering through the gap she'd opened. "There's going to be some bruising, though."

"That I can live with," he said, buttoning up the shirt again. "I'm just glad the things weren't on whatever setting blows off tree branches."

Caroline caught her breath. "Is that what happened?"

"What else?" he said. "I wasn't outside in time to see the branch go, but I did see the woman get slammed into the tree. It was exactly what happened to me, only worse."

"Maybe that's what happened to Melantha, too," Caroline said. "Oh, Roger, what are we going to do?

She trusted us, and we've let her down."

"I don't know," Roger said, taking her hand as he fought back his own gnawing sense of guilt.

Maybe if he hadn't been so intimidating—maybe if Melantha had felt free to tell them the whole truth

—this could have been avoided. But it was too late. Now, most likely, the story was lost to them forever.

Unless...

Letting go of Caroline's hand, he got to his feet. "Where are you going?" she asked as he headed across the living room.

"Fierenzo said we had a message on our machine," he reminded her, picking up the handset and punching in their number.

Caroline came up beside him as the answering machine picked up. Roger punched in the retrieval code, then switched to speakerphone so they could both hear. "Hello, Roger, my name is Cyril," an unfamiliar voice said. "I understand you spoke to Sylvia at Aleksander's this morning..."

They let the message run to the end. Caroline gave a little shiver, Roger noticed, when he came to the part about the blood of thousands of New Yorkers.

"... I hope you'll do the right thing, and that we'll see you and Melantha here soon," the voice concluded.

There was the click of a disconnect. "Lovely," Roger growled. "Nothing like a little veiled threat to

—"

"Hello, Roger, my name is Aleksander," a new voice unexpectedly came on. "I wanted to apologize for not being here when you came by this morning. Sylvia told me about your conversation, and I sense her zeal may have skewed your perception of us. I'd like to make that up to you, as well as give you the complete story before you make any decision on what to do with Melantha. You'd be more than welcome to come back here; alternatively, there is one of your own who's familiar with the situation."

Roger felt his throat tighten. One of your own?

"His name is Otto Velovsky, and he lives in the apartment building across from Jackson Square,"

Aleksander went on. "Please go and listen to him. I don't exaggerate when I say that the fate of the entire city may hang in the balance."

The disconnect click came again, and this time it was followed by silence. Roger waited a moment to make sure there weren't any more messages, then clicked off his end of the connection. "Where's Jackson Square?" Caroline asked.

"No idea," Roger said. "Do you know if the Youngs have a good city map?"

"Should be here," Caroline said, pulling open the telephone stand drawer.

The map was indeed there, tucked beneath a small stack of notepads and pencils. They took it back to the couch, and for a minute searched through it in silence. "There," Caroline said suddenly, pointing to a spot in the West Village near 14th Street and Eighth Avenue. "One of those little neighborhood pocket parks."

"Right," Roger said, nodding as he studied the area. It wasn't too far from a little Italian place he'd taken Caroline to a couple of times before they were married. "Did he give an address? I don't remember hearing one."

"We can look him up in the phone book," Caroline said. "I wonder who he is, and how he fits into this."

"I'm more worried about that 'one of your own' comment," Roger said. "It sounded really strange."

"And the woman by the tree told me to leave Melantha to her own people," Caroline said slowly.

"Roger... these aren't just two ethnic groups, are they?"

He shook his head. "No ethnic group I've ever heard of can climb walls or pop out of trees."

"Trees!" Caroline clutched suddenly at his arm. "Roger—if that woman could come out of the tree, maybe Melantha went into it."

"Oh, damn," Roger muttered as a cluster of mismatched puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place.

"That's how she disappeared Wednesday night. She just popped into one of the orange trees." He snorted under his breath. "I can't believe I'm saying this."

"Never mind that," Caroline said, jumping up and starting across the living room. "Come on."

"Whoa," Roger said. "Where are we going?"

"To the courtyard, of course," Caroline said, scooping up her coat from the chair where she'd draped it. "We have to see if Melantha's in that tree."

"With the cops still out there?"

Caroline froze with one arm halfway into its sleeve. "Oh. No, I guess not."

"Definitely not," Roger agreed, trying to think it through. "And even after they leave, it might not be a good idea. If the woman's still out there, and if she didn't see where Melantha went, that might give her away."

"I don't know," Caroline said, her eyes going strangely distant. "She looked awfully dead to me."

"Then where did the body go?" Roger countered. "Besides, even if she's not there, there may be more of her people around."

"Or the men who shot you," Caroline agreed with another shiver. "Did I tell you they can turn invisible?"

Roger felt something catch in his throat. "No, you did not," he said, trying hard not to yell. Of all the things to forget to tell him—"How do you know?"

"The Grays on the building today did that," Caroline said. "You could see them moving against the wall, but only because they were moving. Once they stopped, it was like they weren't even there."

"Terrific," Roger said, looking surreptitiously around the room.

"But they weren't completely invisible," Caroline added. "You could still see their shadows."

"Really," Roger said, a spark of an idea finally coming to him. "Wait here."

He found the hefty four-cell flashlight the Youngs kept on hand for power outages and went through the apartment again, sweeping the light across walls and ceilings and looking for unexplained mansized shadows. To his relief, there weren't any. "Looks clear," he reported as he returned to the living room.

"I hope so," Caroline said. "What now?"

Roger looked out the window. The extra lights that had been set up around the park had been taken apart and were being loaded into their van. "There's nothing we can do until morning," he said. "We don't know who's going to be watching, and even if we find Melantha we haven't got any place to run but back here. We've already seen how vulnerable this place is."

"But we can't let her stay out there all night."

"We're assuming she was inside one of your orange trees all night and most of the next day," he reminded her. "She ought to be able to hold out until morning."

"I suppose," Caroline said reluctantly. "What then?"