"Right," Roger said, wondering where she was going with this.

"Cyril wants to sacrifice Melantha so that the Greens and Grays can both stay in Manhattan," she continued. "Either way, they all want to stay in Manhattan."

"And Aleksander told us why," Roger said, feeling a touch of impatience. He didn't need a recap of the obvious. "They need to stay with their transport."

"Right," Caroline said. "So why did Nikolos suggest sacrificing Melantha and then leaving?"

Roger frowned into the darkness, his impatience evaporating. "He did say that, didn't he?" he agreed.

"He said they should sacrifice Melantha and then pull back to upstate New York."

"I could understand that coming from one of the younger Greens," Caroline went on. "They might not have the same hatred as their parents, or might not be so attached to the place they'd escaped a war to reach. But Nikolos is one of the original settlers."

"Yes," Roger said, rubbing his cheek. "I don't know much about warfare, but it seems to me a good tactician wouldn't run away from something as much as he would run to something. I wonder if there's a way to find out if he has any interests upstate."

"If you mean real estate interests, sure," Caroline said. "I can pull up the database from my office."

"Upstate records, too?" Roger asked, lifting his eyebrows. "I thought you were limited to the city."

"No, I can get everything in New York state," she said. "Of course, if it's not in his name we're never going to find it."

"These are people who insist on hanging onto the Green name even when they're jammed thirty to an apartment," Roger reminded her. "I think we can assume it won't be listed under John Doe."

"Probably," Caroline agreed. "When should we start? Tomorrow morning?"

Roger looked around. He didn't see anyone nearby; but with Greens and Grays that didn't mean much. "Let's do it now," he decided abruptly. "Let's get the car out of the garage and do it right now."

"The car?" she echoed, sounding startled. "I thought you hated driving in Manhattan on Saturday night."

"I hate getting murdered in my bed even worse," he told her grimly. "Besides, if we find something, we'll want to get right on it. I just hope I remembered to fill the tank before we put it away."

It took Caroline two hours to compile a list of all the Greens with large land holdings within two hundred miles of the city. After that came two more hours of battling the organized chaos of Saturday night traffic before they finally made it out of the worst of the metropolitan traffic. They found a modest motel near Tarrytown, begged two sets of toiletries from the desk clerk, and settled in to study Caroline's list.

Half an hour later, they'd found it.

"That's the place," Roger declared, tapping the listing for a hundred-acre estate tucked away in the hills between Shandaken and Bushnellsville. "E. and N. Green Associates. 'E' for Elymas; 'N' for Nikolos."

"Certainly looks like it," Caroline agreed. "Though I still don't know what we're expecting to find."

"Me, neither," Roger confessed. "Maybe it's nothing but an emergency refugee area Nikolos set up when they first got here. I still want to know what he's up to." He glanced at his watch. "We'd better turn in, too. We'll have another couple of hours' drive in the morning, and we'll want to get as early a start as we can."

"Yes," Caroline murmured, her voice suddenly dark. "Roger... you don't suppose Fierenzo could have been so scared by the Shrieks and hammerguns that he just ran away, do you?"

"It's possible," Roger said encouragingly, squeezing her hand. He didn't believe it for a minute, of course. But then, neither did she. "But whatever happened, there's nothing we can do about it tonight," he added. "Come on, let's get to bed."

25

The first thing Fierenzo noticed as he dragged himself back toward consciousness was that he seemed to be surrounded by a diffuse glow of light. The second was that the familiar city noises reaching his ears were distant, yet too distinct to be filtered through the walls of his apartment.

The third thing he noticed was that he was freezing.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes. The glow was just as diffuse with his eyes open as it had been with them closed, a sort of light cream-colored glow that seemed to fill the sky above him. Blinking to try to clear his vision, he reached a hand tentatively upward.

His fingertips twitched back as they unexpectedly ran into something soft and springy. He blinked again; and suddenly his eyes found the proper focus. He was lying under a length of fabric angling downward over him like the side of a tent.

He turned his head. Not a tent, actually, but a simple lean-to attached at its upper edge to a rough concrete wall about three feet to his right. Wincing as a stab of pain shot through his neck, he followed the concrete wall down to where it ended at a flat expanse of what looked like roofing material on which he was lying.

"Welcome back," a familiar voice said from somewhere in the direction of his feet. "How do you feel?"

Fierenzo lifted his head to look that direction, noting as he did so that he was covered from feet to armpits in a thin blanket the same color as the tent material. Jonah was sitting at the far end of the lean-to, his back braced against the concrete wall. "I've been better," Fierenzo said. "Is it me, or is it cold in here?"

"It's mostly you," Jonah said. "One of the more delightful side effects of getting hit by a Green Shriek is that your body's not quite sure what to do with all the pain that's been dumped on it. Three times out of five it decides you must be sick, and kicks up a fever for a few hours. I can get you another blanket if you want."

"No, that's all right," Fierenzo said, turning halfway up onto his right side and resting his head on his right palm. Now that he was awake and moving, he could feel the chill starting to recede. Lifting his wrist, he peered at his watch: just after two o'clock on Sunday afternoon. He'd slept nearly eighteen hours. "Where am I?"

"On a rooftop in Chinatown," Jonah said. "This is my assigned station for keeping an eye on the Greens in the Sara D. Roosevelt Park and watching for Melantha to make an appearance."

"Really," Fierenzo said. Chinatown was in the southern end of Manhattan, miles from where he'd been attacked. "How did I get here?"

Jonah shrugged. "We have ways of getting around town quickly."

"Ah," Fierenzo said. Surreptitiously, he touched his chest and heard the reassuring crackle of paper from his inner pocket. At least the sketches were still safe. "Who assigned you here?"

"Halfdan and his sons are in charge of the surveillance and sentry arrangements," Jonah said, giving him an indulgent smile. "Does that actually tell you anything?"

"Enough," Fierenzo assured him, only lying a little. "As a matter of fact, I know all about the Greens and the Grays of New York." He lifted his eyebrows significantly. "Jonah Gray."

Jonah's smile didn't even flicker. "Not bad," he said. "Actually, my name isn't Gray. We're not as fastidious as the Greens about wearing our affiliation on our sleeves for the world to see. In fact, we've been branching out for several decades now, name-wise."

"But you are a Gray?"

"I am," Jonah said. "Though I doubt you understand what that means."

"Let me take a crack at it," Fierenzo offered. "You can climb buildings, you can turn invisible, you have disappearing guns, you can fly, and you aren't human. Did I miss anything?"

Jonah's lips puckered. "You've been paying better attention than I thought," he acknowledged reluctantly. "That puts me in kind of an awkward position."

"Sorry to hear that," Fierenzo said, gently rubbing his left elbow along his rib cage where his shoulder holster was nestled. From the feel of it, he could tell that the gun itself was gone. "It seems a waste of effort, though, to save my life, then turn around and kill me yourself."