"Oh, those Greens wouldn't have killed you," Jonah said. "A cop? They wouldn't have dared."

"They tried to kill you," Fierenzo pointed out.

Jonah waved a hand in dismissal. "Different situation. And don't worry, I'm not going to kill you, either. It's just that your dropping in like this is going to make everything more complicated than it already was."

"Complication seems to be the order of the day," Fierenzo said. "Can you at least tell me why you're here?"

"I already did," Jonah said. "I'm watching for Melantha."

"I meant your people," Fierenzo said. "What do you want here on Earth?"

Jonah shrugged. "The same thing everyone else wants," he said, an odd note of sadness in his voice.

"To live and work and raise our families in peace. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' That's us."

"Very nice," Fierenzo complimented him. "I see you've been here long enough to take the tour of Liberty Island."

"Actually, I've never been out there," Jonah admitted. "But then, most of us natives never have."

Natives. Fierenzo's heartbeat picked up a little. Now they were getting somewhere. "Natives of what?" he asked carefully. "From where?"

"Natives of New York, of course," Jonah said, sounding puzzled. "I was born and raised in Queens."

Fierenzo blinked, the whole Space Invaders scenario threatening to unravel in front of his eyes.

"What?"

There must have been something in his expression, because Jonah chuckled. "No, really," he said.

"And I'm third-generation. Our people have been living here since 1928."

"Really," Fierenzo said, not sure whether to be relieved or not. Was a Space Invasion less of a threat if it waited three-quarters of a century to get moving? "Doing what?"

"What I just said," Jonah told him. "Living and working and raising our families." His lips compressed. "Of course, that was before we found out the Greens were here, too."

"I take it you have a problem with them?"

"Aside from the fact that they want to destroy us?" Jonah countered, his voice turning grim. "If you knew what—excuse me," he interrupted himself, lifting his left hand to his cheek the way Fierenzo had seen him do back at the apartment. "Yes?" he said.

Only this time, Fierenzo was able to see that the hand was empty. Another of his now-you-see-it, now-you-don't gadgets?

"On my way," Jonah said, lowering his hand and twitching his little finger. "I'll be right back," he added to Fierenzo, hopping up into a crouch and opening the cloth flap that closed off the end of the lean-to. A momentary burst of cold air rolled over Fierenzo, and he caught a glimpse of a section of rooftop and gray sky beyond it as the other stepped through, closing the flap behind him.

Fierenzo shivered. So he'd been right. Jonah and his fellow Grays were indeed not of this world. And apparently they'd brought not only a load of high-tech gadgets with them, but also a full-fledged war.

Wincing at the muscle twinges, he slowly turned his head and began a systematic inspection of his current living quarters.

There wasn't much to see. Aside from the blanket covering him and another one folded beneath him as a pad, there were only a pair of small mechanic's toolboxes against the wall near where Jonah had been sitting. Throwing off the blanket, he got up on slightly unsteady hands and knees and headed over to investigate.

He had just reached the closer box when the flap opened and Jonah reentered the tent. "Sorry about that," he apologized as he sealed it again behind him. "Jordan spotted some commotion down in the park and I wanted to check it out."

"Melantha?" Fierenzo asked, momentarily forgetting he'd just been caught red-handed sitting where he probably wasn't supposed to be.

Jonah shook his head. "Just a couple of gangs having an argument."

"What kind of argument?" Fierenzo asked, reaching for his cell phone. To his annoyance, it was missing, too.

"Don't worry, there was a patrol car just pulling up to take a look," Jonah assured him. "And Jordan's still watching." He gestured toward the toolbox Fierenzo was kneeling over. "You hungry?"

He was, in fact, starving, Fierenzo suddenly discovered. "I could use a snack," he said. "Just back the butcher truck up to the table."

Jonah grinned. "No butcher trucks, but you're welcome to what we've got. Help yourself."

"Thanks," Fierenzo said, popping the catches and lifting the lid. Inside, instead of tools, was a selection of granola-bar-sized packets in an impressive array of wrapper colors. Aside from the colors, there were no other distinguishing features he could see. "Do I at least get a hint?"

"Sure," Jonah said. "Sorry. The blue ones are basically different shades of beef and pork; the red ones

—"

" 'Shades' of beef?"

"Varieties might be a better way to put it," Jonah said. "The light blue ones taste like roast beef, with the darker ones more toward the steak end of the scale, while the turquoise drift off toward roast pork. Red are types of poultry, yellow are fish, green are fruits or vegetable mixes."

"The ultimate salad bar," Fierenzo said, picking up one of the green bars and peering doubtfully at it.

"Amazingly enough, you're not the first person to make that joke," Jonah said. "That one's a kind of multi-vegetable sort of thing. It goes well with any of the beef bars."

Peeling back the wrapper, Fierenzo took a cautious bite. To his mild surprise, the bar was as flavorful as freshly picked vegetables would have been. "Not bad," he said as he chewed. The texture was also more interesting than he'd expected, with subtle variations that kept his teeth and tongue guessing from one bite to the next. "Goes well with beef, you say?"

"This one especially," Jonah said, picking out a robin's-egg-blue packet. "I find it works best to alternate bites."

The blue bar was equally tasty, reminding Fierenzo of a particularly good beef Wellington he and Claire had once had in SoHo. "Is this standard Gray cuisine?" he asked.

"No, at home we cook up real food just like you do," Jonah assured him. "I'm partial to Italian and Chinese myself. These are watchmeals, designed for Grays who are traveling or on sentry duty."

"Beats the hell out of army MREs," Fierenzo said, shifting around and settling his back against the wall. The cold concrete sent another chill through him, but he ignored it. "You have anything to drink?"

"I've got some water," Jonah offered, pulling open the second toolbox to reveal a neat row of plastic bottles.

"Sounds good," Fierenzo said. "So how deep is the trouble you're in?"

"Deep enough," Jonah admitted as he handed over one of the bottles. "We could wind up with everyone in this whole thing mad at us."

"Sounds like you need a friend," Fierenzo commented, twisting off the bottle cap and taking a long swallow.

"You, for instance?" Jonah shook his head. "Sorry, but like I said, you know too much already." He lifted a finger. "Oh, and just for the record, we don't fly."

"You sure did a good imitation of it back at the playground."

"I was sliding down a tension line," Jonah explained. "Nothing to it."

"Ah," Fierenzo said. "And a tension line is what?"

Jonah snorted. "You are the persistent one, aren't you? Look, I'll protect you until you're recovered—

I owe you that much for getting me off that fire escape. But after that we're going to have to call it even and go our separate ways."

"No, I don't think so," Fierenzo said, draining the rest of the water and taking another bottle out of the box. "You see, I happen to know that your rescue of me last night was just a side effect of you pulling your own bacon out of the frying pan."

Jonah's eyes took on a wary look. "What are you talking about?"