Fierenzo did so, and found the glass disk now floating freely in its socket. "Aim it downward at an angle to the roof and tighten the bezel again," Jonah continued. "Now hold the projector against the wall so that your hand is away from the eye, pull the ring out an inch or so, and let go of the projector."

Carefully, Fierenzo got a two-fingered grip on the top of the device. Leaning as far back out of the way as he could without looking obvious about it, he took hold of the ring and pulled.

Nothing happened. Frowning, he let go of the projector. To his amazement, it remained firmly in place against the wall.

He looked at Jonah. The other had a faint smile on his face, the kind Fierenzo had often seen on amateur magicians. "Now what?"

Jonah gestured. "Wave your hand between the eye and the roof."

Frowning, Fierenzo eased a single finger downward—

And twitched it reflexively away as it hit something solid. "What the hell?"

"There's your tension line," Jonah said. "A thin line of force running between the projector eye and whatever solid object you've got it aimed at."

Carefully, Fierenzo eased his finger around the invisible line. The shape and feel were like a very tight, very slick rope. "How much weight can it handle?" he asked.

"You could hang a dozen guys from it without making the projector work very hard," Jonah said.

"We use them sometimes to travel between skyscrapers."

"Very impressive," Fierenzo said, sliding a finger up and down the line. "What kind of range does it have?"

"Like a hammergun shot, the line runs outward until it hits something solid," Jonah said. "I'm told it was once considered the quick and easy way to travel between mountains."

"And then, what, you just leave the projector behind?" Fierenzo asked, the discomfiting image of a thousand invisible wires crisscrossing Manhattan flashing to mind. "Or can you climb back up it?"

"Not a chance," Jonah said. "The coefficient of friction is way too low." He pointed to the ring Fierenzo was still holding. "That's what the ring's for. You slide it on over one of your fingers before you set off, and it feeds out thread until you reach the other end. Then you just give it couple of backand- pulls, and it shuts the line off and brings the projector back to you." He gestured. "Try it."

Sliding the ring onto his middle finger, Fierenzo pulled it out a couple of feet from the box. He paused, then backed it up and pulled it out; backed it up and pulled it out—

Without warning, the box detached itself from the wall and shot over to Fierenzo's hand, reeling itself in along the thread like a carpenter's tape measure. "And you're ready for your next trip," Jonah concluded, holding out his hand. "I'd offer you a ride, but you really need to be able to hold onto the side of your destination building for it to be a properly enjoyable experience."

"I'm more than happy to pass, thank you," Fierenzo assured him, handing back the projector. "I'd probably twitch my arm the wrong way and shut the thing off in midair."

"You can't," Jonah said. "As long as there's any significant weight on the line it won't shut off. Safety feature."

"And this is what you used to pull Melantha out of the frying pan Wednesday night?"

Jonah nodded. "The tricky part was coming up with a way to keep them from realizing it was somebody outside their group who'd snatched her," he said. "The only way to get over the trees was to set up the tension line several stories up on one of the buildings east of Riverside Park. The problem was that if I'd just slid down to the ground at that angle, I'd have been going so fast I'd have bowled over half the circle when I landed."

"So how did you do it?"

"I set the line nearly horizontal, running it to a building across the Hudson in New Jersey," Jonah said. "Then instead of just hanging on as usual, I hooked an elastic rope onto it and held onto that.

When I got over the circle, I bungeed down into the middle, grabbed Melantha, and ran."

"Clever," Fierenzo said. "But why didn't they find the bungee afterwards?"

"Because it wasn't there," Jonah said. "I didn't use the projector's retrieval ring myself, but left Jordan back at the jump-off building to handle that. He waited until the bungee was over the middle of the river before shutting it down. The bungee sank, and there was nothing left to tell anyone how it was done."

"And so they spent the next few days throwing suspicious glares at each other instead of looking for an outsider," Fierenzo said. "I suppose it was you who blew out all the lights on Riverside Drive, too?"

"Yeah, and I'm sorry about that," Jonah said. "But we had to make sure they couldn't see what was happening."

"So how did the Whittiers come into the picture?"

"The original plan was for me to get Melantha across Manhattan and offshore to Roosevelt Island,"

Jonah said. "Neither side was occupying it, so we figured it would be a safe place to hide her for awhile. But you need both arms to carry someone on a tension line, and one of the Warriors had managed to get me with a knife before I flattened him. At the same time, Melantha wasn't in any shape for a long walk."

"Why didn't you just hop a cab or the subway?"

"What, with me bleeding all over my shirt?" Jonah countered. "Besides, a fair number of Green Laborers drive cabs these days. All I could think to do was take us northeast toward Nikolos's stronghold in Morningside Park, hoping it would be the last direction anyone would expect us to go, while I tried to come up with a new plan. But Melantha wasn't even up to that, so I found an alley to hide her in and went scouting."

"Having blown the padlock off the gate with your hammergun?"

Jonah nodded. "Anyway, I'd just about decided we were going to have to risk that cab after all when I heard the Whittiers talking about the trees on their balcony. It was the perfect solution: being inside a tree would protect Melantha from prying Gray eyes, while being off the ground would keep inquisitive Greens from probing around and finding her. So I called Jordan and had him pop the lights on Broadway. Well, to try, anyway; the gadget we'd rigged up didn't work as well there as it had earlier on Riverside Drive. But it worked well enough. Melantha was awake by then, so I had her turn her trassk into something I could scare the Whittiers with long enough to hand her over to them."

"You were taking a pretty big chance," Fierenzo pointed out. "Picking a pair of New Yorkers at random doesn't necessarily get you the cream of the crop."

"I know," Jonah said. "But like I said, I was out of options. Anyway, I figured we could always get her back from them if we had to. We just couldn't afford to get caught with her ourselves. As long as the Greens didn't know who'd snatched her, even if they got her back, we'd be free to try again. But if we got caught, Halfdan would make sure we never got another chance."

"Halfdan being the head of your peace faction?"

"Halfdan being the one ready and willing to sacrifice Melantha to maintain the status quo," Jonah corrected bluntly. "You can call that peace if you want to. Anyway, I made the handoff, then hid on the wall until they'd taken Melantha away. I called Jordan, told him to get ready to cover for me when the you-know-what hit the fan and all adult Grays got scrambled into search or sentry duty, then climbed up to the fire escape to hide and heal. You know the rest."

"Except what exactly was going on in the Whittiers' apartment when I got dragged into this mess,"

Fierenzo said. "What do you know about that?"

"Not much, but I can connect the dots," Jonah said. "Jordan had wanted to follow the Whittiers home, but the search got under way faster than he'd expected and he had to get clear of the area. The next night, after most of the commotion had moved elsewhere, he went back to the neighborhood to try and find her. My guess is that some people from both sides spotted him climbing around the Whittiers' building and got curious."