"Hi, hon," he greeted her, giving her a distracted sort of kiss. "How was your day?"

"Slow," she said, hanging up her coat and returning to the kitchen. "Yours?"

"The same," he said, opening a can of tomatoes. "Judge Vasco is down with the flu, so the contractdispute argument I was putting together for Bill is on hold for at least a week. And Sam and Carleton are out in the wilds of corporate Delaware on some big rainmaking expedition."

"At least they're not running you off your feet like they usually do," she commented.

"Which was handy, given how much time I spent on hold with Missing Persons," he said a little sourly. "Turns out they don't have anyone on their books who matches the girl's description."

"I know," Caroline said, peering at the open recipe book and pulling a block of cheddar out of the fridge. "They don't have anything on the man, either."

He glanced at her, a flicker of surprise and perhaps even respect flashing across his face. "You called them too?"

She nodded. "I also checked the news sources to see if I could come up with any events that might link to the bruises on her throat. But there was nothing."

He grunted. "I took the subway up to 103rd at lunchtime and walked back along last night's route," he told her. "I couldn't get into the alley—the gate was locked—but I couldn't see an single thing that looked out of the ordinary."

Caroline selected a knife and started cutting slices of cheese. "It's like it never happened."

"Pretty much," Roger agreed. "I did hear one interesting tidbit, though. Seems there was a massive power outage up in Morningside Heights last night. The west part, over by Riverside Park."

Caroline frowned. "How far up?"

"Kelly said everything around his place on West 115th was completely dark." He paused. "Or at least it was after the big flash."

"Flash?"

"Yeah," Roger said. "Like all the streetlights blew at once, he said."

"Did ConEd have any explanation?"

"Just the usual bafflegab," Roger said. "Overloads, cable stress, squirrels in the wiring, or maybe the Broadway construction."

"You think that might have had something to do with our streetlight problem?" Caroline asked.

"I'd like to," Roger said. "But there are three problems. One, it doesn't sound anything like what we ran into, so I don't know how they could be related. Two, the Morningside outage happened nearly an hour before our lights did their magic trick. And three, there's still the problem of why the streetlights went out and not the power in the buildings themselves."

Caroline grimaced. "So we're back where we started," she said. "We've got a wild story without a single bit of proof. Except the gun," she corrected herself. "What did you do with it?"

"I put it in the junk drawer last night," he said. "Underneath your latch-hook stuff."

The latch-hook stuff she hadn't done anything with in years, she recalled, a brief flush of warmth rising into her cheeks. She should either pick up the hobby again or get rid of the trappings. "It's like one of those old ghost stories we used to tell around the campfire," she said. "You ever do that?"

"Nope," Roger said. "And if she was a ghost, she was a damn heavy one."

"Oh, they can be substantial enough," Caroline assured him. "I remember one story about a highschool guy who picked up a girl at a dance and lent her his sweater on the way home."

"Caroline—"

"Anyway," she said, ignoring the interruption, "the next day when he went to the house he'd dropped her off at—"

"Caroline!"

She broke off, startled at the harshness in his voice, shrinking automatically into herself. What had she done now?

Roger was staring into space, the muscles in his throat gone suddenly rigid. "Listen," he said softly.

She frowned, holding her breath and straining her ears.

And there it was. A quiet tapping sound coming from the direction of the living room.

The kind of sound made by knuckles rapping on glass.

"I think," Roger said, his voice sounding unnaturally casual, "we've got company."

He headed for the living room. Caroline looked for a moment at the knife in her hand, then set it down beside the block of cheese and followed.

She found Roger standing just inside the living room, gazing across at the balcony door. There, standing outside looking in at them, her slim figure framed by the darkening sky and the lights of the cityscape behind her, was the girl from last night, still wearing the same patchwork tunic and tights.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out in a whoosh, Roger crossed the room, popped the broomstick out of the rail, and slid back the door.

The girl ducked her head toward him in a sort of abbreviated bow. "May I come in?" she asked. Her voice was deep and throaty, with a slight accent Caroline couldn't place.

"Sure," Roger said, stepping to the side. "Unless you want to stay outside with the trees all night."

It seemed to Caroline that she gave Roger a sharp look at that. But with only that one moment of hesitation, she stepped inside. "Thank you," she said. "And thank you for helping me last night."

"It seemed the right thing to do," Caroline said, ungluing herself from the floor and moving forward as Roger closed the door and latched it. "I don't believe we've properly met," she added. "I'm Caroline Whittier. This is my husband, Roger."

"Hello," the girl said, ducking her head again. "I'm Melantha Gre—" She broke off abruptly.

Gre? "Green?" Caroline hazarded, glancing at the green-and-gray color scheme of her tunic.

The girl's lips compressed briefly. "Yes," she conceded.

"Melantha Green," Caroline repeated. It was, she decided, an attractive combination of the exotic and the down-to-earth. "That's a nice name. How old are you?"

"Twelve," Melantha said. "I'll be thirteen next May."

"I'll bet you're looking forward to becoming a teenager," Caroline commented. "Do you have any family?"

The girl sent a furtive glance back over her shoulder at Roger. "I'm really hungry," she said. "Do you have anything I could eat?"

So family wasn't a topic she wanted to talk about. Interesting. "Certainly," Caroline said, taking her hand and leading her back toward the kitchen. Her skin was cool, but not nearly as cold as it should have been if she'd been sitting out on the balcony all day. "The casserole's not ready, but I can get you something to tide you over. Do you like cheese?"

"Goat's cheese?" Melantha asked hopefully as they stepped into the kitchen.

"Sorry," Roger said from behind them. "Just plain old cow-brand cheddar."

"That's okay," Melantha said, eying the cheese hungrily as Caroline pulled out one of the two chairs at the small breakfast table and settled her into it.

"You can start with this," Caroline said, piling the slices she'd already cut onto a plate and setting it in front of her. "Would you like some milk or juice? We have orange and apple."

The girl had one of the slices in hand before the plate even hit the table. "Some apple, please?"

"Certainly," Caroline said, getting a glass out of the cabinet and turning toward the fridge. She had to make a quick sidestep around Roger, who was suddenly and inexplicably moving past her toward the table. "Tell me, why did you leave us last night?" she asked as she pulled out the bottle of juice.

"Do you have any bread?" Melantha asked.

"Sure," Roger said. He had settled in at the spot where Caroline had been cutting the cheese earlier, his back to the counter as he faced the girl. Keeping his eyes on her, he pulled open the bread drawer and snagged a bag of dinner rolls. "Why did you leave?" he asked as he handed them over.

For a half second Melantha looked up at him. Roger gave her a smile—a forced smile, Caroline could tell, but a smile nonetheless. "I was afraid," she said, dropping her gaze back to the table and undoing the twist tie on the rolls. "I heard voices."