I nodded. He let me go. "Good. You don't want to fay preaching at me again. It won't push me in the direction you want me to go. You got that?" He waited until I nodded again before he went on, "Okay. Now that you've got that straight I'd do everything I can to help you get your lady back. For my reasons, mind you, not yours. We're wasting time here."

"I don't think I understand you at all," I said.

"I don't think you do, either." It wasn't pejorative: more as if he was stating a law of nature. Maybe he was. As I've said, I'd never dealt with anybody of European origin who still clung to his people's old gods, not in an artificial cult like that of Hermes, but as part of a tradition as old and serious as my own. Balance of Powers, I thought and then wondered whose side Perkunas was on. After enduring umpty hundred years of Christianity, the Lithuanian Power might be as eager as Huitzilopochtte to get his own back.

But no matter where his god stood, I thought Tony stood with me. Almost dragging me in his wake, he started down the walk toward the exit. I happened to look back toward his office at just the right time. "Wait!" I exclaimed, and grabbed his arm.

It was like taking hold of the Juggernauts car; once he got moving, he didn't want to stop for anything. "Look back there," I said in a tone heading toward desperate. That's what I was talking about before."

Grudgingly, he turned around. "I don't see anything," he said.

"I don't see anything, either," I answered. "I see Nothing.

Here, stand right where I am now." I moved off the spot he moved onto it. He shook his head, started to go. Now I was desperate. "Stand on tiptoe," I suggested; I'm several inches taller than he is.

He gave me a look that would have wilted me under any other circumstances. When I stayed crisp, he shrugged and went up on his toes. A second later, he said something in Lithuanian that I didn't understand. Then he dropped back into English: "You were right after all, Dave. I don't know what that is."

Neither did I. At the moment, I couldn't see the Nothing; the dump just looked like a weedy vacant lot. But when I'd stood where Tony was now, the wall beyond that point seemed to recede into infinite space. And yet, at the same time, it was obviously right where it belonged. I don't know how to explain it any better than that; I got the feeling I wasn't sensing it entirely through normal vision.

Tony Sudakis came down off tiptoe. He was, as usual, briskly derisive. "When you see something you don't understand in a toxic spell dump, you'd better start trying to find out what it is just as fast as you can," he said. "Why don't you call your wizard - his name was Manstein, right? - and have him get up here? The sooner he can find out what's going on over there, the sooner we can start trying to deal with it"

"Aren't you the same fellow I heard yesterday talking about how if Michael or I set so much as a toe inside the confines of the dump, your people would sue us until the vulture let Prometheus' liver alone?"

"Go ahead, rub it in," he said. "Yeah, I'm that guy. But I'm also the guy you've finally convinced. So come on back to my office."

I was never so happy to turn around in my life. As we headed back toward the squat, ugly fortress, I asked, "Do you know what got dumped in that area? The more I can tell Michael, the quicker he'll be able to identify what's going on.

"Makes sense," Sudakis said. He looked over toward where we'd seen that. Nothing. It wasn't there now, of course, because we weren't in the right spot. "That'd be about, hmm. Area 37. I'll check for you."

He pawed through the files, muttering all the time: "No, can't be that one - that one was exorcised two years ago…

"Maybe this one? No, forget it - I know everything roc's eggshell can do… Hah!"

"Hah?" I echoed.

"Gotta be this one, Dave. Three-four months ago, one of the Baron's Watchers of the Shore found the remains of what sure looked like a major conjuration out on Malibu Beach.

They tested the junk for thaumaturgical activity, but it came back negative - and I mean real negative, like there'd never been any magic around it since time began. Nobody believed that, not from the way the stuff was laid out. so they brought it here and dumped it in spite of the tests."

"I remember that one," I said. There were letters in the Times complaining about the waste of taxpayers' crowns."

"That's it," Tony agreed. "You ask me, me only thing worse than the government spending money when it doesn't need to is not spending it when it does need to."

I started to pick up the phone, then stopped. "You said 'stuff was laid out. What kind of staff?"

He looked down at his parchments. "Funny stuff - like nothing I've ever seen before. Staffs with stone disks mounted on one end, others with those shells called sand crowns instead. If I had to guess, I'd say the stones were carved flat to look like the sand crowns. And there were other staffs, long and short, topped with feathers. Looked like some kind of Indian ritual, maybe, but not one I know."

"Okay." I got on the phone and called Michael. While I waited for him to answer, I worried some more: balance of Powers. Indian magic would not be well - inclined toward what I drought of as peace and order, not now.

"Environmental Perfection Agency - Michael Manstein speaking."

"Michael? Hi, it's David Fisher. Listen, I've got a new job for-"

Michael interrupted, something he hardly ever does:

"David, where are you. What on earth are you up to? Bea is quite vexed" - a word only he would come up with - "with you and Boss is practically in tears."

That made me feel bad, but it would have made me feel worse if I didn't feel pretty bad already. In words of one syllable, I explained where I was and what I was up to. I also told him about Judy, which explained why I was up to it "Good heavens, David," he said, about as big an outburst as you'll ever hear from him. "No wonder your behavior was so anomalous."

"Yeah, no wonder at all," I grunted. Anomalous wasn't the word for it; shitty was. I could blame it on endless worry, no sleep, and too much coffee, but in the end it came back to me. If you're not responsible for what you do in this world, who is?

"Have you discovered anything of import in your return to the Devonshire toxic spell containment area?" Michael asked, graciously not saying anything more about what sort of beast I'd been.

"As I matter of fact, I have." I told him about the Nothing, then put Tony Sudakis on the phone so he could confirm it Tony gave the handset back to me. Michael was saying, shall fly there forthwith to investigate. Your description strikes me as extremely urgent." He hung up.

"He's on his way," I said to Sudakis.

"Okay," he answered. "I'd better stay here, then, to make sure he can get in and do what he needs to do. What about you? You gonna wait here with me?"

I thought about it, shook my head. "I've got to get back and mend my fences. Listen, do you have a telephone at home?" I waited till he nodded, then said, "Would you give me your number? I may need to get hold of you any time.

Like it or not - and I'm not saying you're liable; please understand that - you're in the middle of this, too - and they've got Judy, whoever they are."

He scrawled it on a scrap of parchment. "Here you go. Call when you need to."

"Thanks." I went out the door, down the warded path (I didn't even look back for the Nothing this time), over the footbridge, and out to my carpet. On the way back to St. James'

Freeway, I passed a florist's shop. I stopped and bought Rose some roses. Sometimes words aren't contrition enough.

Rose's eyes went wide when I set the vase on her desk She pointed to the closed door to Bea's office. "She's in a meeting right now, but she'll want to see you when she gets out And thank you, David. You didn't have to do this.