Unsleeping

by Martha, soulcake[at]bellsouth.net

Prologue

There were sounds in the stairwell. Something soft and broken, moving with slow persistence. Shambling and clumsy. Jim heard the liquid splats as pieces sloughed away and were dropped on the steps or smeared across the walls. Darkness nuzzled against the windowpanes of the loft as the soft thing on the stairs kept climbing. Squelching wetly. Jim could hear other things too. Because he was the Sentinel, right? And that meant he could hear everything, everything. Sirens screaming all over the city, the sickeningly elastic sound of the tendon in Sandburg's right ankle.

And in the stairwell, the burbles and squeaks of air moving through a spongy, rotten windpipe, rattling across vocal chords that were as brittle as autumn leaves. Something was trying its damnedest to say something. Maybe it was even trying to say something to him

"Jim!" Blair was trying to say something too. He was dragging himself across the floor, fighting to reach him. "Jim, don't listen to it! Whatever you do man, just don't listen!"

Be nice if he could just turn things and off like that, Jim thought, three-quarters past sanity. Wire those old sentinel senses to a light switch and click, welcome back Jim Ellison, Ordinary Cop, Everyman. We've missed you. And by the way, there's nothing slithering up the stairs for YOU, man. Nothing obscene whispering YOUR name in the darkness. Or if there was you couldn't hear it, so what's the difference? Do yourself just one little favor, though, and don't open that front door. Not tonight. Probably not every again. Don't know what you'd find sitting on the doorstep if you did, but dollars to doughnuts, you wouldn't ask it in for a beer and a round of poker. Probably clean you out anyway. Hell of a poker face, right?

Jim snorted, almost laughing out loud. Blair had pulled himself to his feet, groaning and cursing as he tried to put weight on his bad ankle, but when Jim laughed, his face went dead white, and he stared at Jim with wide, wild eyes. He looked as though something inside him had just died.

Blair, I'm sorry, Jim thought, and shoved the side of his hand into his own mouth and bit down hard, so that no more of those half hysterical sounds that hurt Blair so badly could get out. The pain helped him, but not enough, not nearly enough. He heard a muffled, soggy thump as something heavy bumped against the wall of the stairwell, slid wetly around, and then kept shambling onwards. The thing on the steps was blind, Jim realized joylessly.

It didn't matter. It would find its way to their doorstep all the same.

* * *

"This is one of the safest campuses in the northwest."
Suzanne Tamaki, head of campus security for Rainier University,
Smart Alec

Chapter 1

You'd think a big university like Rainier could afford a few extra light bulbs, Jim thought, shifting on the bench's vinyl upholstery. Especially in a library. It was mid-April and dusk was still early, a clear, starry darkness falling across the canopy of the sky while a ruddy haze lingered at the horizon. A beautiful night. Jim had watched the sunset through the three-story window in the lobby of the main research library, so lulled by the peaceful sunset he practically forgot his annoyance at Blair for being late, even though this little routine was starting to turn into a habit. Blair had drawn a high number in the parking lottery this quarter, meaning he didn't have a campus parking permit. Public transportation was fine, but on nights when Blair was at school and Jim was going home right past Rainier anyway, he could stop and give him a lift, right? It wouldn't be any problem, man. He'd be at the curb outside the library.

Except, of course, when Blair got involved in his work and lost track of the time, which was not exactly an infrequent occurrence. He'd been spending all his time garrisoned in Special Collections, too, so it was no simple matter for Jim to go in and drag him out by his ear, like it would be if Blair were upstairs in the stacks. Come to think of it, it would serve Blair right if Jim did go marching down to Special Collections, flashing his badge instead of a student ID. Maybe next time Blair would remember to check the clock occasionally, or heaven forbid, even wear a watch.

Nah. It wouldn't do any good. Sandburg wouldn't even notice the commotion. He'd just grin up at Jim like he'd been waiting to see him all day, then ask if they had anything in the fridge for dinner, or if Jim would rather stop somewhere on the way home. Besides, this really wasn't so bad. Stopping and just sitting still for a little while, letting the day wind away from him. It really was a beautiful night. Lights were coming on one by one across campus, softly illuminating the gray stonework of the old physics building across the way. Students were pouring into the library in a steady stream, their arms or their backpacks weighted with books. They brought the scent of the night in with them, clinging to their clothes and hair. The evening smelled cold and clean and sharp, and the library was warm, the air a little close from the overwhelming proximity of so much paper and so many books, the heat of all the computers in Reference and the constantly-running copy machines.

But it was still strange how dark it was inside. There were some kids curled up on the other benches in the lobby, apparently waiting for companions like Jim was, or actually choosing to study here in the noisiest, busiest part of the library for whatever inscrutable reasons of their own. Blair claimed some people were really like that, that they worked best when surrounded by chaos. Sandburg, Jim could believe it of, but the rest of these students? Jim didn't buy it for a minute. He thought it was more likely they were studying here because if they went someplace quiet to work, they were afraid they might actually learn something.

Still, he didn't understand how they could even pretend to themselves that they were studying down in the lobby. All the noise and people aside, it was simply too dark. Jim wouldn't have been comfortable reading even with sentinel senses. Had some of the fluorescents gone out? He glanced up at the light fixtures far overhead, hazy bars of luminescence flickering through the gloom. He could hear the fixtures buzzing, but they shed no light, and Jim suddenly sat bolt upright.

It wasn't really dark in here at all, was it?

Oh, damn. Oh dammit to hell. And he'd been doing so well for months, feeling like at last he was really handling things, that maybe, maybe at last he was finally the one controlling his senses instead of the other way around. He was dimly aware of the girl on the bench next to him looking at him curiously, and he felt the old combination of anger and helplessness, driving him to his feet.

(Blair, I need you.)

He would find Blair himself, even though it was so dark by now the face of the woman beside him looked like a white balloon nodding in a black mist. He could find Blair by scent alone if he had to.

He took one step, shuffling across the carpet, and suddenly realized the darkness which enfolded him wasn't empty. There were angles and sharp corners all around him, an entire geometry of nonexistence. He blinked, trying to focus, and saw crooked corridors marching away from him into the night. They opened into streets that wound under broken, windowless towers of unfathomable antiquity, and overhead were terrible stars that shed no light, glittering blackly in a sky that had never known a sunrise.

Jim froze. One step into that nightmare landscape, one single step, and he would never find his way back again. A voice near at hand was talking to him, making meaningless sounds.

"Hey, are you all right?"

No, of course he wasn't all right, anyone with an ounce of sense could have been able to tell that, BLAIR would have been able to tell in a heartbeat. God, Chief, where are you?

And then it was all over. The landscape of darkness dissolved. Shadows were only shadows, and there were fewer and fewer of them. A blazing path of light stretched before him, the elevator doors were opening, and Blair was standing there, resplendent in a canvas windbreaker and an Hawaiian shirt in colors so bright they hurt Jim's eyes. A riot of red and yellow hyacinths, blooming impossibly on palmettos in a field of cream. Blair's eyes were brighter still, blue as the lagoon beside which those flowers would grow. He was talking a mile a minute, his hands punctuating every word. Jim let the wash of his voice and the sparkle in his eyes and even the vibrancy of that appalling shirt wash over him. This was the real world, gaudy, loud and alive. He was all right. Blair was right here, and everything was all right.

"So Nagle's having you dig up primary sources? That's really cool in an undergrad class. Man, I don't even have time to do that for my own classes, much as I'd like to. You got a copy of your syllabus I could look at? I'd really be interested in seeing how he's got his lesson plan set up."

Blair stepped out of the elevator with the kid he was talking to, a tall, white-faced boy in a black turtleneck and jeans, not a speck of color on him from his white lips to the soles of his Doc Martins. Blair looked like a walking carnival next to him. The kid muttered something in response, shrugging to indicate helplessness, or, more likely, that he just wanted to be left alone. It was the sort of nonverbal hint Blair was a master at ignoring under most circumstances, but just then he raised his eyes and saw Jim. His face split into a broad grin, and he gave Jim a little half wave across the lobby. "Looks like my ride's here," he said to the kid in black. "Tell you what, I'll just catch you later, or maybe go see Professor Nagle myself."

Another shrug from the kid, and he and Blair parted, the kid heading for the door while Blair went to the checkout desk. He grinned at Jim again, tilting his head to the side to indicate the weight of books in his backpack. Sorry, Jim, his gesture said. Just a second here while I check out half the library, OK?

OK. Jim felt himself smile back. His moment of disorientation was already beginning to feel as unreal and distant as a dream. He probably needed to tell Blair about this, but it could wait. Maybe until after they got home. Maybe after dinner.

An alarm buzzer suddenly went off, a flat, harsh sound, shocking in even the merely relative quiet of the lobby. Every head jerked up. The kid in black was standing bewildered at a security gate which had locked when he tried to pass through. He kept pushing at the bar with mulish determination, and the work study student manning the desk called, "Oh, hey, wait a minute. I need to check your bag."

The kid looked around, a dazed expression on his face. Alarms were going off in Jim's head too. He didn't stop to analyze them, he just began to move toward the gate from the other side.

"Hang on, you can't go through there." The work study student reached across for the backpack slung over the kid's shoulder, and the white-faced kid jerked away violently.

"Don't touch me."

"Come on, Ross, take it easy." Blair came around to his side, hands extended in a calming gesture. "You don't have to let them search your bag if you don't want. Just look yourself, man. You just forgot to check out a book is all. It's no big deal."

The kid relaxed, at least enough to shrug the backpack off his shoulders with a grunt and set it on the floor between his feet. Unzipping the top, he rooted around for a moment. All an act, apparently, since the book he finally hauled out of his pack was a tremendous, leather-bound tome that must have weighed twenty pounds. He handed it up to Blair, muttering, "Yeah, I guess you were right, Mr. Sandburg."

Blair held the book two-handed, gaping down at it. "Are you nuts? What are you doing with this?"

Ross half-knelt on the floor, still groping deep in his backpack. All at once, Jim knew what was about to happen, and he also knew he was too far away to do anything about it. He took a step, almost running, trying to reach the student anyway. Ross must have seen the movement out of the corner of his eye, because he suddenly made a decision, pulling a .38 out of his bag and aiming it squarely up at Sandburg. "Oh man," Blair said softly. His eyes darted to Jim, less than three yards away. It might as well have been three football fields for all the good Jim could do that moment, but when Blair spoke again, his voice was louder and steadier. "Ross, this is really stupid."

The work study student backed away fast, and a woman somewhere behind Jim blurted out, half-screaming, "Oh my god, he's got a gun." A chaos of movement erupted on all sides. The people behind Jim who could reach the outside doors broke and ran. Those who couldn't escape milled frantically backward, seeking the relative safety of the stairwell and reference lab. Ross stood up, keeping the gun trained on Blair the whole time. The whites of his eyes rolled like a panicky horse. "C'mon, let's go," he told Blair in a shaking voice. "You carry the book."

Blair only shook his head. "That isn't going to work," he quietly. "The police are already here."

It was all the distraction Jim needed. When Ross's head whipped around, Jim pulled his gun and trained it on the student. "Drop it, son," he said. "Let's not make this any worse."

Ross stared at him, then down at Jim's gun, an expression of bewildered disbelief contorting his white features. He was practically snorting in terror. Typical, Jim thought angrily, heartsick all the same. Not as much fun to be on the other end, was it? "Put the gun down, Ross. Do it now."

The kid wasn't gonna do it. Jim saw the brutal moment of decision in the stupid child's frantic eyes, and Jim made his own decision just as quickly. He was too close to miss.

Until Blair stepped forward to shield Ross with his own body. He met Jim's eyes in mute apology, blinking a little before the naked rage he must have seen on Jim's face. Ross had no idea that Blair had just saved his life, or if he knew, he didn't care. Hissing in fear, he knotted his hand in Sandburg's hair and dragged his head down and to the side, staggering him, and put the gun to the back of his head. The book fell from Blair's hands to hit the floor with a crack like a gunshot, and Ross screamed, "Pick it up! Pick it up!"

Blair swallowed. Pulled off balance, one hand on the security gate to keep from falling, his eyes once more found Jim's. He was afraid, but his voice was calm and low. "Just take a deep breath, Ross, and think about this for half a second here, all right? I can't reach it unless you let go."

Ross gave a wild, senseless cry and yanked again, pulling Blair's head back hard. "Stop talking to me like I'm an idiot! I know you set me up."

Blair was watching Jim's face the whole time. "No, I didn't," he told Ross quietly. "You did this all on your own."

"Do you want to die?" Ross demanded. "Is that what you're really doing here?" He lowered the gun and jabbed it hard between Blair's shoulderblades.

Blair blinked in pain. "No, I don't want to die," he said. "And neither do you."

"You don't know shit. You give all these big lectures and you talk about knowing so much, but it's all a crock. If you knew anything, you wouldn't have brought your cop friend here to try and kill me."

Blair's eyes went wide as he realized just how badly he had misjudged Ross and the entire situation. "Take it easy, man. Nobody wants to kill you."

"You're such a liar, but I don't give a damn about that, and you know why not? Because you can't hurt me, that cop can't hurt me, nobody can."

"I'm not lying to you." Blair swallowed. "And nobody wants to hurt you, least of all me."

"Yes, you do. How stupid do you think I am? But it won't work, Mr. Sandburg, I can't die. Too bad you can't say the same, huh?"

Sorrow and regret were written plain across Blair's face. There was no reaching Ross. He would do what he threatened, probably right here in front of Jim, and Blair regretted that most of all.

"Now pick up that book, goddamn you," Ross moaned furiously. He yanked hard, pulling Blair's head down, forcing them to kneel together. Blair reached for the book, and as his fingers touched it, Ross gave an obscene, bubbling cry of relief. He let go of Blair and reached around, straining to touch the book as well. Half a dozen strands of Sandburg's hair hung from his fingers, snagged on the setting of Ross's high school ring. They caught the light, brighter than the dull gold of the ring. Blair raised his eyes and found Jim's face.

Please, Jim thought desperately. Please, Chief, for the love of God.

Blair heard him. He closed his eyes and deliberately bowed his head.

Ross's gray eyes dilated wide, and Jim looked into the madman's left pupil as he pulled the trigger. He saw a geometry of darkness within, a black corridor leading away into endless night just for an instant before the bullet tore its way through, dragging in light and air and heat in a violent, permanent dawn. Ross sat down hard, then flopped backward. The back of his head hit the carpet with a thud. Blair scrambled away on his hands and knees, but he turned back at once, finding Ross's gun lying on the floor and shoving it away from them both with the heel of his hand. He knelt, reaching automatically for the pulse in Ross's throat before he saw the hole where the student's left eye had been. Blair groaned and bowed low over the dead student, shuddering like he was about to be sick.

Ross's arm jerked up suddenly, and his hand knotted in the front of Blair's shirt.

Jim felt the crazy tilt of reality like a storm at sea. He cleared the security gate in a single long-legged stride to grab the shoulders of Blair's canvas jacket and drag him violently from the dead man's grip. Ross was dead. No respiration, no pulse. The sea of reality calmed. The muscle spasm was freakish, but wholly mortal, Jim knew that. Blair did too. He was silent, save for his panting gasps for breath. He kicked out, stumbling awkwardly to his feet as Jim pulled him up and turned him around, supporting him until Blair could stand on his own. He was white with shock, and the center of his Hawaiian shirt was crumpled from Ross's grasp. "You hurt, Chief?"

Blair stared at him, then shook his head carefully. He didn't try to speak yet. "I need to call it in," Jim said, not letting go until Blair nodded again. Ross lay behind him on the floor, his left arm still bent at the elbow, his clutching fingers frozen, grasping nothing, as they would for all eternity now. Blair looked over his shoulder, his nostrils flared, his upper lip curled and trembling. A woman crouched behind the reference desk was crying softly and Jim heard faint and far off, the first wail of a siren.

Blair finally spoke. "He's dead."

"Yeah," Jim said.

"You know," Blair said in a weak voice, "I wondered what the heck he was doing in Special Collections."

* * *

"I mean, he was a Junior in a European history seminar." Blair was leaning heavily on the break room table outside Major Crime, holding a cold paper cup of vending machine coffee between his hands. He was telling the story again; Jim had lost track of how many times it was by that point. It didn't make any more sense as Blair launched into another bewildered rendition. "It's more rigorous than a 200 level survey, sure, but it's still not the sort of class where you would have your students go out and read original works in Middle High German. I knew there was something screwy about that. I knew it." He balled one hand into a fist and stared down at it. The blue eyes that had looked bright as a tropical lagoon to Jim six hours before were muddy and dull with exhaustion now.

"That's what he told you?" Simon had heard the story over and over again too, and it wasn't making any more sense to him than it did to Blair. He had the book Ross had died for in front of him on the table, and from time to time he put his hand on the black cover, as though all the answers were contained within, if only he could figure out how to get at them.

"Yeah, that it was for Nagle's seminar. That's what he told the librarian who pulled the book for him too."

"So he knew what he wanted. He didn't just grab the first thing he saw that looked old and valuable."

"Right, right. Special collections houses non-circulating books. You have to request the book, explain why you need it, do a whole little song and dance before they'll even pull a book for you in the first place. Then you can only look at it right there in the room. There's a librarian there the whole time."

"If they're so careful with their books, how did he get as far as he did with it?"

"I've been thinking about that." Blair shoved his hands through his hair, fruitlessly trying to push it out of his eyes. It was looking lank and unwashed, and probably felt that way as well, because he dug a tie out of the pocket of his jeans and pulled it back into in a sloppy pony tail as he talked to Simon. "Just when I was packing up my stuff to go meet Jim, there was all this commotion across the room because some girl had smuggled in a puppy in an outside pocket of her backpack. Some tiny little long-haired mutt. I didn't get a good look at it. Anyway something set it off. It starts barking, and the librarians freak, hustling the girl out of there, and nobody noticed what Ross was doing."

"You think she was in on it?" Simon asked.

"I don't know." Blair shrugged and looked across the table at Jim. "I don't think so, though. Ross had a gun. I think he was probably planning on using that to get out, and the thing with the dog was just a lucky break for him."

"Do you know who she was?"

"No."

"Would you recognize her again?"

'I don't know. Maybe, but I just don't know. I wasn't really paying attention."

"Sandburg not paying attention to a woman," Simon said, exasperated. It was probably supposed to be a joke, but they were all tired, and he ended up simply sounding brutal. "You really weren't good for anything tonight, were you?"

Blair let his hands drop to the table again where they lay empty and open, palms up in a blank sort of surrender. "Guess not."

Simon abruptly pushed himself back from the table. "It's late," he announced angrily, sounding ashamed of himself. "Go home, gentlemen. And, Jim, I want you on campus tomorrow with Sandburg. Find out how Ross Malitz got such a fatal bug in his ear about this old book."

"Yes, sir."

Simon leaned over the table, his hand on the book once more, this time as though he intended to push it across the table toward Blair. Jim had been leaning against the wall, but he straightened up fast, irrationally feeling he didn't want that damned book anywhere near Blair tonight. In the end, though, Simon simply made a gesture of dismissal and stalked out of the break room. Blair continued to sit where he was, looking at nothing in particular.

"It's after two," Jim said quietly. "I don't know about you, but I'm about ready to get home."

Blair nodded. "Yeah. Me too." He finally lifted his head, stretching from side to side as though trying to stretch a crick out of his neck. "We should leave this in Evidence on our way out. Ms. Jerome in Special Collections will be freaking out about it being out of the library bad enough as it is."

Jim was abruptly tired of hearing about it, and he reached across the table and lifted the book himself, mostly to keep Blair from picking it up. It was heavy and reeked of antiquity. "She'll just have to hold her horses on this like everybody else. This a is police investigation."

Finally, a crooked little almost-smile from Sandburg. Oh, his look said. Is THAT what this is?

Somehow heartened, Jim glanced down at the book. There was no lettering on the front, just a circle of seven stars stamped into the leather. The title was written on the spine, black on black in ornate lettering Jim couldn't have read even if it hadn't been in German. "What's the name of this again?"

"Unaussprechlichen Kulten."

"Right," Jim said, smiling.

"I don't know enough German -- and I can't read the old Gothic typeface print even if I could to know what it's about. I mean, 'Unspeakable Cults,' though, you assume it's probably about the witch trials. Germany got into that in a big way. Something like a hundred thousand people were executed. There's a famous account of so many stakes on the execution grounds in Cologne that it looked like a whole forest on fire." Blair's expression darkened, a terrible sadness coming over his face. "Sometimes it seems like there just isn't a whole lot of hope for the species, doesn't it?"

"Come on, Sandburg." Jim regretted the book in his hands that kept him from reaching out and putting his arm around Blair's slumped shoulders. "Let's go home."

Chapter 2

Blair realized he had been waiting ever since Jim fired. Even before that. In one tiny, screwed up corner of his mind he had been waiting from the moment he decided to step in front of Jim's gun. Sure, he had been mostly concerned with trying to get him and Ross both out of the mess alive, but in case he didn't, his consolation on the way to eternity would have been that at least he was missing the lecture.

OK, now that was seriously messed up. Blair grinned out at the empty night streets, but seeing his own wan reflection smile back, dropped the grin fast. He looked like a corpse. Poor Ross lying dead on the library carpet had had more color in his face. He glanced miserably back at Jim, wondering if it would come now, on the drive home. Jim's eyes were fixed on the road, though, and he hardly said a word except to ask, as they were passing the garish orange lights of an all-night coffee shop on Fifth, if Blair would like to stop for dinner. Breakfast. Whatever you called the meal you ate at 2:30 in the morning.

"No," Blair said. "Let's just get home," not thinking until the orange diner lights were only a reflection in the rear view mirror that Jim was probably the one who had really wanted to eat.

Their building looked abandoned and bleak, the bright, unpeopled storefronts on the ground level only seeming to emphasize how dark and still the upper stories were. Of course, somebody was obviously home since there was no street parking left on the whole block. Blair's Volvo was hogging a prime spot right across from the stairway door, for all the good it did them. For all the good it did him He didn't know if he really saw the parking ticket under the windshield wiper as Jim drove by, or if it was just knowing it had to be there that made him imagine a flash of yellow paper. "Oh shit. It's Wednesday night."

"Thursday morning by now," Jim corrected, not without sympathy.

"And I wasn't here to move the car. Goddamnit. Another twenty-eight bucks down the tube."

Jim shrugged, one hand coming up in a 'don't blame me' gesture, and turned onto Lincoln toward the waterfront.

"Come on, Jim, you can let me in on your big cop secret by now, don't you think? This weekly 'street cleaning' business -- it's all just a scam to raise revenue, isn't it?"

"Looks like you're onto us, Chief. Parking tickets on your car alone paid my salary last year."

"I can just about believe it," Blair pretended to grumble. He was smiling. A ribbing from Jim made him feel safe for the first time since Ross had pulled his gun. The fragile crust of order and reason might have fractured around him, but Jim was still here, they were both safe, and eventually most of the pieces would get picked up again. Just not Ross.

Jim swung an enthusiastic U turn in the middle of Lincoln and pulled the truck into a space Blair would have sworn was too small for it. They were right across from the dry cleaners, which reminded Blair he had dropped off a coat to be cleaned a month -- two months? -- ago, and he really should go claim it before they donated it to Goodwill. Then he dropped his head and fumbled for his seatbelt in exasperation, wondering what the hell was wrong with him anyway. His ideas and emotions were jumping around like drops of water on a hot skillet, everything in the universe apparently of equal import in his messed up head. How could he be thinking about his dry-cleaning when only a few hours ago he allowed Jim to kill one of his own students? How could he be joking about parking tickets?

"Sandburg," Jim said quietly, but Blair flinched anyway. The yellow glare of the streetlights fell on Jim's brow and hid his eyes. "Just a minute."

NOW? Blair thought. You don't say a peep to me whole way home and you bring it up NOW? "Yeah, Jim?" he said.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Jim's voice wasn't angry at all. He only sounded genuinely puzzled, and a little sad.

"Oh come on, Jim, I don't know," Blair snapped. He hadn't meant to sound like an jerk, and made a gesture of apology, not able to say more.

Jim stayed maddeningly cool. "You're telling me you don't know what you were thinking when you blocked my shot? Sandburg, three years you've been riding with me now. I count on you, you understand that? I've got to know you'll be backing me up."

"Jim, I am. I mean, of course you can count on me. I'm your partner."

"Then you wanna explain to me what happened?" The words themselves were brusque, but Jim's voice was still gentle.

"OK, so I was thinking you were about to shoot Ross, and I didn't want you to. What else can I say, man? I just wanted him to get a second chance, and I guess it was stupid of me, but I don't think I can apologize for that. I mean, he's a student of mine. Was a student of mine. God, the poor guy. I never even liked him. One of those bored with the whole world assholes that I can never reach, but he didn't deserve to die for that."

"I didn't draw on him because he was an asshole," Jim said. "He had a weapon and he was obviously dangerous."

"Yeah, I know, I know."

"I just want to be sure you do. It's bad enough that you were putting yourself at risk, but you were endangering me and every other person there by allowing Ross to hang on to that gun. I know you're carrying a heavy load right now. But if Ross had taken anybody else with him, it'd be a hell of a lot worse."

Blair stared out the front windshield of the truck. The yellow lights made everything so ugly at street level. Artificial, flat and washed out. Daylight turned inside out, showing you what you were better off not seeing in the first place.

"And if he'd taken you out, Chief, it would have left me knowing I let you ride with me all this time, and never taught you to handle yourself." Blair looked back at Jim. He was staring out the front too, his hands wrapped hard around the steering wheel like he expected someone to try and take it away from him. "And I'm not real sure what I could do with that, you understand me?"

Blair understood. Probably too well. "I know," he said, swallowing hard. He made a fist and bounced the side of his hand off Jim's solid shoulder a couple of times. Unable to meet Jim's eyes just yet, he groped under his feet for his backpack, then swung himself out of the truck. Before he had gone five steps, Jim caught the shoulder of his canvas jacket, and when Blair stopped, he slung his arm around Blair's shoulders without a word. They walked the long block together, the weight of Jim's arm keeping Blair tucked possessively close all the way to the stairway door. There was a parking ticket on the windshield of the Volvo, all right, but it didn't seem to matter very much anymore.

* * *

That night Jim dreamed of Emily, and in his dream it seemed to him that things had worked out between them after all. They shared a house in the suburbs, he and Em, and though it was small and cramped, with low ceilings and no view of the bay, Emily was happy. Midafternoon sun shone through red gingham curtains on the kitchen window, and Emily jogged a smiling baby boy in her arms, cooing at him. Jim glanced down at his own hand and saw a wedding ring. The child must be his son. "Can I hold him?" Jim asked, feeling a contented sense of wonder.

Emily smiled with that toothy little overbite of hers Jim especially liked. Jack had always been pestering her to see an orthodontist -- hell, honey, I'll pay for it, and I won't even run around on you while you've got a mouthful of metal, ha ha -- and Jim was glad she had refused.

"Jim, of course," she said, and shifted the child carefully into his arms. He gathered his son to his chest, marveling a little at his solid weight, at the way his fuzzy, oversized head bobbled forward against his chest and then rested there, one tiny fist curled in contentment against his shirt front. Emily was smiling at him, and the sunlight spilled through the kitchen window to make an elongated square of light on the linoleum at their feet. This was the way things were supposed to turn out, Jim thought to himself. It didn't matter that the ceilings were too low and the neighbors too close. This was the ordinary life he had always wanted, wasn't it? He'd found it at last.

And then a shadow crossed the square of sunlight. It was shaped something like a man, although the head was terribly misshapen. Jim looked up fast, but whatever had cast the shadow was already gone.

"What is it?" Emily asked, and before Jim could answer, both of them heard the rattle at the front door, and a voice Jim had never expected to hear again calling, "Emily, let me in."

Emily's eyes widened in horror. "Jim," she breathed, "You told me he wouldn't be back."

"Emily, don't do this," called the voice from the front of the house. "I know I'm an old dog, but I can change."

"Jim," Emily said again, "Jim, how could you?" She took the baby from Jim's arms and both of them melted away like a morning fog, leaving Jim alone in the claustrophobic house with Jack Pendergrast banging at the front door.

Jack was shouting for him now. "Slick? Are you in there?" Jack, who had spent the last four years in an unmarked grave, his face full of shotgun pellets, the soft places in his throat and belly eaten by the fishes nine miles down the river. "Come on, they killed me while you were at home screwing my old lady, and now you won't even let me in the front door? Have a heart, Slick."

*NO,* Jim shouted in his mind and sat bolt upright in bed. His bedroom was drenched in sunlight. He curled over his bent knees, breathing hard. It was only a dream. Jack hadn't come back. Emily was another man's wife, and she deserved every happiness. He was still breathing hard though, soaked in a cold, uncomfortable sweat.

And it was the middle of the day. Good lord, no wonder he was having nightmares. He should have been on campus with Sandburg hours ago.

He crashed his way out of bed and went thundering down the steps bellowing for Blair. "Sandburg, get your lazy ass in gear. We're late."

There was no answer from Blair's bedroom. Jim pushed open the French doors, and saw the bed was empty. "Blair!" Jim shouted, and nothing answered him. He was alone in the loft.

Oh, this was crazy. No way Sandburg would have gone off and left him. Just to be sure, though, he stepped out again and checked. The chain was still on the front door, and Jim felt something very cold trickle down the back of his spine. Blair wasn't in the loft, but wherever he had gone, he hadn't left by the front door. Jim turned around slowly, trying to reach out with his senses, but they seemed blocked and sluggish somehow. He moved back into Blair's bedroom, trying to be calm, forcing himself to concentrate. There was a draft in here. How had he not noticed it before? The window that overlooked the fire escape was open.

This wasn't possible. This couldn't be possible. Moving like a sleepwalker he walked to the side of Blair's bed and looked down at the bedclothes. Sandburg wasn't big on making the bed every day. Or every week. But even he didn't sleep in a bed with the sheets yanked up from under the futon and spilled halfway across the floor. It looked as though Blair had grabbed them and tried to hang on while someone pulled him out of bed.

Madness. Jim could never have slept through something like that. It just wasn't possible. Nevertheless, he walked slowly around and looked at the floor between the bed and the window. The geometry of the room seemed all wrong. The angles had never been square, but now they tilted and verged on the edge of insanity. Jim had to shut his eyes against a wave of vertigo, and when he could open them again, he saw the line of muddy, bare footprints leading away to the window. There was an indescribably foul smell in the room, and as Jim clapped his hand over his nose and mouth, trying to block it out, he saw that little toe on the left foot was missing.

"Jack," Simon was laughing sadly in his head. "So vain of that damned toe he even showered with his socks on."

Jim woke himself screaming for Blair. He heard the last shout dying away as he awoke to the darkness of his bedroom, but it was only a hoarse whisper. He lay still, eyes wide open, heart pounding with remembered terror. He reached out violently, despairingly, and found Blair safely asleep in his room below. His senses were so wide open he could hear every rustle of the blanket as Blair's chest rose and fell in a deep, steady rhythm. Sandburg, at least, was untroubled by bad dreams tonight.

It had to be almost morning, didn't it? He looked toward the skylights, but could see no predawn glow. The disorientation of the dream threatened to seize him once more, and he rolled over fast to look at his alarm clock.

It was only 3:30. He'd barely been asleep for an hour.

Damn. He rolled back onto his back and looked glumly upward, not wanting to close his eyes again lest the images of the dream come back to him. Think about something else. Let it go. Don't let your emotions get involved, isn't that what he was always telling Blair? He had to smile a little at that. And Blair listened so earnestly to those little cop lectures too. He'd have to ask Blair someday if he believed a single word Jim said.

Then he heard it. A dull, loud click, like a heavy latch releasing, and then a softer sound, a muffled smack like a body impacting against something that wouldn't yield easily.

Jim was out of bed, his gun in his hand, and half way down the stairs, before he realized the sounds weren't coming from inside the loft. He froze, straining to hear, but he had lost his bearings completely and couldn't find it again. It could have come from anywhere on the block, hell, anywhere in the city, just about, as widely as he had cast his senses when he awoke in the first panic of the dream. It wasn't here, though. He made his way slowly down the stairs, listening to his surroundings, feeling them on the surface of his skin, assuring himself everything was safe and reasonable. Everything in order. He walked to Sandburg's bedroom door, pushed it open, and looked in on his friend. Blair lay on his back, one bare arm on top of the covers, looking peaceful as a child as he slumbered. Jim wanted to speak to him, to comfort himself with the sound of Sandburg's voice, but it wouldn't be fair to wake him just because Jim was having a bad night.

He backed away from the open door, but though he was as quiet as he could be, he heard the change in Blair's respiration, and then a sleepy, quiet, "Jim? Something the matter, man?"

"No, Jim said, and was not surprised to find that it was now the truth. "Go back to sleep."

Chapter 3

Blair's Anthro class met in a room on the fourth floor of the Chemistry building. There were lab tables instead of desks, white boards on every wall covered with scrawled formulae and, in the air, a lingering miasma of sulfur, formaldehyde, and other, less identifiable substances that made Jim flinch when Blair opened the door for him.

"Yeah, I know," Blair said, flashing a smile like sun breaking through on a stormy day. "You think they're trying to tell me something here? First no parking permit, then I get stuck in a chem lab all the way across campus from Hargrove. It's enough to make a guy paranoid." Then the smile was gone as the dull, resigned grief Blair had gotten up with this morning settled over his features once again. Jim felt a stab of anger at Ross, and it didn't matter that the kid was dead. In some ways that only made it worse. He put his hand on the center of Blair's back and followed him into the room.

Most of the seats were already taken. Blair had wondered over breakfast this morning if anyone would even show up for the class, but Jim had known better. "You called it, man," Blair said quietly, dumping his books and notes on the instructor's desk. It was another lab table, this one with a sink and gas jets and a length of rubber tubing coiled on one side. "There's people here I haven't seen since the first day of class."

Blair's students fell silent, watching with wide, unblinking eyes Jim found faintly unnerving. "You can just, um, sit down anywhere there's a seat, I guess," Blair told him. Jim raised an eyebrow at that, hoping to make Blair smile again, but Blair was already turning his attention to his class and away from Jim. A few last students had slipped in behind them, scrounging for the remaining seats. The backpacks slung over their shoulders made them clumsy as turtles trying to navigate a maze, so Jim walked to the back of the room to get out of the way and stood against the wall by the window. The sill was littered with ballpoint pen caps and vending machine food wrappers, and through the grimy pane, Jim could see students on the sidewalks far below scurrying to make their classes.

He looked back toward Blair, who had stopped fussing with his books and papers to shove his sleeve back, obviously looking for the watch he had forgotten to wear once again this morning. "Anybody got the time?"

"Five of," someone volunteered on the front row, at the same time another student said, "I have three minutes after."

"That's great, thanks," Blair mumbled, and stepped out to check the clock in the hall. While he was gone, curious heads swiveled to examine Jim gravely, and Jim found himself wondering how Blair got used to it. Not that Sandburg was exactly the shy type, but being the object of such dispassionate interest felt a little too much like being a lab rat to Jim. It was a relief when Blair came back into the room, and the unblinking, passive eyes turned back to the front. Blair walked around the desk, ignoring the notes he'd been worrying over, and smiled at his students. Not the Sandburg radiance that could blind Jim in unguarded moments, but a quirky, half-sad expression, sympathetic and somehow vulnerable. Under the influence of that smile Blair's class lost some of its air of watchful tension.

"The Nambikwara are a nomadic band in Brazil's northern plateau," was the first thing Blair said. "And despite the fact they live now with only the barest rudiments of material culture, some anthropologists speculate they're really a southern offshoot of the great Chibcha civilization, which was still flourishing when the Spanish arrived."

There was a sudden scrabble for notebooks and pens -- obviously no one had been expecting anything substantive today -- and a querulous voice called out, "Can you spell that for us, Mr. Sandburg?"

Blair held up one hand, palm out, an expression that was half surrender, half a plea for patience. "It was all in this week's reading, people. Give me a moment and just listen, all right?" He was wearing that ugly green checked blazer that was at least two sizes too big for him, his glasses were sliding down his nose, and he looked to Jim as though he had suddenly leapfrogged a decade or two, and was already deeply immersed in the role of tenured professor. An eccentric one at that. This was where Blair really belonged, wasn't it? The ride with Jim these past three years was only a stepping stone along Blair's path, not the end of the journey. Funny how hard it was to remember that sometimes. Even funnier how miserable that little reality check could make Jim feel.

He glanced back out the window. In just the minute or two since he had last looked, the sidewalk below had cleared. There was only one person below the window now, an anonymous student in jeans and three layers of flannel, clutching a tall white paper coffee cup identical to the ones half of Blair's students had brought with them to class this morning. The student seemed to be gazing up at Jim's window.

Jim narrowed his focus, trying to meet the eyes of the watcher outside the window. He zeroed in on a hazel - colored iris flecked with gold, the pupil shrunk to a pinpoint in the bright spring sunlight, and as he did, he felt the first, floating contentment of a zone begin to creep over him. Whoops. He shut his eyes fast, and turned his head before he opened them again. He half expected Blair to have noticed what was happening, and felt a foolish instant of disappointment when he saw Blair was going on with his lecture, quite oblivious.

"One unique aspect about Nambikwara culture is their lack of burial rituals. They mourn bitterly when a friend or family member dies, but they believe the souls of the dead are carried up into the air, dispersed by the wind, and vanish forever. The body of the deceased is simply left on the ground where he or she died."

Blair put his hands behind himself on the lab table and heaved himself up with a grunt and his usual disregard of personal dignity. His feet swung six inches off the floor. "You and me, though," he said in a quieter voice, "We live in a society with a very different attitude about the responsibilities the living owe to the dead."

Rubbing his palms on his jeans he went on, "We feel a debt to those who die before us. Even the body of the deceased is accorded reverence. It's as though, by showing respect to the carcass left behind, we can somehow assuage what is often a profound sense of indebtedness, even guilt, at our own survival. We owe the dead something tremendous, even though the very nature of that debt makes it one we can never repay, no matter what we do."

Finally Blair looked over the heads of his class for a moment, finding Jim before he said the rest. "Ross Malitz was shot to death last night in the research library. I suppose everyone here already knows that. The morning paper had a pretty accurate write-up. I heard the channel 11 news last night called it a gun battle, but it really wasn't. There was only one shot fired, and that was by Detective James Ellison."

There was little reaction from the class, but Jim didn't think it was callousness, necessarily. A degree of shock, perhaps, at hearing what they already knew described so starkly. Only one woman on the back row turned to look at Jim.

Blair's face was composed, his voice mostly level, save for the little rumble as it dropped too low. "I don't know why Ross did what he did last night, but I want to understand it, if I possibly can. It won't take away what I feel for having survived when he didn't. I know it won't change the way his family and friends feel either, or any of you here today. The thing is, not trying to understand is worse. For us, regardless of our beliefs about the afterlife, the dead continue to matter, long after they're gone. This is a debt I owe to Ross."

Blair's class was silent, no one shifting on those uncomfortable lab stools, not a piece of paper rustling. Jim turned his head to glance out the window once more, and saw that the student who had been watching Blair's classroom window from far below was gone. He extended his senses instinctively to search, finding a trail of footsteps and following the sound until he realized there was no scent of coffee nearby. He followed another thread of sound and scent as it pattered away across campus, footsteps on cement, then asphalt, the strong smells of patchouli and grass mingling above and almost drowning out a faint, slightly stale scent of coffee. That wasn't the watcher's trail either. Casting about further he found the sharp acidity of fresh coffee in a paper cup, and followed it until he distinguished the click of heels on linoleum bearing the coffee away. Wrong again. He found another trail, then another, following more for the challenge of the hunt than with any real hope of finding his quarry. Besides, he had entirely lost his bearings by this point -- was he even following sounds on campus anymore? -- when suddenly he happened across a sound and its entwined scent he didn't understand. Clumsy footsteps, shambling and slow, splashing through water. A sewer. Those smells, at least, were unmistakable. What he didn't understand was the impossibly faint, far away glimmer of scent that was Blair Sandburg.

A mistake. It had to be. Blair's presence here in the classroom must be fooling his senses, but it was a damned odd illusion, Blair's scent reflecting back to him from such a distance. He was still trying to puzzle it out when the sound of Blair's voice saying his name broke Jim's concentration, and he lost the trail and the scent altogether.

"That's Jim at the back of the room there. Any of you who have taken classes from me before, you've probably already met him, I guess, or at least seen him around campus. He's the detective with the Cascade PD who lets me tag around with him while I research my dissertation, so you know he's got to be a pretty easy going kind of guy, right?"

Blair raised his head to smile at Jim, and this time Jim hardly noticed the curious faces that turned to regard him once more. He even managed what he hoped would pass as the advertised easy going smile himself. "If there's anything any of you know about what was going on with Ross," Blair went on, "please, you can talk to either one of us. You can catch me at the office, or call, or drop me an email, whatever. Just let me know. Even if it's just to talk. Same with Jim. You can call him at the station if you don't catch him here on campus." Blair rattled off the phone number, then slid off the desk and walked around to write it on the board. There was hardly an inch of clear space on the board, so he wiped a smeary space clean for himself with his sleeve.

So that's how he was always ending up with black and red stains on his shirt sleeves, Jim thought. He'd wondered.

Then Blair stopped talking. The hand holding the board marker froze, and Blair just stood there looking at something in the tangle of numbers and Greek letters. The hesitation lasted only a moment, but when he finally wrote down Jim's number at the station, Jim saw his hand trembling. What in the world? He was on the verge of going to Blair's side himself, to hell with this classroom full of sheep, but Blair finally turned back on his own and looked at the faces of his students without speaking. A long moment passed. Too long. Heads finally turned aside or looked down to escape Blair's searching gaze, and at length Blair shook himself slightly and said in a quiet voice, "That's all for today. I don't think any of us are in the mood for a lecture."

The resulting gust of movement was as sudden and irreversible as dry leaves whirled away by the wind. Notebooks were slammed shut and stuffed into backpacks, lab stools shoved back, and students streamed out of the room as through blown by that imaginary wind. Blair stood at the front, his hands empty at his sides, white faced, saying in a voice that sounded forlorn to Jim, "If there's anything you can tell me about Ross, please, you can call any time. Just let me know."

If anyone was listening, they gave no sign of it, and in a moment more the room was empty of students. Jim pushed himself away from the back wall and walked to the front, where Blair was stacking his notes and books together. He didn't look up to meet Jim's eyes until Jim was on the other side of the desk from him. Then he straightened up and shrugged. "Guess I didn't handle that very well, did I?"

"There wasn't really any good way to do it," Jim said, reaching across to pat the side of Blair's face.

"I guess not," Blair agreed, a fragile smile appearing for an instant.

"What's on the blackboard?"

"Did I jump that much? Oh man, I wonder if everybody else saw it too?"

"What is it?"

"I don't know. Probably nothing, but it gave me a nasty shock. There I'd been talking about poor Ross, and then to turn around and see this on the board -- I dunno. Look at this."

In the midst of scribbled formulae in half a dozen different handwritings was a grid of symbols that did look different. Jim came around the desk to examine it more closely. "See what I mean?" Blair said. "When's the last time you saw Hebrew letters in the middle of a stoicheiometry problem?"

"It's been a while," Jim said dryly, and was rewarded with another quick smile. "What is it? Can you read it?"

"I think so." Blair ran his finger along the top line of letters. "Pe-gimel-resh. It means corpse. Or carcass, I guess. You see why I nearly lost it? And look at this." He traced a line of letters along the side of the little grid as well. "It spells the same thing going down too. Just at first glance, it looks half way like Hellenic iamblichan theurgy mixed up with the Qabala, but I'm not sure at all. Or maybe I've just got the book Ross stole on my brain, and everything is starting to look all mysterious to me now."

Jim seized on the only word he recognized. "Kabala? Like magic spells, fortune telling?"

"Well, kinda." Blair made a warding-off gesture with one hand, palm out, as though shutting himself up before he could begin another lecture. "I really don't know anything about it, that's just what it looks like to me. Or you know, Jim, maybe this is all just crazy. I bet you anything a class in Hebrew mysticism meets in this room too, and I really need to relax." He ran his hand back through his hair, pushing it out of his face and looked up at Jim earnestly.

"Or maybe it does mean something," Jim said.

"Yeah." Blair nodded fast and picked up his notebook. "Yeah, maybe it does. I'll find someone in the religion department who can tell me more about this." He copied the letters carefully, and when he had finished, Jim reached for his wrist and wiped the odd little grid of symbols from the board himself with the sleeve of Blair's coat. "Are you sure that was a smart thing to do?" Blair asked, hardly seeming to notice being used as a human eraser. "It might be evidence or something."

He had a point, actually. Erasing the symbols had been unthinking instinct. "Too late now," Jim said, since he couldn't really explain what he'd done.

Blair looked at him curiously, but in the end he didn't ask Jim about it. He simply gathered his notebooks into his arms and said, "Let's go."

* * *

Ross's dorm mate was a kid named Eddie Norton. He was just as thin and pale as Ross had been, and his T-shirt and jeans were black, as was the duster he wore against the cold April wind. Even so, Jim thought he believed Eddie when he protested plaintively that he hadn't had any idea what Ross was planning, or why he had wanted the book so badly he'd been willing to kill for it. He was red-eyed, and his voice shook when he answered some of Blair's questions, but he was glad enough to let Jim buy him a hamburger and a double order of cheese fries at the student union, and he ate them with a gusto that went a long way toward convincing Jim this was a kid too interested in living to have had anything to do with Ross's self-destructive plans.

"I mean, lookit," Eddie said, interrupting himself to stuff half a dozen dripping cheese fries into his mouth and swallow them apparently whole. "He couldn't have needed the money -- his folks own like half of Rhode Island. And how much money could you get from a weird old book anyway? It doesn't make sense."

"Rhode Island?" Jim asked. "He was a long way from home, wasn't he?"

"No kidding," Blair put in. "Rainier's a good school and all, but it doesn't usually attract rich New England kids."

Eddie shrugged and picked up his burger again. The hamburger patty was beginning to slip out the back of the bun, along with a mayonnaisey slice of tomato. "He went to school somewhere back east his freshman year. I can't remember the name of it now. No place I've ever heard of."

"Do you know why he transferred?" Blair asked.

A frown creased Eddie's white brow. Thinking was apparently an unfamiliar activity, and that tended to convince Jim as well that Ross had not shared his plans with Eddie. Ross hadn't acted any too bright either, but his delusions had seemed, if nothing else, the end result of too much thinking rather than too little. "No, I don't know why he came out here," Eddie said at last. He pushed the innards of his hamburger back into the bun. "He would talk about stuff sometimes, but that was just Ross. Shit, I can't believe any of this. Ross was whacked, but he was a pretty good bud. I can't believe he's gone."

"What kind of stuff did he talk about?" Blair's voice was gentle. "I know this is rough, but if you can help us understand what happened, it would mean a lot."

Eddie nodded, his grief not preventing him from taking another bite before he answered. The wind picked up, whistling around the end of Apter Hall, scattering papers from the tables of other students. It was a cold afternoon to be eating on the outside patio, but the rare golden light of a sunny day and the cloudless blue sky seemed worth braving the wind.

"I don't know," Eddie said at last. "Just stuff. It always sounded pretty cool but -- I don't know. Things that seem really mind-blowing when you've got a buzz on, but the next morning don't make all that much sense. You know what I mean?"

Blair nodded, shivering as a fresh gust of wind blew his hair into his face. "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. What kind of stuff did Ross talk about?"

"You know, about Rainier, about all the people who were getting offed here."

"What?" Blair asked incredulously. "Offed? Murdered?"

"Well, yeah." Eddie looked at Blair as though he was a little thick. "You know, like that maintenance guy who got stung by poisonous spiders, and the professor in the anthro department who was killed in the parking garage out behind Hargrove, and then the chick who taught archeology. Ross would talk about how they were all related, really, but the cops and everyone were too stupid to figure it out." He glanced at Jim and shrugged with an apologetic grin. "Like I said, just crazy stuff."

"That is crazy," Blair said sharply. "Hal Buckner and Emily Watson -- there was no connection between their murders."

"Hey, I'm just telling you what Ross said. Other stuff, too. Did you know they were storing a canister of ebola right here on campus, and that it got stolen? They tried to hush it all up so there wouldn't be a huge panic, but Ross said he knew all about it, that it was all true. And that research farm the university runs? If people had any idea the kind of things they were really breeding out there they would freak, just totally freak."

Blair's jaw was set, and he was looking away from Eddie expressionlessly. His hair blew in his face, hiding his eyes, and he didn't push it aside. Jim said, "OK, so Ross believed there was all this sinister stuff going on here on campus, and that it was all connected somehow. You're right, Eddie, it's all pretty incredible. But what I want to know is what he thought the connection was."

Eddie made a face, scrunching up his nose. "Well, that's the part that never made all that much sense the next morning. But you know on those episodes on Star Trek, where something goes wrong and the hologram starts to buzz and get staticky and then Captain Picard or the Romulans or whoever it was can see through the hologram and see what's really there? Well, Ross said Rainier was like that, and if you were standing at the right place at just the right time, then when the hologram went down you would be able to see what was really there too. It could be really dangerous, which is why people keep dying, but Ross thought it would be totally cool too. He said he had it all figured out."

"I don't think I do," Jim observed mildly.

"Well, he didn't really believe Rainier was just a giant hologram," Eddie said. "At least, I don't think that's what he meant. But that's why he was so psyched about finally getting into your class, Mr. Sandburg." Eddie finally put down the remains of his burger, his face going sad again, as though he had just remembered his room mate had been shot to death last night.

"My class?" Blair turned. "He wanted to be in my class? Why?"

Eddie looked appealingly at Jim, as though Jim would understand what Blair was apparently too dense to get. "That's the only thing that was obvious about it. Whenever something bad happens on campus, Mr. Sandburg's like always there in the middle of it."

Blair reeled like a man who'd just been blindsided. "What?"

"Come on, man," Eddie said with a snort of disgust. "Don't act so stupid. It happened again last night."

The beep of Jim's cell phone interrupted them. Great timing, Jim thought in helpless exasperation. "Excuse me," he said, and rose and walked a step away from the table to take the call. "Ellison."

"Jim." Simon's voice, angry and curt. "Where the hell are you?"

"Here on campus with Sandburg, sir. Where you told me to be."

"Well now I'm telling you to get back to the station," Simon growled. "Everything's just gone to hell in a handbasket."

"Excuse me, sir." Something was really riding Simon's ass. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Dammit, Jim, someone broke into the morgue before dawn last night and stole Ross Malitz's body."

Chapter 4

Blair was waiting in the corridor outside Nagle's history seminar, hoping for a chance to talk to the professor when class let out. Hard to believe Professor Nagle or his medieval European seminar could have had anything to do with Ross's death, but Ross had mentioned Nagle that evening, so it couldn't hurt to check. Blair was covering all the bases. Doing things in neat, tidy Jim-fashion. Best way he knew to impose order on chaos.

And things were chaotic. Let's not forget crazy. Spooky crazy. Keep-looking-over-your-shoulder crazy. It was like David Lash all over again. Even worse, in a weird sort of way, and that was saying something. Eddie's story was a special little nightmare in a class all its own. Not that it was such a revelation to learn Ross hadn't been dealing from a full deck. That much, at least, had been abundantly clear during the last minutes of the kid's life. But if Eddie were to be believed, Blair had been the hapless star of Ross's private delusions for months. Maybe even for years. It was that cautious, careful, spider patience that made the face of Ross's madness so frightening. Just too damn much like David Lash, wasn't it? But even worse, because apparently Ross's delusions weren't so private after all. For crying out loud, someone had cared enough about them, or at least about Ross, to break him out of the morgue last night. David Lash's own father had refused to claim his son's body.

And hey, you know, wasn't it way, way past time to stop thinking about David Lash?

A door slammed somewhere in the building, and Blair flinched, drawing curious stares from students beginning to congregate in the hall for their next classes. "Not enough sleep last night," Blair offered with a shrug and a grin. "Always makes me jumpy."

Nobody smiled back. Not the jock in the Jags t-shirt, shoulders straining at the seams, no surprise there, but the little hippie girl in the broomstick skirt looked just as blankly at him, and the copper-haired, porcelain-skinned beauty queen who didn't even bother pretending to carry books around (a backpack would have wrinkled that linen dress) made a faint grimace of distaste. Okaaay. Blair's hands came up, making a whoa-excuse-me-for-living gesture. What was the matter with these people?

Or maybe a better question would be what was the matter with him. He was a walking bundle of nerves. No wonder he was weirding out the people around him. He needed to just calm down, stop thinking everyone he passed might be in Ross's coterie of true believers. Like his own class this morning. They had been so distant, so cold, when he talked about Ross's death. Had some of them known what Ross had been planning? Had one of them written those symbols on the board?

And on and on and on, and give it a REST already. That kind of thinking was just crazy, paranoid nonsense, because if Ross had been proselytizing, it hadn't been during class. Blair couldn't remember seeing him even talking to anyone else. He had just sat in the back row with a sullen frown on his face, barely even pretending to take notes. Not that anyone in that class had shown signs of becoming the next Richard Leakey. Spring quarter classes were notorious for attracting students who were only there because they'd suddenly realized they needed another GE on their transcripts, and Ross had seemed like another face in the listless crowd. Anyway, Blair thought, trying to be fair to his class, one of their classmates had been shot dead the night before. No wonder they'd been a little stunned and dull. Kids that age liked to pretend they had seen it all and were incapable of being shocked by anything, but Blair knew himself what a facade that was. At nineteen or twenty, firsthand evidence of one's own mortality wasn't accepted easily. Ross certainly hadn't accepted it. Right up until the moment Jim put a bullet in his head he'd been insisting on his own immortality.

Oh, good going, Blair. That line of thought will calm you right down.

Damn. Maybe it was childish of him, but he really, really wished Jim could have stayed on campus with him. They were supposed to be doing this together -- that had been the plan for today, before Ross's body had so inconveniently disappeared. Jeez, who could have anticipated something so crazy? Of course, knowing Simon's managerial style he was probably blaming Jim anyway. He'd have been happier scapegoating Blair, but Blair wasn't within reach. Jim was. So Blair wouldn't call, no matter how badly he wanted the reassurance of Jim's voice. He didn't have any new information, and Jim had enough on his hands. Jim was doing his job. He was counting on Blair to do his.

There, that was better. By the time the door to Nagle's classroom swung open and people began trickling out into the corridor in groups of two and three, Blair felt as though he was finally getting his emotions under control. Nothing to be ashamed of, still feeling shaky and vulnerable less than twenty-four hours after the shooting, but it wasn't useful either. It could be put aside for the time being, while Blair dealt with more important things.

He made his way into the classroom along with the students who were coming in for their next class, and saw Nagle still at the front of the room, surrounded by half a dozen students who were vying for attention, or simply listening with every evidence of being enraptured. Nagle's sharp black eyes darted across the room, picking out Blair instantly from the other people coming into the room, but he didn't pause in his monologue.

Blair sat on the corner of a desk in the front to wait. He had a passing acquaintance with Nagle. Back in the days when he had been trying to scare up a dissertation committee, Buckner had suggested Nagle for one of the required out-of-department committee members, so Blair had dutifully gone and talked to him. Professor Nagle had been profoundly unimpressed with Blair's prospectus, and told him so, but Blair really couldn't hold that against the man. Almost every faculty member he'd approached had turned him down. It had taken nearly 18 months just to put together a committee.

Nah, he had a much better reason to dislike Nagle, he thought, and had to laugh at himself. Jealous, Sandburg? Well, all right, maybe he was, just a little. Nagle was a hugely popular instructor. His lectures were dynamic, sparkling performances, brilliant, accessible, and funny. At sixty, he still wore his blue jeans convincingly, and had aquiline features and a shock of silver hair that made him an arresting figure. His classes routinely had waiting lists fifty names long, and his students adored him.

He was the kind of teacher Blair had always thought he could be too, at least in his secret, immodest, heart of hearts. Hey, he was funny, he was smart, he loved teaching, loved his subject matter, knew he could identify with his students, was certain he could connect with them. His first solo 101 class had been a revelation. It turned out not every important idea in the world could be made funny and accessible. And while he was close in age to his students, there was some stuff about them he'd just couldn't understand. The intellectual laziness, the fashionable ennui. The implicit demand that it was somehow his responsibility to coax them into wanting to learn. Blair just didn't get it. This was the whole world, and you only got one lifetime. Just one shot, folks, so what sort of lazy-assed blockhead would waste any opportunity? Sometimes, he even got exasperated enough to tell his class so, and by the end of his first quarter of teaching, he had figured out he would never be a very popular teacher.

Oh well, he still had a lot to learn about being a teacher, he knew. Funny how hanging out with Jim had made him realize that, more than all his years at the university ever had. And if there was anything Blair knew he despised, it was teachers who blamed their students for their own shortcomings. Look at him, already on his way to becoming just as bad. Maybe he should audit some of Nagle's classes sometime, see if he could pick up some tips.

The lecturer for the next class had arrived by then and, acquainted, no doubt, with the difficulty of prying Nagle out of the room, was drawing attention to himself by erasing the blackboard with wildly enthusiastic strokes. At length Nagle waved his lingering disciples away, saying, "Regular office hours on Thursday," picked up his briefcase, and made his way out of the room.

Blair had to take a few quick steps to catch up. "Excuse me, Dr. Nagle, if you have a minute, I need to talk to you."

Nagle never even slowed his pace. "Blair Sandburg, isn't it? No, I'm sorry, I have an appointment off campus. I'm afraid it will have to wait."

It was like trying to keep up with Jim, Blair having to take a step and a half for every one of Nagle's. "Please," he said, "this is important. It's about Ross Malitz."

"A terrible tragedy," Nagle said flatly. "You were there when it happened, weren't you?"

"Yeah," Blair said. "Yeah, I was. And now I'm doing the best I can to try and figure out why it happened."

The professor shook his head. "The only person who could have answered your question is dead already."

"Ross, you mean." They passed through the double doors out of the history building and into the brightness of a spring afternoon. The wind was blowing colder than ever, driving stray papers twisting and spinning across the lawn. Blair shivered and shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets. "You're probably right -- I mean, of course you are, but I'm just trying to put together the pieces."

"What good can that do now?"

"Maybe none," Blair answered, choosing his words carefully. "But I won't know until I try. Ross was in your history seminar, wasn't he?"

"Clearly you already know that he was," Nagle said. "I resent being asked questions you already know the answers to. You sound like someone who's been hanging around police departments too long."

"I'm sorry," Blair said, a mostly sincere apology. "I'm just trying to understand the sequence of events. Did you know what book Ross was trying to steal? It was von Junzt's Unaussprechlichen Kulten. What's tough for me is figuring out how a guy who practically slept through all my classes knew the first thing about rare 15th century German witchhunting manuals."

Nagle turned his head and raised an eyebrow. "It seems you don't expect very much from your students, Blair. And von Junzt's treatise is not about -- about witchmongering." He spat the word out with distaste.

"So you did talk about the book in class?"

"I certainly discussed Rainier's collection. This is a seminar on the late medieval mind -- of course I wanted my students to be aware of the treasures we have here. The Bollingen Collection is the finest of its kind west of the Mississippi. With the exception of Cornell's White collection and of course Miskatonic's library holdings, it's probably the finest in the country."

"The Bollingen Collection. Right, that's right, I know a little bit about it. Books on alchemy and magic and stuff. The first president of Rainier purchased them from monasteries and private libraries all over Europe while he was in service as minister plenipotentiary to Berlin. I've never had much opportunity to use them in my field, but I understand there are a lot of pretty amazing books."

Nagle nodded in grudging approval. The brick walks were crowded with students hurrying to make their classes, and Blair had to turn sideways to make room for the flow of people going the opposite direction. Nagle didn't wait, and Blair stepped off onto the grass and half-jogged to catch up to him. "But the book Ross took. Did you mention it specifically in class?"

"I really don't remember."

"Was the von Junzt book particularly rare or valuable?"

"Rare? Well, all the books in the collection are rare and unusual, but this one was merely a seventeenth century reprint. There were many books that would be worth more to a collector of antiquities than that particular volume." Both he and Blair had to stop and wait at the crosswalk to the north campus parking lot.

"Can you think of anything at all? I'm just trying to figure out why, of all the books Ross might have asked for, he wanted that particular one. So it wasn't about witchcraft. Then what was it about?"

At a break in the traffic, Blair stepped out into the crosswalk, expecting Nagle would continue on his precipitous way. Instead though, the professor just kept standing on the curb, an expression on his face, Blair saw when he stepped back, as though he were making up his mind about something.

"Von Junzt's Kulten has a special status, I suppose you could say," Nagle explained at last. "It's one of those books that's widely known by specialists in the field, but seldom actually read."

"Oh, I understand," Blair agreed quickly. A definite thawing, there, wasn't it? "Like anthro profs that I swear get all their information on Girard from the digests, or lit people who've never really made it all the way through Middlemarch."

Nagle almost smiled. Probably the same smile that enthralled his undergrads, but Blair could live with that. At least they were finally making some progress.

"As a young man in the service of Count Palatine of Siradz, Gottfried von Junzt traveled as far east as Constantinople. In the course of his travels, he observed certain, ah, survivals that were very surprising to an educated man of his day."

"Survivals?" Blair darted a quick glance over his shoulder, suddenly having the unpleasant sensation he was being watched. The walks behind him were crowded with students and faculty. If someone had their eyes on him, there was no way for him to know it. Feeling the cold wind more keenly, Blair pulled his coat tight, crossing his arms over his chest. "Survivals of what, exactly?"

Nagle cocked his head, black eyes sparkling in the sunlight. "It would probably be an anachronism to call them religious observances. Say, then, certain rites and practices that were already ancient when Sarab and Ganj-Dareh themselves were young."

Blair fell back a step, struggling to keep his face neutral. "Von Junzt noticed that Marian shrines looked a little bit like pagan goddess worship?" he said, wondering if the tone of his voice betrayed him. "Something like that?"

"Oh no. Oh, no, even the ancient fertility cults are only a cover for something far older. Rites that came down from the Pa I-Taq Pass to Samarra on the banks of the Tigris, and thence to Ur and Nippur."

"Dr. Nagle," Blair interrupted, "A man of von Junzt's time couldn't have known about Kermanshah villages, I don't care how widely traveled he was. Excavations didn't even begin until the 19th century, and I seriously doubt he would even have known anything about Samarran caravan routes. What are you talking about here?"

"I'd expect an anthropologist to understand. Mankind's oldest secret. The dark rites that predate civilization, that will continue long after civilization's end."

Blair wiped his hand over his mouth. He could feel himself trembling. "Professor, is that the sort of thing you've been telling your class?"

"What a closed mind you have, Blair. Surprising from a scholar who's based his own life work on finding Burton's superman."

He's baiting you, Sandburg. Blair could almost hear Jim's voice saying the words in his head. You hit the jackpot, all right, so keep it cool, and don't lose your head now.

He met Nagle's mad, bright black eyes steadily. Jim was right. There was no point in arguing with a lunatic. "At any rate," Blair said, keeping his voice quiet so it wouldn't shake, "it sounds to me as though you did discuss Kulten with your class. Probably extensively."

Nagle gave a little shrug of acknowledgement. "It would be difficult to conduct a class in the medieval world view responsibly without discussing von Junzt's findings. Naturally, there was no reason for me to go into detail. Not with a class of undergraduates, at any rate. Now if you'll excuse me, I do have to be going."

"Go into detail about what?" Blair asked, physically moving in front of Nagle before he could step into the crosswalk.

Nagle laughed, whether at the question or at Blair's attempts to impede his progress, Blair didn't know. "There's a very good reason von Junzt's book is often spoken of, yet seldom read. Not all knowledge is a good thing, is it, Blair? You know that as well as I do." He grinned at Blair. "Like the kids say, 'Too much information, man.'"

Blair was really starting to hate that smile. "How about this?" he asked. He swung his backpack off his shoulder and dragged his notebook out.

"Blair, I'm going to be late," Nagle complained mildly.

"This," Blair said, flipping it open to the grid of symbols he'd copied from his classroom board. "Is this from Kulten?"

He couldn't read Nagle's expression at all. He looked down at Blair's notebook, and then up at Blair with a face as blank as an egg. "Dr. Nagle?" Blair prompted at last, at the same moment his cell phone shrilled in his backpack, the sound startling them both.

Dr. Nagle shook himself and stepped away. "I'm late," he announced, and took off across the street, half-loping in his haste. Blair was tempted to follow, but hoping it was Jim calling him, he dug out the phone instead and let Nagle go. "Sandburg."

God, it was good to hear Jim's voice.

"Jim, you won't believe the conversation I've been having with Ross's history professor. He is nuts man, lock 'im up and throw away the key certifiable." Blair turned and started to walk back toward Hargrove, trying to keep his voice down and thinking, as he stepped off the sidewalk onto the grass to keep from getting run over by a pack of sorority girls in matching plaid wool miniskirts, how much he hated people who walked around chatting on cell phones. "The things he's been telling his class, I don't know, it's no wonder Ross went off the deep end. Somebody's got to get that man out of the classroom before he can screw up any more kids, and I wouldn't be surprised if he told Ross to steal the book himself. What's up at the station? Do you need me to come down there? Can you get Simon to ask for a warrant? I think somebody should search Nagle's office. There's no telling what you'd find."

"Whoa, hold on, hold on. Who is this guy?"

"Peter Nagle. A history professor here. Ross was in his class -- they had talked about the book Ross tried to steal in class."

"Doesn't sound like a lot to go on."

"No, Jim, you don't understand. You should have heard this guy, trying to tell me about secret rituals dating back to paleolithic times, practically. Crazy stuff. I expected him to tell me next that aliens built the pyramids. I'm telling you, this is not the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from a tenured history professor. Something is way wrong there. You gotta trust me on this."

"OK, OK, sounds like we should both have a talk with him."

"What's going on at the station? You find out anything?"

Jim sounded tired. "Just that whoever stole Ross's body had to have followed the ambulance straight from the school last night, been right here in the station with us."

"What? Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. The perpetrators broke out of the morgue last night, not into it. They must have been locked in with the body."

"Oh my god." Blair stopped dead. "Jim, this is all just too weird. You want me to come down to the station?"

"No, I'm sorry, Chief, that's why I'm calling. Ross's parents are flying in, and they're due any time now. Simon doesn't want you around while they're here."

"Jim, I don't think --"

"He's got a point. This isn't a good time to draw any more attention to your observer status than we have to. Not while things are still such a mess down here. You can imagine how the comissioner is breathing down Simon's neck on this."

"OK," Blair agreed reluctantly. "All right, I guess so."

"Good man. I'll see you tonight. Might be late getting home."

"All right, I --"

When he realized he was talking to a dead line, Blair turned off the phone and stuffed it into his backpack. Just when he thought things couldn't get any stranger, he thought ruefully. What next?

And then there it was again, dammit, that creepy, cold air on the back of his neck feeling. He whirled around fast, just in time to lock eyes for an instant with a woman across the quadrangle, standing on the steps of the Law Library. Blair raised his hand in a tentative wave, even though he didn't recognize her, and the woman quickly ducked her head and turned away.

Chapter 5

Blair realized he hadn't stopped thinking about Lash. He was thinking about him as he crossed to the Law Library and walked through the lobby and the first floor stacks, not actually looking for the girl he'd seen watching him, just refusing to turn his back on her, because that was the mistake he'd made with David Lash. Turned his back on him. When he'd seen Lash reflected in the window of the cab, some part of his brain had already started putting the pieces together, but what had he done about it? Nothing but glance over his shoulder and be mostly relieved to see that whatever had cast the reflection of someone who was Blair and yet so absolutely not-Blair had already stepped out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind. That sort of thinking had allowed Lash to herd him home like a scared sheep split off from the flock. Practically invited Lash to grab him.

Well, never again. Never, ever again. Hey, there was a time and place to turn tail and run, he knew that. But not when running was exactly what your enemy wanted you to do. Assuming there were any enemy here at all. Assuming the girl he'd glanced from across the quad had really been watching him in the first place. For instance, maybe she'd just seen him from across the way and been so taken by his boyish good looks she hadn't been able to tear her eyes away. Blair grinned to himself, cheered for a minute. Right, Sandburg. Well, it was just about as likely as assuming she was in Ross's big secret posthumous cult.

Or maybe it was Nagle's.

At any rate, it was a moot point because there was no sign of her here, and the longer he walked through the stacks, peering around every carrel and glancing into the windows of all the conference and study rooms, the less certain he became he'd even recognize her if he saw her again. She'd been wearing blue jeans, right? With some sort of flannel jacket and shoulder length light brown hair. In other words, just like half the students on campus. In all probability she'd gone right through the building and out the other end, taking the shortcut between the student union and the upperclass dorms on the north side of campus, and he was completely wasting his time.

He turned around and went back out the double front entrance again, blinking in the bright sunlight. The sky was a hard, clear, cloudless blue, and budding trees on the quad were bent double by the bitter wind, their branches outstretched like imploring arms. Spring or not, Blair was freezing. Maybe he had another coat in his office he could get. Probably he had half a dozen. He was bad about leaving them at school and then being forced to borrow Jim's. Which was fine until he left Jim's at the office too.

Then he should see what he could find out about Peter Nagle. That had to come first, whatever else happened with the investigation. It would take a helluva smoking gun to get a tenured professor out of the classroom, but the man was bad, bad news. Blair had to try before any other kids ended up like Ross. He'd look up Nagle's vita, check his publications, see if he had committed any of his lunatic ideas to print. Hard to imagine anyone would publish his rantings, but it was a place to start.

There, that sounded like a plan. Then catch the bus back home and see what was up with Jim. The poor guy had sounded beat on the phone, and with Ross's parents arriving, the worst was yet to come for him. Blair would get to the loft first, be sure there was a good dinner in the oven for them both. Least he could do. And if that meant he would have to be sure and leave campus well before dusk, well, then, so that's what it meant. He shook his head at his own skittishness but didn't try to argue himself out of it as he half-jogged across the quadrangle, his backpack jouncing on his back and his hands shoved deep in his pockets as protection against the cold wind.

* * *

Ross's parents didn't want to see Jim, and he was unabashedly relieved by that, though he would have talked to them if they had asked. Even over Simon's protests. It was Simon's job to protect the department, and any expressions of sympathy could come back to haunt them in the liability suit the grieving parents might bring one day down the road. Jim knew that. He even understood it, in the same way he understood why a two-bit stickup artist with a couple of convictions behind him would kill the clerk at the next store he robbed, rather than leave an eye witness who could send him up again. Understanding the point of view didn't mean he agreed with it. As far as Simon's concern about liability issues went, well, there was a limit. You couldn't let lawyers dictate your humanity, because once you did, you were well on your way to forgetting what justice was supposed to be all about. Too many people in the system like that already.

Something about having Sandburg around made it all the more important to stand fast against the creeping, incremental compromises, too. Jim had never been very good at those games anyway, as Carolyn had always been quick to tell him. Simon didn't exactly keep his opinions to himself either. But with Sandburg there, watching him in unguarded moments with that -- that look in his eyes. Like Jim could save the whole world if he wanted to, given enough time. It would be an impossible expectation to try and live up to, except Blair never gave Jim time to think about it. The very next minute he'd be pushing Jim toward the door demanding they go to Waterfront Park while the wind was coming out of the west and a fog was rolling in, and they should do a couple of experiments to see how that affected his ability to judge distance and by the way Jim, you didn't really want to go to that steakhouse tonight for dinner, did you? Not when there's a great new Vietnamese place that's just opened up, organic AND vegetarian, sounds great doesn't it?

Jim smiled to himself, shaking himself out of his musings. As a matter of fact, the Vietnamese place had been pretty good. Worlds better, at any rate, than the fast food Mexican joint where Jim had stopped on his way to the station this afternoon. The soda he'd gotten with lunch had been sitting mostly forgotten on his desk all afternoon, and a puddle of condensation was slowly spreading from its base, advancing on a stack of files in inexorable degrees. That really had to be dealt with, sooner rather than later by this point. Jim picked up the paper cup, swinging it out in a wide arc to try to avoid dripping all over the desk, and succeeded about as well as he had expected he would. Now he had a puddle of condensation on the desk and an arc of water droplets splattered across all the files and papers. What a mess. Looked like Sandburg had been sitting there.

He carried the cup over to the water fountain, still dripping water with every step, pried off the lid, and dumped the remains down the drain. The melted ice had settled in a layer of water on top of the darker soda, and they poured out together in mingling ribbons, circling the drain and disappearing down the tiny holes punched in the metal. There were sparkles of round brightness where the surface tension held bubbles of water poised for an instant before they broke and were replaced with darkness.

"It's called a water fountain." A heavy hand fell on Jim's shoulder, the weight of it and the sound of Joel's amused voice bringing Jim back. "Makes you wonder what they'll think up next, don't it?"

"Hey," Jim said, shaking his head. He'd been gone there for a minute, hadn't he? He crumpled the empty cup in his hand and dropped it into the trashcan across the way. A neat hook that would have made Sandburg proud. "Little tired is all."

"Yeah, I hear you. How you feeling? IA got their claws into you yet over this?"

"Not yet. I've got an appointment in the morning, but I don't think it'll be any problem. It was pretty cut and dried."

"Hell of a thing, though. Come on, a library book? And now the body's missing? Makes you wonder what's next. Is Sandburg all right?"

"Little shook up. He's all right."

"Good." Joel nodded. "Good. You tell him he's doing all right."

"I will."

"Hey, he's keeping you on the straight and narrow." He elbowed Jim in the ribs, hard enough for Jim to feel it, laughed at Jim's exaggerated wince. "I know that's gotta be a fulltime job."

There was a trail of dark drops leading back to Jim's desk, and the puddle of condensation on the surface had reached the end of his desk and was dribbling to the floor a drop at a time. Have to wipe that up. Jim scanned the other desks, looking for napkins left over from somebody else's takeout lunch. Water continued to fall, a quick rush of droplets spilling over the edge, then slowing, and Jim was still standing there, thinking about the grid of little round holes in the drinking fountain drain. Sparkling with reflected light for a moment as they held the water, then rushing away into darkness.

Jim could hear things in the darkness. Water splashing in vaults of stone and metal. And the other thing. It was really always with him, wasn't it? All he had to do was be still a bit and listen. Footsteps coming in slow procession. Clumsy but indefatigable. For the love of heaven, Chief, what is that?

And then, just like before, something of Blair shimmered out at him from the darkness, bright as a lock of his curly hair in the sunlight. He reached for it, scent, sound, a vision, touch or taste, but whatever he was sensing, it was too subtle to be caught. Something had caught Blair, though. What other explanation could there be? Why else would Blair be with something that shuffled endlessly through the wet, stinking darkness?

"Jim! What's wrong with you? Siddown before you fall over."

Joel was practically holding him up, both big hands wrapped in the shoulders of Jim's coat. "I'm OK," Jim heard himself muttering. He brought up his hands, trying to pull free, but Joel wasn't buying it. He steered Jim forcibly around and sat him down at his desk.

"Are you sick? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Jim shook his head. "I'm fine," he lied. "I'm fine." He couldn't find his way back to the darkness now, the way his heart was pounding in his chest, certainly not with Joel still leaning over him, one hand still on his shoulder.

Jim groped for the telephone on the desk and punched in Blair's number. It rang once, twice. One more time and Jim was going to hang up and drive straight to campus himself, but then Blair picked up the phone, saying, "Hey Jim, is that you? You should have called me on my office phone. These calls cost money, you know."

I know, Jim thought, weak with relief at the sound of Blair's voice. He was the one who paid the cell phone bill, and it had never seemed a better investment than it did at this minute.

"What's going on?" Blair said. "Has anything new turned up?"

"Is that Sandburg?" Joel asked. Jim nodded, and at that, Joel finally let him go and moved away to his own desk, still scowling with worry.

"No," Jim said. He swallowed. "No, nothing new on this end. We might have something when the fingerprint analysis comes back. I was just wondering -- uh -- if you wanted a ride home this evening."

"Sure," Blair said happily. "When have I ever turned down a ride? Are you leaving now?"

How he wished he could. "No. It may be a little while. Simon's meeting with Ross's parents. He wanted me to stick around until after they left."

Blair's voice was warm with sympathy. "Do they want to talk to you?"

"Not so far. It may be a couple of hours, though. I'll just give you a call before I leave."

A moment of hesitation, then Blair said, "You know, it's a little after five now. I was just gonna catch the bus home anyway. Tell you what, I'll go ahead and do that, then I can have a good dinner started by the time you walk in the door. I think we could both use some home cooking. I'll even thaw out a sirloin for you. Heck, I'll get one out for me too. It feels like a red meat sort of night."

There had to be some good reason to tell Blair to just stay put on campus until Jim could get there. A reason besides persistent auditory hallucinations anyway.

"Jim? Hey, Jim, are you all right?"

Or maybe he could just blow off Simon and go pick up Sandburg right now. "I'm all right," was all Jim said.

"I've got a better idea," Blair announced in a quiet, quick voice. "I'll come down there, meet you at the station and we can head home together. Don't worry about Simon, I'll be invisible. Nobody will even know I'm there."

Sandburg going unnoticed. Oh yeah. Things might be a little crazy and out of sorts today, but not THAT crazy. "Nah, Blair, your first idea was better. I'll see you at home. Need me to pick up anything for this big dinner?"

"Not that big. Just salad and some veggies and I think we've got plenty of frozen. I'll be sure not to start anything that won't keep in case you get held up there. I should just expect you when I see you. Is that about the size of it?"

"Sounds like it. Listen, Sandburg --"

"What is it?"

Jim looked at the puddle of water on his desk. Most of the water had bled away onto the floor, and little more than the outline remained. "Blair, this is a funny kind of case. Just keep an eye out, all right?"

"Hey, I always do," Blair assured him. "Jim, listen to me for a second here, though. You're really all right?"

"I'm all right," Jim said. "See you tonight."

* * *

Blair wasn't so sure Jim was all right. When was the last time Jim had called him just to say hello? There'd been the excuse of offering a ride home, but that had only been an afterthought, Blair knew. He sat there in his office after Jim hung up the phone, thinking about it. Wondering if he should show up at the station anyway, because it sure sounded as though Jim needed some moral support there. Blair was feeling pretty shaky himself, but Jim was the one who had pulled the trigger last night. No matter how justified it had been. Despite the fact there had been no other way, it must be rough on Jim, especially with Ross's parents there. It made Blair's heart ache to think about it.

In the end, though, he decided to go straight home after all. If Jim was having a hard time, Blair showing up at the station when he'd been emphatically uninvited wouldn't help. Sighing, he stuffed the books and xeroxes he'd gathered during the afternoon into his backpack, found Jim's nice brown bomber jacket hanging on the back of his office door, and jogged across campus to the bus stop where he was just in time to see he'd wasted so much time dicking around trying to make up his mind that he'd missed the five-twenty bus.

Shit. It was a fifteen minute wait until the next one, and it was cold outside. He sat down on one of the concrete benches, the cold leeching quickly through his blue jeans. Man, was he ready for summertime. April was lovely and all, but it was just too damn cold for him. He dug a handful of photocopies out of his backpack to distract himself while he waited. Professor Peter Nagle's academic legacy. Nagle wasn't a prolific author, but the articles he had published were in sound journals. Blair didn't much expect to find ranting about secret religious rites in them, and glancing over them as he had copied them seemed to bear out his prediction. He read over the first article in his stack with more care, doggedly looking for something -- a word, a phrase, just a hint of the same craziness that had gleamed from Nagle's eyes this afternoon.

Nothing. Just brittle post-structuralist play, punning deconstruction of texts in four languages. Densely composed, even brilliant in their way, if a little dated by now. Utterly empty. Clean as a newly white-washed room. Nagle wrote about the forces and counter forces of Catholicism and Protestantism, sacred and profane languages, the rise of literacy, witchcraft prosecutions, the education of women and the tradition of alchemical texts with assurance and verve. Blair couldn't fault his scholarship, though he felt his lip curling at Nagle's characterization of the ecclesiastical courts who sentenced countless thousands to die at the stake as victims themselves of stresses in the texts. (Can you put down your Derrida for a half a second, Professor? People died here.)

Whatever Blair thought about the critical approach, though, there was no substance to condemn Nagle in these articles. He even mentioned Unaussprechlin Kulten in one, in connection with a related work, De Vermis Mysteriis, but he afforded them the same treatment as every other text and historical event mentioned in his article. Simply fodder for the great critical guns. The author's own beliefs -- however nutso they might be, Blair thought gloomily -- simply didn't enter into it.

Well, it had been a thought. Most of the other articles looked the same, and after only glancing through a few more, he stuffed the rest of them back into his backpack. His fingers were too cold to hold the papers, and besides, wasn't it about time for the bus to get here? He stood up and walked to the curb to look, despite the way it violated his superstitious certainty that looking for a bus was the best way in the world to be sure it never arrived. Why hadn't he just waited for Jim to show up? A couple more hours on campus wouldn't have killed him. He had just been sick and tired of feeling like everyone was watching him, that's what it had been, and he wanted to escape to the safety of the loft.

Oh well. He'd be home soon enough. If the bus ever arrived. He had to step out into the street to see around a green Chevy Nova parked inconveniently up the hill above the bus stop, the late afternoon sun reflecting blindingly off the windshield, and hello, can you say hallelujah, brother? There was the bus at last. What a hell of a day. It was going to feel so good to get home.

He piled on board with half a dozen other riders, most of them people Blair knew from the same route. He forgot to look at the readout after he fed his debit card through, but he knew he was getting pretty low. Might not even have enough for another ride, so he'd better check that before he got on a bus again. There were some empty seats near the back, and Blair snagged one for himself, sinking down on the hard molded plastic with relief. It beat the heck out of that ice cold concrete bench. It was stuffy in the bus, and a little too warm, and someone a seat or two over was playing a walkman at such earsplitting volume Blair could hear the tinny bass rattling through the seats, but at least he wasn't cold anymore.

The rush hour streets of Cascade slid past the grimy windows in fits and starts. Blair settled back as well as he could on the unyielding seat, his arms crossed over his backpack on his lap, and let his eyes close. At once he felt himself beginning to drift. Slow and easy, back and forth, gliding into darkness like a skater making ever-widening circles on a frozen lake somewhere deep in a snow-wrapped forest. Night was falling, stars twinkling one by one in an indigo sky, and still the skater turned and turned. Ice hissed under her blades, and the forest pressed closer, and there was something odd about the outline of the trees against the sky. Blair looked, trying to understand, but the cold caught in his throat and he awoke with a violent start.

Oh man. He sat up straighter, pushing his hair out of his face. Man. Have to watch that. Last time he'd fallen asleep on the bus he hadn't woken up till the end of the line. Let's not even talk about how much that would suck tonight. He looked out the window, hoping they were near home. Nope. They hadn't even crossed Main. He wiped his eyes, almost regretting his promise to make dinner tonight. It'd be nice to get home and just catch a little shut eye.

On the other hand, Jim would be just as tired, and he wasn't even on his way home yet. Have a heart, Sandburg. OK, so he didn't regret promising Jim dinner. All he had to do was stay awake until he got home. He pulled out the sheaf of xeroxes that was starting to look a little crumpled by this point, and smoothed the last one down over his backpack. It was the only one that looked different from the others, if for no other reason than the journal it had appeared in. The Illinois Journal of American Folklore? Didn't sound like Nagle's bag, and neither did the topic. "Notes Toward an Originating Source for a Dis-Arming Prank Tale."

No, it didn't sound like Nagle at all. In fact, it sounded so far afield he'd checked twice before he'd even bothered copying it. But no, this was Rainier's Peter Nagle all right. The writing was breezy and familiar, a nice change from the high critical sterility of the other articles. In it, Nagle recounted an urban legend that had been current at least since the 1920's, with dozens of versions recorded at various colleges all over the country in the past seventy years. In most versions of the story, a malicious medical student decides to play a prank on his girlfriend by leaving an arm borrowed from an autopsy cadaver in her bed. The girlfriend arrives home, and when the waiting boyfriend doesn't hear the anticipated screams, he breaks into her room to find the prank has gone horribly wrong. Blair found himself wondering how a prank like that could ever have gone right. At any rate, so the story went, the girlfriend's hair has turned white as snow, and she's crouched in a corner of the room chewing on the arm ... driven completely out of her mind.

Great story, Blair thought. Remind me never to date a doctor.

In his article, Nagle went on to suggest the genesis of the story could be found in events that actually transpired at Rainier in 1927. Rainier's first president Rudolph Bollingen, long since retired, still lived in a grand Victorian house just off campus. A very old man by then, suffering from senile dementia, he was attended by a housekeeper who had been with him for decades and could not have been much younger than her employer. At length, it was noticed that no one had entered or left Bollingen's home for several days. When all attempts to rouse the occupants failed, the police entered the house and found poor old Rudolph strangled to death in his bed. His ancient housekeeper had apparently hacked off both his forearms with a carving knife, and when the police found her, she was engaged in boiling them in a stewpot on top of the stove.

Whew. Well, that was a pretty story. Blair watched the view outside the bus window for a few minutes, reassuring himself with the view of ordinary people walking down ordinary streets, no lunatics or cannibals in sight, before finishing the article.

The official explanation, and certainly the right one, was that Rudolph Bollingen's housekeeper had been as mad as her employer, her own dementia going unnoticed until it was far too late. The story on campus, as one would expect, ascribed more lurid motives to the grisly events. Bollingen's legendary collection of books on magic and exotica had still been housed in his home at the time, though they were promised to Rainier in his will. The story went that reading those books had driven Bollingen mad decades before, and his housekeeper had followed him into madness when she had read them in turn, thinking only to while away the long night hours alone in a house with a poor lunatic.

Yeah. A great story all right, and Nagle told it all with a certain ghoulish glee that seemed in keeping with his attitude this morning. But something else was bothering Blair. In the article Nagle pointed out how the old story about the "cursed" book collection had lingered on at Rainier in various guises for decades, giving a peculiar twist to other urban legends. When they were told on Rainier, they took on an edge of madness that was often absent in other versions, a peculiarity Nagle ascribed to the existence of the Bollingen collection, and faint memories of a horror connected with it that lingered long the original events had been mostly forgotten.

Nothing so surprising about that. It was the nature of legends that had any whisper of truth at their back to spread thinner and thinner with retellings and the passage of time. But what was odd was that Nagle hadn't said anything about it this morning when Blair had asked him about one of the books in the Bollingen collection. Instead, he'd fed Blair a line about dark horrors from prehistory, and then just grinned when Blair had floundered in protest. Was THAT why he'd been grinning? Because he'd been pulling Blair's leg?

Christ, a kid was dead. Nagle wouldn't have been joking at a time like that. Would he? Blair shuffled back through the earlier articles. High and dry, unemotional academic exercises unaffected by the tens of thousands of women and children dead at the hands of men Nagle described as victims of intertextuality. You know, maybe it wasn't so far fetched. Maybe Nagle had been laughing at him all along.

His face started to burn. Blair raised cold fingertips and touched his cheek. Red hot, all right. He was way out of his depth. Losing all sense of perspective, chasing phantasms, letting an arrogant SOB like Nagle toy with him. God, he needed Jim. Jim wouldn't have let Nagle get away with it for a minute. What a screwup he was turning out to be on his own. He crammed the papers back into his backpack, shaking with anger, feeling more than a little sick.

A screwup who was just about to miss his stop. He leaped to his feet, yanked the bell and stumbled to the back doors, lurching as the bus jerked to a stop on the other side of Prospect. The cold dusk air burned his flushed cheeks like dry ice as the double back doors swung open. He took the long step down to the street, and the bus rattled away behind him.

Deep breaths. Calming breaths.

Oh like hell. He swung his backpack violently over his shoulder and stalked to the intersection, waiting impatiently for the light. Where were all the cars coming from anyway? Yeah, rush hour, whatever. The instant the light changed he stepped out in the street, heard tires squealing on the pavement, and looked up to see a green Chevy Nova fishtailing across the lane. No way it could stop in time. No way. He stumbled backward, trying to get out of the way, caught the heel of his shoe on the curb and fell hard on his butt on the sidewalk, skinning the palms of his hands on the concrete. The Nova swerved through the crosswalk, one tire bumping up onto the curb, and Blair was eye level with a dented chrome bumper like the maw of a unsouled beast.

Chapter 6

He knew the car would stop in time. He knew the wheels would roll backward off the curb, not make one last revolution forward. No question in his mind. The late afternoon sun was shining low on the horizon, and the sky was pale in the last hours before sunset, and there was no way he could be run over trying to cross Prospect on his way home. He kept scrabbling and flopping backward anyway, since the universe might not realize this was all some ridiculous mistake, until at last he sat on a strap from his backpack and went sprawling, his legs kicking out like a beetle flipped on its back. He looked helplessly up at the sky too beautiful to die under, feeling the corner of a book digging into his spine. The car was so close the heat of the engine panted across his legs.

And then, nothing. The dead sound of the engine stalling out, then of a car horn somewhere on the other side of the intersection blatting impatiently. Blair rolled over. The palms of his hands were burning. His elbows hurt, as well as his butt, and he could hear the tinkle of broken glass inside his backpack. That would be his thermos liner, wouldn't it? Third one this year. The car was still on the sidewalk, barely three feet from him, and he crawled away so he wasn't right in front of the grill. He was breathing in quick gulps of air, and he was shaking too badly to stand up just yet. The driver's door swung open, and he saw scuffed running shoes and blue jeans swing out. The driver was talking in terrified gasps of sound. "Oh god," she said. "Oh god, oh god."

"Take it easy," Blair muttered. "Nothing's broken."

"I'm so sorry. I was watching the bus and I didn't even see the light change. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." She crouched beside him on the sidewalk, babbling in shock. Straight, fine brown hair swung forward, partially hiding her face, but Blair recognized her all the same.

"It's all right. I'm all right."

"God, I'm sorry. I could have killed you. Mr. Sandburg, I'm so sorry." She took his hand as though to help him to his feet, saw his skinned palm and moaned, "Oh, you're bleeding. Oh, god, I'm such an idiot."

"Look, calm down, I'm all right." Blair got his feet under himself and tried to stand up. The woman grabbed his elbow and supported him strongly when he staggered.

"You're not all right. We should get you to a hospital. Oh, I'm so, so, sorry."

Blair took an experimental step. He'd wrenched his ankle in the fall, and he felt it when he put his weight on it. His skinned hands hurt worse. "I saw you," he said bluntly, as his own shock began to wear off. "You were watching me while I was talking to Peter Nagle. Your car was sitting at the bus stop. What's going on? Why are you following me?"

She let him go. "I just wanted to talk to you."

"What, you couldn't stop by during office hours?" He took another step, wincing. "You know, you really need to watch where you're going. You could kill somebody."

"I know," she whispered. "I'm so sorry." Tears rose in her eyes. Her plain, angular face was flushed and blotchy with emotion.

"Look, calm down," Blair said, sighing. "No harm done except I think I broke my thermos. You can buy me a new one and we'll call it square, OK?"

She gulped and nodded quickly. "I was watching the bus," she explained again. "I was trying to see if you'd gotten off yet or not, and the sun was in my eyes and I didn't even see the light. I'm so sorry."

"All right, all right, I got that," Blair said, his voice gentler. "What's your name? You're not an anthro major, are you?"

"Susan. My name's Susan Pera. I'm writing my senior honors paper in history."

"OK, Susan, the first thing you need to do is get your car out of the intersection before somebody comes sailing by and takes the rear end off."

"Oh, you're right. You're right." She took a hesitant step backward. "You're sure you're really not hurt?"

"I'm sure."

She slid back another step. "I'm really sorry. I guess -- I don't know -- maybe I'll be seeing you around?"

Blair sighed. "Something was so important that you followed me all the way home from campus, and now you don't want to talk about it?"

"I thought after practically running you down you wouldn't want to talk to me." One tear slipped down her cheek and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.

"Please don't do that," Blair said quickly. "Sure we can talk. Tell you what, you move your car, and we can have a cup of coffee." He indicated the bakery two stores down with a tilt of his head. "The coffee isn't the greatest, but they make a mean chocolate croissant."

"Thank you." Susan smiled cautiously at him, her hazel green eyes lighting up for a moment. "I really appreciate it."

Blair watched to be sure she didn't plow into anyone while she backed her Nova off the sidewalk, then made his way to the bakery to wait for her, going slow and trying not to limp. Well, well, well -- a senior history major too afraid to talk to him on campus. Three guesses whose class she was in, and the first two didn't count.

When he came in the door of the bakery, Joey, the day chef, glanced over his shoulder and then stopped midway to the ovens. His arms were full of a tray of pale, raw hard rolls for pan bagnats. "Look what the cat drug in," he announced to Blair with a broad grin. "What does Jim mean, letting you out of his sight?"

"Between him and school, I've been pretty busy," Blair said, smiling back. "Can I use your sink for a minute? I just wanna wash my hands."

"Sure, you know where it is." Joey stepped back so Blair could make his way around the counter. "What happened to you? Somebody try to run you over?"

"Just about. I don't think she meant to, though."

Joey shook his head, grinning. "No wonder Jim has to keep you on such a tight leash."

"Yeah, yeah, very funny."

Blair washed the blood and sidewalk grit from his hands in the tiny alcove of a bathroom behind the bakery racks. Mr. April sneered at him from the calendar over the toilet, and Blair found himself wondering if he ever got those chest hairs caught in the buckles. Ouch. He blotted his hands dry on a paper towel, and by the time he came out, Susan had arrived and was ordering a cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant for him, getting a bottled water for herself. Figured, Blair thought, as he thanked her. Susan didn't look like the pastry type. Her hip bones were hard, angular planes under her jeans, and her face had a pale clarity that suggested sugar and butter and chocolate were rare indulgences. Track and field, he thought. Or maybe swimming, he amended, noticing the broad shoulders under her flannel shirt.

They sat down at the little café table Susan picked out, near the counter and away from the window. Blair wasn't really in the mood for decadent pastries either. He sipped at the coffee Susan had bought for him while Susan sat watching him worriedly, twisting her hands together under the table.

"So," Blair said at last. He put down the coffee cup and smiled at her. "What can I do for you?"

Susan put her hands on the table. No jewelry, her nails trimmed short and neat. "This is going to sound really stupid," she said. "It's about my honors paper."

"The one you're writing in history," Blair couldn't help pointing out. "Not in anthropology."

"That's exactly why I wanted to talk to you. I can't go to anybody in the history department because I'm afraid it would get back to my advisor. My friend Monica Underhill's in your class this quarter, and she said you were really easy to talk to, and I just thought maybe you could give me some advice, or at least point me in the right direction, because it's gotten so bad by now that I don't know where else to go."

Blair held up his hands. "Whoa, one step at a time. Is your advisor by any chance Peter Nagle?"

Susan nodded.

"OK, I can see where you wouldn't want to talk to people in the history department about him. What's the problem with your paper?"

She took a deep breath. "I'm writing about Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft. I don't know if you know anything about it or not."

"Just a little. I've never read it, but he's supposed to be one of the great debunkers, right? At the height of the witchcraft hysteria he writes this book to show there's no such thing as magic or witchcraft. Pretty brave thing to do. At the time even doubting the reality of witchcraft could be grounds for execution."

"Yes, that's right." Susan's face had lit up with pleasure. "He takes on everything -- the confessions of condemned witches, the claims of alchemists and sorcerers, all kinds of stuff, and shows how it's all just fear of torture or sleight of hand tricks. I mean, basically he's saying there's no such thing as the supernatural."

"Sounds like a really interesting paper topic. That kind of skepticism is pretty scarce even these days. So what's the problem?"

"Well, it's Dr. Nagle." She made a helpless gesture with her hands. "He approved my topic and everything -- he's my advisor! But when I turned in my outline and first draft he started to get very weird. He told me I was being close minded -- that I wasn't considering other points of view."

"He wanted you to give equal time to sorcerers and witchcraft judges?"

Susan smiled faintly. "Yes, something like that, I think."

"Is it possible he just meant you should refer to more primary sources? You know, maybe see what Scott's contemporaries were saying about him?" Personally, Blair didn't believe for a second that's what Nagle had really meant, but he wouldn't do Susan any good jumping to conclusions. He hadn't been there -- he didn't know what Nagle had actually said. Susan seemed bright, but Nagle had toyed with him as well. No telling what he might have said to an undergrad. He'd certainly strung Blair along without raising a sweat.

"Well, that's what I thought at first. Once I got over being kind of mad about it, I mean."

Blair nodded. "Yeah, I understand."

"But then he brought it up in class, in front of everybody. I can't even tell you what it was like. He was talking about my paper like it was heresy. He just went on and on, saying how disrespectful it was to ancient beliefs, how arrogant I was to dismiss the testimony of so many learned men. Everyone else just turned around and looked at me. I felt like I wanted to die." Susan planted her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands. "This sounds really stupid, doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't sound stupid. It sounds like a very uncomfortable experience."

"You must think I'm being such a baby about this. I mean, if I disagree with Nagle's point of view, I just need to work harder and write a better paper."

"That's the way it's supposed to be," Blair said ruefully. "It doesn't always work out that way."

"Anyway, after that, everybody in class stopped talking to me. I'm not, you know, very outgoing or popular anyway, but now no one in that class will even look at me. And Monday I found somebody had stuffed this into my backpack." She dug a folded sheet of notebook paper from the pocket of her jeans and handed it to him.

He looked in her face before he unfolded it. The corner of her mouth was shaking. He unfolded the sheet of paper on the cafe table to reveal a grid of Hebrew letters identical to the one that had been on his board this morning. Blair swallowed. "Do you know what this is?"

She nodded. "It's from one of the sorcerers that Scot demolishes as a total fraud in Discoverie. One of the guys we studied in class, Gottfried von Junzt. He used Kabalistic signs like this to describe magic he claims he found on his travels in the middle east."

That son of a bitch, Blair thought. "Nagle talked about it in class?"

"Well, yeah, of course." She blinked in mild surprise. "Anyway, I went and showed it to him after I got it. I told him it felt like a threat. I mean, it scared me."

Blair's mouth was dry. "What did he tell you?"

"He said I didn't believe in magic, so what did I have to worry about?" Susan took a hitching breath. Blotches of red appeared on her cheeks. "And now Ross is dead. Mr. Sandburg, I think they're half crazy, all of them. Who would do something like that unless they were crazy?" She knotted her hands together, squeezing until her knuckles tur