Human limbs and clothing hampered Perrin, but not enough to stop him as he twisted around the struggling dolphins, shooting up between them to lay his hands on their bodies. The contact burned his skin, then deeper, into bone, into his mind, shooting through his nerves and veins with a heat that was better than heroin-and more painful. He gritted his teeth, squeezing shut his eyes.

Let me in, he demanded of the dolphins, hoping they could hear him. Let me see what is hurting you.

And they did. Just a glimpse.

But that was more than enough.

What he saw felt like a punch inside his brain, a physical blow that echoed within the hole at the base of his skull, echoing on and on as though that hole traveled through him into an abyss: endless, shattering. He flung himself away, throat locked against his own scream. The base of his skull burned. Above him, he glimpsed divers in the water, finally swimming toward him-hampered by equipment that made them look alien, deadly.

Perrin stared at them, numb and cold.

He was still feeling numb when he dove deeper, toward the bottom of the pool and the dolphin resting so still on the bottom. Nothing in his mind, just darkness and a sick cold nick in his heart. And that feeling of endlessness inside the base of his skull.

The injured dolphin was alive, but unconscious. Drowning. Perrin gathered her in his arms, and pushed off the bottom of the pool with one powerful kick of his feet. The others had finally stopped seizing, blissfully silent. Drifting, turning slowly, lost and confused.

Perrin opened his mind to them, calling for their help as he struggled to swim to the surface with the injured dolphin. The human divers seemed miles away, but he could see their eyes behind those thick goggles-watching him, watching only him-and he realized that their movements were also hampered by their uncertainty of him. He had acted outside the parameters of what was acceptable. He had defied a.s.sumptions. He had torn away part of the mask and become . . . other.

Too late. No alternative. Especially not when the dolphins finally shook off their shock and dove toward him, just out of reach of the humans who finally reached the spot where they had been drifting.

Two dolphins slid beneath their injured podmate, bearing her weight and pushing her to the surface-while the smallest, another female, moved hard against Perrin's side. He grabbed her dorsal fin and allowed himself to be pulled to the surface. His lungs were burning, but he hardly noticed. He opened his mouth at the last moment and swallowed salt water-choking on it, and savoring the taste. It was not as good as the real thing-nothing could be that good-but it was enough.

You know what you have to do, whispered the dolphin beside him, her thoughts weary and sick, and frightened. You must. Even for us, you must.

But Perrin said nothing to her. They broke the surface, and he gasped for breath, kicking hard to stay afloat as he twisted around to search for the injured dolphin. He saw her a short distance away, still held by the others. Human shouts rebounded off the walls-so loud he wanted to clap his hands over his ears and descend back into the deep water. Instead, he swam hard toward the hurt dolphin. Behind him, more shouts, loud splashing sounds.

The dolphin was not breathing. She had not been breathing for several minutes. It was impossible for any dolphin to breathe while unconscious. Perrin staggered into the shallows where she had been brought, reaching her only moments before the aquarium staff. He breathed hard into the dolphin's blowhole, again and again, before hands grabbed his waist and arms, pulling him away. He fought-or tried to-until he saw someone else take his place.

Perrin was dragged, pushed from the water-not gently, but not with anger, either. Just fear, uncertainty-and a few wild looks.

"That was stupid," one man said to him, but he sounded unsure. "You could have gotten hurt."

Perrin hardly heard him. Too busy looking over his shoulder at the dolphins. The young female had not yet been revived. Out in the ocean, in the old days, he might have been able to do something. But not here. Not as he was now.

" . . . did you do that?" Perrin heard dimly, and glanced down to find one of the shark experts standing beside him, her gaze sharp, intense. Her clothes were soaked, and she wore no shoes.

"Excuse me?" he asked, angling for the door.

She planted herself in front of him. "How did you do that? With the dolphins? Why did they respond to you and ignore their handlers?"

Other people were watching them. The last time he had felt such hot scrutiny was in a prison yard before a fight: a breathless, ruthless energy, as if those were the first and last times anyone would see a man driven to his knees.

Perrin did not flinch or blink. "Did they?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

"No one," he said flatly, and pushed past her. He was much larger than anyone else in the room, and though her hand flew up to grab his arm, her fingers closed around air. Her choice. She had time to catch him. So did everyone else, men and women who stared and let him pa.s.s, just before moving toward the edge of the pool where the injured dolphin had begun to move weakly.

Perrin glanced back and met the gaze of the dolphin who had pulled him to the surface, her one eye above water, staring across the humans at him.

Hurry, she whispered.

But he did not.

He forced himself to walk through the employee corridors of the Shedd Aquarium, standing aside for staff who hurried past him while speaking urgently into walkie-talkies. He remained calm and in control, carefully distant from his own thoughts as he stepped outdoors into the crisp autumn air.

It was sunny outside. It hurt his eyes. When he had first ventured on land, the sun had almost blinded him. So much intolerable light. He had never accustomed himself to the sun-not since boyhood. Artificial lights were little better, but the blue glow of the water and the womb of shadows surrounding the viewing chambers inside the aquarium had been an illusion of home.

You'll be fired now, he told himself, suffering a moment of terrible, aching regret. It was the first emotion he had felt since leaving the dolphins, and it stayed with him as he unzipped his soaked gray uniform and left it in a puddle on the sidewalk, along with his tools. He wore jeans beneath, and a white T-shirt, both plastered to his skin. His skull ached, but he did not touch the hole hidden by his wet hair. Not at first.

He had his palm buried against the spot an hour later, when he finally reached his apartment building. A quiet brick walk-up in an even quieter working-cla.s.s neighborhood where no one asked too many questions-or even spoke languages that Perrin could understand. He smelled hot spices as he climbed the rickety stairs and listened to the cadence of some unintelligible Spanish rap burn into his bones, beating time with his thudding heart. His head hurt so badly he could barely see straight. Sharp, stabbing, traveling upward from the base of his skull into his brow. Some of the children playing in the hall stared at him with big eyes and scurried out of his way as he pa.s.sed. He did not want to imagine what he looked like to them-a monster, maybe, the strange albino.

He fumbled with his keys, almost dropping them, and pushed inside his home. It was very dark and cold inside, air conditioner running on high with his window blinds pulled down, taped along the edges to keep even more light out. He had tried fitting cardboard over the gla.s.s, but the landlord had complained and looked at him like he was a murderer or pervert.

His place was small and cheap. Just a studio. No furniture, but a sleeping bag lay in the corner, alongside a cardboard box where he kept his clothes folded. The room was clean, and the bathroom had a tub. That was all he needed.

But he stood in the doorway, savoring the damp of salt water still clinging to his skin, and remembered what it felt like to descend into the pool.

A hard memory. The world seemed to shift around him, and what had been familiar-what he had trained himself to find familiar-was suddenly alien again. This was not his world-and though the tank at the aquarium was just an illusion of the ocean, a bubble, a fake, and prison-he suddenly wished he could be one of the prisoners, even just for a moment. He was already in a prison, one he should not have survived in as long as he had.

The base of his skull throbbed: deep inside, deeper than should be possible, as if his brain were trying to claw free. It had been eight years since he had felt such pain. Eight long years.

He reached around, but all he touched was bone-and with that contact roared a sense of emptiness so vast he leaned over, choking, suffocating with loneliness.

Stop, he told himself, but it was too late. He needed to run. He needed to tear his skin from his bones. He needed to finally die.

He tore the collar of his T-shirt in his haste to pull it over his head. His jeans were next, left behind as he stumbled toward the bathroom. Pain worsened, throbbing in time to his pulse. He was almost blind from it when he reached the tub-already filled with salt water.

Scales erupted over his skin as he tumbled sideways into the water-sloshing a great deal over the side. He was too long for the tub, almost too broad, but he squeezed himself to the bottom as best he could, limp and hurting, savoring the flimsy coc.o.o.n that covered some of his burning, rippling skin. His legs fused together, the bones of his human feet stretching and flattening with cracks and joint-jerking jolts even as ribbons of silver scales flowed down his hips and across his torso. The skin between his fingers flexed outward into pale webs, and, when he opened his eyes, he gazed through a translucent second lid that sharpened the darkness into flecks of shadows.

Bubbles chased free of his throat. Perrin drew in a slow breath through gills that slit down the sides of his neck. The water tasted heavy and stale, even dirty, too much like rusty Chicago, with its train tracks and clogged roads. Perrin dug his knuckles into his brow. The pain in his head eased, but not the roaring emptiness.

He heard a scream. Not from a dolphin. This was human. Female.

Just a premonition, he told himself, filled with dread. Not real.

Not real here. But real somewhere, now or in the future.

Perrin squeezed shut his eyes as another scream filled the bathtub water-not his, though he would have preferred that to the strangled gasp of a woman's terror. The water seemed to echo with that voice, driving straight through him with unrelenting precision.

No, he thought, twisting in agony. He had not suffered visions, or magic-not once in eight years. But today, with the dolphins, he had shared in a terrible vision.

This vision. Part of it, anyway.

Perrin dug his nails into his scalp, crying out as the woman's voice broke into a furious sob. Desperate, he pushed himself off the bottom of the tub. He had been a fool to think water would be a respite from the pain.

Just before he broke the surface, his vision darkened-p.r.i.c.ked with flickers of light, like stars. Perrin steeled himself, but instead of blood and death, the only sight that confronted him was a pair of green eyes. Staring right through him, without tears or pain-filled with nothing but terrible, furious, rage.

And then those eyes disappeared, blown apart as though made of sand-each grain floating through the water toward his face, slow and glittering. Perrin watched, breathless. No longer hearing anything but the sound of his pounding heart.

Until, suddenly, he saw something else.

And everything changed, again.

Perrin pulled himself out of the tub and fell hard on the cold wet floor. He lay for a long time with parts of him crammed between the wall and toilet, though his head was mostly outside the bathroom, one cheek pressed against old rough carpet: beached, exhausted. He stared at the ghostly pale skin of his hands and arms; and strands of his white-blond hair, plastered to the floor.

Time to return to the darkness, he told himself.

Perrin rolled over on his back. Green eyes flashed through his mind, and an ache pulsed briefly through the base of his skull. He thought the headache would begin again, but after a moment spent holding his breath, nothing happened.

The long pale fins of his tail receded, bones shifting and popping as his toes re-formed into human feet. Scales reabsorbed, flashing silver, and the flesh binding his legs split with a soft whisper. Perrin reached down with trembling hands to rub his legs. The skin felt tender. So did his heart.

He crawled, slowly, to the small box beside his sleeping bag. His knees were weak, heart beating too quickly, lungs aching as he readjusted to breathing through his nostrils and mouth. There was a thermos in the box, and he drank from it-a couple careful sips of seawater, or a close approximation-bought from a local store that specialized in obscenely expensive fish. He had tried to find ways to sneak water home from the Shedd, but even after three months, that had proven impossible.

He picked up a small CD player and slipped the headphones on. Nat King Cole crooned gently in his ears. Just one song, played over and over. Perrin focused on the music, rummaging through his few belongings. He had tossed something inside just the other day-disposed of quickly, because he had imagined a burning sensation in his fingers.

He found it quickly. A postcard. Not mailed to him, but used as sc.r.a.p paper during a surprise encounter with an old friend who he had thought was dead. Someone like him-or close enough, that the differences did not matter.

M'cal. Son of a human mother and a Krackeni male. Soul singer, warrior, and soon-to-be father-whose wife was a famed musician. And, perhaps, a witch.

Perrin had not told M'cal of his exile, but somehow the Krackeni half-breed had guessed. Not difficult, he supposed. What Perrin had once been was nothing that any of their kind would voluntarily reject. Even if they wanted to.

You don't have to be alone, M'cal had told him. There are others. Shape-shifters, gargoyles, those who make magic with their minds. You are not alone, Perrin O'doro. And if you ever need help, ever. . .

"All you have to do is ask," Perrin murmured out loud. He began to toss the postcard back into the box, but stopped-burning with misgivings. Still seeing those green eyes, hearing that scream.

Filled, again, with that last terrible premonition he had shared with the dolphins. The one thing he had never imagined. The only thing that could send him back to the sea.

Perrin picked up the phone, and dialed the number on the card.

He arrived in San Francisco that night. His ticket, paid for by strangers. He had been on a plane only twice before, many years in the past, and he would not have flown now given another choice. Airplanes made him ill. Closed walls, no way out. Nor could he travel with large bottles of seawater. Reduced, instead, to buying several three-ounce containers and filling each one with the precious liquid-carrying them in a single quart-sized plastic bag, which he dipped into several times during the flight. Perrin felt like a junkie getting a hit each time he took a sip.

He started shuddering before the plane finished its descent into San Francisco. Even a thousand feet up, he smelled the sea. He could feel it in his bones like a hard chill, sinking from flesh to marrow in throbbing waves. His gait was occasionally drunken as he rushed through the terminal. People stared. He ignored them, unsure whether it was his walk-or his height and albino coloring-that drew the eye. Or worse: something about him that was inherently alien, that gave him away.

His reaction to being near the ocean was worse in the cab. Perrin rolled down the window, and cool sea air whipped at his long hair, bound loosely at his neck with a leather cord. Each breath made him ill-but not because he found the salt scent disgusting. Instead, it was too much pleasure, too much that he had forgotten. Eight years living inland, forcing his body to acclimate, trying to pretend that he was not lost.

All that effort, gone in an instant.

"You can never go home," he murmured to himself, ignoring the flicker of the cab driver's eyes in the rearview mirror. It was a Sat.u.r.day night, and the streets were crowded with bodies and light. Perrin tried to focus on that; but between the buildings of downtown, beyond the canyons of those tremendous city hills, he continued to catch glimpses of the dark sea.

His legs started itching. The base of his skull ached. His vision flickered. He wanted to jump out of his skin, and run screaming-toward the water or away, he could not say. Just that it hurt. It hurt so badly he could not breathe. He forced himself to drink from one of the vials, and his hand shook so much he almost dropped it.

"We're here," said the cab driver, swerving to the curb. Perrin paid him and slipped out onto the sidewalk. He did not have a suitcase, just a backpack. No need for anything else where he was going. Not even the clothes he wore.

He stood still as crowds parted around him-searching for a building number, anything at all that fit the brief instructions he had been given over the phone. Just an address, really. A simple rea.s.surance that someone would be there to meet him. Even in dark jeans and a T-shirt, Perrin didn't think he was hard to miss. All he saw, though, was a Starbucks and a small Italian pizzeria. He smelled chocolate, too. No sign of an office.

Until, from within an alcove so narrow his gaze nearly pa.s.sed over it, Perrin glimpsed movement. A door made of copper and leaded gla.s.s, which pushed open slowly. A young man stepped out: tall, slender, dressed in black jeans and a white T-shirt frayed with burn marks. He looked at Perrin without hesitation, as though he had been watching him for some time already.

"Mr. O'doro?" he asked quietly.

Perrin hesitated. The young man quirked the corner of his mouth into a faint smile but said nothing else. Simply waited in the alcove, like he had all the time in the world. Perrin also waited, studying those eyes-finding them dark and old, and unflinching.

He forced himself to take a step, then another, until he stood in front of the young man and that open door, feeling like it was ready to swallow him into darkness. Which was true, more or less.

"My name is Eddie," said the young man, breaking the silence. He held out his hand. Perrin found his grip strong, and very warm-almost hot.

"Perrin," he replied, and walked through the door into an empty lobby, where the rubber soles of his shoes squeaked on the granite floor. Eddie pointed to the single elevator.

"The Dirk & Steele agency owns the building," he explained, voice echoing faintly in the cavernous room. "The elevator will only go to the top."

Perrin did not feel like small talk. He remained silent as he stepped in, feeling the skin on the back of his neck crawl as Eddie walked in behind him and hit the topmost b.u.t.ton, for the eighth floor. Without pausing, he also flipped the stop switch-preventing the doors from closing.

Perrin frowned. "You better have a good reason for doing that."

A faint flush touched the young man's cheeks, but his gaze remained steady. "You came at a bad time, sir. I apologize for anything . . . anything you might hear upstairs."

"Should I come back?"

"No." Eddie released the b.u.t.ton, and the doors closed. "I wanted to warn you, that's all."

Warnings already. Perrin swayed as the elevator groaned upward. "I was told things about you people. That you're . . . different."

"Different enough. But we try to do good." Eddie smiled, but it was tense, and his knuckles were white as he gripped the handrail. He glanced at the ceiling, then the floors and walls. Perrin took a wild guess that it was not being around him that made the young man nervous. It was the small s.p.a.ce.

Indeed, it suddenly felt very warm inside the elevator. Hot, even, as though he stood in front of an open oven. Perrin shifted on his feet, uncomfortable-and smelled something burning. A whisper of smoke drifted upward from behind the young man. Eddie's face drained of color.

"Um," Perrin said.

"Almost there," Eddie replied tightly, staring at his feet like he was going to be sick. "Sorry."

Perrin wasn't certain he wanted to know what Eddie was apologizing for. He was more relieved than he wanted to admit when the doors finally opened and the young man rushed out, cold air pouring into the elevator in his wake. Eddie leaned against the nearest wall, breathing hard. No more smoke, but on the back of his shirt there was a new hole, singed black around the edges. Perrin had trouble looking away from it.

He forced his gaze past the young man, taking in the undecorated hall-and beyond that, immense floor-to-ceiling windows. The lights of downtown glittered on the other side of the gla.s.s, only slightly obscured by the golden reflection of a lamp burning on a low table. He also heard shouting, but the words blurred together. Too many voices.

Wary, he stopped beside Eddie. Surprised, again, by the heat radiating off his body. "You all right?"

The young man nodded though his shoulders remained hunched. "I was sick for a while. Getting better."

He sounded embarra.s.sed. Perrin considered pretending that nothing had happened-no smoke, no heat-but he had leaned on his own share of walls, ill and alone, and frightened. Some suffering was universal.

"It'll pa.s.s," he said. "Whatever it is."

Eddie peered over his shoulder, his gaze weary, old. At the end of the hall, a hulking figure stepped into view. Perrin felt again that sense of ugly premonition, just a tickle in his mind, followed by a short throb within the hole at the base of his skull.

Eddie followed Perrin's gaze and pushed himself off the wall. "Roland. Mr. O'doro is here to see you."

"You okay?" asked the man, ignoring Perrin.

Eddie shrugged, still tense. And, too, there was something else in his eyes when he looked at the man who stood at the end of the hall.