"What happened in it?"

I pulled her to me. "It was just a dream, angel. This is real."

"So I'm real, now?"

"Baby, you're the realest thing in my whole sad life."

She blinked those limpid eyes, misting. "Detective," she whispered, "that's the most beautiful thing anyone's ever said to me."

"Donner," Maggie whispered, "Donner."

Maggie's clothes melted away. Our bodies merged effortlessly. I was making love to a magical creature, more tangible than the firmest flesh yet liquid and flowing at the perfect moments. Her fingers pulled at the straining muscles of my back, her legs tightened around me and pulled me in deeper, grasping, breath washing past my ear.

"Oh my God," I heard her say, "Oh God."

Fireflies of thought swarmed through me again, as they had in the lab, her love and passion coaxing my synapses into song. This time I didn't fight it but welcomed her thoughts and let her have my deepest mind. We were inside each other, no way to tell where one left off and the other began, vibrating together, rising in a crescendo of wind and electricity. I tasted her sweat and felt her rising heat, moving with me in a precision beyond human yet with an animal need that was almost scary.

Then we were lost, igniting like phoenixes, consumed yet intact, dying yet reborn, fled to someplace else for a time, a blessed momentary reprieve from the terror of our lives.

She cried for a long time. In those moments, she'd seen inside me as far as I'd seen into her.

"In those foster homes. What they did to you..."

The thing I could never look at, that squirmed out of the corner of my vision, that hid behind my barricades. Somehow she'd made it possible to face.

"Yes," I said.

49.

NICOLE.

She upgraded Donner to a knight and put him back on the board. "It won't make any difference," she said to herself.

Her smartscreen beeped. "What?" she said.

The face of the woman who appeared was shrunken in anxiety. "Everything's ready. All the packages have been delivered."

"Keep worrying," said Nicole. "And those tiny wrinkles around your eyes will be gone in a week."

"You're not nervous? With what we're about to do?"

"No."

The woman shook her head, bit her bud-like mouth. "I'm not like you."

"Clearly." Nicole took a sip of wine. It was a Californian pinot noir that managed to astonish her every time with its oaky smoothness. She'd bought the winery. "How's the public handling the church incident?"

"Incident? Is that how you think of it? It was a massacre."

"Don't let your personal feelings intrude, sweetie." Whoops. The look on the woman's face told Nicole that she's been too glib with a sensitive subject. "Look, I understand. To go through losing someone twice... well, it's more than a person should have to handle."

"You could have warned me," the woman said, her voice trembling.

"To what end? What would you have done? Asked me to stop?"

The woman's eyes lowered in guilt. "I'm not sure."

"Which is why you are you and I am me," said Nicole. "Now quit sulking like a dumped schoolgirl and brief me on the President's visit."

50.

DONNER.

Beneath the Great Hall's vaulted ceiling, sunlight canted through spade-shaped windows, making the turquoise-tiled floor glow. Some of the tile patterns on the wall were maze-like; others embodied floral motifs. They were bordered by a broad band of calligraphy. It was an elegant, flowing script, as much art as language. I hoped the sentiments were as beautiful as their expression and not the Persian equivalent of "reborns in reborn cars only."

The Lifetaker ushered us past a series of seven tapestries. Each had to be thirteen, fourteen feet high and almost as wide.

I'd seen these before. At the Cloisters, that medieval monastery cum museum some bored rich guy had shipped from France and reassembled in Washington Heights. Elise and I had gone one sunny Sunday and spent the whole day there.

The tapestries depicted a story about a unicorn hunt. Elise had called them a "medieval comic book," since each panel advanced the tale.

Now, somehow, they gave me the creeps.

At the far side of the room, silk pillows were laid out on a Kashan rug, covered in arabesques.

The Lifetaker pointed at Max and Maggie. "You two will remain here."

Max swelled. "Like hell."

"He will only see Donner, for now."

"It's okay." Max's face went into "Are you fucking kidding?" mode. "Fill you in when I get back." Maggie opened her mouth to protest. I closed her down with a look.

The Lifetaker motioned me up narrow stone steps to a final door.

I entered alone. I expected this new room to be more of the same-more palatial Arabian castle-but it was not.

It was a New York City bar.

"What'll you have?"

I stared at the woman behind the bar. She'd been slicing lemons and limes. Now she was looking at me, waiting for my order.

It could've been any working class bar. Dark and low-slung. No pre-Islamic tiles, just curlicues of neon and cheap malt liquor mirrors. At the far end, past the row of two-seater tables, a jukebox blasted out Stevie Ray Vaughn. In the back, the room turned at a right angle like an upside down L. There was just enough space for a pool table. Back there the walls held more neon, all promising the same thing: hops-induced oblivion. In a recess off the tip of the L, signs in a rodeo font directed "stallions" and "fillies" to their respective stalls.

"Whiskey man, aren't you?"

The man was leaning on the pool table. There was a quarter laid on its rail, reserving it for another game. Which was a stitch, since the nearest pool players were far, far away.

The man smiled, the stick resting behind his neck, his forearms dangling over the ends. Waiting.

He was slim and not too old-thirty-five, maybe. Hair so black it had blue highlights, like Superman's in the comics. Taffy apple skin. The eyes were protuberant and enormous, their owlishness mitigated only by stunning speckled irises and the fact that they were currently brimming with relaxed amusement.

He wore a turtleneck of oxblood and cream-the thick kind that only beanpoles can pull off. Tan slacks and faun loafers with tassels completed the ensemble. The very model of a middle-class, middle-aged, Middle-Eastern man. Not what I'd expected. But then I'd begun to expect what I hadn't been expecting.

A throat cleared to starboard. The bartender was leaning on her palms, letting me know she was ready to get irritated.

"A Coke," I said.

Her ire congealed, but the man laughed. "You heard him."

He slid the stick off his shoulder blades and motioned me closer with it. When I approached he thrust his hand out at me, grinning like he was my new prowl car partner and not some impossible potentate who lived in an impossible citadel.

I took his hand, feeling like an idiot. He pumped it heartily.

"Izzy Struldbrug, how are ya," he said.

"Izzy," I said. "Short for Isodor. Adam and Nicole's father," I said. "You're the Master?"

He gave me my hand back. "I'm a little excited, I have to admit. I've waited a long time to meet you."

The bartender laid my Coke on the rail with a neat little napkin beneath it. She faded back to her fruit.

"Did you know Coke had cocaine in it until 1903?" Struldbrug said.

"Yeah," I said. "Everybody knows that."

"But did you know they still flavor it with coca leaves? There's only one plant authorized to grow them, right here in Jersey for the Coca-Cola Company. They claim they're 'spent,' of course. But in truth you can't process out the alkaloids completely. To this day, Coke still has minute traces of cocaine in it."

"No wonder it's so refreshing."

"It was originally sold as a patent medicine. They claimed it could cure morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headaches, impotence..." He chuckled. "Back then, there was no FDA to make sure they couldn't lie."

"And no Department of Research Integrity," I said.

He grinned like he hadn't heard me. "Listen to me. Once a chemist, always a chemist. Just don't spill your Coke." He ran a reverential hand across the surface of the table. "It'd be hard to replace my billiard cloth out here."

"What is it?" I said, playing his game. "Felt?"

He gave me the look of benevolent patience reserved by experts for amateurs. "Bar tables are usually covered in a wool and nylon blend called baize. This is worsted wool. It's a napless weave. Gives the ball a little more speed. You a player, Mr. Donner?"

"I've dabbled. Mostly when drunk," I replied.

"Oh my. An honest one."

"Don't give me any medals yet."

"Get yourself a cue. We'll see what you're made of."

"I was mostly a rats and mice man."

"Sorry, no craps table. But I'll go easy on you."

I didn't move. "Is this for my benefit? This bar?"

He smiled. "Why on earth would you think that?"

"Doesn't match your castle."

His smile broadened. "I'm eclectic-sue me."

I went to the rack on the wall, stared at the cues.

"They're all good, Mr. Donner. Hard rock maple. Just grab one that strikes your fancy."

I did. He was at the other end of the table, racking the balls. "Eight-ball, American rules okay?" he said, sighting down the plastic triangle.

I'd reached my limit. "I didn't come here to play pool."

He carefully extricated the rack from around the balls. "I know that, Mr. Donner. You've waited a long time for answers. A few more minutes won't kill you." He straightened, twirling the rack on a finger. "And besides, if my banter gets too exasperating, you can always 'stick your roscoe in my mug and threaten to squirt metal if I don't spill.'"

I picked my cue back up. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Very good," he said. "You may break."