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declined to comment.
    Yellin rose suddenly and headed across the diamond toward some trees on the left. I sat there watching him go, feeling a little ill.
    What was Helen Sturluson, exactly? A walking vat of lye, sneaking around the city dissolving people and animals? Or maybe just people — if they hadn’t been able to recover any DNA, who’s to say the earlier remains weren’t human too?
    Yellin paused to look back impatiently.
    “Do come along, Miss Ryder.”
    “Sorry.”
    I put away my phone and tried to shove Sturluson and little Thomas Kaits out of my mind. I couldn’t do anything about it. Yellin was a Second, and he was clearly taking the situation very seriously. He might be an ass to me and the other Nolanders, but he’d be all over something like this. For the Seconds, keeping humans in the dark about the existence of the other world was paramount. Weird stuff — especially weird stuff that resulted in human deaths — was always taken care of immediately.
    Yellin’s strange behavior in the car came to mind.
    No, I must’ve misunderstood it. He was a Second. Whatever was going on, he could handle it, and since it posed a threat, handle it he would.
    I climbed off the bleachers and followed him over to one of the trees. A big hawk was perched on one of the lower branches. So far as I could tell, it was a real hawk.
    Yellin put a barrier around us. Not that I could sense it, mind you — barriers are workings, so I was blind to them. But the guy always went through an elaborate ritual of concentration and deep breathing before creating a working. I couldn’t understand why he did that. It was the world’s biggest tip-off, and it’d sure be awkward to have to do that whole rigmarole in an emergency.
    Eventually Yellin finished his routine and let out a deep breath.
    His barrier must’ve been up because the hawk glided down to us and suddenly became a large, pinkish, winged creature — something like a cross between a man and a bat. I’d seen him before at Cordus’s court functions.
    He and Yellin started speaking in Baasha. I was able to follow along reasonably well. Yellin was complaining about the pink bat-thing’s hawk disguise. The bat-thing nodded along and said he’d do better, but his stubborn expression undercut his words.
    Yellin was unusually forthcoming when I asked him about it during our walk back to the car.
    “That one very much needs to relocate to a less populous area. His inability to hold a female hawk as mate for more than a single season has been much remarked upon by the city’s bird-watchers.”
    The powerful and mysterious Second Emanation, outed by suspicious bird-watchers. It never would’ve occurred to me.
    “Wow. That must be frustrating.”
    “Indeed, Miss Ryder, it is.”
    “Why does he insist on staying here?”
    “Pizza.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “He is an aficionado and finds the pizza in other places unacceptable.”
    For a second, I felt a twinge of sympathy for Yellin — what a ridiculous situation. Then he snapped at me for walking too slowly, and my kind thoughts withered.
    Incredibly, I’d found a street space on Central Park West, just north of Columbus Circle.
    It’d given me a chill to see the Time Warner Center, with its twin spires, down the block. Cordus held court — the kind of court a king has, not a judge — in a penthouse suite near the top of the northern tower. Before he left town, he’d taken me along to court events a couple times. It clearly gave him no small satisfaction to show me off as his newest possession. I hated it.
    Hated it, and yet the memory rose of standing in the elevator with Cordus as he slowly looked me over, taking in the results of the estate staff’s ministrations to my hair, skin, and dress. The image was powerful enough to make my heart rate spike. Something tightened like a hot fist deep in my belly.
    Damn . I shook my head.
    We reached the car, and Yellin settled sullenly into his seat. After a few seconds, he