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shoulder.
    A man’s face floated in black water, his dark skin tinged green. Half-lidded eyes rolled sightlessly back, creased by lines of pain and laughter. More lines connected the flare of broad nostrils to the corners of his full-lipped mouth. A hand and foot and part of an arm floated around him.
    Liz’s mouth dried. She knew the title before she looked at the plaque: Osiris , by Blake Enderly.
    “What is it?” Alex asked, only to answer himself on the same breath. “Oh.”
    They turned to find Rainer watching them, pale eyes narrowed. Alex frowned.
    “Was this a test?” he said. “To see if we really know Blake?”
    Rainer tilted his head in a shrug. “Yes. And you passed. So let’s get something to drink, and talk.”
    T HEY COLLECTED DRINKS and desserts and settled into a maroon leather booth. Liz picked apart layers of baklava as an awkward silence settled with them, full of the hum of machinery and whispering wind. Portishead crooned softly on the radio: Please could you stay a while to share my grief, for it’s such a lovely day to have to always feel this way.
    “Where is Blake?” she asked at last. Memories rose, leaking implacably through her careful walls: muffled voices in another room; her aunt framed in her bedroom door, her face slack and strange; Alis’s voice through a bad connection, tinny and flat with distance and pain. All the different guises bad news wore.
    The woman—Antja—glanced aside, long dark eyes unreadable. Rainer swallowed and a muscle leapt in his jaw.
    “In the hospital. Lions Gate. He’s... in a coma.”
    Liz flinched, slopping cappuccino foam against the side of her cup. Alex leaned forward. “A coma ?”
    “There was a storm. Someone found him washed up on the shore of Carroll Cove the next day.”
    Drowned . An electric shock washed through Liz; blood roared in her ears, and for an instant everything else was grey and far away. “What happened?” Her voice could have been a stranger’s.
    “They don’t know. Alain was with him.” Only a heartbeat’s hesitation, but enough to hear the worst in that indrawn breath. “He died.”
    The grey roar worsened. Under the table, Alex’s hand settled on her knee, warm and steady. She straightened, blinking until her vision focused; she could fall apart later. “What’s going to happen?”
    “I don’t know.” Rainer’s blunt, manicured fingers tapped the side of his demitasse cup. A yellow stone gleamed on his right ring finger. “No one knows.” He paused, eyebrows arching. Familiar eyebrows—now she knew whom the second set of eyes in Blake’s sketchbook belonged to. “You came all the way from Connecticut?”
    “He’s a good friend.”
    “But how did you know?”
    “I... didn’t, exactly. I had a feeling something was wrong.”
    She braced for skepticism, but instead he smiled. He wasn’t precisely handsome—too little chin, a hairline that promised to recede early—but his smile was charming. Compelling. The pull of it unsettled and warmed her in equal measure.
    “I’m glad you did,” he said. “Blake will be glad, too. Had you spoken to him recently?”
    Was the question a little too casual? Or was that her own guilt talking? She forced down a bite of baklava, washed away the sticky sweetness with her cooling coffee. “Not for a few months.”
    Their eyes met and she shivered at the intensity of his pale stare. Magnetic, electric. She wanted to lean closer, but was afraid she’d shock herself if she did. Then it was gone, replaced with polite interest.
    “What about Alain?” Alex asked. “Will there be a service?”
    “Yes. This Saturday at Capilano View.” Rainer dragged a hand over his face and his magnetism faded into weary pallor.
    Antja glanced up, lovely and inscrutable as a sphinx. She had picked her pain au chocolat into tiny slivers, but didn’t seem to have eaten any of it. She set down her fork and laid a hand on his arm. “We should be getting back.”
    Rainer glanced at