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have, should have, done something more to salvage the situation. He seldom bothered with “what ifs” but this one bothered him. He needed time to sort out his feelings. Caring was for the child he’d been, not the man he’d become: cold-hearted, soul-less—no longer his mother’s son.
    He enjoyed the vagabond existence, using it to gather his thoughts and conserve his energies. He assumed Greyfalcon had infiltrated their organization to such an extent that the location of the more ubiquitous Portals might have been compromised. So he steered clear of the major pathways and devoted his time to fashioning new algorithms for traversing the dimensions. He chuckled to himself. He had no conscious control over the process. For all he knew, it was magic, pure and simple, instead of an accident of nature that gifted him with the genetic encoding to create and discover new jump points.
    Their scientists believed that the co-ordinates pre-existed and that he, Trey, simply intuited their time-space equations. More likely it was guesswork and a bit of luck on his part. In any case, the gothi had summoned him home.
    “Yo, buddy. Ya ready?”
    Trey nodded and lunged off the ratty sofa. His chauffeur was a three hundred pound bulldog of a man with a fondness for ribald jokes and the voice of a saint. He owned an impressive playlist of operas that he cranked to full volume, often accompanying the chorus.
    “Yeah, thanks. Say, Dan, where are we?”
    “Harrisburg. Be forty-five minutes to Interstate 78, then it’s home free after that. We’ll make Newark before dark. I can drop you close to the ferry and you can get across from there.”
    “That’s great. Do you want me to drive for a while?”
    Dan snorted, “Fuck no, I wanna live to see my old lady tonight.” He gave Trey a good-natured shove and climbed into the cab.
    Trey settled onto the comfortable bench seat and pawed through the stack of CDs. He’d taken a fancy to the opera Manon Lescaut so he slid that in and set the volume to reasonable. He closed his eyes just to rest them against the bright afternoon light and drifted into a half-sleep. He did not relish the upcoming meeting with his uncle.
    ****
    T rey approached the park bench and sat next to Eirik. They’d agreed to a follow-up meeting near the Museum of Natural History after their technicians and researchers had detected interesting chatter at GFI headquarters. He’d spent the better part of a week holed up in their archives room researching, cementing his suspicions that Kathleen O’Brien’s bloodlines held the clues to what Eirik so desperately sought. He had a fair idea who would be the next target, and a bad feeling about it. He avoided looking at his uncle as he laid out what he knew and what he guessed.
    “The O’Brien woman had a daughter ... has,” Trey corrected quickly, “and I think she is a candidate for your shifter properties.” Explaining what he’d found in their extensive historical records, the references to certain abilities carried through the female line, he informed Eirik, “So I’ll drive down and reconnoiter, see what there is to see.”
    “You’re going to what?” Gothi Eirik nearly screamed at his enforcer.
    “Drive.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Oh, let’s count the reasons shall we, Nephew. First off, you don’t know how. Second, you don’t have a license. Third, you can jump there in ... oh, how about NO time and it’s going to take how long to get there?” Eirik rubbed his eyes, jaw clenched in brittle dissatisfaction, a look Trey knew well. Normally immune to the posturing, he felt a growing annoyance, a subtle displeasure that was a marked change from his habitual acquiescence. Since the debacle with the asset he’d leaned toward being more independent and assertive—even downright surly.
    Trey gave his gothi a smug look and then counted off, “I learned, Rolf made me a fake license, and it takes maybe, what, three hours? Actually, I’m not sure but