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waiter had made his escape, the lucky bastard, and Robin continued. "Redcaps aren't into incest. That was a typical human soap opera addition, because mass murder and cannibalism simply weren't juicy enough."
    I swirled a fork through the pale mound on my plate dubiously as he went on. "In reality, Redcaps don't much care for one another's company. Loathe each other. The male and the female even more so. Consequently, they have the quickest mating habits one could possibly imagine. In, out, handshake, see you next year—this is how much they hate one another. Which is what made Sawney so unique. He brought over forty Redcaps together. They killed together, dwelled together, and didn't try to eat each other during it all … astounding." He took another bite.
    "And what of the rest of the legend?" Niko asked, ignoring his food for the moment. "How they came to their end."
    "Half true. In the original, the women and children were burned and the men bled to death after having their hands and feet chopped off. In reality there were no women or children. They were only male Redcaps and the humans burned them all. I heard that Sawney, as their leader, was given special attention and burned separately. If his remains were gathered and put in a cask, then I suppose that was true." Unfazed by the subject matter, he continued to make his way through lunch with enthusiasm.
    "How the hell did a bunch of humans manage to capture and kill these guys?" I finally broke down and took a bite of the weird stuff in front of me. It looked and smelled like chicken pudding. That's what it tasted like as well, but cinnamon sweet. It wasn't half bad.
    "How did they manage?" He gave a little shrug. "They had an army. Literally. If you have some bizarre fascination with taking up with where they left off, you're a few short."
    "Even counting you?" Niko had gone back to playing with the knife. Palm to the back of the wrist, back of the wrist to palm. The waiters were watching the show from across the restaurant—some giving silent whistles in awe at the sight, some looking a little perturbed.
    "I'd advise you not to get ahead of yourself," Robin said with a jaundiced air. "Is anyone offering to pay you to chase after what may end up only being a phantom? Anyone? Hello?" He cupped a hand to his ear. "What? No answer? Quel surprise."
    "And if this is real? If Sawney is back … if he isn't the phantom you hope, what do you advise then?" Niko countered, flipping the knife to tap the table lightly with its handle.
    Robin went back to working on his meal. "Perhaps he'll be dieting. He is older now. Age wages hell on the waistline." He looked up to see Niko's patient eyes on him. "Oh, fine," he grumbled. "I don't have any further information on Sire Beane, but I have a friend who may—Wahanket. Well, friend is rather a strong term … an acquaintance. He tends to gather facts, has a desiccated finger in many a pie." He added smugly, "I do know people."
    "Yeah, you know people," I commented sourly, remembering another of his informants, Abbagor, who'd tried to kill us … twice. "Too many goddamn people."
    Wahanket, though, turned out to not be nearly as bad as Abbagor. Equally as freaky, but nowhere near as homicidal. And he lived in the museum we'd left only hours ago, which made him more likely than anyone to know about Sawney and his Great Escape.
     
    The Eight-sixth Street station was starting to seem awfully familiar. After exiting and walking over to Fifth Avenue, we were back where we'd started. The Met was packed when we walked in. There were drifting couples, hordes of tourists from every country imaginable, people wandering alone, and a school group of screaming rug rats from hell. They must've left their indoor voices on the bus; even the empty suits of armor looked pained as they thundered by. We kept moving past them as Goodfellow murmured something about the lost art of child sacrifices. In one wing, he stopped before a bust with blind marble