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remember him, right?
    I did. Richard was one of Rolf’s circle, a man who had gone so far along that same strange path that he was now a walking embodiment of what used to be called the fey. He made me extremely nervous, and Lou even more so.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “Well, we were out at the Marin Headlands—”
    “What were you doing out there?” I asked.
    Rolf stared at me without answering, and what little I could see of his face in the dark started to subtly shift. Apparently I wasn’t being given the same latitude as was Campbell. I put both hands up and ducked my head in the universal “sorry, my bad” gesture.
    “We were out at the Headlands,” he said again, pausing for just long enough to give me a chance to interrupt again. I looked at him with polite and attentive interest. “Richard was up a little ahead of me when he stopped and put up a hand as if he had heard something. All I heard was a meadowlark singing in the tall grass. Then he got this look on his face, kind of blissed out, you know? He took off running, crested the hill, and by the time I got to the top he was out of sight. I haven’t seen him since.”
    “I don’t get the connection,” I said.
    “Well, I never heard anything and I never saw anything, but I did feel something.” He waved his hand toward the swirling pattern. “Feel that energy? I felt the same thing coming from the other side of the hill. I don’t know what came out of that thing, but whatever it was, it took Richard.”
    “Maybe he just decided to leave,” I said, hearing how lame that sounded the moment I said it.
    “I can’t do anything about it,” Rolf said. “I can’t mingle like you can, so I can’t really look for him. I can’t get around like you can. You were pretty good at figuring things out the last time you was here, though it took you a while.” He straightened up and became oddly formal. “If you can find Richard Cory, or even tell me what happened to him, I’d be beholden to you.”
    That could be useful. It wouldn’t hurt at all having Rolf owe me. Maybe he could even hunt down the Ifrit creature for us—if anyone was suited for the job, it was him. Besides, I was partly responsible for what had happened. I’d like to know what else we’d unleashed on an unsuspecting world.
    “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Any idea at all what it is I’d be looking for?”
    Rolf shook his head.
    “If I knew what it was, I wouldn’t have to ask you for help,” he said.
    We started back toward the gate. I was happy to get some distance between me and the color swirl. It made me nervous to stand next to it. As we approached the gate, I turned for one last look to see if I could find it from a distance now that I knew it was there. There was the faintest glow, more at the corner of my mind than my eyes, but it was there. And something, barely visible in the shadows, right behind it.
    Lou had noticed it as well, of course. He was standing stock-still, focused, but without his usual warning growl to alert me to danger. He finally took a few steps toward it, but then stopped again, one paw off the ground, motionless. I can read him pretty well. He’s as expressive as any dog in body language, and a lot more in facial expression. He was . . . “baffled” is the word that came to mind.
    “What is it?” asked Campbell, looking at the two of us.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “You might want to stay back, though.”
    I walked back toward the swirling pattern, Lou paralleling my steps. As I got closer, it became apparent there was a figure standing in the shadows, right behind the energy source. The closer I got, the more familiar it seemed. Then it stepped forward and the glow from the energy bands lit up its face for a fraction of a second.
    My mouth turned dry and I had trouble catching my breath. Lou made a sound unlike anything I had ever heard from him—not a bark, not a cry, almost like a human