Floundering, he said, "I'll tell Mr. Patrise that you're better. I know he'll be glad to hear it. And-I really would like to meet your grandfather."
She nodded.
Doc tried to think ahead. "Some night we should… spring him. Get him to the Mirada, at least. My car won't hold three, but I could borrow one of the others."
"Oh, wouldn't that be great?" The light returned to her face, briefly. "Unless he-it might not be like he remembers. Wants to remember. I just don't know."
In that moment Doc knew the meeting was over. In the next moment Norma Jean was telling him how much fun she'd had. how great it had been to meet him. She touched the control and rolled her chair back from the table; Doc stood up hastily.
She was offering him no hand to shake, and even a small kiss on the cheek would have required him to swoop and bend over her in the chair. So he just stood. The man in the dark suit reappeared; he seemed to take no notice at all of Doc.
She stopped, rolled back toward him. "Granddad said I should be good to you," she said unsteadily. "That somebody who does- what you do-was really special. You'll tell everybody I miss them, won't you?"
"Of course."
"And tell your girlfriend you're special," she said then, in a voice full of agony and venom. She turned away and was gone.
As he drove back, a windblown winter rain began to fall, that scattered the ghost fires of the Shade far across the real city.
Friday afternoon, Doc went upstairs to see Patrise. He was sitting behind his silver desk in a long violet dressing gown, feet up, a large book of art reproductions open in his lap.
"I don't expect we'll need you tonight, Hallow," he said. "Have a pleasant evening."
Doc hesitated.
Patrise said, "Was there something else?"
"I was thinking," Doc said, "you know, with all the stuff I carry in my bag, it's a wonder I haven't been jumped before this."
"Do you think so?" Patrise said, sounding interested.
"It makes sense. I mean, I drive a car everybody can recognize, and they probably know I don't carry a gun."
"You haven't wanted to carry a gun."
"I still don't. I just… guess I ought to be more careful, from now on."
Patrise's voice cut right across the nonsense. "Who do you think it was that set us up, Hallow? Are you afraid it was Ginevra?"
"No, it couldn't have-she didn't know anything about what was happening, any more than I did."
"You don't know that," Patrise said, calm. "You don't have any way of knowing that."
"No," Doc said, and stopped while he still had his voice.
Patrise put his book on the desk, sat up in his chair facing Doc. "But / know, Hallow. And she did not."
"Then… do you know-who?"
"Let me tell you something about people, Hallow. If you give people work that makes them feel strong and useful, then they will become strong and useful. Their strength, through you, is power, and astounding things can be done with that power. Impossible things.
"Keep the same people in fear, and you may still get use from them, but never strength. If they find strength despite you, the first thing they will do with it is bring you down. No matter what it costs. Understand that very well, Hallow: any being with a real soul will prize it above anything-certainly above life."
"A soul."
"I am not excluding the Truebloods. If Cloudhunter has no soul, then souls are surely overrated." He leaned back. "Have you thought about where to take Ginevra tonight?"
"Oh… the movies, probably."
"Why don't you take her off the Levee?"
"Is something wrong?"
"Not that I know. You should visit the World now and then. The Art Institute is open late tonight. It's not far. Barely past the Shade. Made dinner plans?"
"No."
"The Berghoff should do. Here." He scribbled a note, signed it, folded it. "Please, take it. Let me have my fun."
"Thank you, sir."
Patrise waved. "And think about the Art Institute."
"I'll ask Ginny."
"Yes. Tell me, Hallow, if you don't mind… do you make her laugh?"
"Uh…" Doc had to turn his thoughts sharply around. "She-laughs at the movies. And other times too."
"Good," Mr. Patrise said. "It is an extraordinary thing, that half the human species should need laughter so much from the other half. It is no small gift, you know. Hallow. Magic and Klrland have no substitute for it. Now, the best of nights to both of you. Hallow."
It was beginning to snow when they left the Shadow. Suddenly the air was on fire, turning the snowflakes blood-red; Ginny gasped, and Doc stopped the Triumph for several minutes while they watched the silent, heatless firestorm.
Ginny took his hand. Under her winter coat she was wearing a ruffled white blouse with a small string of pearls, a long black skirt. "I'd forgotten the fire," she said, sounding astonished.
The plaque NEW ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO was on a gray stone building that must have been a department store before the world shifted. The entrance was flanked by huge bronze lions, one old and green, one looking nearly new. A guard tipped his hat as they came through the door; Ginny scanned a brochure on what to see first, and dragged Doc up a flight of stairs, directly to a huge painting of strolling people: Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Doc had seen pictures of it in books, but…
"Look at it close," Ginny said.
He did. It was made up of thousands upon thousands of dots of color. Close up, they exploded into an atomic-structure diagram; a step back, and they coalesced again into the calm people in the sunny park.
In one of the modern halls, there was a painting of a theater usher, a girl in cap and vest standing in a golden slant of light. She looked weary; she looked terrifyingly alone. When he could look away from the girl, he saw that the pattern of the walls was a precise reproduction of a corner of the Biograph's lobby. Or was it the other way around?
He turned, a little dizzy, and there was another image he had seen any number of times before, but never like this: a long horizontal frame, a night scene somewhere in a big city, a streetcorner diner lit against the gloom. A sign on the brick wall sold nickel cigars to a disbelieving world. Inside, small at the big L-shaped counter, were a handful of people huddled over their coffee and pie, a counterman in white. No reproduction Doc had ever seen captured the electric green of the fluorescent light-it was like spellbox neon, though the artist had died long before things changed.
He looked at that picture for a long time, too, until its loneliness was too much to stand.