Theo’s favorite movies were Wild in the Streets, The Dagger and the Rose, Easy Rider, and Leary. They’d affected his vocabulary. He seemed to glow a little in the semi-gloom; he was wearing a white cotton jacket whose previous owner had been either a waiter or an orderly at an asylum, and a collared knit shirt under it. The VU meters from two tape decks and the mixing board reflected in his wire-rimmed glasses, and Spangler’s floor lights turned his brown bob to auburn. I found myself wondering what less appropriate things shone on him when he wasn’t working. I’d known Theo for about four years, and I had no idea where he lived, or what he did before the moon was up. I hadn’t seen anything strange in that before, but suddenly I was aware of it, and it bothered me. Paranoia, maybe — downtime erasures, walking dead men, vampire hunters, and why shouldn’t I wonder who my acquaintances were when I wasn’t there?

“I may not stay the whole night,” I warned him.

“That’s okay. Maybe Liz’ll come ’round later to fill in.” One of his heels tapped furiously at the leg of the chair he sat in; he seemed unaware of it, as if it were run by a second brain.

After a moment I said, “Also — sometime — some people may come looking for me.” Well, spit it out. “I’m in a little trouble.”

He closed the door on the tape transport and stared at me. It was unnerving to find myself the single focus of all that energy. “Somebody noticed you? Sorry,” he said, in response to my expression, no doubt. “Bad trouble?”

“No, no. Annoying. I just don’t want to be found.”

“Nothin’ easier.” Theo stood up, ambled past me to the door at the top of the stairs, and kicked it shut with a crash. The candle flames leaned wildly. “You’re working, man. Can’t be disturbed.”

“That’s the idea, anyway. But these people may have connections beyond those of mortal men.”

“City connections?” He was rolling the cotton swab hard between his fingers.

“I was thinking of the kind that are supposed to result from sacrificing small animals. But yeah,” I said, remembering Dana’s apartment, “there may be one or two of those, as well.”

Theo nibbled his lower lip. “That’s not good. If it was just the brujo, you hire another brujo. But we bugger the City over here and we’re done, you know that.”

I sat down at the console and powered up the two video decks and the A/B switcher. “They need us. We’re part of the circuses side of the equation.”

He sat down next to me and stared into my face. “What we have here,” he said in the voice of the warden in Cool Hand Luke, “is a failure to think straight. We generate electricity by the grace of God and A. A. Albrecht. I don’t know about God, but Albrecht can shut us down anytime he wants.”