I settled back down behind the handlebars and thought about that. It would have been easy to get me out of the way by wiring the bike. Even easier to bump me off in my apartment just now. But he’d checked me out and decided I didn’t know he was in it, so it wasn’t necessary to kill me. It was almost comforting to know that we were dealing with someone who was at least that fastidious about his trail of bodies. I fastened my helmet, started the engine, and got a Thataway for Captain Hawthorn.

Up the hill and Up the Hill was where it led me, to the costly confines of Dragonstooth Hill, where if people aren’t well fed it’s by choice. Bordertown is taller there, and not just because of the slope of the land. Wealthy elves live in pastel glass spires that sometimes top a hundred feet, that look as if you could bring one down with a single well-placed brick. Except all the bricks are in the humans’ buildings, and so is the pink granite and the pale gold sandstone, shaped into neo-castles and pocket skyscrapers that their owners are terribly proud of whenever the elevators work. Little parkways twine between the feet of buildings, dotted with fountains and sculptures and gardens with roses imported from the Elflands at Great Cost. It’s the kind of neighborhood where you’d never expect to find a hair in the sink, except when people in paint-stained cutoffs and faded T-shirts ride up from the great downbelow. Then passersby look at you as if you’ve come to take the caps off all the toothpaste tubes in town.

I homed in on one building, and circled it to be sure. The answer to my question about Hawthorn was. Right here and straight up. I hoped the elevators were working.

I didn’t know what building it was, but it seemed to be a public one. People stared at me, but no one told me I had to leave. I walked purposefully toward the back of the center lobby, found a small, badly-lit corridor, and followed it to the service elevator. It was on some kind of chain-lift system and made an ungodly noise, but it got me to the top floor, which felt like the one I wanted.

Now all I had to do was tramp up and down the halls looking conspicuous until I found a door to lurk outside. If I ever did this detective thing again, I was going to pack a disguise kit.

One dubious “Can I help you?” spoken in a penetrating voice, and I would have been pinned like a butterfly in a box. But I was lucky; all the doors in the hallway were closed, and nobody seemed to be going in and out of them. And the door I was looking for, the Thataway door, was right in front of me.