Jack shrugged and took the glass. He’d done worse things to get someone to talk. He took a sip.

“It’s good.” There. Was she happy? “Now, can I ask you a few questions?”

“If you wish.” She seated herself on the sofa overhung with plants and vines. She lit a cigarette and began shuffling a deck of cards. She pointed him toward the recliner. “Sit. You want to ask me about a Russian woman with a malamute, don’t you.”

Jack felt his jaw drop. “I—I—”

“And an Indian woman with a German shepherd. The one who told you to stay away from that house in Astoria. The one you foolishly ignored.”

“How did you know?” Jack said, finding his voice.

She blew smoke and shrugged as she began laying out the cards in a classic solitaire tableau. “Lucky guess.”

“Since June I’ve been running into women who know too much—women with dogs. You’re the third. Two isn’t a trend. But three…”

“Not to worry. You have nothing to fear from them. Or me.”

Jack took a deep breath and let it out. He’d expected denials or, at the very least, evasions. To have her come right out and confirm his suspicions…it knocked him off balance.

He took a gulp of his wine. Maybe this was why she’d insisted he take a glass.

“Who are you people?”

She finished laying out the cards and began to play, flipping them over with sharp little snaps. “No one in particular.”

“I don’t buy that. You know too much. Back in June, when I was sick, the Russian lady came to my room”—he saw her in his mind, salt-and-pepper hair, gray jogging suit, big white malamute—”and told me things about a war I’d been drafted into. ‘Is war and you are warrior,’ she said. I don’t know if she mentioned it directly or not, but I’m pretty sure she was going on about something called the Otherness and—”

Anya stopped her card play and looked up at him. “You’d already heard of the Otherness by then.”

“Yeah.”

Although he wished he hadn’t. The first mention had been earlier in the year, in the spring at a—surprise—conspiracy convention. Since then his life hadn’t seemed quite his own.

According to what he’d been told, two vast, unimaginably complex cosmic forces have been at war forever. The prize in the war is all existence—all the dimensions, all the realities, all the parallel dimensions up for grabs. Earth and humanity’s corner of reality is a minor piece on the game board, of no special importance. But if one is going to declare itself winner, one has to take all the pieces. Even the inconsequential ones.