I smiled in spite of myself. Tagging along on Yellin’s social calls was way better than taking one of his tests, which were brutal.

In truth, “social calls” was a bit of a misnomer. These were essentially diplomatic visits. Many Seconds were known to live in Cordus’s First Emanation territory, which stretched from eastern Canada down to the Florida panhandle and west over the Sierras and the Cascades. All those Seconds needed to be checked up on. The goal was to make sure they weren’t doing anything that might reveal their inhumanity or the existence of the other world. Keeping that sort of thing from happening was the whole point of Cordus’s operation. Yellin’s visits were intended to let Seconds in the New York area know the boss was keeping tabs on them.

We headed down the hallway toward the elevator.

“Please, Miss Ryder,” Yellin said over his shoulder, “let us make up for lost time.”

As though I were more than a handful of steps behind him. Disciplining my expression, I followed him to the elevator. We rode it down to the first basement level, which was connected by tunnel to the garage.

Once in the tunnel, I quickened my pace to walk beside Yellin. He sped up, trying to stay in front of me. I sped up a little more. Pretty soon, he was scuttling along like a beetle.

I enjoyed playing this game. I always won because I didn’t care about looking dignified, and he did. You can’t be dignified when you look like you’re running away. He must’ve known it was a losing battle, but he didn’t seem able to stop himself from trying.

“So who’re we visiting today?” I asked, sure he’d find my tone too familiar.

He frowned — or, I should say, his existing frown deepened.

“Among others, we will call on a Second who goes by the name of Helen Sturluson.”

“Has she lived around here a long time?”

Yellin shot me a look a pure annoyance.

Not too long ago, I wouldn’t have asked the question — or tried to walk abreast of him, for that matter. For the first few weeks after he took over my training, I’d just followed him around in silence, too afraid of him to do anything else. But pretty soon I’d discovered something: the guy wasn’t scary.

Based on my initial experiences with Seconds, I’d assumed they were all basically death on wheels, especially the humanoid ones. But Yellin wasn’t. I simply never got the sense that he was considering harming me, whereas many of the other Seconds I’d met gave me that feeling all the time.

So far as I could tell, he just wasn’t a violent person. Irritable and snappish, but not violent.