After a long moment, when it was quite obvious that Arra was seeing neither him nor the basement workroom, she sighed, blinked, and focused. “No. He won’t be.” She held the piece of paper out toward him. “The names underlined in red are the possibles.”

Okay. If that’s how she wanted to play it. Tony was just as glad to move on; a little more sitting around wallowing in the terror and he might start joining Arra’s chant of this is it; we’re all going to die. Good thing she’d gone into television because she sucked as a motivational speaker.

Thirteen names on the much longer list were underlined. He tried not to see significance in the number. “What about Alan Wu?” The actor’s name wasn’t only underlined, it had been circled.

Arra shrugged. “His wife says he didn’t come home last night.”

“There could be a hundred reasons for that.”

“He was on the soundstage, on the set; practically under the gate and his wife gave me the impression that this was very unusual behavior.”

“Yeah, Alan’s pretty dependable.” He stood, folded the paper in quarters, and shoved it in his pocket. “So let’s go get him back.” Two steps toward the stairs, he paused, and turned to see Arra sitting where he’d left her. “Are you coming?”

“You do realize that in the long run it won’t matter. The moment the actual invasion begins . . .”

“. . . you’re out of here. I know, you’ve said.” Over and over and over. “But if you go home now, Julian’s just going to ride your ass about cleaning the party room.”

She looked startled, then, to Tony’s surprise, she smiled. “True enough. So we find them one shadow at a time and we make sure that one doesn’t get back to the gate.”

We. She’d used it twice. Tony figured he’d better not point that out. “It’s a big city.”

“But they’re searching for the light.”

“Henry told me his theory.”

She shrugged and stood. “It seems sound.” Opening the middle drawer on her desk, she pulled out the Greater Vancouver Yellow Pages. Turning, she jerked her head to one side, indicating that Tony should move out of the center of the room. The instant he was clear, she heaved the massive book up into the air and shouted two words that seemed made up mostly of consonants.

In the midst of a shower of pale ash, a single box ad fluttered down to the floor.

Tony grinned. “Cool.”

The Royal Oak Community Church was a large, fake Tudor building on Royal Oak just down from Watling Street. The multiple additions gave it a comfortable, welcoming appearance only slightly offset by the disturbing presence of a pair of trees so severely pruned they looked like giant gumdrops on sticks.