Arra was at her desk, back toward him as he crossed the shadowless room. All but one of her monitors showed solitaire games. On the final monitor she seemed to be combining a graphics program with data entry. Equations scrolled up around a complex spiral made up of strange symbols rather than a solid line. As Tony closed the final distance, the last equation reached the center and disappeared. Arra right clicked her mouse and the spiral flared . . . he had no idea what color that was although watering eyes insisted purple came closest. The light lasted for less than a second, then vanished, and the monitor screen was blank.

About to ask her what she was doing, Tony suddenly realized he didn’t have to.

“You’re going to gate out. That was a computer mock-up of a new gate!”

“A computer mock-up of a metaphysical construct?” Arra spun around to face him, eyes rolling. “You know that’s impossible, right?”

“There are more or less sentient shadows falling through a hole in the air and killing people!” He was shouting. He didn’t care. The situation certainly called for shouting and he had no idea how he’d resisted to this point. “I think you’ll find that the bar for impossible has been set pretty damned high!”

“Don’t you mean low?”

“I have no fucking idea!”

“You tried to tell someone, didn’t you?”

“What?”

She jerked her head back toward the solitaire games. “Sixes blocked on all of them. A romantic idea of responsibility and justice; you tried to warn people, to raise the alarm.” Her tone softened slightly as she met his eyes again. “The trouble is no one will believe you. You’re talking about things that ninety-nine percent of the people of this world refuse to see.”

“Yeah. I get that.” He’d dialed down the volume, but the anger was still very much there. “They’d believe you.”

“Me?”

“You could make them believe you. You could prove that it’s real.”

“How? With magic? I should show them walking corpses or turn a sofa into a flock of geese? Tony, I do that every day and all they see is a special effect. They’ve seen wizards fly and petrify their friends and strike down their enemies from across the room. They know it’s a trick. Nothing I can do will convince the ninety and nine otherwise.”

“Fine! What about the one percent?”

“Well . . .” Arra sighed and spread her hands. “. . . that would be you.”

“You can’t make this whole thing my responsibility!”

“I’m not.”

She sounded so calm and matter-of-fact, it drove the volume right back up again. He wanted to wrap his hands around her throat and shake her until she took him seriously; until she agreed to help; until she destroyed the shadows—unfortunately, he could only shout. “You can’t just fucking run away from this!”

“Yes, I can.”