On this trip, she wore her hiking gear and towed her suitcase. With street map in hand, she wanted to give the impression of being a tourist from out of state who’d wandered into the wrong part of town. Maybe that was why a taxi pulled up almost as soon as she emerged from the back street, while her phone was still chirping its voice mail alert.

“The Marriott Marquis, Times Square,” she told the driver. Head pounding, she hit the “mail” button and clamped the phone to her ear.

“Marriott Marquis, room 2412, continuously booked for the whole week in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Roland Dorchester. Just ask at the front desk and they’ll give you a key.”

Thank you, she thought, pocketing the phone and blinking back tears of relief.

The taxi took her straight to the main entrance and a bellboy was on hand to help her with her suitcase. She headed straight to the front desk.

“Mrs. Dorchester? Yes, ma’am, I have your card-key here. If you’d like to sign…”

Miriam did a little double-take, then scrawled something that she hoped she’d be able to replicate on demand. Then she took the keys and headed for the elevator bank.

She was inside the glass-walled express elevator, and it was surging up from the third floor in a long glide toward the top, when a horrible thought occurred to her. What if they’ve got to Roland? she wondered. After he booked the hotel. They could be waiting for me.

It was a frightening thought, and Miriam instinctively reached toward her pocket. How the hell do you do this? Suddenly it occurred to her that the little revolver was as much of a threat as an asset in this kind of situation. If she went through the door and some bad guy was just inside, he could grab her before she had a chance to use it. Or grab the gun. And she was more than twenty stories up, high enough that—she looked out and down through the glass wall of the lift and took a deep breath of relief. “Oh, that’s okay,” she muttered, as the obvious explanation occurred to her just before the lift bell dinged for attention: Skyscrapers didn’t need doppelgängering against attack from another world where concrete and structural steel were barely known.

Miriam stepped out into the thickly carpeted hallway and stopped. Pulling out her mobile phone, she dialed Roland’s number. It rang three times.

“Hello?”

“Roland, what happens if you’re on the twenty-fourth floor of a tall building, say a hotel, and—” quick glance in either direction—“you try to world-walk?”

“You don’t do that.” He chucked dryly. “That’s why I chose it. I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Come right on up?”

“Sure,” she said and rang off, abruptly dizzy with relief and anticipation.