As soon as he got his bearings, he would double back to where his grandfather had fallen. Harry might have found the old man already, or maybe his grandfather had come to. But he had to check. If there was nothing there, he would head for the rendezvous. It was as much of a plan as he could manage.

Through the traffic ahead, he spotted the headlights of a car flashing quickly on and off as it came toward him. Then again. With a surge of relief, he recognized the car. It was unmistakable. Kingdom’s Silver Phantom.

Metz was behind the wheel.

“I got it,” Alex gasped as he clambered in and slammed the door. “The frame. Is my grandad okay? Where’s everyone else?”

“Hmm?” Metz glanced over as they started moving. “Oh, looking for you. Yes, the old man is fine. We split up. They’re on foot. We decided I should take the car. My leg, you see.”

“I think I know what Harry was trying to say,” Alex panted, talking more to himself, trying to calm down. “When he said, ‘It’s not . . .’ he meant, it’s not the tall man.”

“Oh yes?” Metz turned a corner and slowed, searching the street ahead. “The tall man?”

“It was Hans Beckman,” Alex went on. He dropped the broom into the seat behind without looking, and bent to free his injured foot from the cumbersome mechanical springs. Metz stopped the car. They sat, engine idling.

“Beckman,” Alex repeated, still working it out for himself. His racing thoughts kept colliding. “I can’t remember if we told you about him. . . . But then, that means we’ve not seen the tall man at all. Even when I thought I saw him, outside Harry’s office in Paris. It was Beckman. It was Beckman who stabbed your leg. I heard him laughing. Giggling. So where’s the tall man?”

“He’s right here, silly bunny,” said a voice from behind. Alex felt something sharp scratch gently at his Adam’s apple. In the rearview mirror, he saw Zia sit up, grinning. She held one arm curled around his neck, her little hand clutching a huge, old razor at his throat.

“That’s Father in there, see?”

Alex looked dumbly in the direction the triumphant purple fingernail pointed. Metz smiled back at him.

“A very weak mind, this one. He was almost grateful to give up,” Metz said. Except, Alex suddenly realized, it was no longer Metz at all.

With piercing clarity, he recalled his grandfather speaking as they sat together in a high tree, telling him horrible, impossible things about the tall man: He was exploring the possibility of migrating consciousness. Throwing your mind into another body . . . just slip your personality into someone else, take them over . . .