I didn’t respond. How strange he was, I thought, intrigued by him and yet still repelled by him, for all his graciousness and seeming honesty. It was an act, but what a nearly perfect act. And then the bewitching face, which seemed with every new revelation to be more mobile and expressive and pliant. I roused myself. There was more I had to know.

“How did you accomplish that, following me about? How did you know where I was?”

“Two ways, to be perfectly frank with you. The first is obvious. I can leave my body for short periods, and during those periods I can search for you over vast distances. But I don’t like that sort of bodiless travel at all. And of course you are not easy to find. You cloak yourself for long periods; then you blaze away in careless visibility; and of course you move about with no discernible pattern. Often by the time I’d located you, and brought my body to the location, you were gone.

“Then there’s another way, almost as magical—computer systems. You use many aliases. I’ve been able to discover four of them. I’m often not quick enough to catch up with you through the computer. But I can study your tracks. And when you double back again, I know where to close in.”

I said nothing, merely marveling again at how much he was enjoying all of this.

“I like your taste in cities,” he said. “I like your taste in hotels—the Hassler in Rome, the Ritz in Paris, the Stanhope in New York. And of course the Park Central in Miami, lovely little hotel. Oh, don’t get so suspicious. There’s nothing to chasing people through computer systems. There’s nothing to bribing clerks to show you a credit card receipt, or bullying bank employees to reveal things they’ve been told not to reveal. Tricks usually handle it perfectly well. You don’t have to be a preternatural killer to do it. No, not at all.”

“You steal through the computer systems?”

“When I can,” he said with a little twist to his mouth. “I steal in any fashion. Nothing’s beneath my dignity. But I’m not capable of stealing ten million dollars through any means. If I were, I wouldn’t be here, now, would I? I’m not that clever. I’ve been caught twice. I’ve been in prison. That’s where I perfected the means of traveling out of body, since there wasn’t any other way.” He made a weary bitter sarcastic smile.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because your friend David Talbot is going to tell you. And because I think we should understand each other. I’m weary of taking risks. This is the big score, your body—and ten million dollars when I give it up.”

“What is it with you?” I asked. “This all sounds so petty, so mundane.”

“Ten million is mundane?”

“Yes. You’ve swapped an old body for a new one. You’re young again! And the next step, if I consent, will be my body, my powers. But it’s the money that matters to you. It’s really just the money and nothing else.”