Craig slammed the ice-box shut and leaned heavily against it, his arms straight as rods, palms against the door in the dark. The Trickster. What the fuck was all that about?

Worse. Why was it nagging at his guts? He let his head hang between his shoulders as he leaned against the big, white, humming machine and let himself bathe in a moment of primitive acceptance. What if he were just to believe what seemed to be screaming for his attention for once? There were no leads in this sick case.

No reason, no motives, no clues. Not even a real suspect as far as he was concerned.

What if …

Just what if …

Where would a moment of allowing his mind to be simple and uncluttered get him? So much prejudice and bigotry getting in the way. What had she called him? A science bigot?

He stared at the floor, eyes unfocused on the long rectangle lit dimly by the light from the hall, and let his mind loose.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, in fact maybe he was just asleep on his feet. But Craig McGee started to let go of that intangible, delicate thing that tethered him to common sense, and in seconds found himself in a cocoon of something else, something more than concentration. He let himself accept the fact of a thing called the Trickster, a thing so bad it was worse than the worst wittago. He sucked in the fact of the Isksaksin. And he thought hard about Sam Hunt’s face, and how despite his Indian name it was not the face of a hunter but that of the hunted.

Then stuff started to happen to him. He was in a new area of consciousness. He could feel abstract things in an almost physical way with his mind, and a deep liquid feeling, like an egg breaking inside his stomach, engulfed him.

A picture came into Craig McGee’s mind. It was the picture of a tall woman getting out of a car. Tall and blonde, with blue eyes like ice. The journalist, what was her name? Marlene something? The one that had been in the car with Daniel. He wasn’t seeing the rectangle of light on the linoleum floor any more. He was looking straight at her, into her face. And as he looked he started to see something else, something he didn’t want to see, behind the woman’s face. It was a dark, swirling thing, like clouds of acrid smoke rising from a filthy garbage fire. Like disease moving and multiplying under a microscope. And it was right under that woman’s skin. Plain and visible, and so easy to see when you looked.