So, as the sky was slowly infused with a tired gray, she rose from her hospital bed. Moved to the window. Divided the curtains with her wrists, reached in between them and lifted the sash. The cold morning air washed in over her, penetrating the thin cotton of her nightgown. She heard tires hissing in rainwater below her. The sough of wind through the plane trees. She raised her eyes to look off down the street.

She was in the old Victorian building’s corner turret, the fourth floor. Across the broad intersection, through the branches, over the traffic lights, she could see the Thames glinting dully, seething sluggishly beneath the Chelsea Bridge with an incoming tide. A cormorant flew black over the bridge’s white cables, heading towards where the clouds were parting on a feeble dawn.

And she thought: Yes. The fall from here would do it. That would finish it off for good and all.

Then there was a boom and a thwack behind her. The door had flown open, hit the wall. She looked over her shoulder to see Richard Storm amble in, his idiotic smirk screened by a bouquet of roses and freesias, which he held splayed as if he’d just yanked them from a magician’s hat.

“Morning, glory,” he said. “I’m back—and better than ever. How you feeling?”

“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Storm,” said Sophia quietly. “I need your help.”

4

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Between the demon Asmodeus and a portrait of Ogopogo, the zeuglodon of Lake Okanagan, Storm had found an empty slice of yellow-striped wall against which to bang his forehead repeatedly. He’d been doing it, with pauses to moan Sophia’s name, for more than half an hour now, and it was driving Bernard absolutely around the bend. Bizarre!’s factotum was on a sort of dream quest through the Internet, following reports of a pixie who had apparently crossed Hudson Bay from Baffin Island and was now said to be traveling downcountry towards Saskatoon. Rocking on his backless workstation chair, dabbling at his keyboard with one hand, Bernard was currently in electronic communication with a copper miner’s daughter named Gwen. She, in turn, was feverishly gathering and transmitting reports that a four-inch-high green glow wearing a forester’s cap was busily baking oatcakes in a fallow wheatfield somewhere to the south of her. The whole business required concentration. And to have Storm doing that on the other side of the office—thump-thump, thump-thump, Sophia, Sophia—it was crazy-making.

Finally, lifting his angelic features to whatever gods may be, Bernard gave in, logged off. He swiveled around to face the other. Storm was standing with his back to him, hands in the pockets of his jeans, head down, rocking gently to bring his brow into contact with the wall.

“I sense somehow that you’re distressed,” Bernard said.