Xandre led the way to a landing at the back of a town house, then three stories up a narrow stone staircase that ended far below in the suck and slap of waves at high tide. The three looked in through a window at the small, cluttered lodgings where a man lay sleeping on a narrow bed, bare-chested in the heat. Chance stared at him—not because he looked harmless nor yet because he seemed familiar in that odd way that hinted at future rather than past acquaintance, but because of what he wore around his neck.

Chance smiled again with that humorless smile. “I’ll make you a bargain,” he murmured in Xandre’s ear. “Don’t kill him. That thing around his neck—get it for me, and I will make sure he never troubles anyone again.”

The boy’s eyes were wide and terrified as he finally began to grasp that he was dealing with something he did not understand. “The window grille is bolted,” he whispered, his breath coming shallow and fast.

Chance laid a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder, gradually increasing the pressure to something less friendly as he moved behind him and said, “Should that stop a thief of your experience? But here—iron does rust, and it’s a shame that the landlord won’t do the proper maintenance.”

There was a dull chime, the sound of metal unleashed from a point of stress, and the grille sagged very slightly.

Seizing both shoulders, he turned the boy to face him. “Breathe easy,” he said softly and not at all kindly. “He’ll hear you coming.”

Shivering, Xandre went in through the window, too distracted to notice that somewhere amid all the touching and turning about, he had lost his spent talisman. Chance watched him go, absently crushing in his fist the amulet that had summoned him there. When his hand opened again, an insubstantial dust floated out and was quickly taken by the wind. Lukas was a weeping, trembling heap of fear in the far corner of the landing. Chance gave him a brief, direct look, wondering if he would have to prevent him from crying out at the wrong moment. Lukas eyed him and tried to crawl farther back.

A shout rang out from inside, then a muffled scream, and both of them turned. Lukas had of course reacted to the sound, but Chance had been jolted by a less human stimulus, the sudden sensation that one of his own kind had just torn open a passageway in spacetime. He rushed to pass into the room—and found himself blocked, blocked as solidly as if a wall had been placed before him, a wall that even the undying could not pierce. Silently he railed, sending static crackling into the night like stunted lightning as he fruitlessly tried with all his knowledge and skill to break through.