“She’s not like that.” There was a strange timbre in the rising wind, Dorian realized, a haunted musical beckoning. It was a sound he’d learned to recognize. Luce was upset that he hadn’t come, and she was calling him from the dimness below. They were only a block from the harbor, and by the intensity of the sound Dorian guessed that Luce had come recklessly close to the village dock.

Ellison seemed to be listening to the wind, too hard for Dorian’s comfort. He turned away from Dorian to gaze down into the bluish darkness. “She’s ‘not like that’? Are you sure about that? Because in that case, Dorian, I’d . . . like to meet her very much. Maybe you’d be willing to pass on the message?” Ellison paused and seemed to think of something. “How does she communicate?”

So the guy was still fishing for information, Dorian thought sarcastically. At least that showed that the FBI didn’t know everything. “She won’t want to meet you.”

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t like cops much.” Dorian’s tone was deliberately insulting.

“I can see that she might have her reasons for feeling that way.” Ellison delivered this in a snide voice that clearly implied Luce was a criminal, and Dorian glared at him. “But I’d actually like to meet her on a personal level. Not as part of my job, but simply—”

“Simply to what?” Dorian couldn’t have explained why he suddenly felt so furious. He fought down an impulse to lash out, shove Ellison in the chest, punch him.

“Simply to know, I suppose. What she is. What she wants. Maybe there are other approaches . . .”

“You need to leave us alone!” Dorian couldn’t keep his voice down. It was stupid of him to yell in the street like this. It was a tiny town, and at any moment people would come to find out what was going on. “I’m not in any danger. My girlfriend’s not . . . a bad person.” As Dorian said this Ellison grinned strangely. “I just want you to leave me alone from now on, okay? I don’t want to talk to you again.”

“I doubt that avoiding each other will be an option for us, Dorian.”

“I’m going to make it an option . . .”

“I tend to think of you as a kind of hostage. An innocent mixed up in things he can’t possibly understand. But other people won’t see the situation that way, of course, and I’ve taken a considerable risk by coming here to warn you. At the worst my actions could be construed as treasonous.”

Dorian began to think he might have some leverage. “I promise I won’t tell anybody about this, then. As long as you don’t come back here.”