All three had big smiles for me, though in Cassie’s eyes I could see a trace of the worry that I was feeling. I couldn’t tell what the crow girls were feeling, but then who can?

“Hello Geordie-Pordie,” Maida said. “Don’t you worry anymore.”

Zia nodded. “Because we’re helping.”

“We’re looking everywhere.”

“And then at all the theres all over again.”

“Thanks,” I told them. “I appreciate it.”

“Of course you do,” Maida said.

“We’re the sort of people that should be appreciated.”

“Because we’re so helpful,” Maida explained, just in case I didn’t get it.

They looked at me for a moment, heads cocked like the birds that were their natural shapes.

“Well, it’s been nice talking to you,” Zia said.

“But we can’t stay.”

“We’re busybusy, you know.”

“Very very.”

“Looking and all.”

“Being ever so useful, don’t you think?”

Before I could respond, the pair of them were gone, and it was just Cassie and me on the pier. I took a deep breath, feeling as though I’d just run up a flight of stairs. Talking to the crow girls always did that to me.

“How are you holding up?” she asked me.

“Like crap. Do you have any news from Joe?”

She shook her head. “Not since he called me from Jimmy’s. He’s got Whiskey Jack helping him out and a corbae named Grey.”

I gave her a sharp look. “Did you say ‘Grey’?”

She nodded. “Do you know him?”

“No. But I think he’s involved in all of this.”

I gave her the longer version of what had happened to Lizzie the other night, all the details I hadn’t gotten into when we’d talked on the phone. The business with Grey and the cerva hadn’t seemed relevant then.

“From what you’re telling me,” Cassie said when I was done, “it doesn’t sound as though he’s got it in for Lizzie, and he doesn’t even know Jilly—does he?”

“Not so’s I know. But doesn’t it seem weird to you that Grey should be helping Joe, when Jilly was kidnapped by the same bogans that he had the run-in with a couple of nights ago?”

“Maybe. Joe doesn’t know about the bogans—or he didn’t when I was talking to him.”

“We should tell him.”

Cassie nodded. “Except since I can’t get him to carry a cell phone, I have to wait for him to call me back.” She paused for a moment before adding, “Maybe this Grey doesn’t know what happened either.”

“I guess.”

It didn’t take a genius to see how discouraged I was feeling.