Wildcards

"I don't know," Bre

Chrysalis shook her head.

"Can't you get him to be less cryptic?"

"He's dead."

She reached out, put one of her hands on his and something passed between them. "You probably won't heed my warnings, but I'll give them anyway. Be careful." Bre

"How?" Bre

"If you survive your encounter with Scar, come back to the Palace, tonight. Don't worry about the time. I'll be waiting for you."

There was no mistaking her meaning. She offered entanglements that he had avoided for a long time, relationships that he had wanted no part of for years.

"Or do you find me repulsive?" she asked matter-of-factly in the lengthy silence that stretched between them.

"No," he said more curtly than he had intended. "Its not that, not that at all."

His voice sounded harsh in his own ears. He had isolated himself so long from human contact that the thought of entering into any kind of intimate relationship was frightening.

"Your secrets will be safe from me, Yeoman," Chrysalis said.

He took a deep breath, nodded.

"Good." Her smile returned. "I'll expect you."

He turned without a word, and her smile slipped from her face. "If," she said so softly that only she heard the words, "you can do the impossible. If you can beat Scar."

There were, Bre

He unmasked after he left the Crystal Palace and found a cab. The cabbie was reluctant to take him out to Staten Island, but he flashed a couple of twenties and the hack became all smiles. It was a long ride, by cab and ferry, and Bre

He had the cabbie drop him off a block or so from the Castleton address that Chrysalis had given him, paid the fare, and gave the hack a tip that wiped out most of his cash reserves. As the cab pulled away he moved quietly in the shadows until he stood across the street from Scar's place. It was as Chrysalis had described.

The house itself was a hulking stone mansion set a couple hundred yards off the street. A few lights shone through scattered windows on each of the three floors, but there was no illumination on the outside. The wall that encircled the grounds was stone, about seven feet high, surmounted by strands of electrical wire. The small glass-sided guardbox that stood by the wrought-iron gate held a single sentinel. It didn't look as if the security would be very difficult to breach, but the mansion was definitely too big to search room by room.

It would have to be boldness, nerve, and luck. A lot of luck, Bre

The guard was engrossed in Peregrine, who wore an undeniably attractive costume that was slit down nearly to her navel. Bre

The guard opened the door. "Where did you come from?"

"A cab." Bre

"Oh, oh sure," the guard said. "I heard it. What do you want?"

Bre

"The boss sent me. About the girl," he said, keeping as vague as possible while making his voice assured and knowing. "The boss?"

"Call Scar. He knows."

The guard turned, picked up a phone. He hung up after a few seconds of muffled conversation and touched a panel in front of him. The wrought-iron gate swung open silently.

"Go on in," he said, turning back to the television, where Hiram and Peregrine were eating sugar-coated chocolate crepes with delighted looks on their faces. Bre

"One more thing," he said.

The guard sighed, turned slowly, more than half-watching the television set.

Bre

Scar needed a gardener. The yard had turned feral. The grass hadn't been cut all summer; the shrubberies had gone crazy. Untended, they had spilled over their original boundaries and provided a fairly dense undergrowth beneath the thick, untrimmed trees. It was more of an acre or two of forest than a front yard and for a moment it made Bre

The man who answered the front door had the insolence of a city punk and the gun that he carried under his armpit in a shoulder rig looked big enough to bring down an elephant.

"Come on in. Scar's got a client. They're with the girl." Bre

Scar kept a little better care of the interior of his mansion than he did of the yard, but not much. The marble parquet floor was filthy, and there were stale odors clogging the air that made Bre

His guide turned to the left, passed through a metal detector which beeped once, and looked back at Bre