LITMIR.BIZ

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her choice of this store had been an impulse.

      No point in delaying the inevitable. She reached in her purse and took out a slender little pocketknife, flipped it open and slit the side of the envelope, very carefully. Preserving what evidence there might be. She slid the paper out with a pair of tweezers from her purse and moved shirts to lay it flat on the table.

      It didn’t require much scrutiny. It read, ONE OF YOU HAS MADE A MISTAKE, and the letterhead said Eidolon Corporation—easy enough to fake, if someone went to the trouble of doing it. No signature. She held it up to the light. No watermark. No secret messages. No hints as to its meaning. “One of you”? Meaning her? Jazz? McCarthy? A member of the Cross Society? Impossible to tell. It was a meaningless taunt, a message designed to unnerve; showy, like the delivery by courier. Designed to prove that they could literally find her anywhere.

      Just like the Cross Society. Presuming that someone in the Cross Society hadn’t sent it in the first place.

      Stewart had been following her. Was it possible he was Eidolon? Eminently, she decided. Cross Society? She hadn’t exactly been provided with a full and forthright disclosure of their membership, but somehow she couldn’t see Ken Stewart believing in the things that the Cross Society took for granted: things like premonitions, and psychics, and the ability to alter the future.

      Then again, maybe that explained the erosion she sensed in him, the jittery nervousness. The world was fraying around him, and he was unraveling with it.

      She could completely sympathize.

      Jazz would probably have ditched the note and pelted down the street, collared Stewart and pummeled him until she got what she wanted to know….

      Jazz.

      Lucia’s smile faded as she flipped open her cell phone and speed-dialed Borden’s number. He picked up on the second ring, sounding lazy and sleep-soaked. He sobered up fast when she identified herself.

      “Hey. Um, good morning. What time—crap. It’s late. I overslept.”

      “Is Jazz with you?” she asked.

      There was a short pause and then the tenor of the call changed; she heard the rustle of sheets, a sleepy murmur, the quiet closing of a door. He’d stepped into the bathroom, or the hall. “She’s asleep,” he said. “I don’t want to wake her up if I don’t have to. Do I? Have to wake her up?”

      “Soon,” Lucia said. “A courier just delivered a note to me in a red envelope. Did she get one?”

      “No deliveries—shit. Hang on.” The phone rattled, set down on a counter, she guessed. He was back in less than ten seconds. “Yeah. Somebody slid it under the door. Is it a job?”

      “Don’t you usually compose the messages?”

      “Sometimes,” he said cautiously. Borden was Cross Society, in it up to his neck; Lucia liked him a great deal, but at times like these, she was bitterly aware that trust might be a separate issue. “Look, I can’t go into the way it works, not on the phone.”

      “Yes, I get your point. Open it.”

      “You’re sure?”

      “Yes.”

      There was a rattle, a pause…. “It says, ‘One of you has made a mistake.’ On Eidolon Corporation letterhead. Holy shit.” She heard his breathing go faster. “They know where we are. I have to get Jazz up, right now.”

      “Wait. Have you ever seen one from Eidolon before?” Lucia realized that she was pacing, a habit when she was nervous. The store clerk was watching her. Not, she was relieved to see, in any way that implied he was a conspirator; no, this was the plain, unvarnished interest she was used to attracting. She gave him a small smile and he found something to be busy with that took him out of her line of sight.

      “Lucia, they know where we are. She’s not safe here. Hell, I’m not safe—”

      “Have they ever sent you a message before?” she asked again, with strained patience.

      His composure broke completely. “Look, I don’t get messages from anybody. I’m not a goddamn Lead!”

      She felt a hot flare of irritation. Leads. According to the Cross Society, she and Jazz were Leads, carrying major roles in the chaotic, enormous play of life and death on Planet Earth. “Actors” influenced certain events at crucial moments, but—again, according to the Cross Society’s rather esoteric theory—Leads operated at a kind of nexus point. Jazz had told her, in a quiet voice that meant she had come to believe it, that the Cross Society psychic, Max Simms, had summed it up: Everything you do matters.

      It was a frightening thought. It didn’t get any less frightening the longer it stuck around.

      She kept doggedly on the subject. “Have you ever heard of Eidolon contacting anyone in the Cross Society directly?”

      He sucked in an angry breath. “No. If you’re done—”

      “Almost. Who knew where you were taking her?”

      “Nobody.”

      “You didn’t make the call from—”

      “I booked the reservations at an Internet kiosk using a one-time-only card. Fake name. Believe me, nobody knew we were coming here.”

      There were ways, nevertheless, if the opposition was strong enough. And if Eidolon Corporation was what Max Simms had claimed, a major technological entity with ties to the federal government, then retasking a satellite and painting Borden’s car with a laser tag wouldn’t have been very difficult.

      If, if, if.

      Borden suddenly said, “It’s us. Me and Jazz—maybe it has to do with us.”

      “You think being in love with her is the mistake they’re referring to?”

      “I never said—” He gave up on the reflexive male denial, to his credit. “No, I don’t.”

      “Then it’s entirely possible it might be referring to the events of this morning. To my helping McCarthy get released.”

      “Then why not just send it to you? Why send it to you and Jazz?”

      “McCarthy’s connected to both of us now. I think the better question is, why would Eidolon warn us? Wouldn’t they want us to be making mistakes?”

      “I have no idea what Eidolon wants,” Borden growled. “Look, I barely know what my boss wants half the time. So as far as figuring out motives, good luck. Screw this, I’m waking her up and getting her out of here. Now.”

      “Yes, you’d better get her back to Manny’s.” If there was any such thing as a safe place, given what they’d learned about the world and the Cross Society and Eidolon, it would be in Manny’s Fortress of Solitude. Wherever it currently resided, since he moved house as often as banks took holidays.

      “You’re talking like a cop,” Borden said. “If Eidolon wants us, they can find us. Well, they can find me, anyway. You and Jazz, it’s tougher, since you’re Leads. They can only predict you through the effects you have, not your exact location.”

      “Then how did they just deliver me a note? How did the Cross Society deliver one to Jazz that first night?”

      He gave a rattling sigh. “It’s too freaking early for philosophy and physics, Lucia. But Leads blip on and off the radar. You’re a blur most of the time, but sometimes they can see you clearly. It’s like somebody who usually drives really fast having car trouble. But on the more mundane level, have you considered that somebody could have been following you?”

      Stewart, again. And if she accepted the idea that the note was legitimately from Eidolon, the Cross Society’s adversary in this war of premonitions, then … it changed things. Not for the better. “All right. We’ll need to have a strategy meeting later at the office—one o’clock? Bring Jazz in through

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