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at Maliha’s hands.
    Yanmeng’s method of eating croissants was to bite them straight through, one end to the other, no mercy. He had a few flakes of pastry caught in his white moustache. The corners of Maliha’s lips turned up, until she remembered that this was a solemn conversation.
    “No.”
    There was an awkward silence. She’d hoped for more from him.
    “You told me once that you loved me,” Maliha said. She’d been riding a camel at the time and had nearly fallen off, until Yanmeng made it clear he wasn’t talking about romantic love. “What did you mean by that?”
    “I meant that you have earned my love, my respect, and my loyalty. I have given myself over to your cause. I would die for you.”
    Maliha lowered her head. She couldn’t take the intensity of the look that Yanmeng was giving her, a look like an X-ray reading her inner truth. “Wouldn’t you consider that unconditional love, then?”
    “No, because if you return to the service of the demon Rabishu and assassinate at his will, I would be betrayed.”
    “You have my word I will never do that,” Maliha said.
    “You are a worthy person, regardless of your past,” he said.
    A few minutes passed during which Maliha unraveled another croissant. All of sudden it struck her that this was Yanmeng she was sitting with, Yanmeng who could already walk different planes of existence, Yanmeng who was on his way to joining the god Anu in the highest plane. She viewed his aura and was stunned at the beautiful white and gold light radiating from him. He’d progressed far since the last time she’d looked.
    With a gasp, she bowed her head. “You honor me.”
    He waved his hand. “We’re just two friends talking. And cut out that aura viewing. My wife Eliu says I already have a big head.”
    “I killed your son.” Duh. He already knows that.
    “You removed a scourge of evil from the world. Xietai betrayed Eliu and me a long time ago. What kind of son turns his parents in for death sentences to gain favor for himself with the government? Our love was broken!”
    “Thank you for saving my life. I brought home something of his, a knife. Do you want it as a memento?”
    Mixed emotions played across Yanmeng’s face. In spite of his words, pain showed in his eyes. “No. We’re finished talking about Xietai. Hound mentioned that you had some scraped skin on your back. I’ve got just the thing for it, some salve my grandmother used to make. Let’s take a look. I hope he didn’t mess anything up.”
    T he stars sang of adventure and Maliha’s ears were tuned to them. It had been three days since her arrival home, three days during which Hound and Yanmeng had alternated treating her back. The wound was healed enough by her standards, yet Yanmeng kept putting on gray gooey stuff that smelled like fish, and Hound kept washing it off in favor of antiseptic cream. Finally she mutinied and declared that no one would attempt to heal any part of her, ever.
    Hound had nothing definitive to report about Arnie Henshaw.
    “Arnie made few phone calls, most of them for food delivery. He’d purchased a one-way ticket to Antigua, one of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. The building management said he’d given written notice two weeks before his disappearance, saying that he was retiring to some peace and quiet, no forwarding address given. Then he’d taken accumulated vacation days for the two weeks of his notice, so the day his resignation letter came in was the last day anyone saw him,” Hound said.
    “I wonder what the rush was. If he’d been planning this retirement for a while, he could have worked the last two weeks,” Maliha said.
    “He was within the letter of the regulations to pull that trick, but it was the act of someone not concerned about getting a good reference for his next place of employment. Someone retiring and leaving the country and his former life behind. Human Resources was concerned that they had no place to send his last