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.By coming through and beginning his search for Jenny and Holly, he had been taking positive action.But now he was about to place himself in the hands of another once again, and he wasn’t sure quite what he thought about that.The only person he knew he could trust for sure was Trix.“We’re looking for Jim’s wife and daughter,” Trix said.“They’ve been pulled through from our own Boston into another.Maybe this one.”“Yeah,” O’Brien said.He looked back and forth between Jim and Trix, his expression unreadable, eyes twinkling with humor or, perhaps, disbelief.He crossed his arms and sighed heavily, but it was merely the action of a tired man.“And you’re Uniques.The both of you.Friends.”He knows, Jim thought.O’Brien looked at Trix, seeming to see deeper than mere flesh and skin.“Good friends.And that”—he nodded down at the envelope, which Jim had placed facedown on the tabletop—“that’ll be for me.”“From your counterpart in our Boston,” Jim said.O’Brien nodded thoughtfully, drinking the rest of his pint and putting down the glass so gently that it made no sound.He stretched and looked around the bar, glanced at his watch, then focused his attention back on Jim and Trix.“It’s been a long day,” he said.“You look tired, both of you.And it’s been a long day for me, too, what with …” He waved one hand, and Jim wondered what wonders O’Brien had performed today, what problems he had solved and lost things he had found.“A couple of hours’ sleep will do wonders for us all, and come sunrise I’ll be better able to help you.”“You can’t help us now?” Jim asked.“I could,” O’Brien said.“I could start.But I can’t just”—he clicked his fingers—“out of thin air.I need to talk to you about them.In depth, personally, and a lot of it will be about you as much as them.I need to understand your link to them in order to grab hold of it and pull them in.I need to know them so that I can find them.A name’s nothing to me without knowledge of who that name belongs to, and it might not be so easy for you, tired as you are.Maybe your Oracle’s better at this sort of thing.You understand?”“Not really,” Jim said.“I do,” Trix said, smiling, and Jim thought of her story about her grandfather.“But—”“A few hours,” O’Brien said.“There’s a room made up on the second floor, bathroom attached.It’s a double, but …” He raised one eyebrow.“That’s fine,” Trix said, smiling.“I thought it would be.” O’Brien leaned forward and used one finger to pull the envelope from beneath Jim’s hand.For a second Jim wanted to press down, hold it back, but he was not sure why.Insurance? Fear? Or maybe there was no reason at all.O’Brien dragged the envelope across the table to him—it whispered, like a voice in the dark—turned it over, and looked at the writing on the front without expression.“You’ll wake us?” Jim asked.“Sure.You’ll hear me.” O’Brien looked up from the envelope.“And Jim … Don’t worry.We’ll find your family, for sure.”Jim nodded, unable to talk because the tears were a pressure behind his eyes once again.He and Trix stood, and he realized how right O’Brien had been.He was exhausted.A couple of hours’ sleep would take the edge off his exhaustion, and then tomorrow … tomorrow, he would find his wife and daughter.“Come on,” Trix said, grabbing Jim’s arm and steering him toward the door O’Brien had pointed out behind the bar.“Sleep well!” the Oracle called.As they walked up the curving stairway, Jim heard the sound of paper tearing.And then he heard O’Brien speak again, cursing under his breath.“Oh, you bitch,” Peter O’Brien said, anger and resignation in his voice.What could Veronica have written? Jim wondered.But silence followed, and Jim continued up toward what he hoped would be a moment’s peace.The Worst Day Since YesterdayTRIX PADDED down the corridor of Peter O’Brien’s apartment in her bare feet, exhausted but still alert.Her skin prickled with awareness of her dislocation.In college it had not been that unusual for her and Jenny to end up sleeping on sofas and in guest rooms after parties off-campus or even across town.But she was an adult now, and she could not relax in a stranger’s home.Knowing that the city around her was foreign to her, that she was an intruder here, only made it worse.She opened the door to the guest bedroom, the hinges creaking, and stepped inside.Jim glanced up as she closed the door behind her.He sat in a captain’s chair by the window, sketching with a pencil he had found in a small drawer in the girl’s vanity in the corner.O’Brien might call this a guest room, but it had obviously once been occupied by a young female, and he hadn’t changed the décor enough to make it suitably neutral for a guest room.“Jim,” Trix said
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