Who Watches

by Thia (105407.3066@compuserve.com)

Archive: Master-Apprentice and EwanSlash -- anyone else want it, just ask

Category: First-Time, Crossover: Eye of the Beholder, Angst, AU

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: Vague het intimations, but nothing serious, as well as m/m and f/f. Obsession. See spoilers below.

Spoilers: Eye of the Beholder. No spoilers for TPM.

Feedback: on-list, off-list, all is welcome. Flames ignored.

Disclaimer: Not mine. I am not George Lucas, not that I think he'd recognize any of his creations herein. I am also not whoever made Eye of the Beholder, or else I'd have made the soundtrack available. I am also not whoever wrote 'I Wish You Love', which is recklessly quoted herein. No money made here.

Summary: What happens when the watcher is watched?

Notes: Back when 'Eye of the Beholder' came out, there was some discussion on-list about the Eye encountering Qui-Gon, or BlueGhostie!Qui-Gon watching Obi-Wan the way the Eye watches his targets in the film. Oooh, nifty, I thought, and then spent way too long actually writing the sucker. So thanks go to Annie Carr for providing the initial plot-bunny, Sickleweed for alternately nagging and cheerleading me into writing and re-writing and outlining and re-re-writing, and Fox, Catnip, Cupcake, and Shannon for beta-reading. All remaining mistakes are deliberate.

He was being watched.

The Eye did not pause in checking his surveillance equipment at the thought. Of course he was being watched. It was a part of the price one paid, being a part of the Agency. One observed and one was observed. Qui custos custodes and so on. Before -- well, before, he'd even gotten a bit of a thrill out of the sensation.

Exhibitionist, Margaret had called him. No. Fucking exhibitionist. Or was it voyeur?

He slammed the thought into the back of his mind, with all the rest of the things he refused to think about, and straightened up, stretching to take the kinks out of his back. He automatically scanned the room as he did so, but whoever had bugged the place was very good. Nothing obvious, even to a trained pair of eyes. Only that certain quality of silence.

For a moment he felt a thrill of nerves. He wasn't used to silence. Between the hum of his computers, his microphones, and his daughter -- but for the moment his computers were turned off, and his daughter was nowhere in sight. It was only him, and his watcher.

Poor sod, his life must be truly boring if he thought it interesting to watch a professional voyeur. The Eye bent back over his equipment. He had work to do.

"He's been given a new assignment." A woman's voice, more casual than coldly professional despite her serious tone.

"Already?" A man's voice, rich and deep with a hint of Ireland to it. "I thought you wanted him focused less on his work. A matter of burnout."

"It's just something quick -- a slap on the wrist to the boss's son. Another bimbo's on the scene. Naughty boy has been forging signatures to steal money from a trust fund. Lucky Legs -- Eye, I mean -- is supposed to go and find out why." A sigh. "You know the drill, Jinn."

"Of course."

"And Equipment says to come in and pick up your repaired video pick-up any time. Why they couldn't just call you themselves, I don't know."

A chuckle. "Tell them I'll be down when I come back from this venture, Hil."

"Will do...glorified receptionist, that's what I am..."

Another chuckle, then dial tone.

What was it about this woman?

"...the money?"

"It's right here in my bag, safe and sound."

He'd been given scutwork, and knew it. The boss wasn't really interested in whether young Hugo had embezzled from his trust fund. He just wanted the boy separated from whatever enterprising young woman had egged the young man on. A simple job. Go in, take a few pictures, throw the fear of his father into Paul Hugo, go home.

Then, after following Hugo into that museum, he'd looked at the young woman in question through his camera lens, and she had looked back.

Perhaps Margaret had been right all along, and his work was affecting his mind. But he'd felt something. A quicksilver jolt of connection, a woman's voice whispering his first name over and over again. Nobody had called him Stephen for years.

"This is nice."

"Do you like it? Nobody can see us for a million miles."

Never let them see you. It was the first rule of surveillance. Never get involved. That was -- well, not another of the rules that his teachers had drummed into him, back in the days when he was a whiz kid with the Agency, still wet behind the ears, but nonetheless one he'd followed. Yet here he sat in his car, camouflaged behind trees and the coming storm, submerged in the distant voyeurism of camera and directional mike, and he couldn't stop thinking about the woman even as he taped her with Hugo.

"A Pisces! How seventies. What, you actually into that crap?"

"As a matter of fact I am."

And to make matters worse, he still had that feeling of being watched himself.

He resisted the impulse to look around. (Never let them see you.) He had his own job to do. Concentrate on the computer and on his target.

"...broad-minded, artistic, sensitive; we're also extremely selfish, manic-depressive substance-abusers -- all depends on what side of the bed I get up on."

"All depends on whose bed, huh--"

"Wait."

"What do you want? What?"

"Now we're going to play a game."

The Eye watched as the woman pulled out a tarp and spread it out on the floor, then pulled off her dress. Young Hugo fell to his knees at her direction, half-laughing, half-moaning even as the woman undid his tie and re-bound it around his eyes. Kinky, the Eye thought. Not in the boy's usual way of bimbos. Might explain her hold on him. He'd just take a few more pictures, pass them back to the boss, get the man off his back, and forget --

Then he saw the knife in her hand, and some part of his hind-brain that had been reluctant to work made the jump.

No.

No, no, no, no--

He thought she screamed as she stabbed the stupid boy, the idiot boy who'd trusted her so easily. He knew he screamed, his instruments overloading. No, she wasn't supposed to do that, this was beyond his jurisdiction, fuck --

Calm down!

Calm down. Yes. He threw open his door, nearly fell out of the car, and raced toward the house. Practical. (Don't be seen.) Evidence. He had to retrieve the evidence. (Don't get involved.) He got halfway up the stairs, then swore at himself again silently and ran back down. He couldn't stop the murder now, and couldn't reach the planted camera that way without going through the apartment and straight past her. Down to the stone trellis, then. He pulled himself up the pillars, and stretched for the camera, grimacing as he pulled it loose --

A flash of lightening startled him, and the camera slipped through his fingers to shatter on the pavement below. If she'd heard that -- he looked up, and saw the murderess crumpled on the floor by her victim, staring sightlessly out at him, knife still held loosely in her hand. She was crying now, the ugly, gut-wrenching, sobs of a child.

"Merry Christmas, Daddy...merry christmas..."

Then she was sobbing again, and the Eye remembered he had to get going before she saw him. He swung down from the trellis, scooped up the remains of the camera, and headed back to the car.

He should call the Agency, get someone else in here. He had the murder in fucking color photographs, enough for any prosecutor. But the oncoming storm had rendered his cell phone useless, and he couldn't drive to some police station and report her. Not with that quicksilver connection that had formed between them -- not without so much as a name for the girl. With another soft curse he tossed the phone aside, and looked back at the apartment. Empty. She was gone.

No. He could see movement on the outside stairs, hear the heavy slither of something being dragged. She was taking the plastic-wrapped corpse out to the pier. The Eye took his chance while he had it. Up into the apartment, where he carefully bagged the glass she'd used. At least he could check for fingerprints --

As he turned away from the table, he glanced out the window for the lady in question. There she was, still down by the pier, naked as the day she was born. She'd just heaved the corpse into the water. Then she looked up at the sky, as the heavens opened and rain poured down. She stretched, and reached up as if to run her hands through her hair, then pulled off the dark wig she'd apparently been wearing and tossed that into the water, too, before reaching up to lazily begin rinsing off the blood.

"Don't leave her, Daddy," Lucy's voice whispered.

No. No. She was a murderer and a blackmailer. The moment of connection in the museum had been a hallucination. It wouldn't be the first time -- hadn't he just heard another man's voice, ordering him to calm down when he needed to do so?

"She's just a little girl...don't leave her alone."

She looked so young, out there in the rain.

He had a job to do.

But it still took a long moment before he remembered the danger of being found here by a woman who'd just killed someone.

The Eye followed the young woman by car to Pittsburgh. At the train station there he contacted the Agency, saying it was a Breach 3 emergency. But even as the Agency prepared to call in the troops, the Eye changed his mind, canceled the emergency, and followed the woman on his own.

"You better have a damn good explanation for this." The woman's voice vibrates, quiet and intense, just barely audible over the rattle of a train. "You don't just call off a Breach 3 like that. What's going on?"

"Unfortunately, I don't know," the man says calmly. "I'm not a mind-reader, Hil. He was looking over some surveillance photographs at the time. Perhaps he saw something in them."

The woman sighs. "That's not going to be enough for the brass. Where is he?"

"En route to New York."

"At least he told the truth about that."

"He knows what he's doing, Hil." Another sigh from the woman, and the man adds in a lower, reassuring voice, "If you will not trust him, trust me."

"I trust both of you," the woman says. "But I'm not sure about this."

"It's under control." Dial tone.

'It's under control.'

A lie, and Jinn knew it. The Eye was not under control, not even his own. Something had happened to turn his focus from his work to this woman. Jinn didn't know what, not yet. But he would learn. Not for the official questions which must be answered. For his own curiosity. For one man alone who recognized another. He wasn't quite under control either.

He raised his eyes to watch the man down the train-car frowning over his lap-top. "Soon," he murmured aloud, and smiled.

Her first day in New York City, the woman now calling herself Debra Yates tended to the business of selling her stolen goods, watched the skating on a public pond, then went out and drank herself into a stupor.

Her second day in New York, she woke late, sat around smoking and drinking, then in the evening headed out into the streets again. The Eye followed at a careful distance, down past bored whores and their equally bored johns, through streets of closed stores, to a bar quite a way from her current apartment. Trolling for another victim, the Eye guessed. Was this how she'd picked up young Hugo? In a bar like this? Men and women trickled into it, greeting each other with loud cheerfulness, and the Eye hesitated as he saw a couple of very obvious transvestites going in. Rather than following 'Debra' in, he walked past the bar, glancing in the window. Crowded. Not the sort of place where he could sit in a corner and watch unobtrusively, as he had the night before, not if he wanted to keep track of his object. Instead, he found a nearby doorway, made himself comfortable, and pretended to doze.

Sure enough, she emerged within half an hour, arm-in-arm with a companion...not a man at all, but a woman. They were stumbling a bit, as if already drunk, and giggling together like two teenagers. The Eye rose and shadowed them, straight back to her apartment.

He closed and locked his own door, then sank down before his monitor and watched in confusion. This did not fit into the pattern he'd seen. No prickly condescension; no cold, calculated sexuality like he'd seen that first night with Paul Hugo or on the train with the dark-haired man. Instead, the two women kissed, sometimes butterfly light, sometimes deep and wet, mouths open as if they would swallow each other whole. When they broke apart, they were both laughing, as if at some joke only they knew.

The unknown woman leaned in again, and kissed Debra's forehead, her cheeks, her nose. Debra closed her eyes, smiling still, and the unknown laughed again before obligingly kissing her closed eyelids as well. "You're so beautiful," she said, leaning back again.

Debra only opened her eyes and shook her head, reaching out to begin unbuttoning the other woman's blouse. The woman didn't object, only began unbuttoning Debra's top as well, the two women laughing again when their hands and arms got into each other's way. When the unknown's blouse was completely undone, she abandoned Debra's and stepped back, out of Debra's reach, to strip it off, then slowly and elaborately undo her skirt and pull that off as well. She posed for a moment, in pantyhose, bra and low heels. The Eye couldn't see her expression; her back was to the camera.

Debra smiled, and shook her head. The Eye could see silver tear-tracks on her face as she dropped to her knees to nuzzle against the other woman's belly.

The unknown made a noise in her throat like a purr, and looked down at Debra, one hand caressing the kneeling woman's neck. "Bed," she said.

Debra rose to her feet again, and gestured toward the hallway. "That way," she said, pulling off her own blouse and hastily shucking her skirt. The other woman waited by the hallway, then took Debra's hand and led her beyond the camera's range.

The Eye took a deep, shuddering breath. His eyes felt dry and hot. It didn't fit. This woman killed --

And then stood naked in the December rain, tilted her head up to it, let it wash the blood away in the roar of the thunder and the fitful glare of the lightning.

Through the murmur of his memory he heard music. She must have a stereo in her bedroom, he thought. Something soft and bluesy, fit for slow-dancing. I wish you bluebirds in the spring...to give your heart a song to sing... In counterpoint to it, he could hear moans, gasps, another sort of music he'd nearly forgotten. How long had it been since...

The Eye slumped in his seat, and covered his face with his hands. He could still hear, and in the darkness he could imagine far too clearly.

He was still there when the other woman left in the morning.

"I'm so sorry I can't stay for breakfast -- you know how it is."

Debra smiled a little, and shook her head. She wore a satin dressing gown, elaborately patterned, in vivid contrast to the gray wool office suit of the other. "No, it's all right."

"You have my number, right?" The unknown hesitated in the doorway out. "If you ever have a night free, call me."

"I will," Debra promised, and closed the door behind her. She was still smiling that little bit, and humming to herself as she came out to the living room and began picking up her clothing.

When she went out again later, the Eye didn't follow her. Instead, he stayed inside and worked, trying to force concentration when none would come.

She's just a little girl.

But little girls didn't behave like that, did they?

After a few hours, he abandoned the fine work of implanting the bug in the Pisces necklace he'd impulsively bought for Debra. His daughter stood at his elbow, tunelessly singing that same damn song Debra had had on the stereo last night, rattling a noise-maker everywhere he turned.

"Lucy --"

She kept singing. And then a kiss, but more than this, I wish you love -- He checked the refrigerator, passing Lucy again, bouncing another noise-maker. Nothing to drink except a bottle of water, not even cola, certainly not anything to let him get drunk. Professional habits dyed hard.

"Lucy, be quiet."

He stepped into his bedroom, bottle of water in hand, with the momentary thought of taking a nap, clearing his mind, perhaps giving himself some relief from tension. But Lucy was there too, skipping rope on his blankets, the thump of her feet on the mattress punctuating the same damn song, echoing wherever he went.

"Stop it."

That you and I, could never be--

He gritted his teeth and stepped back into the main room, passing Lucy yet again, whirling her noisemaker, singing that same song in that same tuneless childish voice, couldn't escape from it no matter where he went--

"Lucy, be quiet!"

Lucy went silent immediately, looking at him with large eyes before slumping and fixing her gaze on the noise-maker now still in her lap. Damn. He'd fucked it up again. "I'm -- I'm sorry," he said, trying to find the words when he wasn't even sure why he was apologizing. She was a hallucination. His real daughter was far beyond his reach, with Margaret, wherever she had gone. But Lucy was all he had, except for his watcher and --

Movement on the monitor caught his eye, and he crouched down to see better.

Debra had returned at last. Her face was calm, as well as he could see from the grainy picture, and she didn't pause in the living room. Instead she turned into the hallway, dropping her purse on the table. A moment later, he heard the gurgling of water in the pipes.

A bath. She was going to slip into hot water, covered with bubbles, and forget herself for a little while. Perhaps she'd be remembering last night.

Without allowing himself to think about it, the Eye moved to his own bathroom, reaching out to touch the wall with reverent fingers. On the other side of this, she sat in her own bathtub. He stepped forward into his empty tub, resting his head against the wall. He could hear her, if he listened hard enough -- the faint whisper of song. Same thing as last night. 'I wish you bluebirds in the spring...'

She sounded...happy. Content. He pressed against the wall, the tile cold against his cheek, as if by simple pressure he could see her lounging in the warm water, or erase the boundary between the object of his yearning and himself.

What if...what if...

Jinn reached out and traced the lines of the form on his monitor. Static crackled around his fingertip, and he withdrew his hand again.

It was only a picture...pixels behind glass. The man himself was the next floor down, unaware of hungry eyes watching him discover his own loneliness.

Jinn had been contacted some months previous for a somewhat...unusual...assignment. "Stephen Wilson. Codename Eye."

"What of him?"

His contact had hesitated. "His wife left him, seven years back," she said at last. "Took their daughter with her. She said he was too wrapped up in his work."

It was an old story, all too common in their job. It certainly wasn't enough to explain why he would be set this assignment. He waited.

"He's good," his contact said, after a moment's pause. "Don't get me wrong. He's very good. But there are signs he's not entirely...stable."

Jinn glanced back over the information he'd been sent. She'd given him the official reports from the Eye's last few assignments, the Eye's basic data (height, weight, eye and hair color, distinguishing physical characteristics, marital status, and so on), and the results of his last psychiatric examination. Inconclusive, all of it. If this could be believed, the detective had been erratic even before his wife walked out on him. Within the last year or so --

"He tried to find his family: his daughter, especially," the contact continued. "Even used Agency resources, but no luck. The wife must've had professional help. Finally, about a year ago, he apparently gave up."

"What do you want me to do?" he'd asked.

"Just watch him," his contact told him. "Let us know if anything...unusual occurs. Don't let him see you."

So he'd begun watching the Eye, more and more for himself rather than the Agency. He recognized a kindred spirit. Not in the details, perhaps -- he'd never married, his few attempts at long-term relationships with either gender hadn't been terribly successful, and he'd never had any children. But he admired the Eye's dry, quiet sense of humor, the fierce loyalty to his family even after they'd vanished out of his reach, and his obvious skill at their shared profession. And Jinn recognized the loneliness, the attempts to find purpose in work, the stunted bid to reach out for some sort of connection with another being.

Soon, he said silently to the man in the room below. Soon I'll give you what you need to fill yourself, and you'll fill me in return. Soon.

Jinn sat back from the monitor again, and watched unblinking.

At last the Eye forced himself to sit back. He was sitting in his own damn bathtub, fully clothed, and shivering like a drug user in withdrawal. He had to get out, get some sleep, forget about this woman for a while, or else he'd drown in her.

It took him two hours to fall asleep. And when he fell asleep, he dreamed.

He was walking city streets, some place he didn't recognize. He was looking for something. No -- someone. Looking for someone. The streets warped around him, endlessly long. Occasionally he passed people, walking as he was or standing on street-corners, but he barely stopped to look at them. With the logic of dreamers, he knew they weren't who he sought.

At last a hand caught him by the arm and pulled him into an alleyway. He looked up, into dark blue eyes framed by shaggy hair, and smiled. Of course. This was who he'd been looking for.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" the other man asked in reply.

Who watches those who watch? "Quidam," he answered carelessly -- 'whoever' --- and was rewarded with a smile in return, little more than a faint turn of the lips and gleam in the eyes. Then the man -- Quidam, the dreamer's mind named him -- turned the Eye so his back was to the brick wall, and bent to kiss him. The Eye tilted his head back to give the man easier access.

They kissed, lips and tongues and open mouths. At last Quidam pulled back a little bit, and met the Eye's gaze. The Eye looked back, waiting without being sure what he was waiting for. The other man smiled a little, and knelt gracefully before him. His hands went to the Eye's belt, undoing it with the ease of long practice.

The Eye looked down, knotting his hands into fists against the wall. Night was falling in this city without a name. The faint gleam of a distant streetlight, and the brighter shining of the headlights from cars passing on the street beyond them, rendered Quidam a moving shadow illuminated only by moments. The light picked out faint threads of silver and gold in his hair and beard, and highlighted the lighter shade of his face and hands as he unzipped the Eye's pants and drew them down with his briefs to his knees. Quidam smiled again, eyes dark in the shadow, and for a moment the Eye felt something more than arousal slam into him, an awareness--

(The dreamer hesitated on the edge of waking. Then he turned over, and slipped back beneath the surface of consciousness.)

Then Quidam reached up and stroked the Eye's erection, a tantalizingly light touch, and the Eye caught his breath at the sensation. His hips bucked, and Quidam chuckled softly, pressing them back with his free hand. "Gently," he said. His voice was deep and rich.

The other man stroked again, rubbing his thumb against the exposed head to smear around the pre-come, then leaned forward and took the Eye into his mouth.

Warm. Wet. The Eye heard himself groan as Quidam took him in deeper, sucking lightly, then backed off to taste him more slowly. His tongue explored the exposed head of the Eye's cock. The enervating careful scrape of teeth made the Eye hiss, and Quidam chuckled again before taking him deep and at last allowing the Eye to thrust.

Too much. Too long since...too much...the warm, wet mouth sucking at him, the knowing touch -- the Eye's nerves overloaded, and he groaned long and low as he lost control and came. After a moment, still panting, he realized he'd thrown his head back against the wall. He rolled his head back and forth to relieve the muscles tensed there, then looked down.

Quidam still knelt there, watching him, gleam of eyes in a dark alley. He licked his lips unselfconsciously, then tugged the Eye's pants and briefs back up. The Eye pulled them the rest of the way up, and looked up from zipping the fly to find Quidam had risen to his feet. The taller man leaned forward again, bracing his arms on either side of the Eye's head. The Eye met his gaze, trying to hide his own uncertainty. The other man's body pressed against his, and he could feel Quidam was aroused. Bloody hell, the man had a sequoia stuffed down the front of his trousers. Was the Eye supposed to jerk him off? Somehow it didn't seem like enough.

Quidam brushed his lips over the Eye's, soft and wet from -- well, from him, the Eye supposed. He hesitantly leaned forward a bit himself, returning pressure when Quidam kissed him again, and opening to the other man's tongue. There was another taste there, musk and salt. His own taste.

Quidam backed away, then reached out to press down on the Eye's shoulders. His turn, apparently.

(The dreamer rolled over again restlessly, but the dream's grip was too strong.)

The Eye knelt, hands going to the other man's belt. He glanced up, but the other man said nothing, only turned so his back rested against the door where the Eye's had been. His hands still rested on the Eye's shoulders. The Eye took a deep breath and let it out, then began unbuckling Quidam's belt. It fell apart in his hands, sliding out of the loops of its own accord. He laid one finger on the button of Quidam's jeans. It, too, fell off, and the zipper unzipped before his gaze.

So far, well done. He hesitated there, looking at the shape distending the other man's briefs. One of Quidam's hands left his shoulder and came up to stroke his hair, as if he were a cat. The gentle touch gave the Eye courage to go forward. He reached up and tugged down underwear and jeans both. Guided by the hand on his head, he leaned in to explore Quidam's penis with tentative licks. He smelled of musk and soap, clean and warm, but he didn't taste the same as the flavor he'd shared with the Eye of himself. He tasted...stronger. Darker. The Eye opened his mouth and took in the head, sucking at it lightly, caressing with lips and tongue as well as he could.

Quidam let him draw back, then drew him forward again. The Eye gagged as the other man's cock hit the back of his throat, and automatically pulled back. This was harder than he'd thought it would be. Quidam's grip on his hair tightened, preventing him from withdrawing entirely, and he heard the other man murmur something -- in English, in Latin, he couldn't tell, only that it was encouragement of some kind.

The Eye nodded as well as he could with his mouth full to show he'd heard, then leaned forward, swallowing carefully. With a guttural sound, Quidam thrust into his mouth. The Eye held still, sucking when he could, and moved into the rhythm, until at last the other man groaned in his turn and came. The Eye automatically swallowed, licking his lips as the other man withdrew and pulled his jeans back up. The salt/musk taste wasn't unpleasant --

Without discernible transition, the Eye awoke.

He clicked on his bedside light and looked down at himself, wrinkling his nose at the sticky mess on his belly. He'd had wet dreams before, but not like this. What the hell was going on?

He got up, went to the bathroom, and without turning on the light or looking over toward the bathtub, dampened a washcloth and cleaned himself off. Once clean, he rinsed out the washcloth and draped it over the side of the sink, then leaned forward and looked at himself in the mirror. Himself, not someone else. He could hardly see himself without the light on --

(a moving shadow, illuminated only by moments)

-- just wide eyes and a pale face. He needed more sleep.

Sleep, however, refused to come, no matter how he tossed and turned. It was that dream, he thought. It had been too long -- first the bathtub, trying to touch a woman through the wall, then this dream where he was desperate enough to go for a man --

But it hadn't felt like desperation. Hell, he hardly thought about sex at all in the normal way of things, either heterosexual or homosexual. Sex had always been something other people did, a way they exposed their vulnerable underbelly to his peering cameras. Perhaps that was it: he'd seen that 'Debra' preferred her own gender, so his subconscious thought he should do the same.

That excuse felt empty, too. The Eye lay awake all that night, and stared at the ceiling, and tried to find answers that would not come.

The woman from that second night never returned, not that the Eye saw. He didn't think Debra had killed her. Her pattern had always been to kill and run: first young Hugo, then that fool she'd picked up on the train. No, the woman was safe.

Something had put the wind up on Debra, though. A week or two after the bath and its aftermath, she became much more jumpy: double-locking her door, staring out the window for long periods, and walking the streets without purpose or destination, huddled down in her fur coat. The Eye followed her, and waited for the time when she would turn around and confront him. She never did.

(Why don't you turn around?)

That was different, he argued to himself. You couldn't catch an experienced surveillance agent by so simple a stratagem. His watcher would be back a block or two, behind other people headed the same way, with nothing to mark him. Of course, there were ways to discover who was following you, and turn the tables on them...and perhaps, after this business was finished, it would be interesting to find his watcher and talk with him.

Debra first. Debra must be first. What was her real name? Why did she kill? What went on behind those cold eyes? Had he only imagined that connection? If only his cameras were a little stronger, to see past the surface and into the mind...

Then disaster struck.

Some fool who'd been harassing her on one of her walks tried to follow her across a street, and was hit by a car. A police officer turned up later that night, threatening to arrest her for leaving the scene of an accident, looking for a bribe. And Debra, proving she had not, after all, changed her stripes, shot the cop and ran.

The Eye shrank back from his monitor, the sound of the gunshot still echoing in his ears, then forced himself to his feet and threw down his headphones. No, dammit, not again, he wouldn't panic this time. Calm down. Be practical. Make his watcher proud, he thought darkly, but he was already in motion.

He dove out his window, onto the tiny metal balcony that connected his apartment to Debra's, and in her unlocked window. First to the bathroom: hair in the drain which could be sent back to the Agency for DNA analysis. Then back to the living room: take her old Pisces necklace that had led the cop to her, and the cop's own gun that Debra had used to shoot him. Back out the window, grabbing the camera that had peered into its glass, then back into his own apartment to throw his necessities into a suitcase and race out, down the stairs, trying to beat the elevator down, trying to follow her taxi through the rainy maze of New York City.

To the airport they went, and the Eye allowed himself a moment of triumph. It lasted until he stepped through the doors, and realized he had lost her once more.

He looked down, and saw Lucy looking back up. "Where is she, Daddy?"

"I don't know, sweetheart," he said softly, looking back up. "I don't know."

There.

This particular terminal wasn't all that large, and he'd long since learned the trick of scanning a crowd for a particular face. He'd found her hiding in mink and attitude, on one of the benches scattered through the waiting area. He could almost feel her without looking, a tickling at the edge of his mind.

No. This was not the time for illusions of connection. She'd walk away without ever noticing him. He couldn't look away: if he blinked, he might miss her. He had to stay still, watch closely, and trust to instinct to keep from attracting unwanted attention.

His watcher was here, too. He could sense him, an itch in his mind to match the woman he himself was watching. If he turned around quickly enough, he'd see him, sitting on one of the hard wooden benches. But only if he could keep focused. Only if he didn't blink.

"I'm tired, Daddy. I want to go home."

"Soon, sweetheart."

"What are we doing here? It's late."

"I'm sorry, baby," he told Lucy, keeping his voice to a quiet murmur to avoid drawing the barkeeper's attention. "We can't go yet. Not yet. If I blink, I might lose her."

--or him, the Eye thought, and felt an unexpected twist in his gut at the thought of losing his watcher. He nearly missed Lucy's sulky, "So?"

"So, the last time I blinked, I lost you, I lost my wife, and I nearly lost my mind. I can't lose her."

Not again. Never again. He had a responsibility to 'Debra', or whatever name she had chosen this time. She was so vulnerable, and trying so hard to hide it.

He could let himself be vulnerable, something in him whispered. He could turn around, look into the eyes of his watcher, and -- and what? His mind couldn't seem to go beyond that first step. He could not, must not, return to the Agency, not yet. He had to keep this fragile balance between observer and observed. Just a little girl, Lucy had said. Don't leave her alone. A little girl who'd killed three times already, a little girl who didn't seem to know what she was doing.

He had her in view. All he had to do was keep watch.

Wait -- there. Rising to catch a plane. He caught up coat and suitcase, and set out in the same direction. She'd already found another man, he saw grimly, one she'd been talking with, back to her old tricks. He ignored the shout of the bartender from behind him: he'd paid the man, it couldn't be all that important. Instead, he pushed his way through the flow of people heading for the plane just called. Old woman carrying too much luggage. Middle-aged businessman shouting into his cell-phone. Tall bearded man with shaggy hair --

The Eye glanced over his shoulder, frowning, then turned back and shook his head. Focus. He was imagining things now, as jumpy as the young woman he followed. There was no sign of the man he thought he'd seen. Quidam existed no place but a dream.

He got in line for the plane to San Francisco.

Woman's voice, beginning mid-phrase: "...heard Lucky's report."

"Yes." Background of street-noise behind the man's voice.

"How much of that is the truth?"

The man hesitates. "How much of what?"

"This is not the time for games, Jinn." There's iron in the woman's tone. "Is he bullshitting me? It's been months now since he was put on this case; we'd have pulled him long since if you weren't there. How much of that whole story about Hugo and the broad was the truth?"

"We're in San Francisco, and still following the young woman."

"That's not an answer."

"His request is legitimate, Hil." A smile lightens the man's voice for a moment, then it sobers back to its usual timbre. "No tricks about that. Send the results to me as well, if you would."

A pause, then the woman says, "All right, if you say so." The fury is gone from her voice. "You'd better be telling the truth, Jinn."

Dial tone.

Jinn tucked away his phone and frowned as he scanned the area again. The Eye was nowhere to be seen. He'd been paying too much attention to his report and not enough attention to his job -- damn it! If he'd lost the younger man, there would be hell to pay, and not merely with the Agency.

Then he felt a tell-tale prickle at the back of his neck. He was being followed.

Jinn's pulse leapt, and he controlled the impulse to smile widely. The young bastard had, it seemed, spotted his tail at last, and was of a mind to play games.

He kept on down the street, past the church and the For Rent sign, refusing to look around or stop. He was too conspicuous here. Crowds. Where would he find a crowd? He glanced up and noted the street address as he reached the end of the block, then turned sharply left, heading down the street toward the nearest shopping district.

It took only a matter of moments to lose his would-be follower. The crowds helped, albeit not as much as he would have preferred. He was too tall to blend in well. But they delayed the Eye, long enough for Jinn to find a shadowed coffee-shop, and duck in to order some coffee and seat himself in a dark corner with a view of the entrance.

He watched the Eye go past, and allowed the smile to escape. Well done, my friend, he thought. Not quite well enough - it's obviously been far too long since you attempted to track a fellow tracker -- but experience will tell. The younger man must be feeling more sure of himself, if he allowed himself the time to play games like this. Or else, perhaps --

Jinn's smile faded, and he shook his head at his own foolery. Curiosity did not mean connection. The Eye had brushed past him in the airport without recognizing him as the watcher of whom he'd been, perhaps, becoming aware. Jinn would be a fool indeed to assume anything deeper than a professional interest, like his own had been in the beginning.

He swallowed the rest of his coffee, and rose to go. He had to try to change that. If only he knew how.

One Week:

"It's interesting, don't you think?" the Eye said conversationally.

Jinn looked up from his book (the latest Harry Potter) toward the monitor. The younger man had taken up residence in the bell tower of the church across the street from the new home of 'Charlotte Vincent.' In a place like that, it had been child's play to plant cameras and mikes. Jinn had heard more than he'd have cared to of the man's one-sided discussions with a daughter only he could see. But this -- this was new.

"He trusts her so absolutely," the Eye said. He was leaning against the side of the window, looking out through the slats toward Charlotte's home. "All of them do. And then she kills them."

Jinn leaned in toward the monitor, reaching out to lay one hand on it. Who did the Eye think he was talking to?

"There's not even a hint as to why. A sociopath, perhaps. It's enough to make me wish the cameras could see past the surface." The Eye looked up at last, straight at one of the cameras. "But you know that feeling, don't you?"

Jinn froze in place. The other man's changeable eyes seemed to reach through the monitor and seize him, accuse him of the same obsession he saw in the Eye.

"Of course I know it," Jinn murmured aloud at last, leaning back in his chair, not taking his gaze from the monitor. But the Eye didn't respond. Instead, he turned back to his own monitors and electronics, and said nothing for the rest of the evening.

Five Weeks:

"It has to happen sometime," the Eye said.

This didn't seem to require a response from Jinn, even if the Eye had been able to hear him. He tapped a few keys, and the monitor picture sharpened. The Eye was pacing back and forth in the small confines of the bell tower, occasionally stopping to glower at his own monitor.

"It's her nature," the Eye said. Frustration roughened his voice. "Leonard fits the damn pattern -- he's rich, open to the attentions of a pretty woman--"

"And blind," Jinn murmured, following the Eye's restless movement from one side of the bell tower to the other. "Don't forget that."

"I know he's blind," the Eye went on, as if he'd heard. "But she's never shown any pity of another man's vulnerability before now. She blindfolded young Hugo before she killed him, for God's sake." He paused, looking out the window down toward the house where 'Charlotte' was still sleeping. "Why is she waiting?"

"Why are you waiting?" Jinn glanced over at his own window, with its view of the bell tower where the Eye spent his time. "What are you waiting for?"

The Eye shook his head and turned away from the window again, to look at his surveillance equipment. "It doesn't make sense."

"Be patient," Jinn said, reaching out to pat the monitor as he would the Eye's shoulder if the other man had been there. "You're still young."

Twelve Weeks:

The Eye hardly glanced up at the sound of a car stopping in front of Charlotte's house. His eyes flickered to the monitor, then away. "Leonard again," he said aloud.

Jinn, from where he leaned by the window frame, grimaced up at the bell-tower. "Sloppy. I thought you wanted proof of every last detail."

"She's broken the pattern," the Eye said. His voice was remarkably quiet, as if talking to himself rather than to his imaginary daughter or to Jinn, his watcher. "I don't understand."

"You're waiting for the impossible," Jinn said. "Your 'little girl' has found her daddy, Stephen. It's time for you to move on." His voice was too harsh, and for a moment he was grateful the Eye couldn't hear him. The woman showed no sign of killing anyone, least of all Alexander Leonard. If anything, she seemed happy in Leonard's company, allowed to indulge her interest in the occult with a free hand. But the Eye continued to watch her unblinking whenever she was home, even in the privacy of time with Leonard. His only sign that he remembered his own watcher was these one-sided conversations.

"She seems so settled," the Eye said suddenly. "They go out and shop for groceries every week. Groceries!"

"You could be settled, too," Jinn said, turning back to look at his monitors. The Eye still lay on his thin pallet, staring up at the ceiling.

"What am I supposed to do? Be happy for her?"

"No," Jinn said, and settled himself into the chair in front of the monitors. "Give her up. Call in the guards if you must. Then turn around."

The Eye hesitated for a long moment, then shook his head at whatever he was thinking. "You don't understand."

"Do I not?"

The urge grew stronger with each night that passed. Charlotte Vincent, so called, had found something else to occupy her other than murder, theft and blackmail, and the Eye knew it. He didn't follow her anymore, though his watch of her hours at home never slackened. Only when she was away, spending the evening at Leonard's estate, did the Eye emerge, to pace away his own restlessness. It would be so easy for Jinn to quicken his step one of those times as he followed the Eye, to reach out and touch him. All he had to do was abandon his own pretense of professionalism. He could burn away the younger man's obsession with this woman in the heat of a new obsession, he knew he could.

Each night, Jinn resisted. It was too much of a chance, he told himself. They'd passed each other in the street once or twice: how could he be certain that the physical attraction would be mutual, let alone strong enough to drown reason? A shared loneliness, a yearning for a true companion, a shock of awareness from brushing past him in a crowd -- he could not be certain Stephen shared these things.

Eventually, this assignment would come to an end. He would end it himself if he must. Hilary was holding back the information she'd gotten from the hair the Eye had sent: he knew that, even if the Eye didn't suspect such a thing. She hadn't said so, but DNA testing didn't take this long. Eventually, this would end, the pseudonymous Charlotte Vincent would either be arrested or let go out of the Agency's reckoning...and then the Eye would turn around and look back at his watcher.

Give up, Jinn thought, and reached out to trace the younger man's face on the monitor with delicate fingertips. Give in. You need this connection with another human being as much as I.

Fifteen Weeks:

"He's fucking well fucking her!"

Jinn was out of his chair in a moment, nearly knocking it over as he leaned closer to his monitors and fiddled with them to try to see at two removes what was going on in the house across the way. The Eye had abandoned his own seat in front of the monitor, but the resolution was too grainy: all Jinn could see was faint movement, and the even fainter echo of moans. Jinn muttered a curse. The woman's timing, or at least her placement, could not have been worse. She should have kept to Leonard's house as she had before. Stephen wasn't ready for this information, not yet.

"He has no fucking right," the Eye spat, turning to stalk back over to the shadowed images on the monitor.

Jinn glowered down at the image of the younger man. "She's her own woman," he growled. "You might do well to remember that."

"You fool," the Eye said, but his eyes were on the monitor, and Jinn didn't think he was talking to his watcher. "You don't even know what she is, do you? You're so willing to trust her, you think you know--" He broke off, and cut his video feed with hard punches to his keyboard, then brought up another program and began typing rapidly.

Jinn set his chair back on its legs, and sat down again, not looking away from the younger man. He'd underestimated the Eye. He'd thought that when he found out that Charlotte's affair extended into the physical, that he'd give in and turn her over, out of jealousy if not duty. Obviously the younger man wasn't giving up so easily. The connection was stronger than he'd realized. "She's a murderess," he said, but the words had a plaintive, uncertain quality to them.

The Eye typed without speaking, then hit the return key and sat back. Moments later Jinn's own computer beeped an alert. Email, from the Eye to Hilary, asking with bare politeness about an update on the DNA testing.

"You don't know her either," he said aloud.

But the Eye couldn't hear him.

Fifteen Weeks, Five Days:

"Did you know?"

Jinn looked up from the book he'd been attempting to read, and quirked an eyebrow at the monitor screen. The Eye lay sprawled on his pallet again, clothing in disarray, looking straight up at the camera. His eyes glittered, dark and deep, in the shadows of the afternoon light.

"You're there, I know you are," the Eye continued after a moment's pause. "You're always there. Did you know?"

Jinn closed his book, tucking a piece of paper in to mark his place. "Did I know what?" he said wearily, setting aside the book.

"You're jealous, aren't you." The Eye turned it into a statement rather than a question. "Entirely focused on me. Should I be flattered?"

Yes, Jinn thought. No. "It's not about flattery," he said aloud, though the words rang hollow.

"What do you want to see?"

"You know," Jinn said, leaning in toward the camera. If only he could reach through the glass of the monitor: he'd always been better with touch than with words. "You want it yourself." If only the camera could see past the surface...how long had it been since the Eye said that?

Silence, and then the Eye smiled slowly, his mouth stretching into an empty curve. "Is this what you want?" he asked softly, and brought his hands up to unbutton his shirt.

Jinn gripped the arms of his chair, unable to look away. No, he thought. Stop. Not like this. But the cameras only went one way, after all, and even if he shouted the Eye would not hear him. So he watched, trapped, as the Eye undressed himself, writhing on the bed in a parody of passion as he squirmed out of his jeans and shoes, and then touched himself with the same empty calculation, jerking himself off without ever looking away from the camera's eye looking back down at him.

Jinn licked his lips, his mouth gone dry. For me...he does this for me. A dark pleasure coiled at the base of his spine.

But it meant nothing. The Eye hardly seemed to feel what he was doing to himself. His breathing remained even, his body relaxed. He didn't close his eyes, even when his cock finally spurted in orgasm. Instead, he lay there, hand falling back to his side, and stared up at the camera with empty dark eyes.

Jinn reached out with a shaking hand and turned off the monitor. Enough, he thought. More than enough. No more of these half-measures, this terrible teasing, never quite knowing.

It had to end, somehow...and soon, or else he'd go mad.

He sat there, staring at the darkened monitor, for a long time.

At last:

Jinn's computer beeped. He tapped the keys necessary to bring up the files, not turning his attention away from his monitor screen.

"--there," Hilary was saying. "How'd you know?"

The Eye hardly seemed to be listening to her. He nearly glowed as he scanned the woman's prison records. "Oh, Hil, marry me! I'll need everything you've got on this, uh, probation report--"

"By the way, was that a proposal I heard just pass through your lips?" Hilary sounded immensely amused, and Jinn realized his grip on his chair-arms had tightened too much. Jealous of her, too? he mocked himself, and tore his eyes away from the monitor and the Eye's banter with his Agency contact to turn them to the young woman's record.

Her name was Joanna.

"Joanna Eris."

The Eye's voice was whisper-soft and dreamy. Jinn raised his gaze to the monitors again, and saw the younger man lounging on his bed, scanning the screen full of records.

"You have your answers," he said to the Eye's image. "Now what do you intend?"

The Eye didn't answer.

"All right, Jinn, what the hell is going on out there?" The woman raps out the words, voice hard and cold.

No immediate answer, just the hum of the phone line.

The woman doesn't wait. "You saw his email, don't try to tell me you didn't. Who is this 'extraordinary woman who needs his help,' and why is he trying to resign from the Agency? The boss is about to call in the feds on this case. If you weren't out there keeping an eye on him--"

"He's in Boston," the man interrupts. "Not here."

"Boston? What is he doing in Boston?"

"Tracing a lead on the case." The man speaks slowly, as if tired, or choosing his words carefully, perhaps both.

"Bullshit. He just resigned from the Agency--"

"You may believe me or not," the man says. "Nevertheless, he is following something from a lead in the files on Joanna Eris that you sent him last week."

"If he's on the case, why is he trying to quit?" The hardness has faded from the woman's voice, leaving only puzzlement behind.

A long silence, and then, "I can only tell you what I see, Hil. Speculation as to motives isn't in my job description."

"I thought you were supposed to be perfect, Detective." The woman's tone makes it a comment rather than an accusation. "Sees all, knows all."

"I do what I can." A moment's pause, and then the man says reassuringly, "Don't worry, Hil. All will be well."

Dial tone.

All would be well, Jinn thought to himself with a cynical twist to his lips. Not unless he could produce a true miracle. He'd read that communication. 'This will probably be the last email I'll ever write...' More, he'd seen the Eye, just before he left, arguing with someone only he could see --

"I didn't leave anybody, your mother left me."

"No, I can't, it's too important."

"I'm not running away."

"I didn't abandon anyone! She took you away from me. She took everything away from me."

Breaking off, tense and still, listening to something Jinn could only guess at. Then he'd said in a flat voice, "I have to go," and headed down the stairs.

It smacked of an ultimatum, one which the Eye had accepted. His daughter -- the hallucination of a daughter, the only person that the Eye truly let through his shields. He'd given up his job for this Joanna Eris, and perhaps also his daughter.

"Not me," Jinn said softly, and the words hung in the air like prophecy. "I will not allow you to give me up as well, my friend."

But first -- the Eye would be in Boston for at least a couple days, seeking out one Doctor Janet Brohl for reasons he hadn't discussed aloud. Jinn had time on his hands.

The first rule of surveillance was 'don't let them see you.' The first rule of war was 'know your enemy.' To Jinn's mind, this had crossed over from one to the other.

Jinn hesitated just inside the main room. He'd never been to such a place before. Nonsense, all of it. He didn't believe a man could map his fate in the stars, or by pre-conceived numerological patterns in his name and birth-date.

It didn't matter what he thought; his belief or lack thereof seemed to be a moot point this time. Nobody sat behind the humming computer or at any of the intimate little tables scattered around the edges of the room, under vaguely medieval paintings of the planets. She wasn't here. To make matters worse, Jinn could feel the itch at the base of his skill that told him he was under the gaze of a camera -- a security camera, most likely, but perhaps the Eye's.

Don't let them see you, so the wisdom went. It was a bit late for that now, Jinn thought. He'd have to pay a visit to the belfry to be sure the Eye wasn't recording.

"Do you have an appointment?"

Joanna Eris herself -- no, she was calling herself Charlotte Vincent, Jinn remembered -- emerged from a back room, allowing the heavy drape of velvet to fall back into place behind her. She crossed to the computer and seated herself there, regarding him with polite inquiry.

"No," he said, recollecting himself and his intentions. "No, I don't. I'd -- hoped to make one."

She smiled, and the glacier-dark eyes warmed slightly. "As it happens, I have an opening. Will you be seated?"

Jinn murmured his thanks, and sat on the other side of the desk. Miss Vincent typed a few things into her computer, then turned to face him again. "Were you looking for a particular kind of reading?"

"A, er, compatibility reading," Jinn said. "Astrology."

Miss Vincent nodded, and tapped a few more keys before looking up. "So, Mister..."

"Corwin," he said. "Matthew Corwin." His real name. There was no need to lie when he never intended to see her again.

"Corwin," she repeated, typing that in. "When were you born?"

It was the first of a series of questions, more than he'd expected when he'd planned this. When was he born? What time, exactly? Where? When was his lover born, and what time, and where? She thanked him absently for his answers, then sat back, eyes fixed on the screen.

"Your lover's sun sign is Taurus," she said. "Earthy, passionate, perhaps a little too focused on her goals."

"His."

"Pardon?"

"His goals," Jinn said, and waited for the reaction.

After a moment, her smiled widened into something truly genuine for the first time since he'd come into the room. "His goals," she repeated. 'Your sun sign, on the other hand, is Cancer. You can match him in the bedroom, and are inclined to be intense yourself when you find something to really challenge you among your many interests. I'd say your only problem should be choosing a goal you both share."

"Only problem?" Jinn repeated, quirking an eyebrow, and surprised an actual laugh from her.

"Should be, Mr. Corwin. I didn't say it was your only problem."

She shrugged out of her suit jacket, then, turned the computer monitor to face him, and began explaining the meaning of the two star charts emblazoned there. Jinn listened, nodded occasionally, and silently threw up his hands in utter confusion. Sun signs, moon signs, ascendants, everything blended together into a confusing whirl. But Miss Vincent seemed to be enjoying herself. Her face lit up as she tapped a finger on one particular part of the star chart, explaining its significance to his uncomprehending ears.

The sound of the front door interrupted her just as she was finishing up. "Charlotte?" a gravely male voice called.

"There in a minute, Mr. Leonard," she called back, and hastily hit a few keys that brought the printer whirring to life. Jinn accepted the printed out star charts, and paid her without protest. Even if the charts meant nothing to him, the 'appointment' had given him a bit of insight into Joanna Eris. A true-believer mystic, this one, needing more protection than even Stephen knew. He followed her out into the front hall, and accepted an introduction to Leonard, who shook his hand and asked him what he'd thought of his appointment.

"Very interesting," Jinn said, smiling at Miss Vincent. "It gave me more food for thought than I'd expected."

"Ah," said Leonard, sounding immensely pleased. "She has a gift for such things."

Jinn made the appropriate noises of agreement, and then took himself off, first to the bell tower, where the camera proved to be currently turned off, then back to his temporary housing, to think.

Give up, he'd told the Eye. Good advice. He should take it himself. All he had to do was tell Hil the truth about the last several months, and Stephen Wilson would be pulled off of active duty indefinitely.

Ah, but he already was off active duty, wasn't he? The Eye had resigned, or tried to. Only Jinn's half-truths were keeping Stephen on the Agency payroll, and Jinn on this assignment.

Jinn looked back down at the charts, the majestic dance of stars and planets captured at two moments in time. You'll have to work at it, Joanna Eris had said authoritatively, but you're made for each other.

Jinn wondered sardonically what the charts had said when she compared hers with Leonard's.

The slam of the trap-door caught Jinn by surprise. He looked up from the star charts 'Charlotte Vincent' had given him to find the Eye standing in the bell-tower, looking around him. The younger man held a folded newspaper in one hand, which he absently tapped against his thigh, and in the dim light his eyes glittered.

"I trust your trip to Boston brought results," Jinn said aloud.

The Eye went over to the computer still sitting there, and brought up on its screen a series of images before turning it off with a decisive click. "She's not home," he said, glancing toward the shuttered window. "With Leonard, I suppose.' He laughed, a choked-off, harsh sound. "Fool." His hand tightened on the paper for a moment, then he tossed it down on the table next to the dark computer.

Jinn leaned forward, adjusting the brightness on his own monitor in an effort to see more clearly. What the devil had the Eye discovered in Boston?

"She'll never really love you, you know," the Eye continued, and it took Jinn a moment to realize he must be addressing Leonard. "I met her first lover." He turned away from the desk, and moved through the confines of the tower, skirting the bell with practiced ease. "She's only got one use for men, and it's not in bed."

"Leonard isn't merely her sexual bed-partner," Jinn said, frowning at the images on his screen. "You're a trained observer, you should be able to see that."

"Oh, she was trained well," the Eye continued, and Jinn realized he was packing, throwing clothing and equipment into their cases. "'Never reveal yourself to any man who doesn't need to know' -- 'I taught her to survive,' Dr. Brohl said, 'kill or be killed.' The wigs, the weaknesses, the fucking astrology, all from her teacher."

"That does not mean Joanna is about to kill Alexander Leonard," Jinn argued, raising his voice as if he could make the Eye hear him.

"It's all in the paper," the Eye said, bringing one packed case over to sit by the table next to the darkened computer. "Time to end the holiday and get back to work, it said, remembering to tie up all loose ends before you move on." He turned and looked up at one of the cameras. "Did you know Leonard was that rich? How long have you been waiting for me to figure it out?"

"Waiting, yes, but not for you to do this," Jinn said, his hands clenching. "You're an observer -- never let them see you, never get involved!"

For a moment he felt it again -- the quicksilver, elusive sense of connection. It was gone before he could grasp it. Before he could strain after it, he heard that odd, cracked laugh from the Eye again. "Never get involved," the other man repeated, and turned away from the camera. "It's a bit late for that now. But you would know, wouldn't you?"

Charlotte Vincent proposed marriage to Alexander Leonard. The Eye, certain she intended to kill Leonard and flee once more, attempted to dissuade Leonard with physical violence. He failed. Leonard turned up the next morning prepared to whisk Charlotte off to the church to be married immediately. She was sublimely happy: in love, pregnant, and about to be married.

The Eye panicked. He tried to stop them by shooting at the car.

The car crashed. Joanna Eris, called Charlotte Vincent, lived. Alexander Leonard died.

"Jinn, this has gone too far, do you hear me? You've got to pull him!"

"No."

A moment's hesitation, then, "Where is he?"

"Right in front of me, I assure you."

The woman sighs. "Jinn...what's really going on out there? Have you--"

"I'm a surveillance agent, Hil." The man's voice is quiet, nearly a whisper. "I watch. I don't interfere. I'm merely telling you that in my best judgment, we should leave him alone."

"He doesn't even know what's gong on back here, does he." Not really a question. "The boss is livid."

"It must be done, Hil." The man sounds tired: still quiet, the words slurred more than usual. "Like lancing a boil."

A long pause. Faintly, in the background, is the sound of bad disco, like the soundtrack to a porn movie. At last the woman sighs again. "This is out there even for you, Jinn. The Powers That Be won't let you go too much farther: they've already called in the feds. I don't know about this."

"Trust me, Hil. I won't let you down." Dial tone.

Jinn tucked away his phone without looking away from the Eye. The Eye looked back incuriously, then turned around and signaled the bartender for another drink. He'd been drinking steadily, and ignoring the tears that leaked equally steadily. Jinn, on the other hand, had been nursing a glass of whiskey in his habitual dark corner, hidden by the garish shadows cast by GIRLZ GIRLZ GIRLZ ALL NITE in neon. Pitiful, Jinn thought, the pair of them.

He could step forward, take advantage of Stephen's current weakness, let the younger man talk it out and cry on his shoulder. But even if he admitted who he was, mere words wouldn't be enough, and mindless sex would solve nothing. Come morning, Stephen would still hold himself responsible for Leonard's death, and Joanna's despairing grief. If Jinn came to Stephen now, it wouldn't drive Joanna from his mind. The obsession would remain, and Stephen would remain nothing more than the broken man Jinn saw now.

The obsession had to be purged. If only he knew how.

Then perhaps he could teach himself.

Joanna Eris remained in San Francisco only until the funeral of Alexander Leonard. Then she packed up her belongings and abandoned the city without a second look, driving north and west.

The Eye followed.

He'd killed.

Not her. Not Joanna after all. He had killed Alexander Leonard. He could still hear Joanna's screams of pain and denial. If he hadn't blown open the trunk, the driver wouldn't have swerved into the path of that garbage truck, and now she'd be married.

He didn't know what would have happened after that. He refused to speculate on 'what if.' He'd killed the man. That should be the end of it all.

What did his watcher think?

There had been a note in his glove compartment, discovered the first day on the road. Laser-printed, on paper with no particular watermark. No fingerprints that the Eye could pick up. Entirely untraceable. Take care, it said. Trust your instincts.

He didn't want to consider the paper, or his watcher. All this driving gave him too much time to think. There was only so long he could spend abusing himself for the whole fiasco in San Francisco, and debating Joanna's intentions. He hadn't decided where she was headed: to be honest, he wasn't sure she'd ever had a pattern to her movements in the first place. She paused every so often, to consider the scenery and smoke a cigarette. She never looked backward.

Neither did he.

For a few days in San Francisco he'd wondered if his watcher would still bother to follow, now that he had severed himself even from his morals, from all except his obsession. But as he followed Joanna out onto the open road, he recognized the faint itch between his shoulder blades. If he had refused to obey his common sense and give up his Joanna, so too had his watcher refused to give him up. The note proved it. Go away, he thought. Go away and let me go to hell if I want to. But apparently the whatever-the-hell-it-was that had echoed his watcher's voice into his head twice now (assuming that it had been his watcher, and not another sign of growing insanity) didn't work the other way.

So there they all were, headed vaguely east, and no matter how many twists and turns Joanna (and consequently the Eye) took, that itch of awareness refused to go away.

The stubborn feeling slowed him. In Utah, Joanna's car broke down. He could have driven that remaining five hundred yards and picked her up.

(If you really loved me!)

She was a murderess, he reminded himself. There was no guarantee that she wouldn't kill him and take his car.

(Don't leave her, Daddy...)

He had no choice, watcher or not. He turned the key in the ignition -- just as another car drove up to her, and a man leaned out, talking to her for a few minutes before getting out to hook up her car to his. A tow. Damn. Too late.

He followed them for a few miles, until the road branched. He took the branch, and followed it parallel to their road, until he saw down below a motel of sorts. Yes, he thought. There. They would stop there.

So far, so good. Now he needed only decide what he intended to do.

The wind howled that night.

He should go inside, the Eye told himself. At this time of the year, it was far from comfortable outside for a man in his shirt-sleeves, after dark. But if he went inside, he'd have made a choice. Either he could take the cabin he himself had paid for, and abandon the stranger to Joanna's uncertain mercies...and Joanna likewise to the stranger's mercy...or he could knock on the door and interrupt whatever was going on inside.

She didn't need rescuing. Dr. Brohl had been right. Joanna Eris, whatever else she might be, was a survivor.

Lucy's voice whispered in his mind again: She's just a little girl, Daddy. Don't leave her alone.

Damn it all, he wasn't responsible for her! He couldn't be! Look what had happened the last time he tried to protect Joanna from herself! He'd given up his only contact with his daughter, his job, everything...and Joanna lost even more.

The Eye tossed away his cigarette and paced around the cabin again, peering in the windows. Joanna herself lay back in a luxurious bath full of bubbles, eyes closed, expression remarkably serious. The Eye paused, remembering New York, but no similar reaction pushed him toward the window. Nothing. Only the amorphous urge to protect her. He turned away, frowning, and deliberately brought to mind the dream and the man there. That did bring a prickle of sexual awareness. The Eye gritted his teeth, rounded the cabin, and peered in on Joanna's rescuer. He was rummaging through a drawer, looking for something.

She didn't need his protection, the Eye repeated to himself. If he stepped forward now, he'd only bring himself out into the open. Never let them see you, had he forgotten that? He would hopelessly compromise himself, and accomplish nothing.

Trust your instincts, the note had said. His watcher trusted him to do the right thing.

The Eye turned and paced out to look down the road, light another cigarette, and try to let the bite of the night wind clear his mind.

The 'rescuer' offered Joanna heroin. When she refused, he beat her unconscious, injected Joanna with the heroin anyway, then attempted to rape her. The Eye interrupted this, reduced the rescuer to a bloody pulp, then locked him in the trunk of his own car. He returned to the motel area, only to find Joanna had recovered and left.

Desperate, the trail lost, the Eye called the Agency. Hilary told him to come home: the boss was dead, the Feds were on the case. The Eye refused, and Hilary reluctantly promised him the information he needed.

"He won't come home." The woman's voice sounds hard, angry.

"Of course not."

"I thought you said you were 'lancing the boil.'"

"I'm doing my job." The man's voice is as harsh as the woman's, and clipped with a stronger accent than usual. In the background road-sounds, cars passing, steady low roar of an engine.

"Eye's gone next thing to AWOL, he's out there with a lot of valuable equipment, and we need him back here." The woman's voice softens. "Hell, we need both of you."

"And you will get both of us," the man says, his voice likewise gentled. "Trust your instincts, Hilary. I was assigned to this for a reason."

"Three months."

"Soon," the man counters.

"Six months, and that's stretching way beyond my authorization."

A soft chuckle, and the man repeats, "Soon." Dial tone.

Get going, the note said.

The Eye looked up sharply, scanning the area around him. Flat, like all the rest of this misbegotten area. No place for anyone to hide. Was the bastard dropping them by helicopter or something?

Oh, he was good, he was very good. The Eye got behind the wheel of his car and started it again, driving on east. He was vaguely aware he was smiling.

He would find Joanna. And in the meantime...it was time that someone taught his watcher not to be quite so damn sure of himself. Notes, for God's sake, as if he were the heroine of a Victorian novel.

He could simply have raised the top, locked all the doors on his car and slept in the back. He'd done it before. Any attempts to break in would certainly wake him. But breaking in was hardly his watcher's style. The man was more...elegant than that.

He glanced over at the note again, and felt his smile widen. "Who are you?" he murmured, and wondered if his car was bugged. Probably.

"I missed you." And his smile faltered as he realized how literally true that was.

Go to DaVinci Airport. A helicopter is waiting. Chicago. Our Lady of Mercy Hospital.

"You don't approve?" the Eye said, putting the note on the front seat beside him.

No answer. He'd hardly expected one. Unless his watcher chose to abandon his professionalism as thoroughly as the Eye had done, he wasn't likely to get one.

It had been a long few days of driving, waiting for Hilary to call him back. He hadn't been that long away from the demands of the Agency since...since the early days of his marriage, when he'd still wanted to take his vacation time. He'd stopped occasionally, for food or to sleep, but otherwise he'd kept driving. It was something to do.

He was lonely.

He wasn't sure when he'd come to that realization. Somewhere in the middle of feeling sorry for himself about how he'd handled the fiasco in San Francisco, the self-pity had slipped from his actions to his feelings. At the point where he realized he was actually thinking, 'nobody loves me,' he'd deliberately pulled over and sat trembling in the driver's seat, trying to force himself to think logically.

It wasn't true, surely. He had connections. Hilary -- though he'd done his best to sever that, and who could tell what she thought now. His daughter -- wherever in the world Margaret had taken her. Joanna.

No, not Joanna. All the influence there went one way. All unknowing she governed his actions. They were connected, but she didn't know it. He was random chance to her, a shot from a bell tower, a soothing voice through a drugged haze as she begged not to be left alone. That, at least, was something he could mend when he reached Our Lady of Mercy hospital: he could give her the connection they both wanted. He already had the gold rings in his pocket, picked up in a small town along his road.

His watcher.

His watcher understood him, as he was beginning to understand Joanna. It was inevitable, when one spent long enough studying the actions of another being. His watcher had remained on his side, buffered him from the Agency's disapproval -- how else to explain this most recent note, and the fact that he hadn't been turned over to the Feds himself long before now?

His watcher...liked him. A novel thought. Hilary was the closest thing he'd had to a friend for years now, but that was no more than the result of prolonged contact from working together. His watcher seemed to actually care about him. Perhaps even found him... The Eye remembered his taunting jerk-off, back in San Francisco, and flushed.

"Who are you?" he asked aloud, and was rewarded with that sense of listening silence.

He started up the car again. He had an airport to go to, a hospital in Chicago to visit...and then, perhaps, someone else to meet.

The Eye found Joanna registered under her own name. She'd lost the baby: the Eye didn't ask how. He went to the ward where she lay asleep, and slipped a golden wedding ring on her finger, to match the one he already wore.

Then he left. He gave no name.

Heroin, effects of on pregnancy. The Eye winced back from the images on his screen, and jumped down to the text. Brain damage, mostly, if he was interpreting the medical lingo properly. It shouldn't have caused a miscarriage. That was more likely the result of the beating she'd gotten. He could only guess. No answers here, then. He'd have to keep an eye on the hospital to know when she'd recovered enough to leave.

In the meantime...he would trust his instincts.

The Eye backed the browser out of the pages he'd been checking, then rose and left the library. His watcher was nearby: he recognized the tickle at the back of his mind, the prickle at the back of his neck.

He could go directly back to his hotel. Instead he wandered around Chicago, glancing at the tourist traps. Pizzeria Uno. A Disney something-or-another, with the shiny happy families lining up -- the Eye hunched down in his jacket and hurried past. At last he ended up at Navy Pier, watching through the glass as the Ferris wheel rotated, listening as piped-in Top 20 bopped in counterpoint to the faint sound of a calliope. His gaze flickered back and forth from the people on the Ferris wheel, vague shapes in growing twilight as the wheel's lights came on, and the people passing through the mall behind him, vague reflections in the glass. A dark-haired mother, trying to persuade her fair-haired son he didn't want to see the 3-D feature; a black man with shaven head arguing with his girlfriend as they passed a jewelry store; a tall bearded man lounging against the railing, over by the elevator --

A quicksilver shock of recognition went through the Eye, and he turned to amble over toward the 3-D theater himself. Quidam. No, fool, this was a real man. My watcher. Son-of-a-bitch. Sloppy. Did you forget I'd seen you once?

He paused, pretending to examine the movie posters, and watched the man out of the comer of his eye. Tall, eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses much like the Eye himself used sometimes, neatly trimmed beard and mustache streaked with silver, dressed casually in blue jeans and a long-sleeved, button-down shirt. His arms were folded over his chest, a brown coat slung over them: he unfolded them as the Eye watched, checking his wrist-watch, then pushed away from the railing and turned away, heading for the stairs.

The Eye followed.

The crowds had thinned somewhat as night approached. It didn't matter either way: a man that tall was hard to miss. His quarry paused at the front doors of the mall to shrug into the coat he'd been carrying, and then headed out into the streets. For a moment the Eye thought he was going to take one of the taxis waiting, but his watcher turned his steps aside to walk down the street, stepping to the side to get out of the way of another taxi approaching.

The man never quickened his step, never gave any sign he knew he was being followed. The Eye slowed his own breathing, tamping down the excitement trying to rise. Who was this man? If he could just find where he was staying -- some hint, some clue, something to get his foot in the door. On, under the highway bridge, to the twilit streets just lighting up and buildings looming darkly like Art Deco sculptures. A few turns, nothing complicated, then a set of stairs. Approaching them, the Eye raised his gaze, and realized the man had stopped at the top of them and was looking down at him. Their eyes met.

Stephen.

Not a woman's voice, like in the museum, but a man's, the same voice he'd heard before. The Eye blinked, then ran up the steps.

The man was gone. The Eye ran to the other side of the little platform, but saw no tall man striding along the street. He turned and went to the door leading into a hotel lobby that stood open on another side of the platform, but there was no sign of his quarry. He could have taken an elevator up, or the stairs, or even gone straight through and out another door.

He'd lost him.

Three days passed in utter boredom. Joanna still lay in her drugged sleep. The Eye hadn't seen his watcher since the incident at Navy Pier. Sometime he wondered if the other man had gone away. Or maybe he'd only imagined the tall man with blue eyes, somehow conflated dream with reality.

Except...except he had proof.

Armed with a description, he'd checked the Agency's database, and come up with a name. Matthew Corbin. Codename: Jinn.

"Son-of-a-bitch," he murmured, leaning back in his chair. "I rated high, didn't I?"

He'd heard of Jinn, in the underground, indirect way of rumors within the Agency. Independent, frequently contrary, but one of the best. HQ, in a moment of unusual whimsy, had given him the name of a spirit from Arabian folklore, and damned if he wasn't supposed to pull off miracles like his namesake.

Set a thief to catch a thief, the Eye thought absently, and glanced up to see if he could spot the inevitable camera or mike. He saw nothing, nor did he truly expect to. Jinn had been doing this since the Eye was a babe in diapers. He wouldn't be seen unless he chose to be seen.

The Eye had seen him, there on Navy Pier.

"Oh, yes," he said aloud. "You understand perfectly."

The next day, there was a message in his email.

It said only: Yes. I do.

It broke all the rules, and the Eye knew it. Never let them see you, never get involved. He'd broken them with Joanna, and Jinn seemed bent on shattering them into glassy fragments. He didn't call, and no matter how close a lookout the Eye kept when he ventured out into the streets of Chicago, to get food or air or to subtly check on Joanna's progress, he never again saw the tall man with a beard and piercing blue eyes. Instead, there were only those maddening, teasing notes via email, as untraceable as the physical notes had been.

You are not alone.

"Could have fooled me," he grumbled when first he read it. A voyeur watching a serial killer who'd given up killing, an exhibitionist performing for an unknown and unknowing audience...and that was just his sex life.

Have you given up?

"On Joanna? No." He hadn't visited since that first time. Too much of a risk that the nurse would be able to describe him. But he thought of her every day. "There's still things unresolved."

There are other options.

"Like what?"

This time the note didn't come back immediately, and when it did, it said only, Trust me.

"I can't." He couldn't turn her over to the police or the feds, no matter what Hilary said. He had to...watch her, protect her, try to find out what bound him to her and whether she felt it too. "Not yet."

Trust me.

"Do you trust me?"

No answer.

Other times Jinn was less cryptic. A simple What happened with your wife? resulted, to the Eye's own surprise, in a twenty-minute, incoherent rant about Margaret without even mentioning Lucy. I was never married myself, Jinn confessed by return email. Never felt so strongly about someone.

The Eye almost smiled when he read that. "So I'm special, am I?"

You understand, said the next email.

The next day, Joanna was released from the hospital.

Whatever else she'd lost in the hospital, she seemed to have left behind the brittle vulnerability the Eye had seem on the road between San Francisco and here. It was child's play to trace her to her hotel room, to plant the cameras and directional mikes. For the first day he sat and watched, headphones on.

On the second night, Joanna went out, and returned, serious and intent, with another woman. The Eye watched until their clothing began to come off, then turned off the monitor with a sharp punch of his finger.

His email alert beeped, and he opened it to find a message from Jinn, the first since Joanna's release.

Why?

"She's done it before," the Eye said. "The woman's in no danger. And..." He looked down at where his hands twisted at the wedding ring he wore, twin to the one he'd given her. "I've taken enough from her without invading that as well."

It was an excuse, and he knew it even if Jinn did not. The Eye could remember what happened in New York, all those months ago, the way Joanna's one-night-stand with another woman had stripped away all his own defenses. And that dream -- the one with a man who looked disturbingly like Jinn. If his watcher knew about the Eye's vulnerability, then he knew. But the Eye wasn't going to perform for the hidden cameras, not this time. He had to somehow talk to Joanna, but not yet.

Time was running out. When she'd been released, the Eye hadn't been the only one watching where she went -- and while following her, one fine morning a few days after her release from hospital, the Eye's attention was caught by a man dressed casually, leaning against the hood of a car, whose tense bearing and ceaselessly scanning eyes whispered cop. He looked away, keeping his head down in his parka, then glanced up again to realize he'd lost Joanna. No -- there, in a mirror to his left. She'd hidden herself from him in a stairway.

Let's play a game, Joanna's voice echoed from memory. She liked games, and someone had given her warning. She was going to turn the tables on him -- watch the watcher, hunt the hunter. To his own surprise, his first emotion was neither amusement at her daring, nor concern at his own exposure, but jealousy. This was his game. He'd played it with his watcher before she'd ever even realized she had someone on her tail.

Stupid, petty emotion, he thought, and savagely shoved it down and away. She wanted to play games? Fair enough. He hastened his footsteps, nearly running, then turned into a doorway in his turn, and tried the door. Locked. He swore under his breath, pressing randomly at the call-pad. Not now, not yet, if she got the victory this easily she'd never learn.

The door swung open just barely in time, and he dove in. A quick exploration, a few turns, and he was ducking out a back door, down the fire escape. The tables were turned once more, Miss Eris --

Then he saw the police cars pulling up in front of the building he'd just left, and saw the man in a trench coat talking to Joanna in the preternaturally calm manner of a cop trying to get someone to go quietly. No. Dammit, she was his. Was this Jinn's doing? He wouldn't dare. Joanna had been careless: it wasn't impossible to trace her. But this was unacceptable.

The Eye drew his gun, and fired.

The Eye distracted the police with gunfire while Joanna Eris escaped, then ran away himself and vanished into the flow of morning commuters. Joanna was safe -- for the moment.

She took the next flight up to Alaska.

To: jinn
From: eye

I've found her.

Joanna hadn't stayed in Anchorage. She'd taken another short plane-hop, over to Valdez, and there rented a car, heading up the Richardson Highway at full speed. After five days, she stopped in a town too small to have a name in English, gave the rental car to someone else headed back south, and got a job as a waitress at the Cafe At The End Of The World.

To: eye
From: jinn

Have you introduced yourself?

Jinn had forgotten how damn frustrating it was to wait -- an odd thing, perhaps, in a man who earned his living at the pastime, but nonetheless truth. This time, he had no camera ready, no bug planted that would tell him what he wanted to hear. He would have to trust.

Sometimes, he was even certain he had nothing to fear. Once Stephen got this woman out of his system -- finally confronted her face-to-face, and said whatever might need saying -- then he would return, and all would be well. The Agency would forgive and forget, and Jinn himself...well. There was the sticking point, wasn't it?

Sometimes, he remembered that he'd met Stephen face-to-face, even spoken with him in a strange, twice-removed sense, and the yearning had not loosened its hold.

It didn't matter, he told himself. He could wait. He had no choice.

To: jinn
From: eye

She's closed herself off again.

He mentioned astrology. She shrugged it off. He read her horoscope aloud. She offered him coffee with his omelet. Even when two men came in, hiding behind dark glasses and watching Joanna with elaborate casualness, she didn't blink.

"Fuckin' cops, eh?" he said.

"What about 'em?"

"You can always spot 'em."

"I didn't notice," she said.

He hadn't expected this dull-eyed vulnerability. Perhaps, as Jinn pointed out in return email, he should have. The man in Utah, the feds she hadn't seen coming in Chicago, the cops here -- after Leonard's death, she'd closed down. 'She came to me a timid little field mouse,' Dr. Brohl had said. She certainly seemed like one now.

"Look, um -- I don't know what time you finish, but I'm coming back later and, I wondered if maybe you'd like a drink."

She looked up at him, over the black-rimmed glasses she wore. "I'm working a double."

And outside, the cops drove away.

To: eye
From: jinn

Would you have me wax philosophical about the value of vulnerability? Or, failing that, the virtues of remaining professional? Take what you can and use it. It must end, one way or another.

Temperature, 42 degrees. Partly cloudy. Wind, south-south-east, 3.5 miles per hour.

Pitiful. He should have followed them both up to Alaska. It would have been the professional thing to do. Hell, he should at least tell the Agency where their lost bird had gone. He hadn't reported in since Hil had given him the location of Joanna Eris. Instead, he'd reduced himself to checking his email every ten minutes for word from Stephen, checking the weather report on Delta Junction and Copper Center to glimpse how things were up there. Pitiful. Jinn's hand hovered over the phone.

As he had half a dozen times before, he pulled back, and with a muttered oath rose to his feet and resumed pacing. His computer monitors were silent. All he could do was wait.

They'd forged a connection between them, damn it. Not merely observer and observed, or even that nagging sense of each other, but from something else, a commonality of self, wanting to know other people's minds while being afraid to expose their own. They'd talked, after a fashion, through long hours. Stephen had recognized him on sight. That bond was stronger than any half-hallucinated, father-daughter tie. Jinn believed that. Truly, he did.

In the meantime...he restrained himself. This was Stephen's party. Jinn checked email, and the weather (44.6 degrees, mostly cloudy, no wind), and waited.

To: jinn
From: eye

Don't worry. I know how to be careful.

He'd made his preparations long ago. Cognac and Gitano cigarettes, tucked away in his cupboard. Wallet of money, lying on the table by the door. Gun, loaded with blanks and stored in its holster where someone standing in the front of the trailer could draw it.

It must end.

He'd almost managed it, the night before, alone and half-drunk with her in the cafe. But chance had interrupted, and she'd run off into the night. Time was running out: he didn't need Jinn to remind him of that. He headed off to the cafe one more time.

He'd nearly finished his breakfast without finding his opportunity with Joanna, when in walked the two cops from yesterday, accompanied by the last person he wanted to see. Dr. Janet Brohl. Probably the only person still living whom Joanna loved, the only other person who would be able to see past the glasses and the dulled eyes.

Damn it to bloody hell.

Concentrate. Dr. Brohl had seen him, though her gaze slid away before her companions noticed. She'd probably recognized him. God knew he'd made no particular effort, in Boston or here, to disguise himself. Jinn would shake his head over that, wouldn't he--

Concentrate. Joanna first. Joanna, who'd just taken the cops' order without even noticing her old mentor. Joanna, who wore his ring.

He accosted her when she passed him again, stammering something idiotic as he tried to find the words he needed. I know who you really are -- no. You're in danger -- he'd already hinted at that, and been ignored. Look, over there, don't you see--

The words didn't come, and she brushed him off with a few curt words of her own, before moving over to lean against the counter and look over her pad of orders. The Eye drew breath, biting his tongue hard, and glanced over again at Dr. Brohl, who watched Joanna with hungry gaze. When he looked back at Joanna again, she'd noticed his look. She frowned at him for a moment, then turned to look for herself.

The world separated into heartbeats. He'd never meant to make Joanna betray herself -- but Dr. Brohl's face softened to something twenty years younger, and Joanna's shoulders melted from their usual stiff, defensive posture to yielding, yearning. No, he thought. She didn't understand: it was a trap, damn it all. He strained for the quicksilver connection that had once upon a time spun between them, and felt only a headache press against the back of his eyes.

The moment shattered with silverware and dishes on the floor, back into normal time as another waitress dropped her tray. Joanna turned her back on Dr. Brohl to come over and refill the Eye's coffee. He breathed again.

"I don't know how much more of this place I can take," she said, with an attempt at a laugh, eyes determinedly fixed on her order pad.

Yes, he thought. Now. Thank you.

"I get off in two hours," she said.

"I can't wait," he said, keeping his voice as steady as hers with an effort. Don't look at the cops and Dr. Brohl, don't let triumph leak into voice or bearing or he'd frighten her off and it wasn't time for that yet... "I can drive the car around the back and we can go now."

"I'll meet you out back in five minutes."

As easily as that. Joanna went into the back to tell her boss or not, and the Eye rose, put down the money to pay for his coffee, and met the gaze of Dr. Janet Brohl.

She looked back, the softness lingering in her expression. When one of the cops said something to her, she only shook her head and said nothing. Somewhere in that long moment between Joanna and her mentor, Dr. Brohl had lost and he'd won.

The Eye went out the door past the older woman, and headed out to his car. Training kept his stride easy, and his face calm. He had to be out back in five minutes.

To: jinn
From: eye

It's over.

A graveyard in Valdez. That was all the clue he had to go on. It would have to be enough.

But Stephen wasn't in either cemetery. Jinn sighed and returned to his rented car. He should have known better: the link between them had gone silent, but he'd watched the younger man after Leonard's death and knew how he'd reacted then. He hadn't gone to the morgue or the church.

The Gold Rush with its plastic ferns and plastic drinks was empty. 21 Hyde contained only a few tourists, sipping local ale or staring curiously up at the mounted head of a polar bear, staring back at them with a startled expression. Jinn found his prey at last in a hotel bar on the edge of town.

Not much of a place, Jinn though as he paused in the doorway. A few pictures of skiers and mountains on the wall in a listless attempt to appeal to the tourists. Air heavy with cigarette smoke and the smell of people who no longer cared. No one looked up as he stepped in: the bartender continued mechanically filling a pitcher with weak American beer, two patrons whispered together, words blending together into an unintelligible sibilance, and a third waved his empty glass as if to demand another. Stephen was slumped in a corner, singing half to himself: "That you and I...will never be..."

Jinn laid one hand on Stephen's shoulder. "It's time to go home," he said.

Stephen glanced up at him, then back down at his drink. "Don't have a home."

But you do. Jinn slammed the thought away. That was the bloody sentimentalist talking. "Back to your hotel room, then," he said instead.

"No," Stephen said more clearly, and looked up again to meet Jinn's gaze straight on. His eyes burned with diamond-fire dulled by the alcohol. "If I go back I'll only sit around thinking. I don't want to think, Jinn."

"You can't sit around drinking, either," Jinn pointed out, leaning his hip against the table where Stephen sat. "You'll run out of money."

"It keeps the thoughts away," Stephen said darkly, taking another swig of his whiskey. Then he looked back up at Jinn, and the older man could see something shift into place behind Stephen's eyes. "Unless," said the younger man, and slouched back even farther against the seat so his legs fell open and his eyes glistened in invitation, "Unless you have a better idea."

Jinn hesitated a moment too long. "It would be a mistake," he said at last, manfully ignoring the base instincts that screamed to take what was offered and run.

Stephen only smiled, and patted Jinn's thigh where it rested on the table. "I don't care any more. Neither should you."

As a seduction, it lacked quite a bit. No candles, no soft words of flattery and love, no flowers. Just the glitter in Stephen's eyes.

Next time, Jinn promised himself desperately. He'd demand it all next time.

He never remembered exactly how they got to the Eye's hotel room. It was a clean place, with a door that locked and a deadbolt. When he turned back from tending to that, he discovered Stephen standing by the bed, unbuttoning his shirtcuffs. His parka already lay on the floor, crumpled beside a chair.

"Wait," he said, and when Stephen didn't stop, he crossed the room and arrested the other's hands in his own. "Not so quickly."

"Not quickly enough," Stephen said, looking up with that same challenging expression. "You're still dressed.

"Stephen--"

Before he could say anything more, the younger man had tugged his hands free, reached up, and pulled Jinn down into range for a kiss. No gentle exploration here: his mouth was open, tongue pushing through Jinn's defenses like a teenage boy trying to get as far as he could on the first date. Jinn pushed away, breathing hard, to discover Stephen had rid him of his own jacket, his belt, and was in the process of unbuttoning his shirt.

"Stephen--"

"Later," the younger man said, his voice as harsh as Jinn's own.

Jinn closed his mouth on the reasoned words he had been going to say, and gave in.

The undressing went much more quickly once he began cooperating. Once naked, they sprawled together on the bed, kissing open-mouthed. At first, Jinn allowed Stephen to take the lead, drunk on the feel of tentative fingers along his flank, or exploring the way his nipples peaked to the touch. Then Stephen hesitated, rubbing his hand up and down Jinn's thigh. Jinn opened his eyes, and looked where Stephen was staring, eyes dark and uncertain.

"I don't bite," he murmured.

Stephen's gaze flicked up to meet his for a moment, and he managed a small smile. Then he reached over and pulled Jinn over on top of him, raising his mouth in mute demand for another kiss.

Against his better judgment, Jinn fell into the demanding movements of Stephen's body against his. He tried to linger over his exploration of Stephen's body, as Stephen had lingered over his, but wherever he paused too long, Stephen would shift restlessly under him, pushing up against hand or thigh. "Now."

"Patience," Jinn said, and heard the hoarseness of his own voice.

"I've had enough of being patient." Stephen squirmed around again, pressing his erection up against Jinn's belly. Jinn's pulse leapt, and his eyes blurred for a second. Not a dream, not some distant fantasy, but burning reality against his skin. His vision cleared to see Stephen turned on his belly, legs spread in wanton invitation, looking back over one shoulder with a taunting smile.

No, Jinn thought hazily. This was supposed to be about love. But his own erection ached to be buried in this man, to fuck all thoughts of Joanna Eris out of his head.

With steady hands he pulled a condom out of his wallet, ripped it open, and smoothed it on. With steady hands he took the lube Stephen offered, and slicked himself and his lover, before tossing it onto the night table. Then with steady hands he spread Stephen's ass and guided himself home.

It hadn't been so long since he'd been with a virgin that he didn't remember to go in slow, let the muscle relax its painful tightness around him before thrusting deeper...god, so tight...Jinn felt his arms shake as Stephen drew in a long, shuddering breath and let it out again. Then Stephen pushed back, forcing Jinn in deeper.

"More."

Jinn's good intentions, what there were left, fell into ashes. He began a slow, deep rhythm, biting at the junction of neck and shoulder, pinching sensitive nipples to hear whimpering moans escape his lover, and sliding a hand down to pump Stephen's engorged erection until the quicksilver link between them seemed to burn in the back of his mind, and Stephen came on his cock with a shocked cry that might have been his name. With a last convulsive thrust, he came as well, spurting into the damn condom that separated them, burying his own cry in Stephen's neck.

Jinn finally withdrew to take off the condom and throw it away, then pulled Stephen close again. They fell asleep that way. Jinn roused in the middle of the night to the feel of a warm cloth cleaning off his thighs and groin, followed by a warmer tongue and lips tentatively exploring with licks and mouthing and slow, deep sucks until Jinn came helplessly in his lover's hot mouth. In the lethargic haze of after-orgasm, he reached out to try to reciprocate. But Stephen caught his hands first, pressing them down to the mattress, and rose over him in the darkness to kiss him. Jinn could taste the bitter-musk of his own semen. He sighed as Stephen drew away again to lie down next to him, curve of chest and thigh against his arm, and allowed the warmth of his lover's body to lull him asleep again.

When he woke in the morning, the Eye was gone.

It was sacrilege, if he remembered his childhood religion classes, to bury a suicide in sacred ground. The Eye didn't greatly care. He'd even thought about having a priest, to say the same rite of burial that had sent off Alexander Leonard, but had decided against it at last. This farewell was a private thing.

He stopped at last by the fresh grave, knelt, and laid a rose on the raw earth.

JOANNA ERIS
1973-2000

He'd wanted some sort of quote, some epigram, to soften the bare stone, but hadn't been able to think of anything that neatly summed up her life in a handful of words. Song lyrics would have taken too much space. How did it go again?

Goodbye
No more living without you
This is where our story ends...

"Good-bye, Joanna," he whispered, and rose to his feet, but hesitated. It didn't seem enough -- unfinished, somehow.

"Hi."

He looked up, startled, to find a dark-haired girl in prep-school uniform regarding him curiously from behind Joanna's tombstone. Lucy! some part of him screamed -- but the thought was mere reflex, no corresponding tug at his heart. "Hello," he said politely.

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting a friend." He bit his tongue before the words flowed out, a babbling attempt to explain his relationship, such as it had been, with Joanna Eris. He'd only confuse or frighten this girl. "And you?"

"Oh, we're visiting too." The girl leaned over the tombstone. "Me and Momma. That's a pretty flower. You must have liked her a lot."

"Yes. I did."

"Kathryn!" The call came from over by the cemetery gates.

"Oops." Young Kathryn winced, then smiled up at him. "I have to go. Bye!"

"Good-bye," the Eye murmured, turning to follow her with his gaze. Not Lucy, not at all. And no pain at the thought, only a kind of dull sorrow.

Nothing. The same nothing he'd felt just now, bidding farewell to Joanna.

Halfway to the gate Kathryn met up with a woman whose hand she took. The girl glanced back and waved at him, then let go of her mother's hand to skip on ahead to the gate. She paused there to greet someone. The Eye caught only the deep murmur of a reply, but it was enough.

Not lost after all, he thought. No wonder he felt nothing. He hadn't buried his passions with Joanna, or given them up in San Francisco with the hallucination of Lucy. They'd merely transferred themselves with a quicksilver bond while he was chasing the impossible.

Jinn came through the gate, swinging it closed behind him, then stopped just there, watching the Eye with intent midnight gaze. Uncertain, perhaps. The Eye felt a twinge from certain well-used muscles, and nearly laughed as he jogged over to his lover. Jinn had nothing to worry about. There was far more here than just observer and observed, and the Eye intended to spend a very long time discovering every detail.

He stopped in front of Jinn, looking up at him, and waited. No convenient telepathy sparked through his mind, but at last Jinn's shoulders relaxed, and he smiled. This time the Eye did laugh.

"Do you have a phone?" he asked. "I need to report in."

"...Passed. Jinn, where the hell have you been?"

"Around." The man's tone trembles on the edge of laughter. Faint sounds of traffic and wind in the background, as if outside. "I have your missing detective with me. Shall I bring him back?"

"You've got Lucky? Where is he?"

An indistinguishable murmur, as if the man put his hand over the receiver to speak to someone else. Sounds of movement, and then a new voice speaks -- a lighter tenor, with the sound of a smile in it. "Right here, Hil."

"Lucky! You -- you owe me one mother of a debriefing."

"Don't worry, Hil. We'll take you out, get you drunk, and tell you everything."

"Lucky, you sure you're feeling all right?"

Muffled laughter from both men, then the first takes back the phone. "We should be in Washington within two days."

"Right. Sure you can't report now?"

Second voice, faintly: "No, this is one for in person."

Long pause. "Lucky prefers personal contact to computers? Jinn, what did you do to him?"

"Two days, Hil." Still a smile in his voice, but his tone is serious.

"Two days. I'm looking forward to this report. Be seeing you."

Dial tone.

-fin-

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -- Juvenal. (Who watches those who watch?)