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Have you ever felt uncomfortable in your own skin?

Maybe there's a reason...

That was how I remembered it. The fact that I was remembering it meant either that there really was something to this whole life-after-death thing, or I wasn't dead. Either choice seemed pretty good to me, considering that there was still some sort of "me" left to be thinking all this stuff. Of course, if I were dead, no more Really Good food. That would be bad.

"It's alive," deadpanned a nearby voice.

"That's debatable," I managed to croak out. The trouble with wit is that it requires you to be comparatively awake, and in the state of wakefulness, all kinds of things happen - like awareness of pain. On the plus side, I didn't think anything was broken; on the minus side, I felt like 142 pounds of condemned veal that had been pre-tenderized.

"I'd recommend just lying there for a while. You had a big fall, Humpty old boy."

Oh yeah, eyes work more efficiently when they're open. It was a struggle to make it happen, but I finally managed. A room, darkened but not dark; plain walls, little on them, cozy enough. A bed beneath me; a chair to the side of me, where the voice came from. The voice appeared to belong to a comely young man wearing a light blue surgical scrub shirt. His reddish-brown hair was a tidy, thick mop atop his head, a similar color of clipped mustache on his smiling lip. A stethoscope hung round his neck like an identifying badge. "And you are?"

"My name is Alexei," he said. "To answer those other questions that you probably have, you're in bed, in a small clinic. You were brought here unconscious about three hours ago. I've been looking after you. You may notice that there are no beeps in the air and no wires on your body. You're not hooked up to monitoring devices - nothing that much wrong. Some good news for you there."

"That leaves a certain hint of bad news somewhere else. Give it to me straight, doc."

"Tall order," he said, his harlequin green eyes casting flecks of yellow-gold in their mirth. "Let's be clichéd and ask how much you remember."

"Funny you should say," I mumbled. A deep breath. I didn't know how much anyone else might have said about all this, and a cop would want me to keep a story straight. "Falling. That's about it."

"You fell into an open-topped skiff," Alexei said, "what the garbage collection people call a roll-off. It was filled nearly to overflowing with something like old cotton batting, stacked in layers. The only landing place that would have been better would be one of those huge inflatable things that the stunt men use."

"Lucky me," I said. I cast a few deeply sincere feelings of gratitude to whatever deity might have arranged for such a soft landing. "How's the rest of me?"

"You'll have some sore muscles, I don't doubt, but otherwise you're fine. You landed perfectly, it would seem. Knocked the wind out of you, but that's about it." He looked at me carefully. "How are your eyes?"

Cover your eyes.

"I think they're okay." How would he know?

Alexei nodded. "I've got some drops here that will help a little. We want to be sure that there wasn't any foreign material in that stuff you fell into. If some of it were Fiberglas, like insulation, getting it in your eyes would be a serious problem; it could cut the corneas."

"Why are you worried about my eyes?"

"Just making sure." He very quickly and expertly moved his hands to my eyes, carefully lifting lids that I tried and failed to keep shut. The drops were in both of them before I could make any protest. The liquid felt cooling, soothing - was that real or just an illusion? And just how paranoid was I getting?

"I didn't ask for any special doctoring here."

"Good thing I'm not a doctor then, isn't it?"

"What did you do to my eyes?"

"Just a few drops of my own design. It's a simple herbal compound, mostly just sterile water, very safe, very soothing." He brushed a hand over my forehead, whispered something that I couldn't catch.

"What is it you know," I tried to stay awake, "what are you doing..."

A shushing sound, gentle, soothing, the whispered something again, his hand over my forehead. "Rest, Jeremiah," he said. "You're safe now."

Nothing.

* * * * *

In the fox's den, I huddled against the dry straw and looked at the small patch of outside that was framed by the cave entrance. It was a warm, safe place in here, away from the light snow outside, snow that had given the red fox a thin, second coat of powdered sugar white. The fox looked in at me, seeming to smile.Thank you, I thought. It's safe here. Thank you.

* * * * *

My eyes popped open suddenly, not a good idea when the room you're in is well lit. I closed them again at once, although the general scene had been imprinted upon them. By deduction, I figured that I was on the sofa in my office.

I gave myself exactly ten seconds to sift through the myriad questions and force down the general sensation of stark terror that accompanies the sense of not being in control of one's life. After that, I took one deep breath, shoved my emotions out of the way, and opened my eyes.

So okay, all that attempt at a Vulcan_Kolinahr_ trick didn't work nearly as well as I'd hoped, but at least I wasn't panicked anymore.

There was nothing at all amiss in the office. It was definitely mine, just as I'd left it - well, yesterday, if my time sense was working correctly. I had no idea how long I'd been out. The clock near my desk told me it was just after nine a.m., and the light through the windows seemed to confirm that well enough. I was just paranoid enough to wonder if the office had been bugged or otherwise put under scrutiny, so I forced myself to move slowly, act as normally as possible, and try to figure out the next move.

I felt myself (not like that) and realized that I was wearing the same clothes that I'd been wearing on the last surveillance cycle. I found my cell phone in my pocket. The time agreed with the clock near my desk, and the date was indeed the day after the incident on the roof. I put aside huge conspiracy theories involving resetting the electronics and trusted the information. Three missed text messages.

First: GOT IT. ON MY WAY, MEET MB.

Next, several minutes later: WHERE ARE YOU.

Another, several minutes after that: NO HOSTAGE, SIGNAL AT ONCE.

Nothing else. Maybe they thought I'd lost my phone or something.No hostage- what the hell?

A knock at the door. "Jeremiah?" a voice called softly. "You awake?"

Note to self: Those scenes where the hero draws down because he's in a freaky situation and isn't sure who's friend or foe - maybe they aren't so stupid after all. And here am I without a gun.

"Jeremiah?" the voice, slightly familiar, was inside the office now. The outer door closed, the inner door eased slowly open. A head of reddish-brown hair poked inside slowly.

I remembered suddenly that I hadn't been breathing for a short time and quickly resumed the process. "Alexei, I presume."

He looked toward me and smiled. "I'm glad that you managed to recognize me without all of the nursing garb."

The outfit was very different, somewhere on the practical side of would-be preppie - polo shirt, chinos, all-terrain shoes that seemed very practical rather than stylish. On him, it worked. "Must be the hair."

"I'll take that as a compliment." He brandished a cardboard holder with two tall paper cups and a small carry-out bag. "For behold, I bring you bagels and fruit juice of great joy." His smile diminished as he looked at me carefully. "Jeremiah? Are you all right?"

"How did I get here?"

"All in one piece, as you can see." Alexei set his breakfast goods on my desk and turned to me. "I'm not trying to be an ass. I've been trying to figure out exactly how to put all this together for you, and the truth is, I probably can't. I'll tell you whatever you want to know, or at least as much of it as I know. How's your head? Can you think clearly at this point?"

"Be glad I don't carry a weapon," I said tiredly. "You'd be looking at the business end."

Surprisingly, he only nodded slowly. "Yeah, you're right. You've had one helluva night. Okay, let's start slowly. My name is Alexei Leesavich, and yes it's Russian, and no that's not important. I'm a registered nurse, and I was taking care of you last night because you'd been brought to me. I learned your name and a little bit about what had happened to you, and I was told to make sure that you were all right. I got the impression that someone was after you, or that it was just better that you stay out of sight for a while. That's why you were in the small clinic rather than at the emergency room of St. John's."

I breathed slowly. "Okay. How did you know about me? Who brought me to you?"

"You could say that I work with Sobieslaw, but that's not entirely true." Alexei waggled his hand in the air. "It's more like I'm at the periphery of what he does, because quite frankly, I'm not entirely sure what it is that he does, at least not here in the city. I got enough clues from the people around him that I knew something was going to happen last night, although I couldn't tell you what it was - only that it had something to do with the warehouse. I've got keys to the place, so I thought that I might keep an eye on it for a while.

"I didn't get the chance. Everything happened well before midnight, which surprised me. What self-respecting bad guy does his work ahead of the zero hour?" He shook his head. "Instead, I find myself needing to nursemaid a slightly wounded P.I. Which, if I may add, was not an unattractive task. I only hope I didn't add to your paranoia."

"Actually, you did." I nodded to the food on the desk. "I'm hoping that the food isn't drugged or poisoned, because I'm hungry."

"Think you can trust me?" His eyes held mine softly, without blinking. "I hope that you can."

I thought about it for a moment. I sighed, snapped my fingers, and looked him in the eyes. "Can I trust you?"

"With your life." Alexei blinked suddenly, took half a step away from me. "What..."

I rose from the couch and crossed to my chair behind the desk. "You got something savory, I hope, like maybe some 'everything' bagels? And cream cheese, of course," I said, rummaging through the bag. "Perfect. You're hired. Now let's eat before I pass out from hunger and WTMI."

_"Govno!"_Alexei cursed, moving to put the desk between us. "What was that? What did you do?"

"My turn to be mysterious?" I asked, feeling (I hate to admit) a little smug. I slathered half of a bagel with more cream cheese than most bagel places allow for their legal limit. "Let's just say that I managed to get the truth out of you. It is the truth, I presume? Or have you managed to fool me so completely that I'm about to kill myself with a poisoned pastry?"

After several long seconds of trying to control his breath, my guest closed his eyes and whispered something. I would have said that it sounded familiar, but my memory of the past dozen hours wasn't all that good. If I was correct, it was something that he had whispered last night as well. My Russian wasn't up to a translation. Frankly, my Russian didn't get much past_zdravstvuichi,_ which is supposed to be a greeting. For all I know, it's a word meaning something terrible about my sister. If I'd had one.

Alexei opened his eyes and looked at me carefully. "Not so long ago, they would have burned you as a witch."

"They still might, if last night is anything to go by." I indicated the client's chairs. "You might as well sit down, Alexei. We seem to be on the same side, so we probably ought to get to know each other better."

In other circumstances, that might have been a (you should pardon the expression) straight line. Alexei wasn't quite up to a witty response at that point, so he merely sat, thought for a moment, and reached for a bagel of his own. "You may not believe it, but that's actually what I came here to do. You just surprised the hell out of me."

"You had no shields."

"I didn't think I'd need any."

"Exactly."

He nodded as he chewed on a bit of bagel. "How long?"

"Probably most of my life, although I really didn't figure it out for quite a long time. It's not like it's terribly common in this crazy world. People are too technologically obsessed for something as simple as a little magic to enter into their realm of consciousness."

"Is it really magic?"

"I have no idea. I just do it."

"By accident, or on purpose?"

"Accidentally first." I paused to wet my whistle with a sip of a fine apple-raspberry juice combination from one of the cups. "I was a kid who had read too may old books and seen too many old movies. When you're frustrated by something, you snap your fingers. At some point, I found out that snapping my fingers actually made something happen. I've called it 'luck' all this time. I don't really have any reason to call it anything else." Back to the bagel. "Your turn."

Alexei chuckled. "You could blame it on my being Russian, I suppose. Lots of folk tales and superstitions of a passionate people. That's what I'm told, anyway. I discovered it fairly late in life, in comparison to you anyway. After puberty had set in for a while, I ... well, I actively sought a way to make something happen. Nothing very big."

"You use a magic phrase of some kind."

He nodded. "I created a set of words that I simply never used except as an invocation. It helped me to focus the ... magic, mind-power, luck, whatever it is."

"You put me to sleep with it last night."

"Not exactly. The touch helps to lower the blood pressure, alter the breathing slightly, and cause a very slight release of endorphins. It can't make someone sleep, but it can calm them down. I needed you to be calm. It seemed the best way." He looked down. "It wasn't very fair of me; you were vulnerable. I wouldn't use that power on anyone, ever, unless I thought I had to."

"You're a healer, Alexei," I said, finishing off a bagel. "I can't imagine you using your gifts for anything but the best of reasons. And yes, you probably wouldn't have kept me calm if you hadn't done something. Better that, I'm guessing, than some kind of drug. At least it didn't carry any hangover with it."

"And I don't have to have a narcotics license," he chuckled. After a moment, he sighed heavily. "So. Where do we stand?"

"What do you mean 'we,' paleface?" I smiled at him. "I hired you to get bagels, not as an operative. And besides, you've still got some 'splainin' to do."

"Okay. What do you want to know?"

I started tidying up my desk. "Rule One: You meant it when you said that I can trust you, so you need to know that you can trust me too." I looked at him carefully. "I'm going to assume that you know more than you're telling me."

Damned if he didn't start to blush. "Jeremiah, I'm not--"

"There's something you can't tell me," I cut him off. "You're deeper in this than you're admitting, Alexei. And even though I can trust you, I'm not sure that I can trust whatever side you're working in this mess. That means that it's probably better if I go on alone for a while, follow my own course of inquiry, as the old private dicks used to say." I stood, walked around the desk, leaned against it and looked him squarely in the eye. "If I'm on my own, whoever is running you doesn't have to worry about whether or not you're being on the level with him. This may sound strange, in the circumstance, but I'd really rather not have you in the middle of this. I don't want you to get hurt."

"How much should I read into that?" he asked with a small smile.

"Just enough to know that I mean it. I'm going to ask a few more questions; for your own safety, tell me only what you can to keep both of us out of some form-fitting concrete Gucci's. First: Do you actually work for Sobeislaw?"

"No. I don't take any salary from him, or any company of his." Alexei's eyes locked on mine. "Jeremiah, there is more, but that's all that I can tell you right now about Sobeislaw."

"Why are you tailing him?"

I could see his jaw clench briefly. "There is a personal reason that I can tell you, soon, but not now. There is also an even more important reason. All I can tell you about that second reason is that there are a great many people involved, and that the stakes are higher than it's safe to admit just yet."

"Were you part of that mess at the warehouse last night?"

"No. I have no idea what happened last night. I didn't know you were connected to any of this until after your injury. I had planned to visit the warehouse around midnight, but before I could go there, you were brought to me for medical attention."

"Who brought me?"

"Not Sobieslaw. Not his people." He leaned forward, a tortured look on his face. "Jeremiah, listen to me. There's a lot I can't tell you about yet. I need to have a very few answers myself, and once I have them, I can tell you everything."

"You're not giving me much." I held his gaze. "How about giving me your keys to the warehouse?"

He shook his head. "I'll take you there."

"No. If you're not on Sobieslaw's payroll, then you have no right to a set of keys. Trespassing is a minor crime for a gumshoe, especially if I'm looking in on a client's property, but it's bad news for the civilian who seems to have access that he shouldn't have."

"I won't give you the keys."

"Then I'll take them."

"By force?"

"By luck." I held up my hand, held my fingers close as if to snap them.

Alexei grabbed my hand in his. "Jeremiah, please. Part of what I have to know is in that warehouse. I can tell you more once I've seen it. There's something I have to be absolutely sure of. Let's go down there, now, full daylight, no secrets, no hidden agenda. If the cops come up, you have a reason to be there, and you can vouch for me, or let them take me to jail if you have to. But I have to go."

I thought it over. In all of our conversation, there was one piece of the puzzle that I knew was completely wrong. The good news was that, if the puzzle piece really was as I suspected it to be, then Alexei could have proved himself an ally in a heartbeat. So the bad news was, why didn't he do that?

"I'm assuming I didn't drive here last night, so my car is probably at the surveillance site." I clapped him on the shoulder as I rose. "You drive."