Half an hour after Phil started, after a succession of images, names, and questions, she had entered almost all the museum staff in the new system. She’d identified the security guards, entered the frequencies of their walkie talkies and the numbers of their cell phones on file. The staff in the gift shop, the volunteers on the information desk and the students who earned class credits giving tours each had their own info in the system as well, so the computer could handle their schedules and, in emergency, help with evacuations. She only had a few things left to do.

"Okay, Info Center, bring up the non-human photos again."

"Yes, Mrs. Slate." Six images appeared on the screen.

"Lose the Pixies."

"Pardon? Do you wish me to remove their access?"

Phil shook her head at the reminder that she was talking to a computer. An expensive, well-made expert system, but still just a set of canned responses.

"No, just remove their images from the screen."

The pixies disappeared.

"Now remove my image."

With only three images on screen, Phil realized one was no one she'd seen before. She set that aside for now and concentrated on finishing the task she'd set for herself.

"This one," she touched Tee's picture, "is our custodian. She..." Phil tried but couldn't bring herself to form the words she ought to.

"Is she to have access to my system?"

Phil stared, wondering why accepting Tee into the fold, even on sufferance, had changed the pain in Micah's head. She wished she could talk to him, see if adding the Info Center had removed the constant pain, or if it only made things worse. She wished she had his advice now. The only other people she might turn to for advice weren't there. Michaela and Matt had left on a vacation which got interrupted by an emergency investigation, something about a massive theft of artwork in Paris.

Eventually, that last consideration won out over all the others. In the years since she'd arrived, Tee had never actually done anything harmful. She was weird. She would stop and stare at a display, utterly catatonic, for hours at a time. She cleaned with an obsessive dedication that Phil found more than a little creepy. However, in all that time, for all that weirdness, she had never stolen anything. Phil wondered if it would even really be considered stealing if she took something back to her room; to the best of Phil's knowledge, Tee had lived in the small rooms reserved for the custodian's equipment since she arrived.

In the end, pity decided her more than anything else.

"Give her access, but please inform me if she leaves the museum grounds."

"Yes, Mrs. Slate. In case you cannot be reached, is this information required for security, employment, or medical reasons?"

It took Phil only a moment to come up with an answer there. "Medical. She has a condition. A type of amnesia. She might be an accidental danger to herself or others in an unfamiliar situation."

"Noted. If she leaves the grounds and you are not available, I will alert our senior security, local authorities, and local emergency rooms, and inform them of her description and condition."

"Um... yeah, that sounds good. Okay, remove her picture from the screen. Now, the guy on the left is Sammy. I don't know his real name. I suspect he is a Power in his own right, but he's never used anything supernatural when I've been around to see it. Instead, he trades favors."

"Should he be allowed administrative access to my system?"

Phil's eyebrows shot up, trying to crawl into her hairline. "No. Oh, no, no, no. Hell no, even. If anyone else tries to put him on the admin list, you tell them no and let me know about it immediately. Got it?"

"Is he a known criminal?"

That made Phil pause. She knew Sammy had involved himself somehow with Teresa Gelt's attempt to assassinate Micah and Phil, but she had never known whether he knew Gelt’s plan, or if he’d just traded favors. That's what he did, after all. He traded favors, always coming out on top somehow. Phil wouldn't call him a criminal, but she also would never try to trade with him again. Worse than one of the Sidhe for always remembering favors and slights, debts and obligations, and she had no idea what he would do with a gift.

"No. He's not a criminal. He's... Consider him a VIP, but also a competitor of sorts."

"Understood. I will inform security, yourself, and the information desk when he arrives, so we can ensure his visits are satisfactory."

"That makes sense. Remove Sammy's picture." That left her with one picture, and for the life of her she couldn't figure out who it was.

"Could you bring up all the pictures of this person, one at a time, show me them for about ten seconds each."

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The Information Center didn't respond, but the pictures cycled on the screen. Whoever he was, the visitor had a mix of ethnicities that had left their stamp on his features. Jet black hair, cropped short and spiky. An oddly dark face, but he might have spent a lot of time in tanning beds. She shrugged off the anomaly and kept searching through the pictures. She couldn't see his hands; he wore gloves that matched his suit. She paused the playback and focused on his hands for a bit. It took her a few minutes, but she realized that his fingers stretched a little too long, and the last joint accounted for the extra length. At a guess, he had long fingernails, and didn't want them exposed in public.

"This is getting weirder and weirder. I wish Micah was here."

"Micah is not in the building. I will inform you upon his arrival."

"Yeah, yeah. Keep showing me pictures."

By his clothing, he had visited at least five times, unless he'd changed in the men's room. He always dressed in full suits, nice ones. She endured a brief moment of jealousy; Micah had one suit like that, which he carefully saved for formal occasions. This guy wore them on day trips to a museum. A picture of him in the cafeteria showed he would even eat cheap, messy food in one of them. Either he had sublime confidence in his ability to avoid spills or he didn't care about getting taco sauce on a three-thousand-dollar suit.

The next picture showed him in the same suit as the unknown visitor wandered through the basement galleries, the ones nearest the cafeteria. Micah and Phil had filled them with artwork by local school children. A few pieces showed promise, but most of them? Tokens of appreciation from young visitors. His face showed he didn't think they belonged in a museum. Her estimation of him dropped quite a lot with that realization.

"Everybody starts somewhere, Mr. Art Critic."

That made her think she might know who the visitor was, at least by profession. She and Micah had dealt with more than a few critics in the time they'd owned the museum. The ones looking for 'classic' art often left disappointed, because Micah and Phil had eclectic tastes. Critics looking for the heart and soul of art, emotion given physical form, sometimes came away smiling. Phil didn't look forward to confronting a critic without Micah there to back her up. Especially with her Power so close to the surface, she might wind up doing something she'd regret.

Finally, after watching image after image for nearly ten minutes, she caught a glimpse of something that made her stare at the screen in shock. In one of the images, the visitor craned his neck to see something well above his head. It gave the camera a view maybe an inch under his shirt. Under his collars, the dark skin gave way to some kind of complex pattern.

"Stop. Can you magnify that image any?"

"Is there any particular portion you wish magnified?"

"Yeah, the view down his shirt."

"I am sorry, Mrs. Slate, but my cameras are not designed for a huge degree of high-speed resolution. I can magnify, but the lighting in that area will prevent perfect imaging."

"Gotcha. Just do it."

When the camera zoomed in on the stranger's chest, Phil saw the beginnings of an image. The detail work tickled her memory, but whatever it was, she couldn’t place it. She could tell, however, that the man had ink. She thought about that for a bit, then made another request.

"Info Center, please filter for any pictures where the man's skin is visible."

"His face is visible in all pictures. It is how I identified him."

Phil sighed, counted to ten, and tried again.

"Filter for any pictures where the skin otherwise covered by his clothing is visible."

The Information Center didn't reply, but the pictures rotated again. At each one, the Museum Information Center highlighted a cuff, a collar, or some other body part. She zoomed in on each, and as she looked at them, her unease grew. Finally, it blossomed into realization, and she felt her Power sweating out from underneath her tattoos in response.

"This guy has damn near as much ink as I do. He's tattooed everywhere but his face."

"Incorrect, Mrs. Slate."

"Did you spot somewhere he wasn't? Show me."

"Clarification: his face is tattooed. The resolution makes it difficult to see, but analysis of the motion data indicates a pattern of fine lines covers most of his face. It appears similar to a Maori facial tattoo, but I cannot confirm this, as none of the Maori tattoo images I have match the patterns I derived."

"Can you display what you think it looks like?"

"The image may seem artificial, but I can display what the tattoo should look like based on my extrapolation."

"Do so."

The images disappeared, replaced by a single image of the stranger's face. The Information Center was right; the image looked subtly artificial, almost like one of the movies with real actors, but everything in the movie, including the actor's faces, got redrawn with advanced animation. As she watched, fine lines appeared on the man's face, starting on his cheeks. They spread like ink dropped in a full bucket of milk.

The image, when fully revealed, explained why the man's face looked so dark. Whoever had done the artwork had used ink a few shades darker than the underlying skin tone. It covered so much of his face that in the pictures it seemed he was just dark-skinned. The patterns intrigued her. She closed her eyes, careful not to stare too long. According to the Information Center, this person wasn't human, and plenty of non-humans used patterns to beguile their opponents.

She thought about that for a while. Facial modifications were some of the most drastic available. They were impossible to hide, and most people used them for very personal, important statements about themselves or about how they viewed the world around them.

Phil's own facial modifications were warnings to herself. The Escher on one temple showed her in graphic detail what would happen if she let loose, and the Rodin on the other told her things that the Escher couldn't properly illustrate. The final modification, her nasal piercing through the bridge of her nose, held a chain of three ruby tears, one for each death she'd inadvertently caused with her Power, and since she'd gotten it, there hadn't been a need for a fourth.

Her modifications reminded her of the cost of losing control. The stranger's facial modifications looked to be a way to distract opponents, or maybe to protect himself. That didn't make her sanguine about the fact that this person was in her museum every day at all.

"Can you print out a copy of this, and a copy of each of the other photos where his body art shows?"

"I can email you the originals. You would be able to print them at your leisure then."

"Yeah, no. I can't print from my phone. I never set it up. And the screen is just too little to get a good view. Send them to the printer in Micah's office."

"Which office is that, again?"

Phil brought up a map of the museum and pointed out Micah's office to the machine.

"That is your office, Mrs. Slate."

"It's our office. Micah and mine. Micah is my husband. We're partners. We're... partners."

Dammit, the machine was making her cry again.

"Just print them there. I've... I've got some things to do."

"As you wish, Mrs. Slate."