Kelly’s cold hand was on his cheek. It was freezing. He must have a fever or something. He’d dreamt of a pale woman and blood and ice.

“What time is it?” Steve asked without really waking. “Work? Don’t you need to get to the airport?”

“Airport?” Kelly asked. “What’s an airport?” Her voice was high-pitched, soft, and she smelled of vanilla.

He woke and saw Amaraine perched on the edge of the bench, leaning over him. She wore a silk robe of royal blue that tied in front at the waist, which left a rather deep V. The paleness of her skin accentuated the shadows. He forced herself to look at her face.

“You’re not Kelly,” he said, as if to ground himself in the fact.

“Who is Kelly?”

“My girlfriend.”

Amaraine looked at him oddly. “Little boys have ‘girlfriends.’”

“My lover, then.” Spurred by the view he was unsuccessfully avoiding, he asked, “Tell me, is it reasonable to say that this place is five hundred miles from Earth? Where I came from?”

“Hmm.” Amaraine paused, considering the matter. “As I understand it, you come from another world, another plane of existence entirely. Some theories of the universe say that the planes are laid out side by side through some great space, and so your home is farther away than any place that exists on this world. If so, then yes.”

“And some?”

“Would say that the reason you could come from there, to here, is because there and here are right next to each other.”

“Oh.” So much for easy moral decisions.

“What is your world like?” asked Amaraine.

“Sort of like this. Colder, but that’s because it’s Winter. Do you have seasons here?”

“Yes. It is Summer here now.”

“Good. I’d hate to think it got a lot hotter.”

“You had that heavy thing tied around your waist.” She pointed at the parka beneath his head. “Is that a cloak, with arms? I thought it might be armor.”

“It’s a coat. A very warm coat.”

“What else is different?”

“We’re more ad—” he started, and then decided “advanced” might be an insult. Earth didn’t have anyone who could freeze three men to death with a few words. “What’s actually most curious is what we have in common. We speak English, like you do.”

Amaraine smiled. “I am not an expert in demonology, but I have read a little. Apparently there is a magic about summoning that allows the creature summoned to understand the language of the summoner. Otherwise they’d barely understand commands, would they? To my mind, I am speaking a language called River, or by some Lethian.”

“And the cultists — they speak Lethian too?”

“It is spoken all the way up and down the river Lethe, from Iskander to my home, Umber, with only slight variation. You were, if I was not mistaken, about to say that your world is more advanced.”

“We have machines that do amazing things. But we do not have magic.” He didn’t want to believe in magic, even here. But he’d seen the three frozen men, and he had no other explanation for why he was here at all.

She leaned over, her robe gaping further. “I’d like to hear about it sometime. When we have time. If we both survive.” Her lips were not so close that she was offering a kiss, but they were close enough he could steal one, if he’d been that sort of man. He opened his mouth to ask her. He’d always preferred curvy, outdoorsy girls before. Amaraine made the average goth look bronzed, and she was delicate, but he still felt a pull.

Berta opened the door from the street, and came in, shutting it behind her.

“Is he just now waking up, Milady?” Berta asked. Her hands cradled some clothes, and something made of iron that jutted out.

“Yes,” said Amaraine, standing. “We were just talking.”

“I see, Milady. Well, he’s a good sleeper, he is, but no wonder as late as you were out. I brought the things.”

“Good.” Amaraine started toward the stairs, and addressed Steve. “We shall go up while you change.”

As she spoke, Berta laid the clothes in front of him. They were simple things, pants and a shirt, made of pale brown, undyed and unbleached fabric of some sort. The blade of a sword stuck out from between them. He lifted the shirt to see it clearly. The blade was thirty inches long, the point sharp and the edges beveled and as dull as a butter knife. The ribbed hilt had room only for a single hand between its flat guard and ball-shaped pommel.

He gestured to the weapon. “I don’t know how to use this.”

“You’d best learn, then.” Amaraine paused mid-step. Berta had to stop quickly to avoid running into her. “It has always looked quite simple to me.”

So she didn’t know how to use one either. “What am I supposed to do with it? I’ve never killed anyone.”

Amaraine raised her eyebrows. “The way you fought in the alley, I thought you were a warrior. You didn’t even need my dagger.”

He didn’t know how to explain it, or know why it happened in life-or-death situations and not in conversation. But he could see combat like he always imagined Wayne Gretzky saw hockey, or LeBron saw basketball. “I have great reaction time.”

“I see. Well, that’s something. I shall try divination again to find the cultists, but I am not optimistic.” She continued upstairs, Berta right behind her.

The blood had dried on Steve’s jeans, and he doubted that stain was ever coming out. He wondered why he had slept so late, when it hadn’t even been evening yet back on Earth when he lay down. At least he felt rested now. He stripped off his clothes without checking to see if the ladies were out of sight. He’d nearly been stabbed. He’d seen a dead woman. He’d seen people frozen to death. Getting seen naked didn’t seem worth worrying about.

There were pants, a shirt, a belt, sandals, and the sword. He pulled on the pants, which were loose fitting but not as baggy as the ones the cultists had worn. They tied in the front for fit. He understood why they were loose. Where they touched skin, they scratched. The shirt was softer and smoother, and had a deep V neck that laced up. He tried walking around, and he could move alright, but the pants chafed so he took them off again. He was tempted to wear his jeans underneath, but he was at least going to put his boxers back on.

“I had presumed you’d be done by now,” said Amaraine. How long she’d been standing there on the stairs watching, he didn’t know, but her skirts were on so at least she’d been gone some. She had her robe still wrapped around her.

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“Milady!” said Berta, from out of sight. “I need to get you in your corset!”

“Better not come out,” Amaraine said. “He’s naked. And built quite nicely, too, I might add.”

Steve imagined the maidservant wanting to come drag Amaraine back to the room, but unwilling to leave it herself. His imagination was wrong. He barely got his underwear on before Berta came out to gawk.

He pulled the scratchy pants back on. “Show time is over.” He hefted the sword. It was lighter than he thought it would be.

“A pity,” said Amaraine. “I’ll let you play with your toy.”

A few minutes later, corseted, Amaraine descended the stairs. “Well?” she asked.

“In a fight, it might be more dangerous to my opponent than it is to me,” Steve said. It was probably an understatement. He’d swung a few tennis rackets. But he didn’t like the idea of carrying a sword. It implied that he intended to kill someone. He remembered a friend explaining that she hadn’t made her boyfriend use a condom because she didn’t have one around, and she didn’t have one around because she wasn’t that kind of girl. He’d bit back the retort that the type of girl she apparently wasn’t was a smart one. “I’ll carry the sword, just in case. Why are you giving me these things?”

“We’re leaving town, and I intend to take you with me. I will pay you a hundred silver dinars a week to serve me, and I will pay for you to be trained with the sword. I have a boat docked that will carry us upriver.”

The way she just assumed annoyed him. “I don’t know how much a dinar is worth and I don’t know how long your week is. I can be your partner. You don’t like the Thosk guys. Neither do I. We can work together against them. You can help me figure out this crazy world in the process.”

“Partners? As in equals?”

“Yeah.”

“What a curious thought,” Amaraine said.

An uncomfortable silence followed. Steve didn’t know how he was going to survive without help, or how to get back to Earth, but he knew he had some value to her. Hadn’t her divination told her he was pivotal?

She studied him. He stared back, trying not to blink more often than she did. He felt the tension rise. Time, don’t slow down now. That only makes this harder. But it happened anyway, outside his conscious control. Finally she raised her hand and started to chant. He grabbed her hand.

A slow, cold smile formed on her ruby lips. “You moved quickly,” she said.

“Everything you do is in slow motion to me.”

“Slow motion? As in I move slower than you do?”

“No. As in — it’s hard to explain. I move at the same speed you do, basically. But I can watch it all as if it were moving slowly, see which way your hand is moving, and make a decision as to where to intercept it.”

She considered that. “So you don’t move faster. You’re saying you think faster.”

“I guess so.”

She had a laugh like silver bells, a schoolgirl’s giggle from a poised adult woman.

“What is so funny?”

“Few would suggest they could out think a sorceress. You have an unusual talent, which must be the source of your importance. Well then, we can be,” she paused, seeming to struggle with the word, and then at last completed the sentence. “Associates. But I would suggest you be mindful of your ignorance about this world, and until you learn, be open to taking direction from me. I shall try to exercise restraint in the giving of it. We must still leave town, either way, for we are in danger.”

“But I thought you said that they’d be summoning something else soon!”

“Yes. And I don’t think we want to be there when it comes.”

“It’s not just going to turn around and head back if you’re not here, is it?”

Amaraine shook her head. “Do you have a way of finding them? My divination found nothing.”

“They need a sacrifice. Maybe we can talk to the watch and ask them about any disappearances?”

“There are always disappearances. Most of them come back. I doubt the watch keeps track of disappearances, until there’s a body found. Even then, if it’s not someone of note, the probably shrug.”

Steve frowned. There had to be a way. “Well, do the sacrifices have to be virgins? That might narrow it down some.”

“Virgins? Where did you get that idea?” asked Amaraine. “I think it’s quite the opposite. The cults of the River, whatever the faults of their priests, generally celebrate physical pleasure. Especially, of course, that of Astarte. But Thosk frowns on sexual relations for any reason but procreation, and binds every adult woman to a single husband. The favored sacrifices of Thosk are unchaste women, whose sexuality he despises.”

Steve blinked. “The less chaste the better?”

“I suppose. I’ve studied the Thoskites, but they haven’t told me all their secrets. I’ve seldom had the opportunity to kill one slowly enough.

Steve gulped but let that go. “If you wanted a woman with lots of sexual experience, in a hurry, where would you go?”

“Umber?” Amaraine asked. “The temple of Astarte?”

Amaraine had said she was from Umber. Steve filed that away. “I mean, you’d go to a brothel.”

A thin smile played around Amaraine’s ruby lips. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re a proper lady,” said Berta.

“I’m a proper lady of Umber, Berta. I know there are brothels. I may never have been in one, but that’s because I’m not that way inclined, and a woman need not pay to get a man. You may be right, Steven, and you have a crucial role in this. Perhaps you have played it already, and perhaps not, but I ignore your intuition at my peril. The hetaera of Astarte would be better protected than the freelance women, and would insist on performing their service in the temple, so yes, it would make sense for them to choose a harlot as a sacrifice.”

“Prostitution isn’t illegal, is it?”

“Why would it be? No, harlotry is a long tradition both honored and dishonored. Perhaps in Iskander it is different, since the Thoskites took over. My brown cloak, Berta! The blue one needs more washing after last night. You go to the boat and tell Bradgar to have it ready for us, and Steve and I will investigate the brothels.” There was a glitter in her eye as she said it.

“Yes, Milady,” said Berta through tight lips as she draped a garment of chocolate wool over Amaraine’s pale shoulders.