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Her voice got stronger and I felt the queasy chill and smell slide away. Then a little push . . .

I felt as if I had plunged from the ceiling into the couch and I lurched back, panting, opening my eyes.

Mara looked flustered, her hair a bit disheveled and her face white. “That was a mite rough. Do you feel all right?”

I swallowed bile and croaked, “I’m OK.” I swallowed again. “I think.”

“You look done in.”

I shook it off. “I’m fine.” I got to my feet and looked at my watch. “But I have to go.”

Mara gave me a shrewd look. “Don’t push yourself. And please be careful. You know how to come and go now, but you’re not strong or steady at it yet. You need practice.”

I nodded and started for the door. “I know. Trust me. I won’t be bungee jumping off any Grey cliffs, if I can help it.” A flurry of shivers scurried over my skin and I kept my eyes turned away from Albert.

Mara followed me and caught me at the door. She gave me a hard, sober look. “Be sure you don’t. Lorry grilles are unforgiving.”

I returned a wan smile and said I’d be careful, then hurried away, cursing myself.

Immersion in the Grey induced a panic in me I hadn’t experienced since grade school. I just had to get far away from it, into the comfort of the familiar, for a while. The longer the better, though I doubted it would be long.

I got to the Ingstrom warehouse after the auction had started. Michael grinned at me and waved as he registered new bidders. I headed for the sound of Will’s amplified voice, breathing normal dust and dirt and feeling relieved.

Bidders’ paddles flapped in the air as Will spieled on. He knew how to gauge a crowd. In minutes, he’d closed a set of wooden file cabinets at seven hundred dollars. It was still early in the day and already the crowd was catching bidding fever.

The buyers were the usual assortment of shop owners and auction addicts. But there was a knot of blank-faced men and women huddled in depressed passivity near the back wall. I guessed they were former Ingstrom employees gathered to watch the carrion birds fight for the bones of their livelihood. The buyers pressed forward, ignoring them, impatient for the choice lots.

A box full of glass gewgaws came up and an intense bidding war developed between a thin, blond woman and a pudgy man with bad hair transplants. I couldn’t recall names, but they were familiar to me from other auctions. Rival antiques dealers. She, I remembered, was unpopular with some of the other dealers for her sharp ways. I wondered if the man bidding against her merely wanted to drive the price up—he didn’t look like the glass curio type.

The price had risen to ridiculous when I saw her hesitate. Will called for another ten dollars. Both bidders looked around. The man grimaced.

Will leaned into the microphone slightly and scanned the crowd. “Antique deck prisms in perfect condition. Highly collectible in today’s market,” he stated, letting his eye rest on her. “Last chance. Do I hear any more?”

Biting her lip, the woman flicked her paddle up. Will’s gavel came down so fast you’d have thought the building was collapsing, though there was no chance of anyone taking pity on her and making a last-minute bid. A sigh and a ripple moved over the crowd as the lot closed. Will moved on to the next one. I could see a scowl spread across the woman’s face as she began to suspect she’d been cooked. Then she turned and pushed through the crowd to the door.

About a dozen lots later, Will declared a forty-five-minute break for lunch. I followed him to the back of the warehouse and caught up to him at the registration table in a clutch of the grim men and women.

He looked down at me and beamed. “Hi! Nice to see you again.” He slipped his arm around a deflated-looking woman of sixty-and-some and drew her forward. “This is Ann Ingstrom—the senior Mrs. Ingstrom. Mrs. Ingstrom, this is Ms. Blaine, the investigator I mentioned this morning.”

She was wearing a well-made navy wool suit that hung on her as