"Looks like it came down on the other side of Central Park," he said, holding out a hand for the glasses.

"Sweet Goddess, it looks like it came down around Monroe and Fourth!" she replied, drawing a map in her head. They looked at each other, appalled: that was right in the middle of downtown.

I hope the Squirrel and the Peacock didn't get hit, she found herself thinking, absurdly-both nightspots booked a lot of live music. Then she shook her head angrily.

"There must be hundreds hurt," she said. Hundreds dead, more like, her mind insisted on telling her. She swallowed, and added silently to herself: Horned Lord of Death and Resurrection, guide the dying to the Summerlands.

Merciful Lady, preserver of life, keep the living safe. So mote it be!

Aloud she went on: "And where are the emergency people?"

"Trying to get their ambulances and fire trucks to work," Dennis said; there was a grim tone to his voice she'd seldom heard before. "Check your watch."

Juniper blinked, but did as he asked, pulling it out of her vest pocket where it waited at the end of a polished chain of fine gold links. She was wearing a sort of pseudo-Irish-cum-Highlander costume-billowy-sleeved peasant shirt and lace cravat and fawn-colored waistcoat with a long tartan skirt below and buckled shoes-what she thought of privately as her Gael-girl outfit. The watch was an old one, from her mother's father; she clicked the cover open.

"Working fine," Dennis said, as she tilted it to catch the firelight. "But mine ain't. It's digital."

He turned and switched to Sign. How about yours, Eilir?

It's an electric, she signed. Quartz. It's stopped.

"And stopped at just the same time as that one on the wall over there," he said, signing as he spoke. "Six fifteen."

"What's happening?" Juniper said, signing it and then running her hands through her long fox-red hair.