"Absolutely," I assured her. "Our portal is in an apartment in Columbus. Let me bundle up these characters where they'll keep for an hour or two, call it in to my coordinator, and I'll drive you there. You'll be home in five hours."

She looked down at the men. "You're not going to just leave them here, are you?"

"Absolutely not," I said grimly, grabbing one under the arms and starting to drag him to a nearby alley. "Aside from anything else, I rather like watching kidnap trials."

It took some long and fancy persuasion to get Sir Charles and the authorities to allow me to go back. Even then, they made me wait until two months after I'd brought Amanda home.

Which was fine with me. I'd been planning to wait that long anyway.

The biographies said that Weldon had quit his barroom career by this point and was writing full-time out of a downtown Pittsburgh apartment. He seemed cautiously pleased to see me. "Hello, Sigmund," he greeted me, stepping back to let me into the room. "I was hoping you'd come back."

"It took some doing," I said. "But I managed to convince them it would be safer to give you the whole story than leave you with only half of it."

"I have a full half, do I?" he asked wryly as he waved me to a somewhat threadbare chair.

"Possibly a bit less," I conceded, studying his face as I sat down.

Two months had worked wonders on the man. The emptiness I'd seen in his eyes that last night was gone, replaced by the creative fire the biographies had so often commented on. "You're looking good," I added. "Much better than the last time I saw you."

"I could say the same about you," he reminded me. He hesitated, just noticeably. "How is Amanda?"

"She's fine," I assured him. "She sends her greetings, and her deep thanks."

"So what exactly was that all about?" he asked, sitting down on a mismatched couch across from me. "I watched the papers for days, but