"At least they're not running you off your feet like they usually do," she commented.

"Which was handy, given how much time I spent on hold with Missing Persons," he said a little sourly. "Turns out they don't have anyone on their books who matches the girl's description."

"I know," Caroline said, peering at the open recipe book and pulling a block of cheddar out of the fridge. "They don't have anything on the man, either."

He glanced at her, a flicker of surprise and perhaps even respect flashing across his face. "You called them too?"

She nodded. "I also checked the news sources to see if I could come up with any events that might link to the bruises on her throat. But there was nothing."

He grunted. "I took the subway up to 103rd at lunchtime and walked back along last night's route," he told her. "I couldn't get into the alley—the gate was locked—but I couldn't see an single thing that looked out of the ordinary."

Caroline selected a knife and started cutting slices of cheese. "It's like it never happened."

"Pretty much," Roger agreed. "I did hear one interesting tidbit, though. Seems there was a massive power outage up in Morningside Heights last night. The west part, over by Riverside Park."

Caroline frowned. "How far up?"

"Kelly said everything around his place on West 115th was completely dark." He paused. "Or at least it was after the big flash."

"Flash?"

"Yeah," Roger said. "Like all the streetlights blew at once, he said."

"Did ConEd have any explanation?"

"Just the usual bafflegab," Roger said. "Overloads, cable stress, squirrels in the wiring, or maybe the Broadway construction."

"You think that might have had something to do with our streetlight problem?" Caroline asked.

"I'd like to," Roger said. "But there are three problems. One, it doesn't sound anything like what we ran into, so I don't know how they could be related. Two, the Morningside outage happened nearly an hour before our lights did their magic trick. And three, there's still the problem of why the streetlights went out and not the power in the buildings themselves."