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thousand.”
    “You are pressing your luck, Mallory,” said the Grundy ominously.
    “And you’re pressing yours,” shot back Mallory. “I was the only person in this Manhattan that could find your damned unicorn after he was stolen from you, and I’m the only one who can find out what happened to your elephant.”
    “What makes you so sure of that?”
    “The fact that you’re sure of it,” replied Mallory with a confident grin. “We hate each other’s guts, remember? You wouldn’t have swallowed your pride and come to me unless you’d tried every other means of discovering what really happened first.”
    The Grundy nodded his approval. “I chose the right man. Sooner or later I shall kill you, slowly and painfully, but for the moment we shall be allies.”
    “Not a chance,” Mallory contradicted him. “For the moment we’re employer and employee … and one of my conditions for remaining your employee is a nonrefundable down payment of five thousand dollars.” He paused. “Another is your promise not to harass my partner while I’m working.” He smiled. “She doesn’t know you like I do. You scare the hell out of her.”
    “Winnifred Carruthers is a fat old woman with a bleak past and a bleaker future. What is she to you?”
    “She’s my friend.”
    The demon snorted his contempt.
    “I haven’t got so many friends that I can let you go around terrifying them,” continued Mallory. “Have we got a deal?”
    The Grundy stood stock still for a moment, then nodded. “We have a deal.”
    “Good. Put the money on my desk before you leave.”
    But the Grundy had anticipated him, and Mallory found that he was speaking to empty air. He reached across the desk, counted out the bills (which, he noted without surprise, came to exactly five thousand dollars), and placed them in his pocket, while Felina stared at some spot that only she could see and watched the Grundy complete his leave-taking.
    • • •
    Mallory stood before the grandstand at Jamaica, watching a dozen elephants lumber through their morning workouts and trying to stifle yet another yawn, while all manner of men and vaguely humanoid creatures that had been confined to his nightmares only fifteen days ago went about their morning’s chores. The track itself was on the outskirts of the city of Jamaica, which, like this particular Manhattan, was a hodgepodge of skyscrapers, Gothic castles, and odd little stores on winding streets that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
    “What the hell am I doing here at five in the morning?” he muttered.
    “Watching elephants run in a circle,” said Felina helpfully.
    “Why is it always animals?” continued Mallory, feeling his mortality as the cold morning air bit through his rumpled suit. “First a unicorn, then an elephant. Why can’t it be something that keeps normal hours, like a bank robber?”
    “Because the Grundy owns all the banks, and nobody would dare to rob him,” answered Felina, avidly watching a small bird that circled overhead as it prepared to land on the rail just in front of the grandstand. Finally it perched about fifteen feet away, and Felina uttered an inhuman shriek and leaped nimbly toward it. The bird took flight, barely escaping her outstretched claws, but one of the elephants, startled by the sound, turned to pinpoint the source of the commotion, failed to keep a straight course, and broke through the outer rail on the clubhouse turn. His rider went flying through the air, finally landing in the branches of a small tree, while the huge pachyderm continued lumbering through the parking lot, banging into an occasional Tucker or DeLorean.
    “Bringing you along may not have been the brightest idea I ever had,” said Mallory, futilely attempting to pull her off her perch atop the rail.
    “But I like it here,” purred Felina, rubbing her shoulder against his own. “There are so many pretty birds here. Fat pretty birds. Fat juicy pretty birds. Fat tasty juicy