had detectives looking for you for six months. Where have you been, Rog? Smashing up the car like that and—disappearing! I've been out of my mind."

"Sorry," said Tennant. "I've had my troubles, too." Agatha was scared stiff—of him. Probably with reason. He looked again at Cass Gordon and found that he suddenly didn't care. She couldn't say it was loneliness. Women have waited longer than eighteen months. He would have if his captors had let him.

"Where in hell have you been, Rog?" Gordon's tone was almost parental. "I don't suppose it's news to you, but there was a lot of suspicion directed your way while that crazy killer was operating around here. Agatha and I managed to clear you."

"Decent of you," said Tennant. He got up, crossed to the cabinet that served as a bar. It was fully equipped—with more expensive liquor, he noticed, than he had ever been able to afford. He poured a drink of brandy, waited for the others to fill their glasses.

Agatha looked at him over the rim of hers. "Tell us, Rog. We have a right to know. I do, anyway."

"One question first," he said. "What about those killings? Have there been any lately?"

"Not for over a year," Cass told him. "They never did get the devil who skinned those bodies and removed the heads."

So, Tennant thought, they hadn't used the gateway. Not since they had brought the four of them through, not since they had begun to train him for his Judas ram duties.

Agatha was asking him if he had been abroad.

"In a way," he replied unemotionally. "Sorry if I've worried you, Agatha, but my life has been rather—indefinite, since I—left."

He was standing no more than four inches from this woman he had desired desperately for six years, and he no longer wanted her. He was acutely conscious of her perfume. It wrapped them both like an exotic blanket, and it repelled him. He studied the firm clear flesh of her cheek and chin, the arch of nostril, the carmine fullness of lower lip, the swell of bosom above low-cut gown. And he no longer wanted any of it or of her. Cass Gordon—

It didn't have to be anybody at all. For it to be Cass Gordon was revolting.

"Rog," she said and her voice trembled, "what are we going to do? What do you want to do?"

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