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They went back to the commuter train station and boarded an empty car on a San
Francisco–bound BART train. Rondeau and B talked about restaurants, while Marla
thought about where to start in her search for other sorcerers in the city.
The door at the far end of the car opened, and two men entered. Marla looked at them,
frowning. They were identical twins, in their twenties, with buzzed-short black hair and
glasses with chunky black frames, and they wore matching clothing—red T-shirts,
khaki cargo pants, black hiking boots. They each had mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and
other devices clipped to their belts, and carried matching black laptop bags over their
shoulders. Marla figured they had more computational power hanging on their bodies
than had existed in the entire world circa 1950. They stopped in the aisle beside Marla’s
seat, each gripping the overhead rail left-handed, leaning slightly toward her at precisely
the same angle. “You’re Marla,” one of them said.
“You have to come with us,” said the other. Their voices were exactly the same.
“We’re all on the same train,” Marla said. “Going the same way. So for the time being, I
don’t have any objection to that.”
They looked at each other with eerie simultaneity, then back down at Marla. “We’ll get
off the train at Civic Center,” one said. “and you’ll come with us. Someone wants to
meet you.”
Marla crossed her legs, bumping one of the men gently in the knee with her foot in the
process. He stepped backwards, out of her way—and so did the other guy, though she
hadn’t touched him. She glanced at Rondeau, who raised an eyebrow, and Marla shook
her head fractionally. B looked a little frightened, which just went to prove that he
didn’t know much about Marla at all, since these were clearly people of the henchman
variety, and Marla had never met a henchman yet that she couldn’t fillet one-handed if
the need arose.
“Who wants to meet me?” Marla said.
“Mr. Dalton,” one of them said.
“Let me guess,” Marla said. “He’s the new pro-tem chief sorcerer, since Finch’s
untimely demise?”
“You’ll find out who he is when he decides to tell you,” the other one said, clearly
trying to be menacing.
Marla rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s another twenty minutes before we get back to the city,
so why don’t you two sit down?”
“Don’t give us any trouble,” one said, as they both sat down on the seat opposite.
“Do I look like a troublemaker?” Marla said. “You two just saved me a lot of walking
around and asking questions. Hell, I’m thankful. I want to meet your boss.”