Bob looked wearily down at him, his face striated with runnels of blue. It looked like he was bleeding from the scalp, as if his entire face might just peel off any second now. "An Old One screaming in pain," Bob told him, unable to smile but managing to smirk with one corner of his mouth. "It didn't sign up for this kind of shit."

"You're lying." he didn't even know why he said. Of course he was lying - Bob was spectacularly good at that.

"It's been hurt by an animal, and it doesn't like that."

"Nothing can get close enough to an Old One to hurt it," Lucifer pointed out, sure he was on solid ground. "Except you, and you're right here."

But Bob looked down at him like one of those creepy crucified Humans they liked to put up in some of their churches, and gave him a grin that was more gloating and predatory than anything he'd seen from him before. "You think I didn't know you were sniffing around, Lucy? Now what kind of business would I be if I couldn't pick up the shift in that tide?"

He glared up at his solid cobalt eyes, refusing to believe this. Bob was desperate, he knew he was going to lose and was spouting complete shit. (But what if he wasn't?) "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that one day I met the perfect assassin. Retired, in a way, but still remarkable in several respects. Top of the list was that he'd been hurt so much pain was no longer a deterrent. He didn't like it, but it didn't stop him, and, as a result, the only fears he had weren't related to pain at all. Although it's an over simplification to say he's a man without fear, let's just say that's good enough for our purposes. He'd been fucked over so much by telepaths his mind had learned to adjust itself; it could heal itself over like flesh wound. But the most remarkable thing was my energy couldn't kill him-well, not unless I really meant it.  Believe me, I didn't."

This had to be complete bullshit. There was no way Bob could...was there?

The fear that seized Lucifer was so sudden it felt like a panic attack. "Avatar!" He shouted to the two Old Ones in the wallow with them. "Bob has an avatar and it's attacking! Do something, damn it!"

There was some sort of growling/squealing conversation between the Old Ones as the painful noises continued echoing through the connecting sewer tunnels. He still couldn't quite believe it (Since when was Bob that powerful? Since when were Humans that strong?) , and as he tried to follow the drift of the Old Ones conversation, he heard Bob chuckling to himself after another shriek of pain down the tunnel.  "Wolverine's ripped my flesh," Bob said, apropos of nothing.

Lucifer determined what the Old Ones were going to do as they shifted their heavy bodies in their direction, and he looked up at Bob with a triumphant laugh. "They figure if they drain you completely, you're no good to your avatar, and the Others are at our mercy. What did you think about that, asshole?"

The calculating, cold smile never left Bob's face. "I think you're a day late and a dollar short, mate."

Lucifer backed up as the Old Ones clustered around Bob, but even as they reached their tentacles towards him, Bob asked him, "I hope you think it's a good day to die, Ceph. Just remember it never had to be this way."

It was just his arrogance. There was no way this was done, no way Bob had won just because his avatar had gotten past the first scout.

But Lucifer slipped down a clear sewer tunnel anyways, headed for the surface. It was always best to clear a battlefield until the war was over.

A strange smell in this fetid sewer, a familiar one, one he'd smelled in the upper world before this thing attacked him...

It was near him, and yet it was not. He looked around and saw nothing but concrete walls blackened with slime and waste, splatters of blood like septic matter and chunks of rubbery dark flesh, some of which was still moving as if unaware it had be detached from the rest of the body.  It smelled like...him, but different; something like him...but he was alone here, the beast withdrawing deeper into the tunnels behind him.

But that other scent, surface world, seemed to be swirling towards the opposite end of the tunnel, and for a moment he didn't know which way to go. In spite of his rage urging him after the creature, the buzzing hot pain in his mind seemed to ebb a little, and he thought he should see if that other world person was here. Maybe they worked with the beast; maybe they were another victim.

The farther he went down the tunnel the more he began to see light - pale at first, with a decidedly blue tint - and then the pain started to return, somehow greater than before. It was like a buzzsaw  tearing up the tissue behind his eyes, and his hearing started coming back in like a slow tide. The noises he heard were hollow and distant, but slid along his burning nerves like razor blades, and he knew he hated it. Didn't matter what it was; he would do anything to stop that noise.

The familiar scent was gone, but it no longer mattered, as anger had taken over and he didn't remember what else he had come after in the first place.

There was a new noise - more felt than heard, something that seemed to turn his insides to liquid and drop him to knees - but as soon as it stopped he used the slime slicked wall to help him back up to his feet and went after...it.  

Again the idiot mantra, the only thing he could hold in his head for any length of time.

The tunnel came out in a wide pit, filled with filth and blood and...it. Two of them, far from him, clustered against a wall around something bright blue. The true light source, something like a diamond shaped sliver of light so bright it was painful to look at, and he heard...singing? "When the dawn breaks, with a hand shake,relaxed and feeling great. Collision-"

He looked away from the light, cringing, as it seemed to stab through the back of his skull. Suddenly he heard a voice say, "Thanks Logan, I think I can take it from here."

In the same voice, but now outside his head, the singer added, "-head on."

And reality seemed to explode.

Blue light like acid erupted and blinded him, while those sonic waves of screams spiraled up to an impossible pitch, liquefying his bones and nerves, rupturing everything in its path through his mind. He may have screamed, but he couldn't hear, and he couldn't feel his body, didn't know if he was standing or flattened under the sonic assault of unholy, brutal noise.

For one blissful moment, it all stopped - noise, pain, sense of self - and he was swamped in blood warm darkness.

**

A woman's voice, familiar, and yet somehow chilling.

He shoved himself up to a sitting position on the hardwood floor, and looked around, confused. Something had happened...something elsewhere, something violent...but this room was familiar in a way that wasn't clear.

It wasn't much of a room, really, just a sparsely decorated bedroom with all the usual stuff: bed, chest of drawers, nightstands, wing chair tucked in a far corner and looking orphaned somehow. But one unusual thing caught his eye and maybe his stomach clench in sudden anxiety - a neon palm tree.

He looked over his shoulder, and standing in the open doorway was a woman. She was petite and slender, dressed in a demure business outfit of a long black skirt and a royal blue blouse with shell buttons, sleek black hair held away from her face by a silver hair clip with a bright blue design like the eye of peacock feather, but for some reason she was barefoot. She was lovely, with a delicately featured face highlighted by warm brown eyes, but the sight of her seemed to paralyze him, make him feel instantly ice cold.  It seemed to take him a moment to work his vocal cords. "M-Mariko?" He had a sudden feeling he shouldn't be here. He couldn't remember where he was before, although he had the impression it was some place very bad,  but still he thought he shouldn't be here. His heart began to race, and he wasn't sure he was breathing.

She looked down at him with a curious kindness. "What is it?"

Was this a memory? Did something get shaken loose in his head?Or was this Bob's doing somehow?

(Maybe he was dead. Again. But maybe this time it would stick.)

He didn't know what to say. Finally seeing her face seemed to turn him to stone, and he couldn't think more than he could breathe or speak.

She came over to him, and his first instinct was to back up, run away, but he'd have to stand to do that, and movement was momentarily beyond him. She knelt down in front of him, and gave him a weak smile. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Did she know she was dead? "Am I dead?" He asked.

She touched him, hand smoothing across his cheek to the back of his neck. She felt warm, and she smelled exactly right, like musk and green tea, cinnamon and almond. He didn't know how he remembered what she smelled like, but he did, buried somewhere in his memory, and he knew it was right. "No, sweetheart. I didn't think you could die."

This close to her, he felt like he was about to shatter into a thousand pieces, and her touch made it all seem far too real and dangerous. "I wish I could," he admitted, and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in the side of her long, slender neck. The smell of her and her body heat was just too much, and he was horrified to feel tears in his eyes. "I'm so sorry," he told her, trying hard to swallow back sobs. It was the only thing he could think to say to her.

Her arms slid around him, warm and surprisingly strong, and she whispered, "Shh. It's okay."

"It'll never be okay." Now he was crying in earnest, and mentally cursing at himself to stop seemed to do no good at all. He was a fucking failure all the way around, but especially when it came to her.

She stroked his hair soothingly, kissed his ear, and he wondered if this wasn't some sort of afterlife thing, what the hell was it?It had to be Bob's doing; was there any other explanation?

Oh, he was going to kill Bob.

"Forgive me," he whispered, not completely sure if he was asking forgiveness for being a weepy baby man or for failing to save her. Maybe both.

"There's nothing to forgive, but I'll say it if it will make you feel better." He got a sense that her delicate appearance completely belied a more fiery personality, but that would make sense - he had a thing for difficult women.

"I failed you."

"No, love, you were the one person that never did," she replied, brushing her lips over his hair, kissing him softly on the forehead.

He didn't deserve her; he knew then it was a stupid fluke he'd ever gotten her.

He held her tight, unable to stop from sobbing, obscurely wishing she'd get angry at him or hit or something. He could deal with anger, he was used to that. He didn't know how to deal with this.

But he had seen her face; he remembered what she looked like. Maybe now he'd remember her.

**

Logan woke up with a jolt, not sure where the fuck he was-in other words, in a typical manner. Still, waking up in what looked liked a big sewer pit was a new one for him. "Jesus fucking christ, how did I get here?" He asked, sitting up, and then gave an accusatory glare at Bob.

Bob stepped back and held his hands up in a surrendering manner. "I had nothing to do with the location. How much do you remember?"

A curious question. Remember of what...oh. "The plan went tits up, but I was gonna go get the Old Ones anyways..." he saw his hands were covered with sticky black goo. Some of it was the sewer muck, but a lot of it wasn't. It was also all over his torn clothes, and he could feel/smell some of it on his face. "Did I?"

"You did great," Bob assured him. "You kicked ass."

"Don't I always?" He got up to his feet, trying not to show his basic unsteadiness, and tried to recall what else may have happened. His head hurt, and since that never happened he had to assume things had gotten pretty bad.

(Had he really seen Mariko? What was that about?)

Bob looked...interesting.  He was wearing those long, ugly green and yellow shorts he once saw him wearing in a mindscape (which tracked since he was supposedly surfing when he was kidnapped) , a bright blue mesh tank top,
and a necklace with a little jade Ganesha on it, but that was it. He looked a little pale for him, and his hair seemed a bit more gold than brown,  but otherwise he looked fine, and remarkably clean. Even barefoot in the muck, he still appeared untouched by the dirt.

Unlike Logan, who was just dripping with blood, guts, and worse things. He felt like the super hero sidekick who did all the dirty work, while the other guy got all the glory (and managed to look good doing it).

Looking around the muddy pit, he noticed nothing but the greyish brown black muck, and some twisted bits of torn metal, but nothing else. "Where are they?"

Bob looked around, feigning an innocence that never fit him. "Who?"

He scowled at him. "The Three Stooges. Who the fuck else, Bob? The Old Ones!'

"Oh. Let's say they've gone to a better place."

Although he was covered in blood, Logan couldn't help but none of the blood was in the pit. He thought he smelled a lot of it in the tunnel behind him, but that was it. "I didn't kill the ones in here, did I?"

Bob smiled at him. "You can't kill the Old Ones."

Logan raised an eyebrow at the answer between the lines. "But you can?"

Bob continued to grin at him, and simply sidestepped the question altogether. "Come on - Lucy's done a runner, and I think he needs to be told nobody likes a coward."

"Lucy?"

"Lucifer."

Logan nodded in understanding, but he still asked, "Why won't you admit you killed them?"

Bob's smile was almost beatific. " 'Cause, mate, I don't have that kind of power. I've just moved them on."

"Moved them where? Another dimension?"

Bob nodded, but Logan was sure he was being bullshitted. "What about the people there?"

"There's no people there." He clapped him on the shoulder, and giving him a Cheshire cat grin, assured him, "I've just sent them to Hell."

That really didn't clear things up. "Do you mean you killed them or just sent them to a hell dimension?"

"Yes."

Logan glared at him. "I hate you."

Bob just laughed, like he feared he might. "I love ya too, mate."

"Oh, that reminds me." He threw a right cross, and was as stunned as Bob when he actually made contact with his face.

Bob staggered back, grabbing his nose (which hadn't broke, like most noses would; weird) (or maybe not, considering it was Bob. The weird thing was he made contact at all), and said crossly, "'ey, what the fuck was that for?"

"What the fuck did you put in my head?" He snapped, trying not to let his shock show. How in the hell did he successfully hit Bob?Well, he did it on a moment's angry impulse, but Bob should have read that on the wall. Maybe Bob got complacent, and figured he wouldn't actually hit him.

"Ah, I see." Bob rubbed his nose, but straightened up, apparently fine. He didn't seem angry either. "If I told ya it was residual energy, you'd just try and thump me again, wouldn't you?"

Logan just nodded.

Bob actually smiled, taking things as seriously as always (which meant not at all).  "Sorry to use you like that, mate, but I got a feelin' someone was after me, and people after me usually have to block or drain my powers some way. So I didn't think you'd mind holdin' on to a bit for me until I needed it."

"I did mind," he snapped bitterly. "Next time ask."

"Done," Bob agreed, perhaps a little too easily.

"I know I owe you, but-"

"No, you don't owe me, Logan, and I was out of line. I'm sorry.  I wasn't tryin' to use you like everyone else."

Okay, he was awake, right?He was tempted to slap himself, but if Bob was actually here he didn't want him to watch him do it. "Like everyone else?"

"I mean in the past. I don't think Xavier's usin' you."

Logan would swear he heard a 'but' in there. "You don't think, but..?"

"He's not using you. But I don't think he's come close to admitting how much they need you. I know it seems to you like they're doing you a favor by giving you a steady place to crash, but really you're doing them a bigger favor."

Logan snorted. "I knew that." Well, he suspected it.

Bob nodded like he didn't believe him for a minute. "Wanna find Ceph, and then blow this dreary little pop stand?"

"Yeah, sure. Can I hit you again?"

"No. First one was free, but the rest'll cost ya."

"There's always a catch." Logan sighed, following Bob up one of the cleaner sewer tunnels.

But what struck Logan as wrong right away was the sun: high in the sky, it was bright enough to make him squint as his eyes adjusted to the light. "Were we down there that long?" He asked, not quite believing it.

"Time runs differently in the various dimensions."

"That's not an answer," Logan pointed out, scowling at him.

But Bob gave him that infuriating grin again, and he wondered if he could land another punch. "You're right, it's not." Before Logan could make any fruitless threats, Bob went off to the left, headed down the nearest alley,  and Logan branched off to the right, trying to pick up any scents he might have picked up below, beyond the Old Ones and Human waste and Bob's electric blood. It was difficult, since he reeked like a Old Ones slaughterhouse, but he thought he picked up...something.

He followed it through deserted alleys, past the huge crater in the street where the Old One had broken through (he had a vague idea that had happened, but he couldn't quite remember it), and now this place really seemed like a ghost town. There wasn't even any demon movement. It was like the sun had scoured the world clean.

He remembered how dark the night was when he went down there - it was nowhere near dawn. So unless they spent several hours down there, how had it come up so fast?

"Can you make the sun come up, Bob?" He muttered to himself, wondering if that was even remotely possible.
Well, why the hell not? How possible was anything Bob did?

The buildings looked even worse in the daylight, not only abandoned but like erosion had worked on them for at least fifty years, and if someone told him there were no more Humans living in Sunnydale, he wouldn't have been surprised.

He just began wondering what had become of Naomi when he suddenly smelled her...and ozone. "Shit!" He exclaimed, quickly diving into a shadowed alley on his left.

The bolt of electricity hit exactly the spot where he had been, charring the pavement.  "Naomi it's me!" He shouted, sticking to the shadows. He was pretty sure she was across the street, hiding in another clot of shadows. And she wasn't alone.

"See? I told ya he'd try something like that," a man said.

"Naomi, that's Lucifer pretending to be me," he shouted, hoping she was all right. If that fucker hurt her, he'd strangle him with his own intestines. Assuming he had intestines.

"He's not even very original," Lucifer complained.

The bastard. Logan started to inch his way around the building, hoping maybe he'd be able to get across the street from an unexpected vantage point, when he decided to ask, "How did you know it was me? Did he even ask you where you put my bike?"

"It's my bike, asshole, and why should I care?" Lucifer shouted back.

Logan hoped Naomi caught that.

There was a sudden, strangled yelp, and Naomi said, "Okay, Logan, you can come out. I'm not going to zap you."

He sniffed the air carefully, but it smelled like someone got fried, and Naomi smelled very much like herself. Still, he ventured out warily, only to see Naomi standing over the body of a man in a muck stained white suit. She studied his face carefully, and asked, "How did I ever think he was you?"

"His power, remember?"

She nodded. "Hallucinations."

"Manipulating the mind, making people see things. Cute, huh?"

She looked up at him, and gave him a tired smile. "Quick thinking on the bike."

"I love your bike."

That made her smile even broader, and it was almost painful to see. Seeing her happy brought back painful memories.

"Oh dear, did he get nuked?" Bob asked, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

Naomi raised her hands, but Logan motioned her to put them down."This rude bastard is Bob. Bob, this is Naomi."

"Electra Naomi?" He asked, surprised.

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You know of me?"

"I know of you from another dimension," he said, then bowed like a knight before a lady of the court. Real funny considering he was wearing shorts loud enough to make your eyes bleed. "A pleasure to meet you here."

"Thank you," she said, trying not to laugh. "You're much better looking than Logan said you were."

He rolled his eyes, and Bob grinned at him. "Did he say I looked like a warthog?"

"No, he said you looked like a surfer bum."

Bob held out his hands in mock surrender. "Well, I kinda do, but it's not so much a look as a lifestyle."

She nodded and smiled like she thought he was insane and possibly armed. "Is that Ganesha? Are you Hindu?"

"No, he's just a mate." Bob then crouched down for a better look at the slightly smoldering Lucifer, and she looked at him and mouthed silently, "Hindu god?"

He didn't know if she was asking about Ganesha or asking if Bob was a Hindu god,  so he simply shook his head and mouthed back the word, "Later."

Naomi glanced down at Bob, who seemed to be trying to take Lucifer's pulse, and said, "I gave him a good hard jolt, but he'll probably start coming around in fifteen minutes or so."

"I doubt it. He's dead, Jim."

Naomi looked genuinely shocked, but Bob was right: Logan could now smell the death coming off of him, under the heavy scent of roasted flesh. "I didn't give him a lethal charge! I mean, I don't think I did..."

"You weren't the one that killed him," Bob assured her, standing up. Somehow, he had acquired mirrored sunglasses he hadn't had a moment before. Did he have to do this weird reality shifting shit in front of his friends? "One of the other groups did. You zapping him was just coincidental."

"One of the other groups?" Naomi repeated, puzzled.

"He cut a deal with the Old Ones to deliver me, but as you can tell that deal went a mite bad. They don't take kindly to those sorts of things. Or anything, actually. Bitter bunch. But if you looked like a big walking cyst, you might feel the same way."

"That's one group," she pointed out, wincing at his cyst analogy. But if Logan remembered correctly, Bob wasn't engaging in his usual hyperbole. "Who are the others?"

"The group whose dimension he was trying to invade. They aren't a jolly bunch either."

"The Powers That Be?" Logan guessed.

Naomi looked between them, stunned. "Aren't they supposed to be good guys?"

"Don't tell the cops, but sometimes good is subjective," Bob said, glancing up at the clear azure sky. "Huh. I guess it was a nice day to die."

Naomi gave Logan another questioning glance, but Logan was too busy scowling at Bob's profile to really notice.

He wondered if he'd ever bother to tell him what he was. And - even if asked point blank - he wondered if Bob would ever tell him if he killed Lucifer or not.

**

"Home sweet - shit, what's happened?" He exclaimed, seeing Amaranth standing by the couch, trying to steady Tallulah's thrashing arms.

"Last thing we know she went to see if she could help Logan some way with the Old Ones, then she seemed to go into some kind of seizure," Helga told him, putting the phone down. Of course she wanted to just throw herself at him, and then threaten to kick his ass for scaring her so much, but that seemed secondary to Tally's problem.

"I even tried a healing spell to get her out of it, but it didn't work," Amaranth told him, frowning at herself. She seemed to think its failure to work was somehow her fault.

"Oh shit. Logan thought he smelled her in the tunnels leading to where they were holding me, but then he lost her. She probably came back, but not before the Old Ones did some damage." Bob went over to her and sat on the edge of the couch, and as soon as he took Tally's face in her hands, Amaranth let her arms go. If Bob couldn't fix this, poor Tallulah was completely screwed.

"Tally," Bob said, holding her head steady. "Sweetheart, you're okay. Hear me, you're okay."

It seemed to sink in. She stopped thrashing like she was fighting an invisible opponent trying to pin her down to the sofa, and  Helga went over and put her hand on Bob's shoulder. There were no words for how grateful she was that he was all right.

(Oh shit, she was going soft.)

Tally went still, and then opened her eyes. They went wide seeing Bob, and then she sat up and threw her arms around him. "Bobby! You're all right!"

She called him Bobby?"I'm fine, thanks very much to you." He told her, patting her back reassuringly. Amaranth mouthed the word "Bobby" at him in disgust, and he just shrugged a single shoulder, seemingly saying he didn't like it either, but what could he do?

Tallulah gave him an extra squeeze before letting him go and sitting back, running a hand through her sweaty hair. "Oh gods, it was awful.  It was like I had ticks in my brain or something. I held out as long as I could, but I lost the plot. Logan seemed to be handling it better than me." It was then she looked around the room curiously, and asked, "Where's Logan? Is he..?"

"He's fine," he assured her. Bob reached up and covered Helga's hand with his, giving it a gentle squeeze. "I decided to give him time to say goodbye to his friends in that realm. He usually doesn't get a happy ending, you know."

Helga coughed to cover a scoff. There was a gross understatement if she had ever heard one.

**

"So when the Old Ones died or went away, the spell was lifted?"

"That seems to be it. Man, it was weird. It was like the ground screamed, and someone turned on the microwave for a moment. I thought I was going to roasted and pummeled at the same time." She  raised herself up on one elbow, and looked down at him curiously. "How was it for you? I still can't believe you made it."

"Me neither. I guess I must be crazy already. How could I get crazier?" At her disapproving look, he quickly added, "Bob put something in my head, which probably protected me. But I'm still trying to figure out how that worked." He folded his arms behind his head and looked up at the white stuccoed ceiling. "I still don't get how I could have had enough power to save Bob, exactly."

"He doesn't make a lot of sense though, does he?"

"Bob? No."

Bob had gone back to assure the girls everything was fine, and he'd left to clean up, as the blood on him was starting to congeal, and he didn't think it could smell worse unless he found some rotted carcass to roll in. And even then, it'd have to be pretty putrid.

So Naomi let him borrow one of the mansion's functioning showers, but it quickly became apparent what he needed was a firehose or maybe some paint thinner - Old Ones blood seemed as sticky as rubber cement. Just before he ran through the entire hot water tank, Naomi brought him some clothes she stole from Steve's closet (he was 'roughly' his size, or at least closer than Chai at any rate). The remains of his own clothes were currently spewing up black smoke in the incinerator, and he fully supported burning them, because there was no way in hell he was putting those back on. But while she was in there, Naomi offered to do his back, although they forgot about that pretty quick.

It brought up what he thought was an interesting point: did this count as cheating on the Logan in this dimension?

Neither of them knew the answer to that one, but Naomi didn't really think so. "What am I going to say - I cheated on you with you? What would you say to that?" She asked.

"Lay off the cough syrup," he admitted.

She punched him on the shoulder, but he felt that was  warranted.

It was strange. He loved being with Naomi again: he loved her smell, the way the electricity crawled over his skin when they touched, the way it sparked when they kissed, but there was something missing. It took him a while to figure out what it was, but it was so obvious he couldn't believe he actually had to think about -she wasn't Naomi. Well, she was, but not "his" Naomi, not the one he really knew (and missed). She was another Naomi. Feisty, sexy, beautiful, raunchy...but not the "real" one.

Not that he was about to jump out of her bed, though. He wasn't completely insane.

She snuggled up against him, resting her head on his chest as she stretched her arm over his abdomen. He felt the electricity tickling his skin, a mostly pleasant sensation he had missed more than he realized.

"I suppose I oughta get out of here before your friends get back. You've got enough to explain."

There was a message on the answering machine when they got back, from one of her cohorts, a British woman named Emma with a voice so upper crust and chilly he thought he saw ice clouds coming out of the recorder. They'd run across a nest of...something (he didn't know what she had said, but it sounded like a name with at least three excess syllables) in East L.A.  and would be back tonight at the latest. She told him Emma was a powerful telepath with a somewhat loose grasp of privacy issues, who felt verbal communication was usually beneath her. She sounded like a real party animal.

Naomi sighed, her breath a warm caress across his skin. "I suppose. You know what Logan?"

"What?"

"No matter the dimension, you have the weirdest friends."

That made him laugh, and it felt good. He couldn't remember the last time he had laughed.

But he knew she was probably right.

He hadn't been kidding. The moment he picked it up and flipped it open, the world did its sideways twisty thing, and he was spit out on a cedar porch overlooking a sloping hill and a massive body of water.

"How'd it go?" Bob asked. He was leaning on the porch railing, looking out at the calm blue waters of the harbor and the city beyond. He had changed into jeans and a t-shirt, but he still didn't have any shoes on.