the

bone, cooking, cleaning, ironing, washing out somebody's skimpy little black

panties who never wears a bra, but I won't mention it, and now all of a

sudden

I'm not good enough to talk to?"

"She didn't mean it, Broom," said Wyrdrune, sighing heavily. "She's just

upset."

"Upset?" The broom turned to Kira. "You want upset? Five bristles I lost

today,

Miss Hoity-toity, but do I shout at you when you come home?" The broom turned

back to Wyrdrune and wagged a spindly finger at him. "And as for you, Mr.

Wizard, with yom farpotshket spells, you should be more careful before

somebody

gets hurt! Pay attention to what you're doing with all this meshuggah popping

and poofing all over the place. Why you can't take a bus like a normal

person,

I'll never understand. So we're finished with the yelling now? Yes? Good.

There's fresh coffee and some hot apple strudel on the table. Sit! Eat! And

now,

if you'll excuse me, 'the stick' has to go and do your laundry."

As the broom swept out of the room Kara shook her head and shucked her

leather

jacket. She plopped down onto the couch and put her feet up on the large

wooden

cable spool that served as a coffee table. She was wearing a wide chain-mail

and

leather belt and a skintight, sleeveless black tunic, sheer enough to leave

nothing to the imagination. "You could've had a nice cat for a familiar," she

said wryly, "but no, not you."

"Never mind the broom," said Wyrdrune, going into the kitchen to pour them

both

some coffee. "Did you learn anything from Makepeace?"

Dr. Sebastian Makepeace, a professor at New York University, was one of

Modred's

contacts in New York. Aside from teaching courses in pre-Collapse history, he

was also somehow connected with government intelligence. He knew Modred by

the

code name Morpheus and the alias Michael Cornwall. He had no idea who Modred

really was.

"No, Makepeace hasn't heard a thing," said Kira. "I take it you didn't have

any

luck, either?"

Wyrdrune shook his head. "Nobody's seen him, nobody's heard from him. And it

took me all day just to find out that much. Even knowing who his people are

and

the proper procedures and recognition signals, trying to get any of them to

talk

is next to impossible."

"I know what you mean," she said. "Makepeace was suspicious as hell, and

Modred

had specifically told him about us. He's a weird guy, that Makepeace."