UR

advice. Get out of football. You’ll never make it a career, and your head deserves better.”
    “Duly noted,” Robbie saidcwhich was not agreement, as they both knew. “See you in class?”
    “On Tuesday,” Wesley said. But fifteen minutes later he had reason to wonder if anyone would see him. Ever again.
    .
     
    There was a car in the spot where he usually left the Malibu when he didn’t leave it in Parking Lot A at the college. Wesley could have parked behind it, but chose the other side of the street instead. Something about the car made him uneasy. It was a Cadillac, and in the glow of the arc sodium beneath which it was parked, it seemed too bright. The red paint almost seemed to yell Here I am! Do you like me?
    Wesley didn’t. Nor did he like the tinted windows or the oversized gangsta hubcabs with their gold Cadillac emblems. It looked like a drug dealer’s car. If, that was, the dealer in question also happened to be a homicidal maniac.
    Now why would I think that?
    “Stress of the day, that’s all,” he said as he crossed the deserted street with his briefcase banging against his leg. He bent down. Nobody was inside the car. At least he didn’t think so. With the darkened windows, it was hard to be entirely sure.
    It’s the Paradox Police. They’ve come for me.
    This idea should have seemed ridiculous at best, a paranoid fantasy at worst, but felt like neither. And when you considered all that had happened, maybe it wasn’t paranoid at all.
    Wesley stretched out a hand, touched the door of the car, then snatched it back. The door felt like metal, but it was warm. And it seemed to be pulsing . As if, metal or not, the car were alive.
    Run .
    The thought was so powerful he felt his lips mouth it, but he knew running wasn’t an option. If he tried, the man or men who belonged to the loathsome red car would find him. This was a fact so simple that it defied logic. It bypassed logic. So instead of running, he used his key to open the street door and went upstairs. He did it slowly, because his heart was racing and his legs kept threatening to give way.
    The door of his apartment stood open, light spilling onto the upstairs landing in a long rectangle.
    “Ah, here you are,” a not-quite-human voice said. “Come in, Wesley of Kentucky.”
    .
     
    There were two of them. One was young and one was old. The old one sat on his sofa, where Wesley and Ellen Silverman had once seduced each other to their mutual enjoyment (nay, ecstasy). The young one sat in Wesley’s favorite chair, the one he always ended up in when the night was late, the leftover cheesecake tasty, the book interesting, and the light from the standing lamp just right. They both wore long mustard-colored coats, the kind that are called dusters, and Wesley understood, without knowing how he understood, that the coats were alive. He also understood that the men wearing them were not men at all. Their faces kept changing , and what lay just beneath the skin was reptilian. Or birdlike. Or both.
    On their lapels, where lawmen in a Western movie would have worn badges, both wore buttons bearing a red eye. Wesley thought these too were alive. Those eyes were watching him.
    “How did you know it was me?”
    “Smelled you,” the older of the two replied, and the terrible thing was this: it didn’t sound like a joke.
    “What do you want?”
    “You know why we’re here,” the young one said. The older of the two never spoke again at all until the end of the visit. Listening to one of them was bad enough. It was like listening to a man whose voice-box was stuffed with crickets.
    “I suppose I do,” Wesley said. His voice was steady, at least so far. “I broke the Paradox Laws.” He prayed they didn’t know about Robbie, and thought they might not; the Kindle had been registered to Wesley Smith, after all.
    “You have no idea what you did,” the man in the yellow coat said in a meditative voice. “The Tower trembles; the worlds shudder in their courses. The rose feels a chill, as of winter.”
    Very poetic, but not very illuminating. “What Tower? What rose?” Wesley could feel sweat breaking on his forehead even though he liked to keep the apartment cool. It’s because of them , he thought. These boys run hot.
    “It doesn’t matter,” his younger visitor said. “Explain yourself, Wesley of Kentucky. And do it well, if you would ever see sunshine again.”
    For a moment Wesley couldn’t. His mind was filled with a single