Jayne gags. She can never take aspirin with anything but beer, but pain and traveling had made her forget. She'd washed them back with water, and now her throat's burning, lined with gunk. And she's dying—she hasn't had a headache so brutal since she got rid of Hex. Him and his aftershave both.

Hex, she thinks, alias Migraine Man.

Might be a song in that.

Eyes blurring, she fumbles for her tour jacket and staggers down to the hotel courtyard. Past the fake tropical greenery and the pool—the chlorine makes her head worse—she squeezes through the back gate. It's dusk, and the cold cuts at her temples like a bone saw, a buzz powered by the drone of Niagara Falls.

Across the alley is the bar where her band is playing. The place—The Wedding Knight, it's called—is okay, Jayne thinks. It has hardwood fixtures and a high ceiling, which make for great acoustics, and a massive window pointed straight at the Falls, just in case you forget where you are. The decor is pubby: dark furniture and dim lighting, banners and stained glass with scenes of knights rescuing damsels. No swords on the walls, though, and only one suit of armor: by Niagara standards, the Knight is pretty restrained. Kim bitches about the size of the stage, but it's fine, really. They've played bandstands the size of sanitary napkins.

The door creaks as Jayne pitches inside. Smoky air mauls her, but then she sees the beer she needs, sparkling on the bar like an engagement ring.

"Set me up with one of those, Gerry?" Her voice is gargly.

"I think this one is for you, Sho—from Romeo here." The owner, Gerry, looks ill. He jerks a thumb at the only customer.

The man is slumped over a newspaper, in a pose that reminds her of first grade, Teacher making them put their heads down when they got hyper. They didn't build them like this guy in school, though: nice muscles, gorgeous curly hair, olive skin.

"Beer's yours." Quiet words seep from beneath the black curls.

Stop, Jayne tells herself. You're off men. "Gerry, can you get…"

But Gerry is fleeing, face chalky, a hand over his mouth.

"Dammit." She picks up the mug. The aspirin pulp surrenders, washed off her larynx by the flood of beer. She hears a thunk in the men's room—the door to one of the stalls—and then Gerry, retching. The sound vibrates the windows, the walls, her aching skull.

"Don't think this means we're engaged," she says to Curly. "I only drink…"

"When you're sick." The head rolls up, and Jayne's suddenly looking into tired gray eyes.

She takes a measured sip, sets the glass down, leaving a streak of condensation on the bar. Keeping her eyes on him, she snags a napkin and wipes the wood. He looks sane, but how can you tell?

"How did you know that?" she asks finally.

"I read your…" He pushes himself upright, closing his eyes as if moving hurts.

"Are you all right?"

"Sorry." Then he passes out, hitting the floor so hard the thump comes up through Jayne's red boots.

Is he a reporter, she wonders. Fan? Old schoolmate? No, she'd remember this guy. A stalker, maybe?

Her eye skips over the newspaper headline: "Jumper Falls' Fourth Fatality of Year."

Fatality?

She checks Curly's wrist for a pulse—yes—and a medical bracelet—no. He doesn't smell of booze, but there's something… is it diabetics who smell sweet?

Bending close, she takes a deep whiff. Dust and pollen icepick into her aching brain, along with something else.

Blood.

She looks up, in search of anything that will help—and sees herself. There she is on television, her and the band. The sound's off. Their name, Imaginary Cherry, is in small print at the bottom of the screen.

Her lips move without sound, her bright red bass bobs as she plays.

Snatching the napkin dispenser, she mumbles the words:

Tell me the worst thing you've ever done
Tell me, my friend, and I'll beat it by one

"The bartender… he's timesick," the man says as she peels up the sticky membrane of his shirt, soaking up blood with the napkins. "From the previous reroute."

"You're worried about him?" she squeaks. Under his sternum, a chunk of heavy glass juts like a shark fin from under blood-slicked flesh.

"Get me away before he pukes up his liver."

Jayne touches the piece of glass, hoping it will come loose, but it barely moves. "You are going nowhere."

"I can treat it. Med-bug," he says. "Trust me." His voice is anguished.

"I'll call an ambulance," she says.

Using his elbows and feet to push himself along, he tries to inch away.

"Stay where you are," Jayne orders. There's no phone she can see behind the bar, and while she's looking, he grabs a table and pulls himself up, groaning.

"Could you get my newspaper?"

His newspaper?

"Gerry, where's your phone?" Retching answers Jayne's shout.

The pay phones. Change. She slaps her pockets.

"Don't die. You hear me? Don't die." She sprints outside. "Somebody call … "

But the first face she sees is more trouble. It's Hex, the Migraine Man himself, a mean twist to his handsome features.

The tip jar. Quarters in the tip jar, dummy.

Backpedaling through the squeaking door before Hex can see her, Jayne sprints back the way she came.

The injured man isn't there. Gerry moans from the men's room, and on television the video is ending. The band, wearing school uniforms, is herded into a truant officer's van. Last shot: close-up on Jayne as the doors slam.

On the floor, the newspaper and a puddle of blood make a triangle with the wad of bloody napkins.

"You okay, Gerry?" Her eye settles again on the headline.

"Jumper Falls' Fourth Fatality." Her skin crawls, but it's not because of the headline. Thing is, it's a Sunday paper. And the date is tomorrow.

Tomorrow's paper.

She's still staring when the door creaks.

Bleeding or not, the last thing Rath Harper had needed was an ambulance, with its cargo of paramedics and cops and complications. That scene couldn't happen. Rath would have to go further back.

So the instant Jayne Sho ran off to get him some help, he had sailed backward, tacking in time. He'd aimed for dawn the previous Wednesday, which would've given him a full day before Imaginary Cherry arrived to play The Wedding Knight. But the time current here is too strong for a three-day jump. All Rath had gotten was twelve hours. He'd found dawn all right, but it was still Saturday.

He barely registers this piece of bad news—a streak of red numbers blinking across his timeskiff's chronometer—before frustration and pain cause him to drop the thing. Bouncing on the hardwood floor, the skiff generates an era-appropriate mask for itself. It now looks like a calculator.

The damn song has soaked into his mind:

I'll tell the worst thing I've ever done
Guilt is a drug, son, you're not the only one.
Error is human, forgiveness divine
I'll absolve yours if you'll absolve mine.

Groaning, he fumbles for his med-bug. It's masked too—as a fat executive pen—but when he presses it against the wound it unfolds like a praying mantis. Needles and instruments, hinged like legs, explore the chunk of glass lodged under his sternum, probing beyond it to seal slashed capillaries, knitting ruptured flesh.

The glass was a gift from a younger, deadlier version of himself, a Rath Harper who sails time protecting what his former employers call the Glorious Future.

Rath the Older is a different guy. He's run out on the Time Division, but not on his conscience. That makes for a complicated existence, because his younger self still prowls the timestream. It isn't enough that Rath is haunted by the memories of things he did for the Time Division. Sometimes he ends up confronting his past—even his past self—in the flesh.

While the bug does its work, Rath looks around. Hanging beside the door are black and white stills of bands booked to play the Knight. Jayne Sho's there in the center of a clutch of four women. She and the other singer, a white woman named Kim-Beth Castor, are cheek to cheek like best pals in a school yearbook. Flanking them are the others. The tall black woman is the drummer, Ardena Williams. The other one is the keyboard player, Ming Liang.

Rath contemplates Jayne's face. In the photograph she's lovely, the fragility of her features balanced by a confidence he hadn't seen in their brief encounter.

He locks eyes with her picture, trying not to anticipate the moment when med-bug will shock him with electrical current.

He hears the buzz, feels his chest go numb.

In the window there's a faint reflection, him and the insectile bunch of silver limbs, both superimposed on the spectacular view of Niagara. The blue-black wall of water is obscured by its own spray, dimly lit by the rising sun. He watches both waterfall and reflection as the med-bug braces against the blood-smeared skin of his chest. It extracts the glass, chittering in a manner that is supposed to be comforting. Rath, who gets patched by med-bug more often than he gets laid, hates the sound.

The anesthetic charge fades. Pain seeps back, an ache drizzling through him like rain running through hair, like the guilt that permeates the cracks and crannies of his mind.

Time Division, Rath's former employer, rules the Glorious Future. Young Rath's job had been rerouting events that threatened the timeline, even killing if a death would protect it. The trouble is that back then, Rath had rarely distinguished between necessary killings and convenient ones. And the Division hadn't cared at all.

"Tell me the worst thing you've ever done," he mumbles.

Rath, the here-and-now one with the hole in his chest, has been making amends, backtracking, trying to rehabilitate himself, rehabilitate the future too.

The crummy truth is that, in Rath's home era, everyone is healthy, fed and at peace. So he doesn't want to derail the Glorious Future. All he wants is to wash some blood off his hands. Achieve the same goal without taking the violent shortcuts. Do things differently, do them better.

This time the mission was stopping his old self before he could commit the first and cruelest of Rath's unnecessary kills.

Med-bug seals the wound and turns back into a pen. Plucking napkins out of the dispenser, Rath wipes up the blood on the bar and stool. Groaning, he bends to wipe the floor, retrieving his timeskiff and the hunk of glass.

Each temporal reroute is like a stone dropped into water; as each reroute splashes into the timestream, ripples and waves emanate from its source. Rath has changed time twice now—once as his murderous young self, a second time when he stopped that self and got hurt. The bartender—Gerry, Jayne had called him—remembers Rath coming into the bar Saturday night, ten years younger, to make sure Imaginary Cherry was still playing that evening. And as of this reroute, Gerry also remembers Rath older. Older, bleeding and—maybe—ordering a beer.

Rath isn't sure he ordered the pretty singer's beer at all.

The Division calls this confusion—and the sickness that comes with it—mnemonesia.

He buries the glass and napkins deep in the trash and slips outside, shuffling down the Niagara Parkway toward the Falls. Today, he thinks, he has to talk to Jayne Sho. He may have prevented his young self's taking the easy way out, but if he doesn't want Time Division to send out another guardian, he still has a reroute to perform.

Thing is, he doesn't know exactly what it's gonna take to accomplish that reroute. But the first step has to be finding out what is driving Jayne's former boyfriend, the guy she calls Hex, to a suicide date with Niagara Falls.

If he's lucky, Jayne will know.

"I don't see why we need an extra room. I'm not going to meet anyone in Canada."

"You could get laid in Antarctica," Jayne says to Kim.

Imaginary Cherry's a band that pulses between dichotomies: Kim, with her high, vibrant voice, Jayne's lower, fuller sound; Jayne's songs and Kim's guitar, played like she shreds her strings off God's back. Kim's more extroverted than an evangelist, has curly red hair and sex appeal to burn. Jayne, a Thai-American with the kind of looks that reward close attention, has had to provide common sense for them both.

The tube's on and Ming's channel-surfing, clicking from commercial to commercial. Ardena's dozing.

"I'm keeping separate rooms," Jayne declares.

"You know I can't sleep if I'm alone."

"Neither of us sleeps if you're not."

Ming, always the peacemaker, interrupts. "Screw the extra room. Let's talk about something important for a change."

"Important like what?" Jayne says, though, really, she's afraid she knows. She sees the drummer's eyes open. Ardena is the oldest, and Jayne finds her intimidating as hell.

"I'm quitting if we stick with the high school angst crap." Ardena says.

"What?" says Kim, her voice sharp and indignant.

The tension is there all at once, like water behind a new dam, and Jayne's eyes burn. "You didn't say anything yesterday about quitting."

Ardena shrugs. "We barely talked."

"We're going into the studio in six months," Kim says. "Jayne wrote half the songs already."

"More Schoolgirl Fantasy," Ardena says. "Anyway, the music's fine. It's this." She waves a stapled-together pile of paper scraps. Jayne writes lyrics on anything she can find.

"You're deranged. The lyrics click," Kim says.

"I think we can click without playing fluff—"

"Guys.…" Ming pleads.

Blessedly, the phone rings. Hooking it off the table, Ming listens, then tosses the receiver. "Yours, Jaynie."

Jayne catches it like a lifeline. "Hello?"

"Jayne Sho?" A man's voice, a stranger.

"Is it the bar?" Kim asks.

Jayne shakes her head. "Who is this?"

"My name's Rath Harper, Miss Sho. I'm calling about Reggie Bayers."

"Hex?"

"I have reason to think he's in trouble. I think you can help, and I need to talk to you. Can you meet me?"

"He's asking you out, isn't he?" Kim whispers. "Don't go, Jayne. He's probably a stalker."

"What was that?" says the man.

"Nothing," Jayne says.

"We can meet somewhere public," he says. "The hotel cafe?"

"Fine," Jayne says, ignoring Kim's frantic gestures. "When?"

"Sooner the better. I'm calling from the lobby."

I could kiss you, Mister Rath Harper, Jayne thinks. "I'll be right down."

Kim pouts as Jayne hangs up. "Jayne, a total stranger? They're gonna find your body dismembered in the whirlpool."

"Won't that be nice for the tourists?" Jayne says, blowing kisses, avoiding Ardena's gaze. "Chopped Up Woman Falls' Fourth Fatality…"

"What is it?" Ming says.

"Nothing," Jayne says, though suddenly she's sweating.

"We'll talk about the songs later, Jayne?"

"Sure, Ardie." Scooping up her coat, she runs.

Kim's voice chases her down the hall. "Look, it's our video."

Downstairs, there are two guys in the cafe. One is short, white, pimply. His lips move as he tracks his way down the menu with a nicotine-stained finger.

As for the other—well, if he's Rath Harper, Jayne really could kiss him. He's slumped in the booth, circles under his dark eyes, looking both gorgeous and vulnerable. You're off men, she thinks, and adds firmly: especially the tasty ones.

Then his gaze flickers up, and he smiles.

Jayne practically skips to the table. "How'd you recognize me?"

He nods at the television behind the grill. Van doors slam on the song's last chord and another video bumps her off the screen.

"Oh. Dumb question."

"You're not used to being a star." His shirt is cheap gray cotton, rumpled and at least one size too big. He smells like industrial soap.

"Hardly a star," she says uncomfortably. "You said Hex was in trouble?"

His eyes cut into her skin, weighing the steel in her nerves. She hopes she isn't blushing, so naturally her face heats up. She wonders if he knows she and Hex broke up.

"He's going to kill himself tonight," Rath says.

"Oh." It stops her cold. Pulling a napkin from the silver box on the table, she twists it into a lumpy cord, concentrating on the wrinkles whirling into the paper, the pattern of dots pressed into the sheet, the tiny fibers popping loose like little bristles … anything but what this strange, handsome man has just said.

"I don't believe you," she says at last. "How could you know that?"

"It's true," Rath says. "I thought you could tell me why."

"Me? We broke up. Months ago." Her mind slides uneasily over thoughts of the single that Imaginary Cherry is releasing next week.

Hex suicidal. Should she be worried? No, it's ludicrous. Angry, then, or just annoyed? This on top of Ardena she didn't need.

"Cripes," she sighs, "what do you want to know?"

"For starters, who dumped who?"

"He dumped me."

"Oh."

"If you figured the solution was to get us back together…"

"No." He says it fast, Jayne is pleased to note.

"I was warming up to leave him. Wait.…" She shakes her head, as if the action will clarify things. "This is dumb. Who said Hex was suicidal?"

Just then the rest of the band appears in the cafe entrance. Kim's chattering at Ardena like a furious sparrow, and Ardena's shaking her head, not hearing a word. She won't waste energy fighting with Kim. Not when it's Jayne who has to rewrite the lyrics.

"There she is," Ming says, breaking into the one-sided argument. She points at Jayne and knocks over the sign at the door. "Please Wait To Be Seated," goes crashing onto the tiles.

"What's wrong?" Jayne says.

"Somebody broke into the Knight," Ardena says.

Kim gives Rath the once-over. "Hi. I'm Kim-Beth Castor."

"Gerry's wife asked if we should come make sure everything's still there," Ming says.

"His wife?" Jayne says. Rath takes Kim's hand, shaking it briefly and dropping it without comment.

"Her name's Elaine," Ming says. "Gerry's sick."

"I'll be right there," Jayne says. Nobody moves. "Go ahead. I'll catch up."

Reluctantly they clear off, Ardena leading, Kim trailing.

"I'll have to call you," she says to Rath.

"I'm not local," he says. "I don't have a number."

"Well, where are you staying?"

"Just arrived," he says evasively, and suddenly Jayne doesn't trust him at all. "I'll hang out here. Can you come back?"

"Maybe." Just as well she's off men.

She speeds off in pursuit of the band.

It's ridiculous anyway. Hex suicidal is about as likely as Kim celibate.

Besides, if Hex is in so much danger, why isn't Mister Rath Harper in Boston, saving him? How's he going to do any good here?

Then, halfway through the lobby, she's blasted by a familiar reek.

Aftershave … a brand she knows well. The smell's coming from an alcove behind the escalators, rising up off the plush gray upholstery of an empty chair. Familiar, musky, it draws memories to her like water bubbling from rock. The throb of the Falls becomes an electric razor, the steamy smell of the cafe becomes the hot ozone of the iron Hex used to use on his jeans.

Standing beside it, she sees Rath Harper getting to his feet, laying a handful of change next to his untouched cup of coffee. The chair's got a perfect view of the booth where she's been sitting.

Jayne lays her hand flat on the seat cushion.

It's still warm.

Someone broke into the Knight. His younger self?

He hopes not.

Jayne running out on him is beginning to look like a pattern. Worse, every time she turns her back, Rath has to go off and do damage control.

When he's sure she's well gone from the cafe, he creeps painfully down to the hotel's basement, past the staff room and laundry, and heads into a big, jumbled storage area.

He had intercepted the old Rath in a Boston mall before he could reroute Hex Bayers. Time Division had assigned him the job of making sure Jayne Sho and Ardena Williams were still together a few years down the timeline. They hadn't bothered to say why—just that Imaginary Cherry broke up when Hex went over Horseshoe Falls. Jayne Sho canceled the Saturday night concert and the band dissolved before their next gig. She and Ardena never saw each other again.

The young Rath had determined that Hex wasn't needed anywhere else in the timeline, that his dying in Niagara when the band was there and in crisis had pushed them into splitting. His calculations had confirmed that if Hex died elsewhere and earlier, the band stayed together.

The timeflow balanced so beautifully that Rath had decided to kill Bayers in Boston—before he could off himself in Canada.

That accomplished, all he had to do was follow the band around Niagara and make sure they played the critical concert. He had even stuck around to keep an eye on Jayne afterward, watching her get the bad news about Bayers.

His old self had been nothing if not methodical.

There are ten years and thousands of time jumps between when young Rath killed Bayers and when the new improved Rath arrived to stop him. The revised memory of what happened has not caught up with the older Rath yet. So far, all he remembers is his first encounter with Hex Bayers, following him into a bathroom and shooting him at close range. Eventually the memories will catch up, and he'll remember being intercepted by a stranger, fighting him, stabbing him with a hunk of glass, eventually getting knocked out.

Maybe one day he'll remember waking up to discover the job he'd come to do had been mysteriously finished without him—and without a murder.

Rath had thought he was prepared to take himself on. He'd gotten a disguise, the type of mask he uses for the med-bug and skiff, and sailed to Boston. He'd waited for his young self.

But time travel's paradoxes wash up some memories and erode others. Rath's well planned surprise was blown when young Rath tacked into Boston and his temporal alarm started beeping.

He had forgotten he used to be tethered to the damned alarm.

The fight had been long and bloody, and he would have lost if young Rath hadn't begun to remember things two ways, begun to experience the first symptoms of mnemonesia.

That had scared him and—better—distracted him. Rath managed to knock him out, then dosed him to the eyeballs with a drug called Comazee.

He'd intended to drug Bayers too—different drug—but by then, mall security was on them and Hex was gone. So Rath slipped his young self into a time eddy and tacked forward, looking for an opportunity to dose Bayers. And the current had dragged him all the way to Canada—to Saturday just before the suicide.

Without the drug—Fugue, this one's called, in a dose strong enough to wipe a week's worth of memories—Bayers is carrying the memory of his own death. Time Division calls this terminal mnemonesia.

Wedged in the deepest corner of the hotel basement behind the boiler room is a cache of false walls, spare doors and furniture rejected from honeymoon suites. Ten years ago when he was following Jayne, checking the integrity of his reroute, young Rath had stayed here. A curtained, heart-shaped bed sprawls under a long forgotten window. Through the grease-smudged glass and a layer of rusted chicken wire, Rath can just make out the hotel pool.

Alert for the temporal alarm, he squeezes between the fake walls, chest aching. If the old Rath has escaped from the time eddy, if he's loose in Niagara and breaking into bars, he might be hiding here.

No. Dust permeates the velvet cover of the bed and the gauzy pink curtains.

Pulling out his timeskiff, he generates a field, opening a pipe to the eddy where he'd left the old Rath and draining it into the present. His young self materializes on the bed, still unconscious, his own med-bug working the Comazee dose.

"Good."

Through the grimy window, he sees Jayne Sho skirting kids and vacationers, on her way to the Wedding Knight. He'll have to catch up with her later, find out how to save Bayers.

Rath touches his young self's hand, reassuring himself that he's really there. Then he slumps onto the hard cement floor between the bed and an plaster-stained, heart-shaped Jacuzzi.

"Just for a minute," he promises.

His eyelids sag and he drowns into sleep.

"They moved the instruments," Ardena says.

"Everything's where we left it."

"Sort of," Ming says. All of them except Kim are neat freaks. "Keyboard's okay."

Jayne's head throbs. She can't stop thinking about Hex. She smells him in her coat and on the black instrument crates. It's almost enough to make her wish he was dead.

"Jayne?"

"Okay," she says uncertainly. One of the electrical cords in her bass kit doesn't belong to her.

She bends over, sneaks out her keychain, and opens her red-handled pocketknife. Feeling paranoid, she nevertheless cuts the plug off the cable, fraying copper wires. "My cord's falling apart."

"Bar's got spares," Ardena says.

"Good," Jayne says, relieved and embarrassed at once.

She hums the notes of one of the new songs, then sings, improvising lyrics.

Hidden things and nightmares
A face I cannot see
What you say makes no sense today
Try again another time,
Or repeat it now—but to a different me

She scribbles the words on the back of a paper beer coaster.

"I like that," Ardena says.

Jayne scoops up the decapitated cord and stamps out of the Knight.

Yawning, he pats his pockets. The skiff's in one pocket, med-bug in the other… where's the tempaedia?

Abandoned in the bar, dummy.

Fortunately, the old self carries the same kit. He pulls it out of the young Rath's coat, a big wad of time-sensitive paper masked as a book. Kneading and spreading the paper into sheet big enough to display an entire newspaper, he programs it to scan the local daily.

"Jumper Falls' Fourth Fatality" is fading, smearing away into a different headline.

"Singer May Have Been Trying to Save Jumper."

"Police investigating the fourth and fifth fatalities at the Falls this year say that Jayne Sho may have been accidentally pulled into the Falls by the other victim. Police think she may have been trying to save the man…"

Rath lunges for his skiff, dropping the tempaedia on the dusty bedspread. He'll have to go further back.

Sailing isn't easy. Time has rapids, currents. Here in this week in Ontario it's a torrent, a deadly forward thrust. To time, Rath is less than a salmon trying to swim up a waterfall. He can only do the math and hope to shove himself clear of all his earlier reroutes.

He aims for Wednesday morning, before the band arrives.

Usually Jayne sleeps in the afternoon but she can't rid herself of the smell of aftershave, of the knowledge that Hex is in town, of the creepy idea that he watched her in the cafe.

Could seeing her with another guy drive him to suicide?

No. Murder maybe. Hex doesn't do so well with knowing there are other men in the world.

Eventually she worries herself into a brutal headache and goes rummaging for aspirin. She shakes six pills into her hand, then pauses on the way to clapping them to her mouth. Phantom sensations hit her—melted aspirin, burning throat.

Don't try to take them with water.

Tripping on the chopped-up electrical cord, she picks her jacket off the carpet and heads for the Knight. The door creaks as she walks in, and the sound doubles, echoing in her aching brain.

Elaine and Rath are the only ones there, and the pint of beer Jayne wanted is ready. "This mine, Harper?"

"Yeah," he says. He's practically asleep. Maybe he did just get into town. Maybe he's jet lagged. Maybe she can trust him. His clothes fit better now—he must have changed. Dark shirt, long coat, admirably tight jeans.

"Where did you fly in from?" she asks.

He pushes himself upright and crumples the newspaper he's lying on, jamming it into his coat. "Sailed," he says, voice pained. "Listen, can you help…" He lurches toward the men's room.

"You're not drunk, are you?" She slides under his shoulder, supporting him. He's warm; his arm fits around her perfectly. She guides him past the urinals into a stall.

"Thanks," he says, closing the door. His coat drops onto the floor in front of the toilet. "I'll need a couple minutes."

It's her second time in a men's room. The first time was in school, second grade. The urinals still remind her of totems, altars to a strange and hostile god. Snatches of potential lyrics flicker through her mind, and she pulls a paper towel off the sink and writes:

Went into the boy's room on a dare,
Trying to act like I didn't care,

And then:

Ardie would hate this, do I mind,
if she wants to quit maybe that's just fine.

An odd, electronic chitter hacks into her thought, and she addresses the closed door of the stall. "You sick? Flu?"

"Accident. Okay in a minute."

The headline of his paper is poking out of the coat pocket. "Singer May Have Been Trying to Save Jumper."

"I've been thinking about Hex all afternoon," she says. "I can't believe he'd kill himself."

"No?" He sounds surprised.

"And there's something else. Stupid, maybe. Remember someone broke in here? They replaced one of my electrical cords with a new one."

"Him?"

"Maybe."

"You don't still have it, do you?"

"It's in my room. I didn't want it near the instruments."

"Good." There's a buzz and a gasp from the other side of the door and a weird thunk: glass on tile. Between the toes of his shoes she sees a long, wickedly curved piece of glass, covered in blood.

Struck by an image—the glass, buried in Rath's flesh—Jayne bolts back into the bar, pausing half in and out of the men's room with the door propped open against her hip.

Elaine is watching the news. "He gonna make it?"

"Probably. What's on MuchMusic?"

Elaine flicks the remote. It's the Imaginary Cherry video. "Egomaniac."

"Sorry," Jayne says. She's jumpy, freaked. She met Rath this morning. Or… why does she think … wasn't it … ?

"When are they gonna start playing the new video?"

"This weekend," she answers automatically.

"Schoolgirl Fantasy, right?"

"Hex is on his way up the street right now."

Elaine frowns. "Pardon?"

"What did you say?" Rath stares at Jayne as he comes out of the stall. The bloody shirt is in his hand, and sticky lines of white cover his chest.

"I see Hex outside. I come back in and you're gone away."

"I'm gone?" Rath says. He pulls a calculator out of his coat, looks at the display.

"He's coming up the street," Jayne says.

"You're right. We need more time." Rath punches calculator buttons as the Knight's door creaks, opening.

To see Niagara Falls is to wear a succession of raincoats. Blue for Maid of the Mist, the boats that take tourists down to the base of the Falls to get deafened and wet. Orange for the Cave of the Winds, a walkway at the bottom of the U.S. side. Yellow for the tunnels under Horseshoe Falls on the Canada side.

Each group of tourists becomes a separate herd of polyurethane-clad monks. When they're on the boat, they wave at the people in the tunnels, on the walkways. The other groups wave back.

The band is playing tourist. Rath's following. His chest aches and itches, but falling asleep in the hotel solved one problem—he's no longer staggering with fatigue.

Kim-Beth Castor is complaining: "You can't scope a guy in a raincoat," she says as they get off the boat.

"Try looking at the waterfall," Ardena says.

"They're herding us toward the gift shop, aren't they?" groans Ming. She's still cleaning her glasses.

They're filing past a shelf piled high with Canada flags when Jayne spots him. She does a double-take: makes sure he's not really looking at her friend.

He's suddenly conscious of how ugly his shirt is, how badly it fits. He stole it from a locker in the hotel.

"What's next?" Kim says.

"Wind tunnels," Jayne says.

The tunnels are big concrete tubes with cheap lights, and they remind Rath of bomb shelters. The roar of water rushing over them is unnerving even before he passes the empty hole in the cavern and sees the Falls from behind, tons of white water pouring past the man-made gap in the stone, and a smell: wet rock … fish, maybe, or algae.

Imaginary Cherry breaks into pairs, Ming and Kim ahead, Ardena and Jayne trailing.

"Kim's going to be an infant for the rest of her life," the drummer says. "I can live with one baby. I can't live with two."

"I'm barely old enough to drink and you're rushing me into the geriatric ward."

"I want more songs like Guilt Trip. Not more cookie tunes. Life's too short to cut corners, Jayne."

"I'm not getting what you want from me."

"Grow up, that's all."

"I write what's in me, Ardie."

"Dig deeper."

Ardena strides ahead, and Jayne turns her attention back to the short tunnel and the white water beyond it. A frail length of chain and maybe ten feet of distance are all that separate the public from the waterfall. There is no other barrier: no window, no bars.

Rath heard the argument. Now he sees Jayne crouch, grip the chain in her hands. She shakes it, obviously frustrated. The sound of the metal jangling is drowned by the water. Her lips move. She could be talking to herself or cursing Ardena. She could be singing a song.

"Jayne Sho?" he calls. Maybe he should give her a minute, but things are going badly. He couldn't tack back more than a day, and now the forward pull of time is dragging him again.

She straightens, turns to face him. Her sharp chin and big eyes are framed by wisps of damp, blue-black hair. It's a nicer style than her video persona—less polished, more real. It's more than stage presence. She's genuinely beautiful.

She gives him a smile he remembers from the video, confident and challenging. "You a reporter?"

He blinks, a little stunned. "No. I have to talk to you about Reggie Bayers."

"Ancient history's not my best subject."

"He's planning to attempt suicide."

"What?" Her confident persona deflates. A hand snakes out and grabs the plastic sleeve of her raincoat, begins twisting.

Despite the urgency, Rath is sorry she stopped flirting.

"Jayne," calls Ardena, returning from up ahead. Inside the yellow hood, her dark face is exasperated.

"I can't talk about Hex right now," Jayne says.

"When can you? There isn't much time."

"We're sightseeing today," she says. "How about after the show? Eleven thirty at the Wedding Knight?"

"I'll be there," he says.

He wastes a few hours eating in a restaurant, trying to find decent clothes to wear to the bar. He ducks back into the hotel for a few more hours of rest and a second treatment from the med-bug. He stares a long time at his drugged young counterpart, broods on the past till he's well and truly depressed. Then he tries to scan the timeflow, see if he's doing any good here. Everything's churned up and moving; none of his reroutes have settled yet.

He plays pointless games with the thousands of napkins, crumpling and throwing them into the heart-shaped Jacuzzi from the far end of his makeshift nest. Finally it's time.

He finds a booth in the back corner of the bar just as Imaginary Cherry comes on. The tension between them is obvious: the drummer plays with chilly precision, each movement sharp as glass; Ming's look is that of a woman torn by competing loyalties. Jayne plays the crowd with relentless concentration. Her voice is deep, sensuous, at odds with the girlish lyrics of the songs. Young men crowd against the stage, gazing up, eyes riveted.

Only Kim-Beth Castor seems oblivious. Unlike Jayne, she is making eye contact, winking, coming on to the audience, having fun. The combination—Kim flirting, Jayne putting it all into her voice—is pure power.

They play a set, then break in opposite directions. Ardena and Ming disappear through the fire exit to smoke. Kim gets a Bloody Mary and lingers in front of the stage. Jayne retreats with a beer to the far end of the bar. Her gaze rakes the crowd but misses Rath, who's in the shadow of the suit of armor.

Voices seep through the fire exit.

"What did she say?" Ming asks.

"She wasn't happy."

"I wish you'd give her more time."

Rath can't hear Ardena's response, guesses it's the same silent glower she's worn all night.

"Her stuff will mature."

"After how long?" Ardena says. "We're almost thirty, Ming. I can't keep playing take me to the prom songs."

"We're never going to find a better songwriter."

"She needs us too," Ardena says. "I'm good. You're good."

"But Jayne's …"

"Great," Ardena says heavily.

"Star quality."

"Yeah."

Rath sips his beer, leaving a circle of condensation on the table. He pulls napkins out of the dispenser, soaking up the ring, and sets the cup down on another white rectangle, pressing the moisture into pristine layers of paper.

"I think Jayne's capable of growing up now. I think with a little push she'd write things we'd all love."

"You love Guilt Trip."

"Is it so much to ask that I like ten out of twelve instead of one?"

There's a pause. "No," Ming says.

"Stop being such a nanny fixit, then. How much time do you spend mediating their fights?"

"Not so much," Ming says, defensive. Ardena laughs, and after a minute, Ming joins in. "You got a plan to fix Kim, too?"

"Won't matter as much if the rest works out."

"True." Ming agrees, but her voice is morose.

"You know," Ardena says, "if I quit, it doesn't mean you have to."

"You're so gallant. You go, I go," Ming says.

"Thanks."

"Magic's in the foursome anyway. So what's the plan?"

"Push Jayne some more," Ardena says.

"You're sure?"

"Trust me."

Ming's answer is lost in the crowd noise, and as Rath leans closer to the wall trying to pick it up, he spots Hex Bayers. Slumping further into shadow, he fumbles for the chain around his neck—the disguise he wore in Boston when he attacked his young self. He turns his face to the wall and triggers it, feels the masking tingle into place. He looks older now, black, with a beard and white hair.

Bayers is a big guy, tall and white, with crisp-curling golden hair and big, tanned features. His ice-blue eyes cut the crowd, lock on Jayne just as she slams down her beer and heads for the stage. He scans the room, looking for a seat, sees the space next to Rath.

"Terrific," Rath mutters.

Ming, Ardena and Kim reappear, all moving toward the stage. Behind her glasses, Ming's eyes are huge and strained.

"This is our next single," Jayne says as the crowd surges back to the dance floor. "It's called Schoolgirl Fantasy."

As they start to play Hex jams himself against the booth, bookending Rath between his bulk and the suit of armor. A plastic bag is clenched in his fist, and through its translucent yellow skin, Rath can see the snake coils of an electrical cord.

Jayne sings:

Things I would put up with once, just to have a guy
Now I have to ask myself, why'd I bother, why?

Hex's face convulses with fury and he glances at the men nearest the booth. The song's obviously a knife in his pride. Maybe he'll be drunk before the concert starts tomorrow. Maybe he'll be headed out to the Falls when Jayne runs into him. Will she go to him, try to stop him?

Rath leans across the table. "Want to talk about it, son?"

"No." Radiating hostility, Hex moves to take the seat across the table. Rath's experienced eye can see the mnemonesia below the surface: twitching eyebrows, shaking hands. He rubs his throat every two or three seconds, pressing his fingers over the spot where Rath knows he put the bullet. Hex drinks. He gets angrier.

Just before the second set ends, he starts examining the suit of armor. It's set on a black plywood frame, wired into place so that clumsy patrons can't knock it to pieces. The frame itself is a cheap and ugly in comparison to the hardwood in the rest of the bar, and the management has camouflaged its crudeness by draping banners from behind the visored helm down behind the silver toes.

Hex winks once at Rath and then slides his arm behind the banners. Apparently he finds empty space because, after a minute's groping, he retrieves the plastic bag, winks again, and slides out of sight behind the banners. The armor's visor shivers, then stills.

Imaginary Cherry has finished playing, and the women pack up their instruments. Then Jayne does a slow cruise through the bar, looking for Rath. Their eyes meet and she smiles at his mask, the non-committal smile of a performer to someone she doesn't know.

What to do? He can't very well approach her with Hex right there.

She waits for nearly twenty minutes before throwing on her red jacket and striding out of the bar. Hex remains silently tucked behind the armor, even when Gerry calls the last round.

One of the waitresses comes to escort Rath outside.

"Sir? You'll have to leave now. Want me to call you a cab?"

"No thanks." He jerks his head suggestively at the armor.

"Good night, sir." She hustles him outside.

How long is Hex going to stay in there?

He checks his watch: four hours before he sails into the bar at dawn.

He waits outside, listening to the Falls, watching the Knight. After half an hour he hears glass breaking around back. Bayers emerges—emptyhanded and wearing an ugly look of satisfaction.

Rath follows him a couple of blocks to his hotel, makes sure he gets to bed all right. Missing Jayne was bad enough. He can at least make sure the mnemonesia hasn't pushed Bayers' suicide forward a day.