“Is everything all right?” I asked, and I could hear my voice changing, the brightness draining out of it.

“Did something happen to him?

Is Marcus hurt?

Where is he?” Still neither of them would meet my eyes, and still neither of them would answer, and I felt the first cold finger of real fear touch the back of my neck.

I was starting, absurdly, to get angry, angry at the strange careful way they were behaving, angry at being handled, when I saw, coming toward me down the corridor, a face I knew.

It was David, Marcus’s colleague and friend of many years.