With a tug at his heart that he hadn’t felt for a long time, the elf remembered holding a terrified young woman outside a restaurant full of corpses in San Francisco. Closing his eyes, he sank into the welcoming warmth of the water as a wave of memory brought back the sweet smell of her fresh-washed hair against his face. Serrin rarely thought about women, nor did he linger on the topic now. He leaned back against the deep tub, turning his thoughts to business and to the fact that the accommodations the suits had chosen for him did not reveal much about them. The Crescent Hotel was neither real class nor the fake kind for Americans and Japanese with more money than true discernment; it was simply a reasonably good place to stay. He guessed that the pair would not give much away in the breakfast meeting, either, that there might be some cat-and-mouse about this job. I’ll worry about that later, he thought. Right now, it’s time to soak these bones and get out some of the jet lag.