My cell phone rang.

“Zoe,” I said. “Hopefully she found Tolliver.”

She had. “He’s at Trinity Church. Are you still over on Yonge? I can swing by and meet up with you.”

I told her where we were. A moment of silence. Then, “Hmm, that’s a bit farther out of my way than I thought. How about I just meet you there?”

According to the plaque outside, the Church of the Holy Trinity was built in 1847, on what had then been the outskirts of Toronto. Looking around, it was hard to imagine this had ever been on the outskirts of anything. The small church stood incongruously cheek-to-jowl with the sprawling Eaton Centre shopping center-an urban shopping mall in the heart of downtown. As if having a house of spiritual worship standing beside a monument to material worship wasn’t ironic enough, the church also served as a walk-in center for the homeless.

As we waited for Zoe, I read the homeless memorial list posted outside. The list of names was dotted with Jane and John Does, those who couldn’t even be properly immortalized on their own memorial.

Clay glanced over my shoulder as Zoe approached. She tensed, her face going rigid.

“What?” he said.

“Go ahead. Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Ask how many of those-” She waved at the list. “-were mine.”

Clay gave me a “huh?” look, but said only, “I was going to say something. Like ‘hello.’ Or ‘about time you showed up.’ ”

Zoe nodded, obviously relieved. A few of the names on those lists undoubtedly had been her victims. A vampire doesn’t kill every time she feeds, but she does need to drain lifeblood once a year to retain her immortality. Most pick someone like the men and women on this list. Choosing a victim from the streets lessens the ripple effect, affecting fewer lives than, say, killing a suburban mother of four, and drawing less public attention. Still, however much has gone wrong with a life, it is still a life. I suppose vampires realize that, at least some of them.

As we headed for the front doors, Clay said, “So what’s up with Anita Barrington?”

Zoe blinked. “Why? What did she-?”

“You heard where we were, and suddenly didn’t want to meet us,” he said.

“No, I-” She paused, then shook off the denial. “I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with Anita Barrington. She’s quite new here, but from what I hear, a nice lady. It’s just…well, she’s an immortality quester.”

Zoe looked across our blank faces. “An immortality quester is-”

“A supernatural trying to find the secret to immortality,” Clay said. “Yeah, we know. Ran into a couple of vampires doing that a few years back.”

“Edward and Natasha.” Zoe nodded, then lowered her gaze for a moment before continuing. “Well, even vampires can catch the bug. But those questers who aren’tvampires sometimes develop an…unhealthy interest in our kind, the semi-immortals.”

“So Anita’s bothered you-”

“No, no. Never met her. But I had an…experience with an immortality quester years ago. It just taught me to avoid them.”

Clay studied her face, then grunted. “Let’s get inside. Before this Tolliver guy takes off.”

We climbed the steps to a set of tall, narrow green-painted wooden doors, propped open to welcome daytime visitors. Inside was a reception area, staffed by a volunteer at a table with guides and history booklets. To our left, a huge framed antique coat of arms hung over recycling containers. On the right, tarnished brass memorial plaques hung above a bulletin board covered in flyers for antiwar demonstrations, AIDS clinics and missing-person notices.

Zoe led us to the left, where the pews were. They were arranged to form a three-sided box that faced a table in the middle. Above the western entrance doors were colorful banners for social justice, peace and cultural diversity. Beneath them, a young man slept on a green sofa.

Zoe headed toward two men talking near an interior door. The younger man, probably in his early forties, turned and started walking briskly down the aisle. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt from the Metro-Central YMCA, he was fit, average height, dark-skinned with a short beard and distracted eyes. In one hand he carried a black bag that looked like an old-fashioned medical satchel.

He almost smacked into me, as if I’d materialized from nowhere. With a murmured apology, he started going around me.

“Randy,” Zoe called after him.

He stopped, and turned. “Zoe?”

“Hey, Doc. Do you have a minute? We need to talk to you.”

A discreet glance at his watch, then at Clay and me, as if curiosity was warring with an insanely busy schedule. Without a word, he nodded and waved us to a hall on the east side of the church. We went down a few steps, then out a single door into a courtyard.

Brightly painted red and blue metal chairs and tables were arranged around a small fountain. Every chair was empty, but Tolliver still led us around the fountain, to take a table at the far side, where the noise of the falling water would mask our conversation.

He gestured to the chairs. There were only three, and he seemed ready to give them to us, but when Clay took up position at my shoulder, Tolliver turned the third chair around to face ours, then sat.

“So…” he began. “What’s this about?”

I told him the story. A version of it, that is. Zoe had suggested we remove the part about stealing the letter ourselves. If that would bother Tolliver, it seemed a little hypocritical, considering he engaged Zoe’s services often enough to be on a first-name basis. But she’d advised us to stick to a variation on the truth-that we were interracial council delegates investigating the portal and trying to close it.