"What's wrong?" Roger asked quickly, kneeling down beside her.

"Nothing, nothing," Susanne said, smiling as she shook her head. "I just... felt like stopping. I realized I've got no real reason to go back to London, at least not yet. I don't live in the dorm anymore, and George's house has already been wrecked enough on my account. I really have no place to go. And stranger still, I don't care. I almost prefer it this way, not having anything tying me down someplace."

"It gets old fairly quickly," Roger said quietly.

"What, life on the road? Perhaps... I'm sure it will eventually. But random people aren't going to recognize me wherever I go. I don't have a schedule to keep. I'm not trading anything for this freedom."

The two were silent for a few minutes. They each knew the other was right, and Susanne was reveling in the feeling that she could just sit there on the grass for hours, if she so wished.

After a few minutes, though, Roger began to get impatient. "I hate to be the stick in the mud," he said, "but the longer you stay here, the greater the chances that one of the others will find you. And Meredith's apartment is nearby. If, for example, Celly or Nyx came after you now and found you, they would also very quickly find Meredith. And vice versa. Finding Meredith would mean finding you."

Susanne stood with a martyred sigh. "The safety in numbers theory doesn't hold, huh? Well, I'm getting bored, anyway. Let's see how much trouble we can get into."

"Sounds like a plan... local trouble, or were you planning another raid on Celly's castle?"

"Breaking into Celly's castle is getting boring. I think I'll give her a break for a bit. I suppose I should really pore through what I have here from her central computer system and see what I can get out of it. Probably not much. I have a feeling she'd know better than to put really sensitive material into a database of any kind."

"Would Bob know better?"

"We shall see."