In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) by Randall Farmer Page B

Gilgamesh had arranged for Tiamat’s graveyard to be out of Crow metasense range of her house for just that reason.  Nobody had thought of it at the time, but having the Good Doctor’s research offices similarly outside of Crow metasense range of her house also helped.
    “I understand your worries, but they shouldn’t prevent you from helping us.”
    “I do want to help, if I can,” Talisman said.  “And with Merlin teaching me dross constructs, I need more dross than ever.”
    The real reason Talisman was involved now .  “If you can negotiate access to the inside of a Focus household once or twice a month, you’ll have enough dross,” Gilgamesh said.  Range mattered a lot.  Hanging back outside of Focus metasense range when a Crow took Focus dross wasted nearly two thirds of the dross, more if you counted the extra cost of drawing dross at range.  “If you give me a way to contact you, I can start the work of setting you up with one of the rebellion Focuses.  If we work together, we can have her entire household out of her house when you take dross.”
    “Yes, thank you, sir,” Talisman said.  He gave Gilgamesh three post office boxes and two local telephone numbers, both pay phones.
    Gilgamesh kept his glee inside.  If this succeeded, Talisman would be his first success as the Crow ‘coordinator’ for the Rizzari rebellion.
     
    ---
     
    “I hate to ask this of you, Gilgamesh,” Carol said.  “You just got back.  But I’m falling behind in my recruiting and I don’t have time to do a follow-up trip to Philadelphia.”
    Gilgamesh grimaced and fought off the panicky urges.  “You want me to spy on Hera?” he said, nearly a squeal.  He took a deep breath.  “Sorry.  It’s just that Focus Biggioni is one of my personal nightmares.”  The affair with Hera got under Carol’s skin.  She had bent over backwards offering to settle the issue, and Hera’s lack of response really irritated her.
    “I know the feeling,” Carol said.  She slipped out from under her bench setup and slapped on a couple more forty-five-pound plates.  “I have three notebooks of leads that need to be followed up on, mostly the business end of things.  I’m fairly positive she’s dirty, involved in some way in organized crime.  If I can get that nailed down I’ll have something real to use against her.  Also, I need to know what her next move will be.  All she did after my last attempt to get her attention was to bark at Lori and refuse to negotiate with me unless I capitulated to her demands.  She’s got to be doing something.”
    That wasn’t the way Lori explained the conversation to him, but it was at least close.  Arm and Focus realities were as different from each other as they were from Crow reality.  “As long as you want data and not interpretation of Focus behaviors, I’ll do the job,” Gilgamesh said.  He was happy to help Tiamat; helping Tiamat not only kept her happy but he knew she was good for the implied return favors later.  He knew how quickly disaster could strike any of them.  “But if I vanish, come get me fast.  Hera’s nobody I want to tangle with in person, and using what she did to you in the CDC as an example, I’d end up being her servant after not too much time.”  Or sent to Pittsburgh to be enslaved by the Nightmare Focus, as Sky theorized happened to Crows who ran afoul of the nastier East Coast Focuses.
    “Great.  Thanks,” Carol said.  She smiled as she lay down on the bench under her loaded bar.  “Before you leave…we do have tonight.”
    Gilgamesh smiled back.
     
    Tonya Biggioni: August 23, 1968
     
    Gracious Crow Cheshire:
     
    As you have agreed never to pass this on to Crow Polaris, I would be glad to speak of this panicky incident directly.  It is not an exaggerated story, as many have intimated.  It is instead a sad story.  I was barely recovered from an earlier bad adventure involving Tiamat (who has later grown, in a proper