I have a few basic rules for dealing with guns. First, don’t let anyone else have one. Second, if you must let someone else go armed, try not to tease them. I put my hands up, saying soothingly, “I’m sure it was.”

“I didn’t know it would kill her! I thought I’d fixed the problems, and she was so upset about the cats. She was going to demand we abandon the whole project, and . . . and . . .”

“And you thought you’d show her just how well it could really work.”

“Yes,” she said, desperately. That’s the nice thing about insanity: evil people kill you, but crazy ones try to make you understand. “I could do it one last time—do it right—and she’d see. We’d be finished. We could go public, and everything would be . . . better.”

“But something went wrong.” She was silent. I frowned. “You still don’t know what went wrong, do you?”

“I’ll find it!”

“I’m sure you will.”

Gordan shook her head as if to clear it, and then smiled. “I will, thanks to you and your courtly boy. Every bit of data helps. If you survive, it’ll tell me everything, and if you die, you’ve helped save Faerie. Be proud. You’ll be remembered as pioneers of our brave new world.”

“Sacrifices are always remembered that way.”

“If it bothers you to think of yourselves as sacrifices, don’t. Think of yourselves as . . . explorers running the risk of sailing off the edge of the world. It’ll only hurt for a second. Once the current starts up, you won’t feel anything at all. You won’t even be able to move.”

That explained why none of their victims struggled. Use April to get the machine on them, flip a switch, and they were frozen while they died. April didn’t help to kill Jan, and so she wasn’t caught the right way. “Let Quentin go, Gordan,” I said. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Maybe if you’d sent him away when I told you to, I could have, but it’s too late now.” She glanced over her shoulder. “April should be back soon. It’s nice, having an assistant who doesn’t understand that space is supposed to be linear. She’s so efficient.”

I began inching away from the wall. She turned immediately, a small, chiding smile on her face. “Uh- uh. No funny business.”

“You’re using her,” I said, slumping back against the wall.

“Who, April? I didn’t use her. She came willingly.”

“Did she understand what she was doing?”

“What we were doing, you mean? Of course she did. She understood we were helping others be like her. Of course, she didn’t know they wouldn’t come back after they were shut down, but that doesn’t matter. She still agreed.”

“It matters to me.”