She missed human companionship. Ached for the old camaraderie. Wished that she could walk down the steps in Inga’s, slap people on the back, be invited to their tables to lift a cold glass of beer. She’d fought for them. Been one of them.

“Now you are outcast!” Demon chortled.

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

“Poor . . . sad . . . pathetic.”

“Eat vomit and die, you piece of shit.”

Demon chittered in quetzal laughter where he slipped around down behind her gallbladder.

She could sense Rocket giving her that three-eyed look of commiseration. He often did these days. And the look was new. Almost human. Another piece of her personal weirdity, she imagined that she really did see Rocket on her shoulder, could feel his weight. But only when she was looking for him.

“How screwed up is that?” she asked Dek, thankful the drug had knocked him out.

She laughed, answered herself. “As screwed up as having an intimate conversation with a man who’s so out of it, he isn’t hearing a word I’m saying.”

If there was ever a symbolic moment of how alone Talina felt, this was it.

Well, there was Kylee. As far that went. She and Kylee shared quetzal molecules, even shared memories—some of them damned uncomfortable for Talina’s part. But Kylee was just coming on fourteen. She was more quetzal than even Talina, and her youth at Mundo Base had been limited to immediate family. While Rocket’s death might have torn her in two, Kylee had never buried a husband or a lover, never shared that ultimate intimacy that came of an adult relationship. She’d never been one of a team, a valued member of a community.

For all the things they had in common, Talina and Kylee had even more differences that left them in separate hells.

Just thinking about it, she remembered the morning sunlight on Cap’s face as it poured through the window. He was lying in her bed, still lost in dreams. With that came the memory of how they’d made small talk after sex, his reassuring hand on her breast. For those few days she’d had a partner, a man she could treat as an equal and a soul mate.

She didn’t dare allow herself to recall her days with Mitch. That had been young, heady love. The stuff of fairy tales and head-over-heels passion. Talina had lost herself in Mitch, her heart had beat within his, her soul had wound around his until the two were one. And his death had almost killed her.

The firelight played in yellow and shadows as it toyed with Dek Taglioni’s features. What was it about him? Some innate quality that Talina hadn’t been able to finger. Not even that first night when she and Stepan Allenovich had half carried the blind and stumbling Dek back to her dome.