As if I’d earned it by fixing the inverter — but that didn’t ring true. Before I had time to reconsider, I asked, “What happened to your voice?”

“I used to sing. I was proud of it. But when I was fifteen, I was involved in a cocaine deal that went a little astray. I was shot in the neck.”

“Chango.” My eyes, before I could stop them, went to a spot just below his face, but the band collar of his shirt hid most of his throat.

“It was hard to forgive that fifteen-year-old boy for ruining my voice. But you must forgive yourself. I never forgot; that would have meant unlearning the lessons that made me wiser than him. But I forgave.”

“Well, there,” I said brightly, and put the screwdriver away. “All done. But I still think you should switch to wind.”

As we retraced our steps to the front of the house, I waited for him to return to the subject. I was relieved when he didn’t.

The person I least wanted to talk to was Theo, so I was unreasonably annoyed when he was consistently somewhere else all afternoon. When I found China Black in the kitchen and mentioned him, she raised her hands from a pile of lettuce and looked at the ceiling. “Your Frances has him, cher,” she said. “She is making him draw maps and remember the number of steps in all of Ego’s staircases.”

“She’s not my Frances,” I said, without heat. “But I wish her luck. Theo’s doing all right if he remembers to go home when we turn the lights off.” That was spite; Theo was perfectly acute by any normal standard. Now I could tell her how many -

I could, too. I could tell Frances all manner of useful things about Ego, that Theo was unlikely to have noticed. Number of security people on the front and back entrances, day and night; old fire exits; corners that stayed dark, even when guards passed with their lamps… Theo would never have gone into those windowless rooms wary of the absence of light, as I had, frightened of the power that could swallow me with impunity, that dimmed my life to nonexistence just by being there.

Frances was planning her damned murder. Santos, I could take the point for her, with a videocassette in my hand. All I needed was a faked label for — what was the supposed name of the stupid thing? — Hellriders. The Horseman movie. I sold video to his old man, for gods’ sake. Did he know that? He had to.

“Are you well?” said China Black.

I’d forgotten I was in the middle of a conversation. “Yes,” I said. There was a leaf cast aside on the counter, brown around its red-and-green edges. I picked it up and turned it between my fingers and thumb. “Dana called you ‘Maitresse,’ ” I said suddenly.

China Black went on tearing lettuce. “Shall I answer the question you want to ask? I am teaching her, for her safety.”