“I told you it wasn’t a screw job,” I said. “If she gets out safely, I’ll pay for it.”

He stopped glaring. His head pushed forward, tilted, like a bird watching for insects in the grass. “Will you,” he said. His eyes were red and heavy-lidded, like a vampire’s after a good meal.

I nodded, but I did it meeting his gaze, and it was enough.

“I have a question in the queue,” said Frances.

“Just you,” I told her. I supposed I would have to look her in the eye as well.

She answered, gently, “The hell you say.”

I could lie; I could tell her we’d have a better chance if we split up, that I could find my way out by myself, or had a place to hole up. Like any good lie, it had a little truth in it. Smuggling one person would be easier to accomplish than smuggling two. It took less room, and it took less convincing of the people doing the smuggling. So I could say it. She might buy it, and go quietly.

“This is how it’s got to be,” I told her.

“Why?”

Curse the woman. She could put more irony, more force of will, more threats and promises and personal anguish, into that one word than anyone I’d ever heard of.

“One of us has to stay. I don’t have anything to lose. Everything I had to offer anyone, everything I’ve spent my life and feelings on, is gone. I’m over, I’m done with. I shouldn’t have been started in the first place, you know that.”

“That’s terribly affecting, but you left a part out. Why does one of us have to stay?”

I took another breath. “Because somebody’s got to pay for it.”

Frances frowned. Then something changed in her face, and she slid off the table and addressed Beano. “The tri-wheeler in back is mine. I built a lot of it myself. Everything works. It’s full of pre-Bang toys you won’t find anywhere else, and I had every intention of staking my life on its reliability. It’s worth passage out of town for two, and a great deal more. Will you take it in trade?”

Beano smiled at her. “Good thing you offered. The boys with the barrels are gonna want something. They can have the trike.”

“If you hadn’t mentioned it,” I said, exasperated, to Frances, “he might not have thought of the trike.”

Frances rounded on me. Her face was bloodless. “You can’t do this. You can’t.”

“Of course I can. It’s none of your business.” I said to Beano, “Safe passage for her out of the City. Deal, or no?”

“I’ll check.” He stopped in the doorway to the back rooms, and said, “Don’t go away.” Then he closed the door.

“You made it my business,” Frances said immediately.

My gaze went where I’d been keeping it from going, while Beano was in the room: the shelves of the display case. The set of bone needles was there. “No, I didn’t. I wish I’d just lied about it.”