“I’m sorry.” And I was, but I didn’t know what to do.

“Get out of here,” Theo said to me, his face blank as tape leader. I plunged through the door in the rear wall of the balcony and shot the bolt home.

I said before that I had a place at the Underbridge. This was it. I passed through without really registering it, beyond deciding that nothing in the closet-sized space could help them find me: a mattress, a couple changes of clothes, a toothbrush. Maybe the barrenness of my life-style would move them to pity, and they’d leave me alone. I began to feel more than guilty. The guy with pink hair seemed like a dangerous sort, and I was leaving Theo and Sher to make my apologies. Well, what could I do? I yanked open the outer door and stepped onto the fire escape.

It was raining steadily, steamily, and everything shone. Somewhere many blocks away, a fire alarm was wailing. I heard the Underbridge’s sound system from the open front door. Water gushed over the dam in the river in front of me. The storm, stalking away to the east, gave a long, low rumble like an empty stomach. I hoped the accumulated noise was enough to cover the sound of me running down all those metal steps.

I ran down most of them, actually. Five of them I fell down, loudly, because I forgot that things are slippery when wet. And the last three I skipped entirely and just jumped to the pavement. I was feeling hopeful when something small and hard settled against my skull over my right ear, and a cheerful female voice said, “Darlin’, you must think we’re awfully thick. Were you hoping we’d forget to look for another exit?”

I stood very still, because I had a suspicion about the hard thing over my ear, and wondered if I should tell her that no, the forgetting was all on my side, thank you. Because, of course, I’d known that the man in the silvertones had a partner.

“Put your hands behind you,” she said. When I did, something closed around my wrists. Handcuffs? No, these people were not City security, I knew that. What was happening here? What had I done?

“What do you want with me?” I asked, and there was more than a hint of a wail in my voice.

She came around in front of me. Yes, that was a gun she had. Under the mannish hat she wore I saw her hair, the dark cherry color I remembered from a distance in the Night Fair. Her skin was translucently pale, the complexion of the rich. Money made an excellent sunblock. Her eyes were cold, flat gray, and familiar — oh.

“You were with the nightbabies. Outside the Odeon,” I said. I was forgetting to breathe, which broke my sentences up. “With the bone in your nose.”

She looked pleased. “Very good! I didn’t even have to do the voice for you. Now — who are you, at the moment?”