The taste of bile was still in my mouth, and I was shivering steadily. “Which were you?” I asked. “Crazy, or vicious?”

He settled back on his heels and shook his head. “We were all crazy. God, how long d’you think you could stay well adjusted after you found out you could possess people?”

“I’m the possessee. You tell me.” I got up slowly — I felt as if I’d lost blood, I was so weak — and turned off the fire under the kettle. It hadn’t boiled dry, which was my only proof that it had not been hours since I filled it. I rummaged for tea on the shelves and found chamomile in a jam jar. Fine with me; my nerves could use soothing. I caught myself reaching for the teapot, and took down a mug instead. While the flowers steeped, I cleaned up after myself.

“If I leave for half an hour, will you be here when I get back?” Mick Skinner asked, which forced me to admit to myself that he was still in the room.

“Where are you going?”

“Thought I ought to fetch some food, before things shut down at dawn.”

He was relatively new to the City, but he knew the Night Fair’s schedule. “Did you steal that out of my head?”

“What — oh. Yeah. I needed it this morning, when I… ” When he’d ridden me last. “Do you have all my memories now?”

“No. Don’t get so damned excited. I get at a hor — a person’s memories just like they do. I have to fish for ’em. Sometimes what I’m concerned with brings one up, but it’s usually not that easy.”

I settled carefully into the wing chair, cradling my mug in both hands. I felt as brittle as one of my fragile old tapes, yanked into motion between pinch rollers, around capstans. If one reel balked: snap. I angled my head at Frances, limp on the floor. “Is that why it felt like she was killing me, when she made her little trip in?”

He rubbed his forehead and finished the gesture by smoothing his hair. The copper fish chimed lightly. “She was in a state. Instead of opening a window, she broke the glass with a hammer, I guess.”

“In other words, she didn’t have to do that. Heck, I feel lots better.”

Mick’s front teeth met, sharply. “Look. There’s a limit to how much apologizing I’m going to do for Frances, but I’m not going to trash her for you, either. We went through hell together — and if that sounds like a cliche, it’s not. We were friends. If she’s nuts, I know why. And there’s nothing she’s done that I haven’t done, too.” He stood up, a series of precise movements. “I’m going for food. If you’re not here when I get back, I promise not to give a goddamn.” And he left.

The tea had cleared the foul taste out of my mouth, and had stopped my shaking. I could probably make my way out of the building now, and lose myself in the Night Fair. I remembered, suddenly, the thong from my hair that Frances had held outside the Underbridge. She’d found me then. But maybe she was done with me now that she’d gouged out knowledge and found I wasn’t what she wanted.