Her nose was short, and tilted up a little at the end. But then, it wasn’t her nose. “Are you ever going to let her back out?” I asked sharply.

“Who?”

“The person whose body that is.”

I thought she wasn’t going to answer. The pause was attributable, perhaps, to thinking. “No. Either way, no.”

“Either way?”

But that, she didn’t answer.

Outside it was dawn, a light so fragile that it seemed a strong wind could break and scatter it. On the edges of the City, people would be gathering the things they would bring to market: peppers, poultry, straw hats, water jugs, fabric dye, burn ointment, door hinges. On Loring Common, the milking would be finished; the heavy-shouldered, lyre-horned cows would be plodding out of the shed to graze. The milk would be on its way to market soon. I was on my way to… where? Someplace safe, where we could talk. What if I had nothing to say?

The long black car passed out of the gates of the Night Fair. Somewhere in the City Theo and Sher were alive, or dead. Myra and Dusty and Dana and Cassidy were doing whatever they pleased, or could get away with, or thought they had to. To them, for now and maybe forever, the three people in the back seat of the limousine were irrelevant. I wedged myself in my corner of the car and wrapped my arms around me. I wouldn’t, had I been asked, have said I was cold.

In the morning light, the Schmidt beer cap sign looked as if it had been painted on the sky behind it. The suspension bridge, its cables looping like the flight of swallows, ran above and below us. If La Maitresse hadn’t intercepted us, we’d have gone this way anyway; the Underbridge was on the other shore, east along the river.

Then the car slowed and turned, and I straightened up and pulled my gaze down from overhead. We’d turned off — not on the other shore, not quite as far as that.

I stared, and breathed, “We’re on the island.”

“I know,” Frances said. Her head was up and her eyes open. “What, then?” She must have understood me from my voice; hers was low and level. I saw in her face the effort to focus her mind, to gather up her scattered reserves and hold them ready.

“The place has unreasonably high ju-ju levels. For instance, they say if you don’t belong, or weren’t invited, you won’t be able to turn off the bridge onto this street.”

“The ultimate private subdivision.”

I shrugged. “Don’t believe it, then.”

“I almost do, actually. This always was an oddity sink. Maybe someone’s found a way to use it. Do you believe it?”

“I’ve never had business on the island.” That was true. There was no reason to mention the times when, on the way to or from business elsewhere, I’d intended to test the folk wisdom, and forgot the intention until I was on the other side of the river. I wished I’d been paying more attention to where we’d turned off.