At the side of my boulder, almost hidden in a tuft of tall grass, was a thin-stemmed little plant with a cluster of deep pink flowers. The color was so vivid it seemed to vibrate. I pulled it. It had no fragrance. There were short oval leaves climbing in pairs up the stalk. I began to strip them off, starting at the bottom.

“So now you know how all your friends feel,” Sher continued.

“Not quite,” I said. “You haven’t had any sudden revelations about me.”

She glared at me. “I’ve had plenty about you. Half of ’em I found out by accident and the other half by putting things together, and every time I found the kind of thing friends tell each other, it made me feel like shit. Because you hadn’t.” Sher dug a stone out of the grass and lobbed it into the pond; I watched the rings of water pulse out toward us as she talked. “If you’d wanted to know anything about me, or Theo, you could have just asked. But then we might have asked you something, and whenever we did, you’d slither out of it until it was pretty clear that you wanted us to keep our distance. Now you’re mad because we did. Were we supposed to keep giving our little secrets to you and never get anything back?”

“That’s not true!” Careful, careful. Chilly. “I’ve always kept even-up with you. I know the Deal.”

Sherrea looked at me as if I’d sprouted antennae. “Damballah, you can bite me now,” she muttered. “For instance,” she went on, stronger, “there was when I found out you weren’t a woman.”

The stem bent in my fingers.

“There’s one you can pay Theo back with; I don’t think he’s been disillusioned yet. He still talks as if you’re a guy, anyway.”

“Make up your mind,” I said. It came out thin. “Which am I?”

“My mind has nothing to do with it. When I figured out that either you were both or neither, I started watching for it. You do a chameleon thing — maybe it’s not even conscious — that makes you seem female when you’re with a woman, and male when you’re with a man. Like you take on the local coloring. In a mixed group you kind of shift around. I was still trying to figure out if you were natural or technological when the Horseman showed up. Then I knew — I just did — that they were in it somewhere. And I was afraid she could control you with it, so I said what I did to you.”

“You said… I’m sorry. I can’t remember.”

“That you don’t belong to them. Never did, and don’t now.”

I blew air out through my nose, like laughing. “Maybe I don’t now. But as far as ‘did,’ you’re wrong. I was a custom order.”

“No.” She rose and brushed nonexistent grass off her trousers. “I’m the kick-ass bruja, and I say so. You never did.”