Martin’s running late, the Mission traffic thick in front of his van and the sky above scowling dark. It is not raining but it looks like a rainy day. He knows how to get to the school, knows it cold, but is having trouble backpedaling in his head to how he’s here. His screen won’t do that for him; it’s a story he has to tell himself. One night a girl appeared in a forest in an apron and stole a barrel. He, Martin Icke, walked with her out of the woods and then for several years more or less died. Now they are doing something together. It is a risky idea, a bad idea even. But it is theirs, together.

The van’s radio manages music for every mood or occasion, but Martin can’t figure out what to listen to on the way to a kidnapping. Dance songs about dancing keep his mind on the moves. He has Rachel’s phone, left behind at the bar, that opens up to her birthday, which he took note of some time ago. That was smart of him, he tells himself, and now the phone is shiny in his pocket waiting for instructions. He feels it there like a charm, ready to call the Vic and summon up money without ever tracing it to him. Martin is gambling his entire life on Padgett. She is gambling hers on the Vic. They’d better, he tells himself, win.

Padgett’s at the place where she and Kit always split a bagel, splitting a bagel. San Francisco’s bagels are wretched and spongy, but nothing would sit right in Padgett’s stomach anyway. She tells herself it will help her performance, these butterflies, aid in her transformation into the panicked mother of a snatched child.

“Bagels make my hands sticky,” Kit says.

“We don’t have to worry about that,” Padgett soothes. “Because of …?”

“Napkins,” Kitsune says.

“Which start with the letter …?”

The little girl thinks, thoughtfully. “W. ”

“W is just your favorite letter to say, silly,” Padgett says, crossing the street unnecessarily. They drew it on a paper napkin, the quieter sidewalk, the driver’s door. By the hydrant, if it hasn’t happened yet, she will stop and fuss over the child’s buttery hands. Butter is what Kit will remember, Padgett thinks, she hopes, the only thing from this day.