She stretches and is not wearing pants. It is not the first time she has lost time. It is, she thinks, the scariest. There’s a scratch down her leg, the way she used to go crazy on her own body. Her mother, she remembers, thank God, is at a chamber music festival in New Hampshire, is where she is, OK, there’s some time, you have time to piece back the blacked-out shambles. Wind comes in through the broken window, and instead she could live in a palace. Her spirits are low, and everything she can get her hands on wobbles in the middle of the bedroom trying to get some sort of grip. The lifeline is where, the rescue is what. Listening for something, is what she’s doing.

The answer is yes.

She slips to her childhood bathroom, floss and gloss in the cabinet, and throws up. Her legs go back in her underwear and back in her pants, like cream in coffee. At least this will be done. The hallway down to her childhood kitchen exhibits what the police would call signs of a struggle. Let’s not call them, no, let’s not summon the police to your mother’s house to hear from you that you do not know what has happened to you, if something did.

It doesn’t matter. She gets there. The Vic’s place has a flat garden, grassless since the days of drought, full of black rocks and a fountain that always makes her want to pee, but that’s not where the door is that insiders use. That’s the one with the clattery stairs along the side, and by the time Padgett reaches the top, her heart is so thumpy and loud it’s like she’s being chased by somebody. She has no idea what time it is, maybe ten, with birds chirping. She bams on the door.

The Vic opens up, and the scene behind him is so peaceful it’s deflating. Kitsune is in a wooden high chair, just kicking around, and the Vic is in a baggy Scandinavian garment his marketing head brought him back from a conference, somewhere between pajamas and what a wizard would don. A harmless perk of music is going on, and there’s a sandwich, inched out of its wrapping, on a blue plate.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Padgett steps in. “How am I doing on time?”

There’s a clock from Scandinavia too, on the plain white wall, or maybe from Hayes Valley in their own city. Civilization is overrated, Padgett thinks, looking at the silverware, but what else is there? Vic, meanwhile, is alarmed a little. “What happened to you? You look—are you OK?”

She sits down at the table, just out of kicking range from the baby. “You told me to think about it, to take my time.”

“That was two days ago,” the Vic says. “The Trail found your prototype in a gutter.”