Suddenly, a hand reached through the crowd and grabbed my wrist, tight. Startled, I yanked back, but I was too distracted to be strong, and I found myself being pulled through the knot of bodies. I slipped on someone’s spilled drink and almost went down, but the hand gripped tighter and I found myself being pulled back up again.

I had the thought that maybe I should scream for help. Try to get Chris’s attention. That I should fight back. But I was having too much difficulty getting my bearings. I couldn’t see through the haze and the lights and the panic. My voice felt locked inside.

Finally, I burst from the crowd, shocked to find myself spit out on the other side of the room. I could see Chris across the room. He had found a stool and was slouched on it, playing with his phone. So glad to know he had my back.

The hand let go and I spun around.

And found myself nose to nose with a familiar face. Familiar heavily painted cat-eyes. A familiar wave of blue. A familiar corseted body. The girl who had given me the key to Dom Distribution. The girl who lived in, and went missing from, Bill Hollis’s apartment building. The girl who I’d thought I’d never see again.

“Blue?”

“I thought that was you,” she answered. Her eyes were huge and sparkly in this light. Her chin came to a severe point. She looked like manga come to life. “I wasn’t sure what I would have done if I’d gotten you all the way over here and it wasn’t you.” She laughed. Tendrils of blue hair stuck to her forehead in sweat.

“I thought you were . . .” I struggled for words. “Bill Hollis said you were dead.”

“Dead to him, maybe. But alive and well. A little bit homeless, but whatever. That’s a detail.”

I was aware of my mouth hanging open, of my hand hovering in midair between us, as if there was a force field around Blue that kept me from touching her. “What about Ruby?” I asked.

She pressed her lips together and then let them spring apart again. “Hollis actually did try to kill her. Came to her apartment and tried to, like . . .” She wrapped both hands around her neck and stuck out her tongue. “He was trying to find out what she had told you. But Ruby fought him off and that was the end of that. She went home. Texas. One day there, next day gone. Day after that, he kicked the rest of us out. Said we were ‘too talkative’ and ‘dangerous.’” She made air quotes. “I’ve been here and there since. Mostly here. I know the owner. He doesn’t charge me to hang out. And usually I can find someone to go home with.”