My place was closer than hers at that point, so we headed toward it. Twilight had set in; everyone who lived south of Ho was finally awake and looking for something to get into. Now that I knew to look for it, I saw signs of pulled threads in the social fabric—odd, suspicious, sliding-away glances at Tick-Tick or at me from humans or elves, respectively, whom we didn’t know. There were people around town, apparently, who believed that one or the other of us was letting the species down.

We didn’t do a lot of talking until we got to my building. Then Tick-Tick said, “What now, my dear?”

I had been thinking about that, which was why I hadn’t been talking. “I say to hell with Linn’s little plan to keep this quiet. Rico needs to know all this.”

She nodded. We made it to the first-floor landing before I remembered that I was out of beer.

“Go on up,” I told her. I went back down and cadged two bottles of lager from my neighbor Yoshi, who looked like he’d just gotten up.

“I owe you,” I said.

“Nah. I think I owe you. Anyway, don’t worry about it.” He scratched his scalp with both hands and yawned.

I tramped back up the stairs with the two sweating bottles. At the end of the hall, my door was open, and the room beyond was dark. I set the bottles down on the floor outside and bumped the door open with my arm at full stretch. Tick-Tick was sitting in the armchair by the window.

“You didn’t light a lamp.”

Her silhouette shook its head. “Hadn’t the energy. And the dark is so restful—”

Her words stuck on a long and painful-sounding cough.

Chapter 8. Talking Heads

She was tired—reasonable enough, I was tired, it had been a hell of a day—and said, if I didn’t mind, she’d as soon sleep in the armchair as stumble off home.

“I mind,” I answered. “You can have the bed.”

“Where will you sleep?” She really did look tired; her eyelids drooped, her shoulders drooped, and her head was carried a little crooked, like a rose beginning to sag on the stem.

“Same place I slept before I got the bed. On the floor.”

“Aren’t you a little bruised and chipped for that sort of thing?”

“Nah. Foam pad and a sleeping bag will take care of it.”

She protested a little, but only a little. She slid from the chair over to the bed in one boneless motion, and seemed to fall asleep as soon as she landed.