It didn’t sound like a restful sleep. I lay on the floor in my sleeping bag listening to her cough, because I knew I’d wake up every time she did it, anyway. Not a familiar sound. Tick-Tick had been hurt before, and sick drunk once in my memory (tequila shots, immoderately taken, will make even an elf sick), and mildly food-poisoned a couple of times, from one cause or another. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her cough before, and the strangeness of it, and the intensity, brought me fully conscious every time she did it.

When the light through the window got to be too much to ignore, and the room warmed up too much for the sleeping bag, I got up and put a kettle of water on. I was out of peppermint tea, which the Ticker would have liked, and out of licorice root, which she wouldn’t have liked but which would have been good for her. There was purple coneflower, though, which according to Ms. Wu was good for the immune system. Okay, better late than never. I made a pot, poured out two cups (I had no idea if I could catch anything she could catch, but a well-groomed immune system is an ornament to one’s life at the best of times), and took hers to the bedside.

“Hullo,” she croaked. Tick-Tick usually wakes up quickly and gracefully, unlike yours truly. This was obviously not going to be one of the usual days.

“Tea. Do you want honey in it?”

“No, thank you. I’m sorry if I kept you up. I did, didn’t I?”

I thought about lying politely, but it would have been pointless. “I think Linn gave you his stupid cold.”

“I think you’re right. Probably the day before yesterday; he was coughing at the hospital.”

“I hope he’s miserable.”

“For shame, dear heart. I assure you, I’m not miserable. Indeed, once we finish this pot of tea, I think we should venture out for breakfast. Oh, but I was so weary last night, as if all the virtue had been drawn off from my blood!”

She spoke in a good, strong, lively voice, but spoiled it by coughing at the end.

“I can cook something here.”

“Certainly. This from the boy who had to beg beer from his neighbor last night, and I know very well that if you have nothing else consumable in the kitchen, you have beer. I had something more sustaining in mind to break my fast than fried water.”

She was right, of course. “I can go out and get something and cook it here.”

“No, my dear, if I’m in a weakened state, the last thing I need is your cooking. Huevos rancheros at Taco Hell will set me up to a nicety, if it’s open yet.”