“What?”

“Sorry. Never mind.”

“Not as old as I feel right now,” she sighed. “Oh, and speaking of things that make me feel old, I consulted Milo Chevrolet yesterday about this stuff we’re—I’m after.”

Milo was one of the most powerful magicians in Bordertown; he’d used some of that power to carve out a magic-free space to live in, which he’d filled with three hundred volumes of nonfiction and a model railroad. He could make a fetus feel old. “And he says?” I asked, cautiously.

“He was annoyed when I kept calling it a drug. He says that properly it’s a mutagen, if it’s making permanent changes in the bodies of the people taking it.”

“It’s a who?”

“Never mind. Until somebody fails to die of it, there’s no saying the changes are permanent, anyway. I reserve the right to save time and call it a drug. Unfortunately, he hasn’t seen any of it.”

“Well, Tiamat has.”

“Mmm. Ordinarily, I’d have that art supply store staked out, and follow this Tiamat around until we found the next link up. But lately when I find people, they tend to get snuffed.”

I considered this. One of the snuffed, of course, was someone I’d found, but I appreciated her restraint in not mentioning it. “Why?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I were a rare form of bread mold. “What do you mean, why? To keep them from leading me to the next link in the chain.”

“No, I know that. I mean, why is it an unavoidable result?”

Rico’s turn to consider. She scanned my face as she did so, but as if it might have been any face; she was just looking at me for something to look at. Still, I felt as if I might be blushing, so I concentrated on drinking beer. Yes, too hoppy. What a shame. Could have been a contender.

“Linn’s the only other cop I can trust absolutely,” Rico said finally. “The ones I don’t really suspect of being in the trade, I can’t be sure will keep quiet. They might trust people I wouldn’t. And I don’t know how long Linn’s going to be sidelined.”

“So why do you need Linn?” After his proposal to me the day before, and Tick-Tick’s analysis of it, I confess I didn’t entirely trust Linn, though I had a hard time imagining him involved with the bad guys in this case. “Take care of it yourself, and you don’t have to worry who trusts who.”

“Whom.”

I frowned at her. “Are you sure?”