I folded my hands on the tabletop and looked out the window. It was a nice neighborhood; the wooden balcony was in good repair, and recently painted, and sported a wooden folding chair and a little table with a candle on it, any of which would have eventually wandered away from a back stoop in my neighborhood. From the distance between Rico’s balcony and the one on the back of the buildings across the way, I suspected there was a small courtyard below.

“Whatever it is, go ahead and spit it out,” she said.

Still looking out the window, I said, “I have a partner, too.” Rico didn’t say anything, so I went on. “We have that kind of relationship. We don’t usually do anything as dangerous as you and Linn, but we break a lot of trail in the Nevernever, and travel rough, and we have to count on each other to decide the right thing pretty quickly. So I understand what you’re saying.”

“And?”

“And that’s why I can’t just promise to take orders. I know myself. I’m not in the habit. I just won’t. That wouldn’t bother me—I’d go ahead and promise, and do what had to be done, and explain myself to you afterward—except for one thing. You insist on taking responsibility for what I do. Linn said that was why you didn’t want me to work on the case anymore. Which is okay, if you’re the boss and I’m the lackey, and all I have to do is remember to ask, ‘Do you want fries with that?’ But that’s not how it’ll happen, and you won’t be responsible for my actions, but you’ll try to be. On those terms, I think I’d rather stay an outsider, and work with my partner, and spend another day like yesterday. It may have been uncomfortable, but you can’t say it didn’t work.”

She didn’t say anything for a few moments, so I turned to see what was going on. She was leaning up against the counter looking at me, with an expression that, except for a certain amount of amusement, was hard to sort out. “When you and Tick-Tick are working together,” she began, gently, “don’t you ever give each other orders?”

“I don’t—”

“Duck? Hold this? Watch out? Grab that end, quick? And are you telling me that if something happened to Tick-Tick, especially when she was in your company, you’d say, ‘Darn shame, but she wasn’t my responsibility’?”

“No. I’m not telling you that.”