It was Tick-Tick who picked up Rico’s question, cool and academic and dauntingly elven. “It’s not the drug problem. Capital D, capital P. The Mad River itself is a dangerous drug for humans, after all, and I’ve never seen the police concern themselves with what Soho’s children choose to intoxicate themselves with.”

Rico nodded. “Victimless crime. We don’t care who they sleep with, either, or whether they charge ‘em for it. Though if they ask, we’ll tell ‘em it’s a bad idea.”

“Are you having fun?” I asked. “Tell us a story. Detective.”

Rico took off the Peepers and folded them, set them on the table. She studied me before she spoke, as if she were seeing something or someone who wasn’t me. “Humans can’t get into the Elflands; maybe the Wall recognizes them. But what if someone gave you a vial of blue stuff to shoot and said it’d change you, make you just enough like an elf that you could step over the Border into Faerie?”

Wolfboy watched Rico, narrow-eyed. His lip twitched on one side, not quite a snarl, but maybe the possibility of one. He was a little ahead of the Ticker and me, I think, in following the idea to its consequences; he usually is. Tick-Tick frowned at Rico. “It wouldn’t be possible,” she said at last, but warily.

“Isn’t it? There are plenty of substances that shuffle chromosomes. They use ‘em out in the World for bioengineering.”

“Leaving aside that the Elflands are overrated,” the Ticker said, “I’d guess a great deal of money could be made with a product like that. If it has any effect.”

“Oh, it has an effect. It brings on hallucinations and euphoria. At first, that’s all it does. With repeated use, it cranks up or damps down certain glands. You have a growth spurt, you lose weight. It seems to break down melanin; skin color fades. Hallucinations become increasingly intense.” She picked up the Peepers and sighted down the earpieces. “And then it kills you.”

If that was what Wolfboy had guessed ahead to, I understood the snarl. I thought of the runaways in Soho who wanted to see the Elflands—which was all of them. Or the less-than-halfbreeds who felt the pull of their elven heritage. Or dumb Jewish boys who’d arrived in Bordertown willing to do anything to stop being what they were, how they were. A shiver ran down my arms.

“I’ve hit the wall on this,” Rico said. “Charlie was a mule for the person or people behind the stuff. I found out that much, and we were on him like polish on a shoe for maybe twenty-four hours. Twenty-four God-damned hours later, he’s dead, with nothing to connect him to his bosses. Whoever it is I’m after might as well be an illusion.”