“I don’t know. I’ve so little experience of sickness—it could be nothing, and I might fancy myself at death’s door.”

“Linn’s in bed with it, and Rico thinks that’s odd. J think it’s odd.”

She turned her head away roughly, which set her to coughing until her eyes streamed with tears. I made her drink some tea, and after a bit she could say, in a small voice, “I think it’s odd, too.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I think…” She closed her eyes, and for a few moments lay still, only the rise and fall of her chest keeping me from panic. At last she said, “I think you should bring Ms. Wu.”

Ms. Wu was not, strictly speaking, a doctor, though she knew a good deal of medicine. But she was a powerful magician, certainly the equal of Milo Chevrolet. For all anyone knew, she had been here since the Elflands came back; she might have been created all of a piece with the Borderlands themselves.

“Then you don’t think it’s just a cold.” She caught at my fingers, her hands still warm from cradling her tea. “I’m afraid. Orient,” she whispered. So was Rico. So, for that matter, was I.

Chapter 9. The Transformation Blues

Bordertown: the land where doctors and high-powered magicians run Chinese grocery stores. I didn’t actually run all the way to Wu’s Worldly Emporium, in the sense that untrained people use “run.” I used the gait I’d learned as a cross-country runner in high school and had enough use for over the years that I’d never forgotten it. It ate miles in a hurry, and it tended to drop you into a light trance, in which you could stand a little back from your worries—who was behind you, who was ahead of you, or, in this instance, why you felt the need to be in such a rush.

So I arrived just a little short of breath, and with the aura of someone who’d been doing honest work, rather than being overcome with panic. Elsewhere, the bookstore that Wolfboy and Sparks ran, was right next door. I had an urge to stick my head in, to tell them that Tick-Tick was sick—but that would be silly. There was nothing to worry about. People got sick all the time, and I was taking care of it by consulting Ms. Wu, so why should I bother Wolfboy and Sparks unnecessarily?