The Ticker slept on the couch, because it was easier than going up and down the platforms to and from the bed on the highest level. I set up a cot near the workbench because I didn’t want to get too comfortable, in case Tick-Tick wanted to wake me up in the middle of the night. Consequently, when she did wake me up in the middle of the night, it didn’t take any time at all.

She didn’t do it on purpose; she was in the throes of a fever dream, and the tossing and muttering were enough to rouse me. I put the kettle on before I went to her.

Her skin was hot and dry. My hand on her forehead woke her up, and she stared at me blankly for a second.

“Orient? But I thought you—no, I dreamed that, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know, but probably. It’s time for some willow bark.”

She coughed. “And the loo.”

I helped her to the bathroom door, and helped her back to the couch, and made the tea, and felt reasonably capable. But reasonably capable wasn’t quite enough to ensure either the Ticker or me an easy, uninterrupted night. That was why I was only half-asleep at dawn, one arm thrown over my eyes to keep the light out, enduring just a little too much brain activity to make it really worth the effort.

The Ticker sick, and Linn. Rico looking worn to the bone; Ms. Wu looking worn to the bone; and me probably added to the list as soon as I gave up and got out of bed. The girl Tiamat looking the way the girl in the hospital bed probably had before she got quite so far along. So far along what? Was the thing that Tick-Tick hadn’t said, but strongly suggested, true: that, up to a point, the drug worked? That’d be one in the eye for the Lords of Elfland. A little tuck and shuffle in the old DNA, and you could make an elf from a human. Except they’d already sort of got that one in the eye, because human-elf crosses produced fertile offspring, which meant that we had to be pretty near neighbors genetically as it was.

So far along. Which was how far? How far was “up to a point”? How long did humans have on that passport to the Elflands, before their visas were cancelled in a big way? And why did the transformation fail?