I folded the note up into a packet, rummaged in the drawers for sealing wax and couldn’t find any, gave up and used epoxy instead. (There were times, in the Borderlands, when epoxy wouldn’t set. But Tick-Tick claimed that this was an improvement on Superglue, which according to her, wouldn’t work at all here. I told her that was nonsense. She told me, no, it was magic.) I wrote “Sunny Rico” on the outside of the note, put the cap on the pen, and turned around to find that Tick-Tick was awake.

“Love letter?” she whispered.

I felt my face get warm. “Of course not! Note to Rico.”

“Ah.” She nodded and widened her eyes at me.

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“No, no, my dear. But I hope she appreciates the effort involved.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“Since I heard the desk drawer open.”

I thought back over what I’d done since I got the paper and pen out, and what it must have looked like. “I just wanted to make sure it didn’t give anything away if the wrong person read it.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding about the way she had when she’d said, “Ah.”

I made a disgusted noise and pushed the chair back from the workbench. “Criminy, she’s a cop.”

The Ticker nodded. I sat down in the chair next to the couch, to save her voice, if she insisted on having this conversation. “She is indeed a cop. It’s that very fact that makes me so concerned for your susceptible heart.”

“I. Beg. Your. Pardon.”

“Didn’t I say, not so long ago, that your preference was for women that any reasonable male would ward off with garlic and crucifixes? I’m afraid that in Sunny Rico, my dear, we see your ideal romantic object.”

“Huh-uh. No way. You,” I said firmly, leveling an index finger at her, “have a fever.”

“Yes, I do, but a fever’s always at low ebb in the morning.”

“Then I’m counting on you being delirious by noon, because you’re already seeing things.”

“I always see things. But if you prefer, I won’t tell you what they are. After all, I’m at your mercy.”

“Good grief,” I said, and went to stick my head out into the atrium, to see if anybody else was up yet. Nobody was.

However, it wasn’t long before a guy came past in the street below, selling eggs out of his bike basket. I bought some and gave him the note to carry, and went back upstairs to make breakfast. Yes, I can make a perfectly decent breakfast, no matter what sort of comments may have been made to the contrary. But the Ticker hadn’t much appetite, and seemed almost too tired to wield her fork if she did have.

“I didn’t mean it, about the delirium,” I said.