Rico went on, “Five-foot-ten—maybe about six feet by now. Black hair, dark blue eyes. Good-looking kid. A lot like you. You okay? You’re a little green.”

My fingers were tight around the remaining bottle. I let go of it and laid my hands flat on the table instead.

“Charged with grand theft auto, back in the World,” Rico concluded. She folded the Peepers with a click. “And murder.”

I thought the Ticker’s shoulders moved. I was afraid to look at Wolfboy.

“If I found him,” Rico said, eyeing the wall above the booth, “I’d have to extradite him. If B-town got in the habit of harboring fugitives, we’d never be able to keep the damn real cops—the ones from the World, I mean—out of here. Nobody wants that.”

I scrabbled up enough self-control to speak. “What do you want me to do?”

“Help me find Charlie’s boss.”

“It’s not that easy. One of us needs to know who I’m looking for.”

“I’ve got to try.” For an instant, Rico looked hunted and hungry. That’s right, she’d been on the street. She’d imagine her friends falling to this. She put the Peepers on again. “Can you start now?”

“He doesn’t want to.” Tick-Tick, in her fine, measured voice, like a reciting poet or a courtroom lawyer. “Nor does he have to. He’s committed no crime—” I saw the stop in her thoughts mirrored in her eyes, when she wondered if I had committed a crime. “And if he has, arrest him. Where is it written that mere authority allows you these liberties with another person’s life?”

The smooth silver curve of the Night Peepers was opaque; all I could see there was the room, my face, the Ticker’s, and Wolfboy’s unreadable one over his clenched, black-clawed fingers.

I pried my hands loose from the table and stood up. “Isn’t that what authority is?”

Rico had the grace to flinch.

I smiled stiffly at Tick-Tick. “Tell Peach to eat my chowder and think of me.”

“Heartbreaker,” she said, as if it hurt her. Wolfboy made a quick, impatient gesture, then seemed to stop himself. I wondered what he would have said, if he could.

I led the way out of the Hard Luck, for the sake of my self-respect. Rico, for whatever reason, let me do it.

Chapter 2. Chance of a Ghost