Tick-Tick rallied in the morning, as she had the day before, but she didn’t seem quite as rallied as she was then. Since neither her household nor mine could boast a fever thermometer, I could only judge from the feel of her forehead what her temperature was, but it felt high. I could tell from her face that she was in pain. She turned down food again; she drank some orange juice, and I wanted her to drink more, but she said it hurt her throat.

I had the windows open, so I heard the banging on the front door. I hopped up three platforms and stuck my head out to see, wondering why, if the Ticker had gone to the trouble of installing a remote mechanical latch for the front door, she hadn’t rigged up a doorbell, too. Probably wasn’t enough of a challenge.

It was Tiamat. When I whistled she looked up, and I saw the evidence of tears on her white, pouched face.

“Oh, Jesus, you are here,” she said.

“I’ll be right down.” I could have let her in, but I didn’t think she’d be a useful distraction for Tick-Tick. And I remembered the way she’d looked at the Ticker, and spoken to her, as if being born on the other side of the Border had made her the author of Tiamat’s miseries.

As Rico had reminded me the night before, it hadn’t been so awfully long since the last time I’d seen her, and consequently, the last time I’d seen Tiamat, too. She didn’t seem taller, or thinner, or paler, and her hair was still red—though that, I realized, seeing it in sunlight, wasn’t the color it usually was, anyway. But her skin seemed dry and dull, and her eyes were bloodshot, as well as red from crying.

“I wasn’t going to come,” she said, as soon as I came out the door. “Everything was okay then, when I talked to you.”

“I know. Have a seat,” I told her, in as soothing a voice as I could manage. Hers was hoarse and inclined to crack, suggesting that she was prepared to have hysterics if the occasion called for it. My nerves weren’t exactly titanium-wrapped, what with one thing and another. I settled down on the stoop and stretched my legs out in front of me, and pretended I was relaxed.

Tiamat didn’t sit down. Instead she shifted from one foot to another on the sidewalk in front of me, and fixed me with a desperate glare. “I don’t know what you can do about it, anyway. Except you seemed to know all about this before anybody else did. Jesus, you’ve got to be able to help me.”