When I could think again, I found that Sunny had made the effort mostly unnecessary. She only wanted to know if I was fit to drive, or if she ought to. I weighed the alternatives carefully: driving the Ticker’s bike (I’d promised it she’d be back soon; her voice saying “All that has been mine…”) versus sitting in the sidecar and the person driving not being her. “I’ll drive,” I said.

By the time we got out to the curb in the rain, I remembered to ask, “Where are we going?”

“My place,” she said. “It’s closer.”

“I—I’d kind of like to be by myself.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Trust me.”

I tried to marshall a couple of civil arguments, or even an uncivil one. She interrupted with, “Do you have a shower?”

I thought of the barrel in the backyard, in the rain. “Not… really.”

“I do. Drive, or give me the keys.”

I drove. It wasn’t raining hard enough to substitute for the shower, but it made my clothes damp enough to bring back the awful river smell in them, and chilled me pretty thoroughly in the bike-made breeze. A passable set of distractions. Would it be very long before I could quit worrying about where my next distraction was coming from?

Sunny’s street was quiet, and almost all the windows were dark. “It’s late,” I said.

“It’s that. So try not to throw any pots and pans down the stairs.”

There was a candle in a holder, on a little table inside the front door. Sunny lit it and led the way up, and I put all my effort into not missing a step in the wobbling light. On the third floor landing. Sunny turned to me. “Wait here.”

I remembered that she was on the fourth floor. “Why?”

“Because. Not scared of the dark, are you?”

The light disappeared with her, up the next flight and around the corner. I heard her stop at her front door.

There was a long silence before the jingle of keys reached me, and the sound of the door opening. It was a well-made building, so I couldn’t hear anything after that.

It seemed like several minutes before her head appeared around the turn in the stairs. “Coast is clear,” she said softly. “Come on up.”

The lamps were all lit in her apartment, and the white walls had warmed to a kind of buff color in the glow. “Coast is clear of what?” I asked.

She tipped her head to one side and gave me a look that suggested she was being patient and I should appreciate it. “Of anything that might have been left by the person who made my car blow up.”

I stared. “I forgot.” Ye Gods, how could I? I’d had one surprise at Walt Felkin’s front door; wasn’t that enough to make me permanently wary? Well, I had a lot on my mind—which reminded me of what and how much, and I turned away and sat down in a chair in the living room, blind for an instant with the return of feeling.