To me. Sunny said, “Let ‘em out the back door, and make sure they leave. I don’t want them hanging around to give any warnings or get in the way. Oh, and here.” She rummaged in her jacket pocket with her gun-free hand, and produced three of the seven-sided gold coins that Tick-Tick said were called lion’s teeth in the Elflands. “Give them to the girl. The little prince there,” she said, nodding at the one in green and silver, “won’t have the common sense to accept.”

“You’ll be okay here?”

“I won’t stir without you,” Sunny answered drily.

On the back steps, I gave the girl the remains of my last pack of cigarettes, and the coins. The torchlight gave the three of them a particularly supernatural glimmering look, glossing their skin and touching their ruined clothes discreetly, and I thought about how my ancestors, centuries ago, had written about visitations from their ancestors. Faerie rades, changelings, dancing under the hill.

The girl looked at the coins in her palm. The kid in his ball dress said something sharply to her, but I shushed him just as sharply, thinking of Sunny inside, and what might happen to her, or me, if somebody decided to check out the argument on the back porch. The girl wasn’t any better at keeping her feelings off her face than her well-dressed compatriot. I saw her pride put up a fight and take a serious blow as she closed her fingers over the money. I felt as if I’d hit her, instead of making it possible for her to get along on her own. But learning to distinguish false pride from true is a survival skill, and if the first lesson had hurt—well, if she hadn’t wanted to grow up the hard way, she shouldn’t have run away to Bordertown.

She went down the steps and into the alley, where the light barely fell on her, and jerked her head to order the others to follow. It was the first ungraceful motion I’d seen her make. The younger boy came promptly, and she started away, an irregular brightness in the night. The older one paused, and looked at the door and me one last time; then he, too, disappeared into the dark. I hoped that when the girl gave him his share of the gold, he’d have the brains not to refuse it.

Sunny may have thought I was silly to worry about her, but she’d kept her word anyway; she was still in the little dormitory. “Okay, extra careful,” she said. “Don’t assume there’s only one person left in the building, and don’t assume that just because he seems like a self-absorbed wanker he can’t do you damage.”