“Come in. My name is Orient.” This one wouldn’t want to shake hands.

“Do… don’t humans usually have two names?”

I couldn’t keep from smiling a little. “Sometimes.”

“Oh! Oh, of course. You are the one who was her partner.”

That surprised me. “I didn’t think she kept in touch.”

“In touch? Oh. No. That is, there are those who do—who write to their families, who visit—and I asked that they convey word of her, when they could.” He scowled at me suddenly. “I did not have her spied upon. Some families do, whose children have fled.”

“No, I don’t think she would have let that happen.” Once I saw him up close, I was willing to guess that he was older than Tick-Tick. He wore an expensive-looking wide-skirted coat in a sober shade of dark green, and a silk cravat, and had a heavy gold ring with what was probably the family crest embossed on it on his left hand. He looked like a fine upstanding pillar of the Faerie community. He also looked completely out of his element and aware of it, about evenly concerned for my good will and his dignity.

I slung another assortment of stuff off the dairy-cow print chair and said, “Make yourself comfortable. And I didn’t catch your name.”

“I—my name of custom is Vissa. You may use that.”

“Thank you.” I did know my manners, and that included Faerie manners, so I offered him food and drink before asking him what I could do for him.

He refused the refreshments and said, “I have come to take my sister home.”

I’d thought it might be something like that. I filled the kettle and lit the fire under it, which would have been an embarrassing gesture if the gas hadn’t decided to flow today. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him watching the procedure. Not scornful, not amazed, just interested. “What happens to the bodies of dead people is always a big topic with humans. Some of us figure the occupant has moved out, and they’re compost. Some of us think there’s still a connection between the dead person and the body, and that what happens to the latter affects the former. And some of us think it doesn’t matter one way or the other, but that the people who are still living should be content with the arrangement, whatever happens to the remains.” I couldn’t think of Tick-Tick as “remains” yet, but it had been two days. Sometimes a strange artificial distance would set in, as if she’d gone on an extended jaunt into the Nevernever and I didn’t expect her back for a month. I think it was what Ms. Wu had called denial, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t last.