The jewelry all belonged on the corpse, but faintly, as if the pieces forgot their owner even as I held them. The coins belonged anywhere—money’s like that. Their formless, omnidirectional pull made my head ache. The impression ball gave back nothing but lousy music. Maybe my hand was where it belonged; an i-ball is meant to be held, after all. Or perhaps the magic in it crossed wires with my talent. If I understood how my talent worked, maybe I’d know. But the keys…

The keys were the jackpot, as I might have expected if I’d thought about it. There were three of them, and each one pulled me, strong and steady, in a different direction. I held them up and jingled them, feeling abstractly pleased.

“Keys,” Rico said, “belong in locks.”

“Uh huh. Doors, cabinets, ignitions. These could be to his front door, his wheels, and his mom’s house.”

Rico stood swiftly. “Let’s go find out.”

•

The first two stops were Charlie’s bike, abandoned on High Street and impounded in the copshop garage, and Charlie’s squat on Hell’s Gate. The third was a boarded-up rowhouse near Fare-You-Well Park.

“If his mom lives here,” Rico said—eyeing the rusted fence fallen into the basement entry, the trash on the steps, the wound in the wall where someone had yanked out the intercom system—”then I know where that boy got his sense of style.” Her Night Peepers were back on her nose, and I wondered for the first time just how much better she could see in the dark than I could. “Do the honors, will you?” she added, and offered me a flashlight.

I unlocked the front door and turned to find Rico close behind me, with a gun in her hand. “Those things make me nervous,” I said.

“Shh, you’ll wake Mom.”

We went quietly into the front hall. It stank of damp plaster dust and decaying wood, and nothing else. The building was uncompromisingly silent. I phrased a question Wolfboy-style: with eyebrows and tilt of head. She nodded toward a piece of wall next to one of the hallway doors. I stood against it.

Rico moved to the other side, back flat to the wall, and turned the knob slowly. Then she slammed the door open and snapped back out of the way. It was as good as a movie. Absolutely nothing happened. She edged out to look around the doorframe. Nothing happened then, either. She prowled the room like a tiger trained in Tai Chi, gun ready; then she made another textbook entrance into the next room in the suite. The whole suite was empty, except for little piles of wallpaper that had fallen off the walls from damp. Swaths of the ceiling paper drooped loose over our heads, and half-loosened strips dangled from the walls like lolling paper tongues.