“Ideally, not butter,” Tick-Tick said. She was standing next to me, unlit match in hand. In front of her were two gilt-edged plates bearing waffles and strawberries. “Whatever your flaws, my bonny boy, you’ve always been reasonably alert. This sudden tendency to fall into abstraction—” (the liqueur gave off a satisfying foomph, and a toxic-looking blue-green flame) “—is not like you. I put up with it in Wolfboy because I can’t tell when his eyes aren’t focusing anyway.”

“Um.”

“ ‘Um,’ indeed. And I would love to know whose face you were seeing in that poor cream.” With that, she used it to put out the last scuttling bits of flame.

I thought about it. “Mine, maybe. Probably I was just spacing out.”

We sat at the round table that was just the right size for two; I don’t know if the Ticker ever has dinner parties. If she does, she can probably find another table. This one was made of some highly-polished golden wood in high Art Nouveau style. Heaven only knows how these things come into Bordertown, or, once they have, why they should land on Tick-Tick’s doorstep instead of in some parlor on Dragonstooth Hill.

The alcohol was gone from the liqueur, the strawberries were warmed and softened, and some of the sugars had caramelized. The waffles were crisp all around the edges and soft in the middle. And the Ticker had stopped me just in time on the whipped cream. There was hot tea to wash it down with, which tasted something like Darjeeling and something like not. It was related to last night’s shower: It was a meal to make me grovellingly happy to be alive.

So I was grateful that Tick-Tick waited until I’d finished before she said, “And who did you kill?”

“Pardon?”

She looked patient. “That was two syllables, so I know you’re stalling. If you really didn’t know what I was asking, you’d have made do with ‘Huh?’ Or is this Richard Paul Somebody not you after all, in which case, what does he have on you, my lad, that you’ll go out and get ceilings dropped on you rather than tell Rico to go bother him?”

On second thought, it would have been useful to have some food to push around the plate, so I could pretend to be distracted. “I thought I didn’t have to reciprocate.”

“Of course not. But that was in matters of confidences freely given. This is a direct question. I ask because I want to be of use, and I can’t trust you, once you’re fully sunk in misery, to recognize when I can be of use.”