Rico started up the stairs after him, but I lagged in the doorway and asked the black-haired woman, “Don’t the public servants themselves care?”

“Huh?”

“About being brained with a brick.”

“Oh.” The dust on her face cracked with her sudden grin. “But if we did anything about it, people might think we were scared of dying.”

There was a scuffed yellow hard hat propped rakishly on the newel post. I put it on as I went up the stairs.

The sun was beating down in the apartment where Rico and I had found the note. On first look, I thought the mess we’d left behind us the night before was undisturbed. Then I recognized that the whole business had been shifted just enough to form a grid, which had then been examined with downright archaeological sensibilities.

“Your apparition,” Linn began, “manifested here, by the inner doorway?”

Rico nodded. “Table with the note on it over there, in the middle of the room.”

“The remains of it are there still. We found nothing by the door; if there was some small thing to serve as vessel to the spell until it was freed, it was destroyed or carried away.”

Rico clenched one hand, as if she would have liked to whack something with it.

“But see what we did find, in fallen plaster.” Linn handed her a clear plastic bag, and she frowned. I leaned over her shoulder for a better look.

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “The Ticker was right.” I snagged it out of her hand without thinking, for a closer look.

Before Rico could object, Linn asked sharply, “You know its nature?”

“It’s a photocell. Tick-Tick does things with ‘em now and then. This one’s smaller, though, and the part that picks up the light looks sort of burnt.”

“Indeed. It was made to use only once, to close the contact in a circuit. In that circuit.” And he pointed at the remaining ceiling above my head.

His excavations in the plaster had exposed it, or enough of it: the light-gauge covered wire, the battery holder that now dangled empty, and the four terminal ends, only one charred black where something explosive had been attached and gone off. Three more that hadn’t fired.

“Had the wind not turned and brought a fey spirit with it, we’d have taken your bodies from out of this wrack.”

Four ceiling beams blown loose at once could have dropped the whole top of the building into this room. Linn’s assessment seemed pretty reasonable. A quick image crossed my mind: Charlie’s broken body wearing my bloodied clothes. I felt as if someone had twisted a stick in my guts.

“I don’t get it,” Rico said. “Why the indirect route? Why not just plant a bomb and blow us up?”