I left them with their heads, sandy-brown and silver-white, bent over the battered square of note paper, and picked my way through the rubble to the stairs. I sat down on the top one. I didn’t know what I felt, besides afraid, and even that didn’t seem to have any shape or direction. No, not true. There was one direction that always seemed to attract fear and anger, and it could be best described as: If I wasn’t able to find things, I wouldn’t be in this mess. It was almost comforting to have such a familiar cause for my problems.

The black-haired woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “You mean they’re still at it?” she said when she saw me.

“Whatever it is. Yeah.”

She climbed the stairs and dropped down next to me. “You’re not ours, are you? No matter what the hell Linn says.”

“Well, I’m scared of dying and I don’t care who knows it.”

“I mean, you’re not a cop.”

“No. No matter what Linn says.”

“Didn’t think so. Civilians get kind of a look in the presence of the constabulary. You know, more of the whites of the eyes showing.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Hey, nothing personal. It’s a reasonable reaction, anyway. I mean, Jesus, who comes to Bordertown to be a cop? It makes sense to figure all the Silver Suits have a spoke loose.”

“Do you?” I asked. I half expected to see a bottle labelled “Drink Me” on the step at my feet. “Have a spoke loose, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah, but just barely. I’ve only been in it for a year and a half. But you have to wonder about Linn—hell, I never heard that the elves have anything like police, when they’re at home. So why would he do this?”

“He probably started with crosswords,” I said, “and got hooked on the harder stuff as he went along.”

She frowned at me.

“Sorry. He reminds me of a friend of mine, is all.”

“Would your friend become a Suit?”

“She’d be anything that gave her enough of the kind of problems she likes to solve. I don’t think she has a choice.”

“Maybe that’s it. But his partner—that was her, wasn’t it—she’s got two spokes out.”

“How’s that?”

“I hear her father was a cop, back in the World. I mean, if you’ve seen this job up close, you’ve gotta be crazy to want it. And who the hell ever heard of somebody coming to B-town to be just like her parents?”

I thought about that one. Certainly nobody I knew had run away to join the family business. But maybe it was something that happened when you got older. Which made me wonder how old Sunny Rico was, anyway…

“By the way, I’m Kathy Hong.”