We nodded to people as we crossed the room. An elf, identified as a member of the Bloods by the red leather headband and a cut-off, shredded red tank top, glared at me for an instant; then his face cleared and he nodded back. I’d found his kid sister’s stolen cycle a month ago. A muscular man, mahogany brown, with a blackwork tattoo over half his face and down his neck, looked up from a copy of Dubious Truth and a cup of tea and smiled vaguely. He was a sculptor; he’d come to me about a copy of a book on Calder’s mobiles. I read it before I passed it on. Life ought to be one long education.

County Hell Fairgrounds was on the sound system, and the window glass quaked audibly with every extra-low note. We claimed the booth just as the bass player grabbed a fistful of strings and climbed the alphabet with them.

“How does he make his hands do that?” I asked.

“Too much Fairport Convention in his youth,” suggested Tick-Tick. “Shall I make the A-sign at Peach?”

I thought about the alternative. “Yeah. It’s too hot for stout. Ale sounds right.”

The Ticker sat up very straight, caught Peach’s eye across the room, and made a pyramid with her hands. Then she held up two fingers.

The front door opened again and produced a partial pocket of silence. Well, no, it wasn’t the door, but the person who’d pushed it open. He moved smoothly on long, supple muscles that made him seem taller than he was. He grinned at the reaction in the room, which produced more of it, because the grin was full of large, white, pointed teeth in a long jaw, and the face and body were covered with smooth red-brown fur.

Tick-Tick made a scratch-that gesture to Peach and held up three fingers. The same hand turned into a waving white flag to summon Wolfboy.

“Ay, Lobito,” I said when he came up. “You’ll just have to sit with the scaff ‘n’ raff if you want a booth.”

Wolfboy raised his hands palm-up and rolled his eyes to heaven in a perfect “Why me?”

Tick-Tick slid over to make room for him.

“How’s Sparks?” the Ticker asked.

Wolfboy dragged a notebook and pen out of his back jeans pocket before he sat; then he flipped to a new page, wrote quickly (it must be hard to write quickly and well with claws on the ends of your fingers, but I suppose anything comes with practice), and showed it to us. Way good. She’s minding the store, it read. Wolfboy and his girlfriend Sparks ran the best used bookstore in town. It made me feel almost old; the Ticker and I had known him since before any of us did anything useful with our time.