Pretty tentative, for the Ticker. “You’re not bothering me. I’m not doing anything.” Well, I was breathing, and my heart was beating. But the rest of me wasn’t busy.

“Ah. Then… have you thought about it yet?”

“What do you mean?”

“I said you should give up Rico’s puzzle, and you said you would think on it. I wondered if you had, or if you cared to think aloud.”

“I don’t have to.” Her head came up rather sharply when I said that. “I’ve been laid off.”

For a moment she sat still as a painting. Then she said, in a changed voice, “Oh. Oh, bother.”

“Huh?”

“Sleet and snow, I’d never thought Sunny Rico was a fool.”

“I’m not following this,” I said. I hadn’t expected the news to make her angry and amused and resigned, and all of them at once.

Tick-Tick folded her arms over the back of her chair, rested her chin on them, and looked at me. “I, at least, know that the surest way to make you want to do something is to tell you that you absolutely may not.”

I thought about it. Then I said, “Not this time. It’s a relief. I can get back to real life now. Hell, maybe I’ll find a steady girlfriend and learn to play the guitar.”

She glared at me. “You are my dear friend,” she declared, “and you lie like a rug.”

“No, honest.”

She snorted delicately and turned back to her book.

But I really wished that I hadn’t taken the time to think about it. Because as soon as I did I realized that, of course, she was right.

Chapter 7. Street Smarts

Linn did come around, the next day. He looked tired, which doesn’t always look the same in elves as it does in humans. His eyes weren’t bloodshot, and there were no shadows under them, and heaven knows he couldn’t have been paler than normal and not be dead. He just seemed dimmed, like a candle flame flickering in its own wax.

I was sitting in the kitchen window (that is, the window closest to the level the kitchen is on) nursing a cup of tea when Tick-Tick showed him in, so I had a nice vantage point to watch him from. His gaze bounced from level to level around the room like a runaway Superball, starting and ending at the Ticker’s workbench. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to look unalarmed, or unimpressed. I was pretty sure it was one or the other.

“Good morning. Tea?” I asked, sliding down off the windowsill.

“Thank you, no. I’m pleased to see you well, or seeming well.”