We were a block away and around the corner before she dug in her heels (actually, grabbed the fender of a gutted, rusted-out car that still stood by the curb) and refused to be moved. “That was it?” she asked me, still wearing that shaken face. “That was what had happened to the girl who died?”

“Except that there was a lot more of it.”

She rubbed her hands over her face. “That was—blessed Isle. It was a parody of Faerie. A parody of me. And yet—oh, surely not.”

“What?”

“A part of it was true.”

“What?” I said again, but in a different tone, because there was something in her voice that scared me thoroughly.

“We are—the elven people are in a few ways more like animal-kind than humans are. The wild canines know in a dozen small ways which are members of their pack and which not, and where they stand within those groups. We can do that too, a little. We can sometimes identify the blood of Faerie. And what that girl had, my heart—it was not so, but it was very like. What can it be, this thing we seek?”

I was just wondering if this latest piece of information was news to Rico, when three people came around the corner behind Tick-Tick. They weren’t moving quickly, but they were purposeful just the same. “Company,” I said. “Three of them. I think they’re looking for us.”

“Five,” Tick-Tick replied. “And no question of it.”

It was almost a relief; I knew from the Ticker’s face, anyway, that she’d set everything else aside for the moment to deal with whatever physical problem we might be about to have. The newcomers were all humans, and I wondered how many of them had applied for their passports. From the looks of them, if they had, none were as far along as Tiamat. Was that to our advantage or not? We needed some serious advantage. Neither of us was in the rumbling line at the best of times, and I wasn’t at the top of my form right then.

They stopped and spread out—at least, the three behind Tick-Tick did, which was all I could see, since she and I hadn’t changed position. Stopping was a good sign. In sane people, it means that they’re willing to consider being talked out of pounding your face into the asphalt. Two male, one female, probably friends and/or roommates of Tiamat’s. None of them had anything in their hands, but one of the guys had a baggy denim coat on, with pockets big enough to hold a lot of things I hoped they didn’t. “It’s all right,” I said, trying for a soothing balance of calm and scared. “We’re leaving. And we promise not to come back.”