“Yeah. The Bo— person we work for needs help,” Teddy said very stealthily.

Alea’s friend looked between the two of them, then with a grunt, he jammed a finger against Alea’s shoulder. “You get your crap together, Jacob. Take whatever this is outside. In fact, you can stay outside while you’re at it.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry,” Alea Iacta said. “I’m doing better, you’ll see.”

“Uh-huh,” the big guy said. He turned to Teddy and looked her up and down. “You trust this idiot?” he asked.

“Not really,” Teddy said. “But I can kick his butt if he tries anything.”

He nodded. “Good. If he does do anything, you tell me and I’ll pop his head right off his stupid shoulders, you got that?”

“Yeah, okay,” Teddy said. “But I can do that myself.”

He snorted and moved off toward the back of the room. “I’ve got my eye on you, Jacob.”

Alea Iacta, whose real name Teddy presumed was Jacob, swallowed, looked to her, then swallowed even harder. “We need to talk,” she said. “The Boss needs you for stuff.”

“Ah, what kind of stuff?” he asked. “Because I have a life, you know. Things to do, people to see and all that.”

“None of that matters,” Teddy said. “The Boss is gonna be beating up some Dealer guy ’cause he stole something that kinda belongs to the Boss. Now the Boss needs a costume to beat him up in, and she needs cannon fodder.”

“I could maybe help with the costume?” he said.

“You could help with both,” Teddy assured him. “But I think the costume is more important for now. The Boss will need to move soonish.”

Alea licked his lips and looked around the room for a bit. “Look, I don’t know why you think I can help that much. I did my part to pay your . . . Boss back for what I did. That was it.”

Teddy didn’t like where the conversation was going. Alea Iacta seemed to be backing out of the deal he made with the Boss and that just wasn’t cool. But Teddy was a clever girl, and she knew about the carrot and the stick.

“You can’t just back out from helping the Boss,” Teddy said.

Alea Iacta puffed his chest out and made himself bigger. He looked like someone shoring up all his bravery.

“Because if you don’t help the Boss,” Teddy continued, “I’ll eat you.”

If someone hit you with a stick, you ate them, and if they hit you with a carrot, you ate them and then the carrot.

Alea’s bravery puffed out of him like a particularly squeaky fart. “I . . . I’ll show you to the costume room,” he said.