Izza did not answer.

“Okay,” Cat said. “Why did you chase them off?”

“They need me.”

“People need each other sometimes. Nothing wrong with that.”

“I won’t be around forever.”

Cat laughed, but the laugh stopped when Izza looked at her. Not that Izza’d put any special malice into her eyes. She just looked, like normal. “You’re young to say things like that and mean them.”

“I’m leaving, aren’t I? Soon as you’re well.”

“Why?”

Izza stood and paced, waiting for Cat to change her question. She did not. At last Izza stopped, returned, and sat again. “They don’t put kids in the Penitents, okay?”

“Okay.” Cat set the bamboo box aside. “You’re scared.”

“We’re not all made of silver. We can’t all fight those things off.”

“You have to run,” she said, “and you don’t want them to be lost without you.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes people have to work together, though.”

“That why you left your god?”

Cat said nothing.

“I see the withdrawal. And I saw you fight the Penitents. A god made you. And you left him.”

“I wasn’t made,” she said at last. “Not any different from you at least.”

“But you had a god.”

“A goddess. Yes. I worked for one, back onshore. Guess you could say we’re separated now.” She smiled briefly, after that, a pained kind of smile.

“What happened?”

“You know how I said people have to work together?”

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes the best way to work together is to be apart for a while.”

Izza didn’t understand, but she knew better than to ask questions. If Cat wanted her to know what she meant, she would have spoken plainly.

One night, Izza came to the warehouse and found Cat gone, the wad of dirty linens where she’d slept folded into a neat square. Not even footprints remained. Izza set down the box of rice and fruit she’d brought and searched the warehouse, even the little chapel hidden behind the debris, searched the docks beneath and the road outside. Nothing. Cat had vanished, quick as she came, and left her here.

She sank down beside the boxed rice, crossed her legs and hugged her knees, and stared over the horizon of her arms. Steam twisted out from under the box lid, rose a few inches, faded into air.

Of course. Cat needed food, and rest, time to recover. She hadn’t ever meant to bring Izza along. Who would? Made as much sense as Izza bringing Ivy or Ellen. Or Nick or Vel or Seth or Cassie or Jet. Or any of the others.

Sunset purpled the sky. A single star gleamed through a gap in the roof. She didn’t know the star’s name. Her mother would have. Her mother was gone.

She remembered a song, and wished she hadn’t.