I watched Fitz’s eyes as he calculated, considered, and made his choice. His face went pale, but his jaw was clenched, his eyes steady.

I don’t know what motivated me, exactly, but I leaned down near him and snapped, “Don’t!”

The young man had begun to shift his weight, to get his feet beneath him. He froze in the act.

“He’s expecting it, Fitz,” I said in a harsh, forceful tone. “He spat on you to drive you to it. He’s ready. He’ll kill you before you’ve finished standing up.”

Fitz looked around him, but his gaze went right through me. He couldn’t see me, then. Huh.

“I’ve been where you are, kid. I know this bald loser’s type. Don’t be a sucker. Don’t give him what he wants.”

Fitz closed his eyes very tightly for a moment. Then he exhaled slowly, and his body relaxed.

“Wise,” Baldy said. “Make good on your claim, and we might still have a way to work together, Fitz.”

Fitz swallowed, and grimaced as if at a bitter taste in his mouth, and said, “Yes, sir. I’m going to check the perimeter.”

“An excellent idea,” Baldy said. “I’d rather not see you for a while.” Then he walked away from Fitz, leaning down to touch the shoulder of one of the young men, and muttered softly.

Fitz moved, quickly and quietly, getting off the shop floor and moving out into the hallway. There he hugged himself tightly, shivering, and began walking rapidly down a hallway.

“I’m not crazy,” he said. “I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.”

“Well… kinda,” I said, keeping pace. “What are you doing working for an asshole like that?”

“You aren’t real,” Fitz said.

“The hell I’m not,” I replied. “I just can’t figure out why it is that you can hear me talking.”

“I’m not crazy,” Fitz snarled, and put his hands over his ears.

“I’m pretty sure that won’t help you,” I noted. “I mean, it’s your mind that perceives me. I think you just happen to get it as, uh… one of those MV4 things, instead of as a movie.”

“MP3,” Fitz corrected me automatically. Then he jerked his hands from his ears and looked around him, eyes wide. “Uh… are you… you actually there?”

“I am,” I confirmed. “Though any halfway decent hallucination would tell you that.”

Fitz blinked. “Um. I don’t want to piss you off or anything but… what are you?”

“I’m a guy who doesn’t like to see his friends getting shot at, Fitz,” I told him.

Fitz’s steps slowed. He seemed to put his back against a wall out of reflex more than thought. He was very still for a long moment. Then he said, “You’re… a, um… a spirit?”

“Technically,” I said.

He swallowed. “You work for the Rag Lady.”

Hell’s bells. The kid was terrified of Molly. And I’d known plenty of kids like Fitz when I was growing up in the system. I met them in foster homes, in orphanages, in schools and summer camps. Tough kids, survivors, people who knew that no one was looking out for them except themselves. Not everyone had the same experience in the system, but portions of it were positively Darwinian. It created some hard cases. Fitz was one of them.