The loft was quiet for having most of the den crammed in up there. We were running on batteries, so the computers were shut down but for one in a corner, where a Wizzer worked hard to scare up a weather report. A pair of the older guys hunched around the CB. Rousseau perched on a desk nearby, while people came and went with inventories or damage reports. Song-yi logged them into her personal tablet, the only one in the den. A small crowd pelted the boss with questions, and he answered as best he could. He was good at this sort of crisis, where the solutions were obvious and calming: you do this, you fix that. The not-so-busy had sacked out anywhere a body could fit. But a lot of folks just stared into space or murmured in tired groups. The den had taken this one hard.

Jenn and I moved dirty dishes off a crate and sat. I tried not to wolf my food.

“Look who comes,” she noted. “The walking wounded.”

Rubio had rounded the corner from the stairs, moving slow but a lot steadier.

“You heard what happened to him?” I murmured while he was still out of earshot.

“Who hasn’t? Those stupid boys had to tell all their stupid little buddies. See the glares? No one asks, hey dude, did you really do it? He’s convicted already.”

“But you know he didn’t.”

She rolled her shoulders in a complicated shrug.

“No, I mean, you do. Don’t you?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. He’s marked, and that’s that.”

How many of Rube’s so-called friends were thinking the same thing? I gnawed my lip. “How are the guys who got shot?”

“That’s the thing. One more died this afternoon.”

Rube slouched over with a plate of pan-scrapings. We made room on our crate. He was bandaged and stitched, but able to shove food in his mouth and still make rude noises about green kids who couldn’t deliver a serious beating even though there were three of them and were vanquished by a girl.

Jenn shot him a warning glance and for once he got the message.

“How come you were out so late?” he asked me.

“You mean, other than saving your butt, and the numbnuts boys as well?”

“You were already late by the time you got to me.”

I quickly reviewed my storm tale for what to tell and what to edit out. The Macys, yes, and that got a good laugh. Nothing about the hide or the Souk, and especially not Daniel. The Stormies, without the arrows; the surge, yes, even my vision of the lost woman. None of this would be suspect, but I hesitated with the last. Did I sound like a crazy person? Hard not to. Retelling was reliving, and I got all worked up about it again.