“I don’t know,” I said, losing patience. “How would I know? Maybe the police will come up with something. Having one of their own shot is a powerful incentive to find the bad guy. God knows they asked me to tell them every single thing I’ve done in the past few days, over and over. I’ll tell you something else I have to do—I have to go see the detective who got shot.”

Tolliver nodded. He turned his face away from me, to look out the window. The day was cold and clear, the sky so bright a blue that it hurt to look at it. It was an achingly beautiful day. And here we were, shut inside a hospital and peeved with each other.

I stepped over to his bed, took his hand. It was unresponsive in my grasp. “I have to shower and eat, and I have to go see the detective,” I said. “After that, I’ll be back. If I keep moving, I’ll be fine. No one can follow me 24-7. Right?” I hated to sound wheedling, but I did.

“I need to get out of here,” he said.

“Yes, and you will, soon. The doctor said so. Just don’t do anything crazy and fall, okay?”

There was a sketchy knock at the door, and as our heads turned, a short man walked in. He was extraordinary looking—all in black, with platinum spiked hair and piercings in his eyebrow, his nose, and (I knew from the past) his tongue. He was younger than me, somewhere around twenty-one, and he was slim and oddly handsome.

“Hello, Manfred,” Tolliver said. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad to see you.”

Eleven

Eleven

MANFRED seemed a little hurt that I had protested against his coming with me. “You don’t think I can be helpful?” he asked, his blue eyes looking a shade too forlorn.

“Manfred,” I began, exasperated, “I just don’t know what to do with you.”

“I have some very good ideas,” he said. He waggled his eyebrows.

He was making it funny, but he was serious. I never doubted that at my slightest response, Manfred would be booking us into the nearest hotel as fast as he could whip out his wallet.

The thing was, I’d have to pay for the room, because that wallet was probably empty. I didn’t know how Manfred was getting by. His grandmother, Xylda Bernardo, had been a colorful old fraud, but she’d had the genuine gift. It just didn’t always speak to her when she needed it to, and when she didn’t hear the real voice, she’d make one up. She’d made a poor living at it. She had a flare for the dramatic that had led to some pretty unconvincing overacting.