The heels of my boots caught on the cobblestones here and there, and my head lolled back, almost touching the ground, which meant I was looking up at the bridges and some of the tourists looking down. I smiled and waved. No one waved back, except for one little boy who waved and frantically tugged on the adult next to him, trying to get his father to see me. But the man didn’t seem to recognize that anything out of the usual was happening. I wondered if he could see Feish at all.

“Good kid,” I mumbled. And he was a good kid, trying to help some lady being dragged along by her fish friend. My mumble turned into a laugh, and then I was being dragged through the narrow opening into 66 Factors Row.

As soon as we stepped—okay, Feish stepped and I was dragged—out of the open, the sound of hammering metal on metal rang through the air. Loud, rhythmic, and loud . . . did I mention loud? How could you not hear that from the outside?

“Loud,” I mumbled the word.

“Boss help,” Feish said, dropping me in the middle of the floor. I stared up at the ceiling, the timbers of the building clearly visible, the age on them even more so. They probably still smelled like saltwater. So often the timbers used to construct the buildings on the waterfront were pulled off old ships. I lifted a hand as if I could touch the wood and still feel the cool saltwater.

The hand that I lifted was the one I’d used to grab Jinx. Lines ran from my fingertips and palm, creeping down my wrist toward my elbow in a pattern that looked suspiciously like a spider web.

“Cool.” I turned my hand over, but suddenly a figure was blocking the light. The hammering noise was gone, and when I looked up, Crash was staring down at me. “I grabbed Jinx.” As if that would explain everything.

He took me by the wrist and pulled me up to my feet with little effort. “You have some of her spines still in you.”

I closed my eyes and tried, with great effort on my part, not to giggle. “I don’t feel anything. I just feel a little . . . tipsy.” A giggle might have slipped out at the end, I’m not sure. I went from standing to being carried all the way to a hard bed that I tried to roll out of, and almost succeeded.

Hands grabbed me. “You need to hold her down,” Crash said.

“Okay,” I answered. “What’s wrong with her? Who do I need to hold down?”

Feish clucked her tongue. “Why is she reacting like this to Jinx?”