I was in a holding pattern. I wasn’t sure what to do about the sick kids situation. Dom was off consulting with our people on Bainbridge, so he wasn’t around to bounce ideas off of, and the cards weren’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.

I gulped down the rest of my bourbon, then raised the empty glass and caught the bartender’s eye. Normally I don’t push for table-side service at a dive bar, but it was a Tuesday, and I was one of three patrons in the place. The chick tending bar nodded and grabbed the bottle of Tatoosh, then made her way across the sticky floor to my corner table.

“You any good with those things?” she asked as she poured. She wanted me to do a reading for her. That’s why she was asking. It’s always why people asked.

I shrugged. “I’m decent.” Normally I’d humor her. Maybe even try to charm her pants off with my fortune-telling wiles. Might even earn myself access to a shower. What could I say? She was pretty enough in a grunge-chic way, and I was more than lonely enough.

I hadn’t been with anyone since that afternoon in the stairwell with the Senate’s spy. It didn’t matter that he was dead now, that I’d killed him. I was still tempted to replace the feel of his hands on my body with those of another. It might even work. For a few hours. But I was afraid that the memories of how he’d sounded in that stairwell, how he’d smelled and felt, would return, fresh as ever. I feared finding out that they might haunt me forever.

I clenched my jaw. I wasn’t in the mood for temporary amnesia right now, anyway.

The bartender lingered for a few seconds too long. I took it as a signal to take my leave and pulled my wallet from my left coat pocket. I fished out four twenties and handed them to her. “No change.” It was plenty to pay for the three doubles plus a decent tip. I tossed back the bourbon in my freshly refilled glass, then slid it across the corner of the table to the bartender. “Thanks.”

She took the hint and returned to the bar, the bottle and empty glass in hand.

I restacked my cards and tucked them into their crushed velvet drawstring bag, then returned the bag to my backpack and zipped the whole thing up. After scooting out of the booth, I headed to the bar’s back door, which spit me out in a dingy alleyway. The pavement was slick with rain and even slicker where the uneven cobblestones of days gone by showed through the patchy asphalt, and my balance was a little off from that last double. Pulling up my hood to fend off the drizzle, I made my way to the mouth of the alley, keeping a careful eye on where I placed my boots.

I could head back to the library, maybe do some more research on Ouroboros. Except I doubted that anything I found online would do me—or the sick kids—any good. It was hardly like they would publicly post the directions to make a cure for whatever mutant disease they’d cooked up.