“So all those buttons are different restaurants?” I asked, looking at the jukebox, now totally out of place, like a British police call box on the deck of the Titanic.

Al bobbed his head and downed a glass of red wine. “They are memories,” he said, looking at Newt. “Apart from the last one, we’ve not had a new one for thousands of years.”

Newt’s brow furrowed, and she flicked a grape at him. “I apologized formally for that,” she muttered. “It was Ku’Sox’s fault.”

“Ku’Sox.” I breathed in, wondering if Al had made this memory as I snatched up something that might be a cracker after a few thousand years of civilization. How Ku’Sox had anything to do with the lack of new memories at Dalliance was beyond me. Maybe he’d broken the machine. He certainly had broken my life. He and Trent. Stupid elf. You can summon me back any time now, Ivy.

“Stay away from Ku’Sox, Rachel,” Al offered as he filled my empty glass from a flaccid wineskin.

My nose wrinkled. No way was I drinking anything that came out of a bag with fur still on it from its previous owner. “Not a problem,” I said. “Besides, last I saw him, he was hiding out in reality, and what are the chances that he’d come back here?”

Newt sipped from her silver goblet, her fingers playing in the candle flame. “Everyone finds his way home eventually,” she said, and as I watched, her eyes changed. Though she made no move as she reclined in idleness like a goddess on a throne, the light behind her black orbs went from complaisant to virulent hatred.

Al noticed, too, and he motioned for me to shut up.

“You want to kill him?” Newt asked me, her mild tone a stark contrast with her hidden anger.

“Yes!” I blurted out, then hesitated when I saw her fondling a knife on her hip. “Uh…”

“That’s two of us, then,” she said, interrupting me. “Give me enough time, Gally, and I’ll have the majority.”

“No one likes the little genetic designer dump,” Al said, trying not to look at her, but it was hard not to. “But we can’t kill him. Same as we can’t kill you, love,” he said to Newt, clinking his glass to hers. “Genetic material is genetic material.”

“Al,” Newt pouted as I puzzled over the designer-dump comment. “Is that what I am to you? Genetic material?”

“Of course not, love,” he said, playing with her. “I want your library, too.”

I watched Newt’s mood sour as she stabbed a grape and ate it off the point of her knife. “I despise the bastard even more than you do, Rachel, though that might change as he takes everything you love. You need to be clever to best him. Are you clever, Rachel?”

Oh God. She wants to know if I’m clever. I glanced at Al, and he stared at me, then shrugged. Licking my lips, I said, “It’s the shiny pot that puts a hole in the sky.”