“Didn’t you want to pay your respects?” Robby demanded in the vestibule as they shrugged on their coats. Velvet shot her a dirty look. “Then why did you drag me down here?”

Velvet’s hands paused in buttoning her coat. She frowned down at her penny loafers.

“Hell if I know,” she said. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I just didn’t want to—you know-look at him again.”

The side door to the vestibule opened. Burt’s two daughters came out of the bathroom, still snuffling. They pushed past without an apology.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Velvet called after them. The younger looked back, surprised.

“Did you know him?” she asked; she sounded sad and miserable and lonely. Velvet stared at her, frozen. Never should have said anything, she kicked herself. Stupid bitch.

“She worked with him,” Robby supplied, and grabbed Velvet’s coat sleeve. “Come on, before you get yourself in bigger trouble.”

The girl waved an awkward goodbye as the door wheezed shut behind them. Velvet shivered in the blast of cold wind.

“You didn’t have to say that,” she snapped. Robby sighed, her breath a white flag.

“I didn’t have to come here at all, you know.”

“Well, why did you?” Velvet demanded. Robby gave her a long level stare.

“Because you asked me to.”

Robby’s borrowed car matched her perfectly. Gray. Conservative. Not too new, not too old. Velvet slammed the door irritably and stared out the window at the church, where people were starting to straggle out. One of them was the guy who’d stared at her. He seemed to be looking for someone.

Robby hit the accelerator and Velvet closed her eyes, resting her head against the cold glass of the window.

She still smelled burnt flesh. It had all been a waste of time, after all. Burt’s ghost wasn’t going to be put in the ground by anything so simple as a funeral.

“I have to work,” Robby said. “I’m going by Jim’s. Where do you want me to drop you?”

So that’s how it was going to be. Dropped off at a corner, just like a street whore. Dumped with the clothes on her back and—luckily—the three hundred stuffed in her shirt. Well, that was no big deal. She’d call Ming. That was it, she’d call Ming, get set up with a couple of gigs—

The bruises. She’d have to explain the bruises.

“How come that guy knew me at the funeral?” she asked. “I’m sure I never saw him before.”

“Maybe a former customer?” Robby asked; she couldn’t quite keep the prissy tone out of her voice. “Somebody not very memorable?”