“Good idea.”

We trooped in. The others arrived over the next twenty minutes or so. Gard had insisted on taking Kincaid by one of Marcone’s buildings—probably someplace where he kept medical supplies for those times when he didn’t want the police wondering why his employees came in with gunshot or knife wounds. To my amusement, Murphy had insisted on accompanying Kincaid—which meant that the cops were about to learn the location of another of Marcone’s secret stashes, maybe even the name of whatever doctor he had on his payroll. And since it was Murphy’s car, and Murphy was with me, and Gard needed my help, there wasn’t diddly Gard could do about it.

That’s my Murphy, manufacturing her own damned silver lining when the clouds didn’t cough one up.

Mouse was delighted to see me, and greeted me with much fond twitching and bumping against my legs and tail wagging. He, at least, thought I merely smelled interesting. Molly greeted us with only slightly less enthusiasm, and immediately set about making food for everyone. It turns out that Molly wasn’t her mother’s daughter in that respect. Charity was like the MacGyver of the kitchen. She could whip up a five-course meal for twelve from an egg, two spaghetti noodles, some household chemicals, and a stick of chewing gum. Molly…

Molly once burned my egg. My boiled egg. I don’t know how.

She could, however, make a mean cup of coffee.

Once Kincaid had been settled down on the guest bed in Charity’s sewing room, everyone else gathered in the kitchen. Murphy looked strained. I poured her a cup of joe, and she came to stand next to me. I offered Luccio one as well. She accepted with a small, grateful nod.

“How is he?” she asked Murphy.

“Sleeping,” Murphy said. “Gard got him some painkillers.”

I guzzled coffee, fighting off a round of chills. “Okay, people. Here’s the situation. We are bent over, greased up, and Nicodemus and his crew are about to drive one of those Japanese bullet trains right up our collective ass.”

The room went quiet.

“They took Ivy,” I said. “That’s bad.”

“Harry,” Murphy said, “I know I’m the new kid, but you’re going to have to explain this thing with the little girl to me again.”

“Ivy is the Archive,” I said quietly. “A long time ago—we don’t know when—somebody—we don’t know who—created the Archive. A kind of intellectual construct.”

“What?” Sanya asked.

“A kind of entity composed of pure information. Think of it as software for the brain,” Luccio said. “Like a very advanced database management system.”

“Ah,” Sanya said, nodding.

I arched an eyebrow at Luccio in surprise.

She shrugged, smiling a little. “I like computers. I read all about them. It’s…my hobby, really. I understand the theory behind them.”

“Right,” I said. “Ahem. Okay. The Archive is passed from one generation to the next, mother to daughter—all the memories of the previous bearers of the Archive, and all the facts they have gathered.