“That’s right. Don’t forget. It’s easy to get lost around here, and that wouldn’t be safe for you. Folks’d just as soon stab you as send you in the right direction.”

I shuddered. “Thanks,” I muttered with quiet sarcasm.

He laughed as if my answer had delighted him. “No point in ignoring the truth. Doesn’t make it worse to have it said out loud.”

It didn’t make it better, either, but I didn’t say that. I was beginning to enjoy myself just a little. It was so nice to have someone talk to me again. Jeb was, if nothing else, interesting company.

“One, two, three,” he counted off, then he led me down the third hallway from the left. We started passing round entrances covered by a variety of makeshift doors. Some were curtained off with patterned sheets of fabric; others had big pieces of cardboard duct-taped together. One hole had two real doors—one red-painted wood, one gray metal—leaning over the opening.

“Seven,” Jeb counted, and stopped in front of a smallish circle, the tallest point just a few inches higher than my head. This one protected its privacy with a pretty jade green screen—the kind that might divide the space in an elegant living room. There was a pattern of cherry blossoms embroidered across the silk.

“This is the only space I can think of for now. The only one that’s fitted up decent for human habitation. It will be empty for a few weeks, and we’ll figure something better out for you by the time it’s needed again.”

He folded the screen aside, and a light that was brighter than that in the hallway greeted us.

The room he revealed gave me a strange feeling of vertigo—probably because it was so much taller than it was wide. Standing inside it was like standing in a tower or a silo, not that I had ever been in such places, but those were the comparisons Melanie made. The ceiling, twice as high as the room was wide, was a maze of cracks. Like vines of light, the cracks circled around and almost met. This seemed dangerous to me—unstable. But Jeb showed no fear of cave-ins as he led me farther in.