It was a long night, and a long walk, but then again everybody had a lot of explaining to do, and a lot of thinking to do too. Quentin told her what he knew about why Asmodeus (that was it) would have wanted the knife, and after hearing the tale of Reynard the murdering rapist fox-god she thought it was pretty understandable. She must have been planning to steal it all along, that was the whole reason she was there. All else being equal Plum wished her well.

But how had she known it was in the case in the first place? Plum didn’t even have a guess. Quentin didn’t either, or if he did he didn’t make it.

More disquieting was the fact that Asmodeus obviously knew about Plum’s family. She’d realized a while ago that the bird must know; now it was clear that her secret identity wasn’t anywhere near as secret as she thought it was, and that being a Chatwin meant that she was already part of a lot of other people’s stories in ways that she was only now becoming aware of. She figured she might as well tell Quentin at this point; she felt safe with him. She’d almost told him once, at the hotel bar, and anyway he asked why she could open the suitcase when nobody else could, because of course he wasn’t going to let that go, and that had to be the answer. Her great-grandfather had locked it and made sure only a family member could unlock it. She could have made up something, but she was so tired she couldn’t think of a lie, and anyway what was the point.

For the record Plum thought it was pretty rich that Quentin turned out to be connected to a hard case like Betsy, if only indirectly. But he was turning out to be a pretty hard case himself, in his way, or at any rate harder than she’d thought based on first impressions. And everywhere she looked things were getting connected up, or rather it was becoming clear that they were already connected in ways that she was only just now picking up on. It was a worrying trend. Everybody else was deep into their own stories, and all the stories were woven together just beneath the surface into a web that included Plum. But what was Plum’s story?

Toward dawn they’d recovered enough strength from the spellcasting orgy of the day before that they could risk some low flight, just above the trees. They had no idea where they even were. Once the sun was up they found a road and walked along it looking sufficiently pathetic and unthreatening that some guy out for an early-morning drive in his Honda Element gave them a ride into the nearest town.