“Tell him what you told me,” Sadina said. Her voice sounded awfully steady for someone who’d been kidnapped with a bag over her head. “I’d love to hear it again, myself.”

The woman stepped forward, coming into the scant source of light, which Isaac now realized was a small oil lamp sitting next to the ugly giant of a man they’d met at the start of all this. His partner came closer and squatted next to Isaac.

“My name is Leticia.” She had skin somewhere between dark and light, brown eyes, brown hair cinched up into a ponytail. Her long-sleeve shirt had a warped picture of the moon on it. “But Timon here calls me Letti. You can call me Letti, Isaac. That’s how good of friends we’re going to be. The others have gone on ahead of us, but you’ll meet them later.”

Timon. That was it.

“You drugged us,” Isaac said. “Put a bag over my head and dragged me out of a house. Doesn’t seem the best way to start a friendship.”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Sadina shouted. Then she laughed, and Isaac wondered if she was still drugged.

The woman named Letti eased herself into a sitting position then pulled a small, round container out of her front pocket. She snapped off the lid and pulled out a white pill, offering it to Isaac with a smile.

He raised his eyebrows. “Really? You like me better when I’m knocked out?”

“It’s a mint. Timon said you needed a mint. I agree with his opinion. You need a mint.”

Isaac glanced over at Sadina, who said, “I think you’re fine. If they wanted to kill us we’d have been dead by now.”

He took the white pill, sniffed it, smelled peppermint. “Sorry, lady, but where we come from we don’t have fancy white pills for bad breath.” He threw it into the darkest corner of the room. “Maybe just move back a few feet if you can’t handle it.”

She scooted back a full pace from him, her expression one of amusement.

“Am I dreaming?” he asked. “This is not the way I expected it to go the first time I was ever kidnapped by somebody. What the hell is going on?”

“We’re not your enemies,” Letti answered. “You have absolutely no reason to be scared of us. You’ll notice you’re not tied up or anything. And, like your friend said, it would’ve been a lot easier to kill you than bring you here. You’d still be in that house where you met Timon, in fact. Kind of like Kletter.”

“Kletter? What’d you do to Kletter?” He had a vague memory of a woman saying, “She’s gone” after the coarse bag had been slipped over his head.

Letti didn’t answer right away, her eyes drifting toward the floor.