A line of silver paint settled across the hood, effacing the final flaw. “How interesting that you see a distinction.”

He set down the spray gun and appraised the car, which looked as good as new. Then he retrieved his carry-on bag from the backseat and began to strip. He kicked off his shoes and tugged down his pants. He wore no underwear.

What she saw startled her.

Rather what she didn’t see.

She’d heard of it before, of course. But it seemed like one of those bizarre conditions consigned to medical case studies and dusty journals. Not something that belonged out here in the real world.

He piled his bloody clothes on the concrete floor, spilled some oil on them, and lit them on fire. Then he looked up, naked, unashamed, and expressionless. “I suggest you do the same.”

Her leather pants were clean, but her bustier sported a few smears from moving Setyeyiva. As Jaggers dressed in fresh clothes, she stripped off her shirt and threw it onto the small pyre.

She grabbed her encrypted satphone and walked outside, already dialing.

Standing beneath the firmament, she waited as it rang and rang. A click announced Van Sciver’s presence on the line.

“HOW was your MEAL?”

“No nutritional content,” she said.

There was a slight delay as their conversation ping-ponged between various virtual telephone-switch destinations. “Are there any inGREDients we might use to prepare a future meal?”

“No.”

She waited until it became clear that this was not a delay but a silence.

She’d visited Orphan Y at his undisclosed location only once, choppering in with a hood over her head. She pictured him there in his great room, lost in the flickering lights of the monitors, his very flesh seeming to crawl with the numbers pouring across the screens. It was as if he’d achieved singularity, given up his human form to become one with the data.

“Y?” she said. “You there?”

“I WILL identify HIS NEXT RESERVATION. And I WILL SEND you two to DINE with HIM.”

The air soothed her bare, burn-ravaged back. She drew in a cool breath, tilted her face to the smog-smeared stars. Somewhere pots clanged and a car backfired and drunken young men yelled in the night.

She thought of a girl with raven hair bent over the open hatch of the car. Her almond-shaped face, sweet and simple. The blood spurting from her carotid.

“The man you stuck me with,” Candy said. “My fellow diner. The guy’s a psychopath.”

“YES,” came back the multitude of voices. “But he’s MY PSYCHOPATH.”

30. Someone’s Idea of a Library

30

Someone’s Idea of a Library

Two dogs, thirteen guards, two snipers, one doctor, and Dex.