Another nod.

“Who were you supposed to give it to?”

“Dunno.”

“But you know what he looks like,” I said. I was trying to sound reassuring, though I wasn’t sure how good a job I was doing at it. I wished Anne were here—she’s good with kids. “Don’t you?”

Another nod, this one reluctant.

“Could you describe him to me?”

“I dunno.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs and Caldera walked back in. “They’re on their way,” she said. “Should only be a few minutes.”

I nodded and turned back to Leo. “But it was a man?”

Leo nodded.

“Tall? Short?”

I kept asking, drawing information out piece by piece. Leo answered reluctantly, but he still answered—he was probably afraid of what we’d do if he said no. I didn’t much like that, but it didn’t seem the time to push it. The person Leo had met at Pudding Mill Lane had been a mage. Male, brown hair, tallish but not too tall, suit, light skin . . . “How old was he?” I asked.

“Old.”

“Forty? Fifty?”

“Twenty-five or something.”

Caldera didn’t smile. She pulled out her phone, tapped at the screen, then held it out to him. “Was this the guy?”

I looked at Caldera curiously. There was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before, and Leo seemed to sense it. He shrank back. “I dunno.”

“Leo,” Caldera said. “I need you to look at this picture. Was this the man you saw on Thursday night?”

Unwillingly, Leo looked at the phone, stared at it for a few seconds, then nodded.

Caldera didn’t take her eyes off Leo. “Are you sure?”

“I guess.”

Caldera swore under her breath and got to her feet. “Find out what happened at the station. Fast. I need to call this in.” She disappeared downstairs again.

I frowned after her. What was that about? “So you took the green marble to Pudding Mill Lane,” I said to Leo. “And you met that man there.”

Nod.

“Were you supposed to give it to him?”

“I guess.”

“You were supposed to give it to him, if . . . ?”

“If he said the right thing.”

Code phrase, I thought. Leo was getting uncomfortable again. The subject he didn’t want to talk about seemed to be the person who’d sent him to the station. I was getting the strong feeling that was who he was scared of. “What happened at the station?”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“We know it’s not your fault.”

“They’ll say it was.” I realised suddenly that Leo was trembling. He wasn’t scared—he was terrified. “I was supposed to give it to the man in the suit.”

I tried different lines of questioning. Not that one, not that one . . . ah. “But someone else came,” I said. “A man with a beard, wearing sunglasses.”

Leo nodded.

“And there was a fight, so you ran away.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“I know.” So Leo had been there to meet the mage at the station when Chamois had attacked. “Did you see anyone get hurt?”