Rain rose to his feet, and in the same motion, pushed on the table in front of him, sending scrap, food, and his tools to the ground. The table followed a second later, everything crashing in a sharp, deafening noise, with a short yelp from Natalie.

Natalie, who had been watching from the sidelines.

The bowl rolled around on the floor for a second, the only sound. The sound wound down as it lost momentum.

Where the sound faded, I heard another. Kenzie’s nervous giggling.

“Please don’t,” Rain said.

“I can’t help it.”

“Come,” Ashley said. She winced as she picked Kenzie up out of the chair. “Slippers off. We’re going for a walk. You and me.”

The giggling stopped and started in the minute or so it took for Ashley to get Kenzie to the door and make her put her boots on. I helped, getting the coat, hat and gloves, with Swansong’s stuff in my other arm.

Rather than put those things on, Ashley just opened the door, stepping out onto the fire escape without winter clothes. I handed everything over, and she shut the door. They’d get dressed for the outdoors outdoors.

The door closing mercifully shut out the sound of the nervous giggling.

Rain stood with his eyes up toward the ceiling, fingers knit together behind his head, forearms pressed against his ears.

“I fucked this up,” I said.

“I don’t think there was a good way to do it.”

“I was considering one-on-one, once I’d briefed people I thought were safe,” I said. “I was seventy-five percent on Ashley, I thought that if she did have an outburst, it would be okay so long as she was away from Kenzie. She surprised me.”

“She once said her default for every person she meets is to be disappointed in them,” Tristan said. “There’s never any surprises if they live up to that disappointment.”

Rain was only just now relaxing, lowering his arms. He looked down at the table he’d overturned. “I’ll clean up. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll get it,” Natalie said. “Please. It’ll help if I can do something.”

“If you bring the stuff, I’ll help,” Rain said. “I told myself a long time ago I didn’t want anyone cleaning up for me. It’s a rule.”

“Okay,” Natalie said. She was on the other end of the room, so I barely heard her.

“If you’d done Kenzie last, she would have gotten curious and found out, and she would have been hurt,” Sveta told me. “If you told her first, we would have realized something was wrong, and I would have had a pretty hard time knowing I was last on your list of people to tell.”

“Is it okay that I told you after—” I started.

I stopped because she was already nodding.