Ratcatcher didn’t look down, her eyes on the sky. At the corner of the building, Chicken Little was jogging, Snuff huffing as he followed.

“We can bring them back,” I said. “They’re unharmed. Or they should be.”

She didn’t look away.

“All we want to know is what happened with you and Foresight.”

“You’re not going to arretht me for the other thtuff?”

I shook my head. Then I paused. “What other stuff? Should we?”

She shrugged.

Whatever.

“We just care about the failed recruitment for now. What happened, that you didn’t get recruited by Foresight?” I asked.

“It thtarted with me getting pith drunk,” she said. “Thent thome textth to my new both.”

“Texts?”

“The thorta textth you don’t want your grandmama to thee.”

“Do you remember sending these texts?” I asked her.

Black 13.6

Tattletale took her sweet frigging time in catching up to us. There was enough time for a concerned citizen to start talking on their phone while looking warily at Chicken Little and the hooded ex-killer Snuff who had been chasing—following—after him, time for me to talk to them while Snuff kept an eye on Ratcatcher, a defusing of the situation with Chicken’s help, and then time for us to get slightly bored.

With a light whistle to get Chicken’s attention, she motioned to the hawks. “Release one to show goodwill?”

Chicken Little didn’t. He hung back, on the opposite side of the alley as Ratcatcher, with Snuff standing beside him, one hand at his shoulder. Ratcatcher had retreated into the building she’d been planning to escape into, mainly for warmth, and I stood at the doorway, keeping it just ajar enough I could keep an eye on her.

Not that she was going anywhere, with Chicken Little holding her pets.

“I’m not sure I can,” Chicken Little said.

Ratcatcher didn’t make a sound, but the bent nose of her mask flicked around in an alarmed way, her head craning to see Chicken Little through the cracked-open doorway.

“Why can’t you?” Tattletale asked.

“Because when you said I had to be nonlethal, that’s something I’ve never done before. It’s like I plant these flags and the birds go to the flag to do whatever it says on the flag. Attack, wait, watch out, patrol…”

“Yes… and?”

“And I don’t have a ‘catch but don’t kill’ flag so I just stuck down an ‘attack’ and ‘wait’ flag in the same place and they’re kind of stuck between the two and getting stressed out. But it worked for them grabbing but not killing. I can’t really tell one to do one thing and the other to do another, and if I put down more flags they can’t follow because of contradicting orders then they’ll either snap and eat the rats or they’ll both go quiet and let the rats go.”