Even though I climbed into my seat normally, my hand ready to close the door, Sveta was quicker than I was, seizing the handle and tugging the door shut. Sealing us off from the other group.

“Start us up. I want the radio,” Tattletale said. “And keep an eye on those guys.”

“Will do,” Snuff said.

The radio was on a second later, along with the blast of heat from the car’s vents. Snuff pulled out partway and stopped, waiting for the other car.

“I’ll leave my seatbelt off, so I can fly out and help them if I need to,” I said. A surprise attack now wouldn’t be much of a surprise, given how Teacher was operating.

The radio was going, but it wasn’t the convenient movie or television thing where things started at a convenient time. That was if this was the sort of thing that came up in the news, and if Tattletale was right. For now, the noise on the radio was about politics. Druck striking a deal for the construction workers.

“I’m sorry,” I told Sveta.

“They still say nice things about Weld now and then on the message boards and sites. Never anything nice about me,” she murmured. “They barely consider me alive, apparently.”

“They’re idiots,” I said.

“They’re idiots who used to call me a sister and Weld a brother.”

I reached out, into the tangle of tendrils between head and blouse, and hooked my fingers into them. They wrapped around my hand and forearm, while her head turned my way.

I was in the midst of tugging her closer, into something approximating a hug, when I felt a pang at my finger, then at another.

Sveta visibly concentrated, worked at relaxing, and let my withdraw my hand.

I flexed my hand. My finger had been bent to a painful point, but not broken.

“Sorry.”

“No need for,” I said. “Offer for a hug still stands.”

“I want to,” she said. “I can’t. Not right now.”

Only the background noise of radio and the sound of the vehicle followed the statement. I watched over one shoulder to make sure the car following was okay. Saw Engel’s silhouette through the tinted windshield, and found myself kind of detesting her.

I put my eyeless mask on and my hood up, and I told myself it was so I could better fly through the cold wind when and if I had to fly to rescue them.

Tattletale began to adjust the radio’s volume, raising it.