The file folder to the left was more recent. It was from the infodump Dragon had given me, detailing everything we knew about agents and how they were structured.

The door we’d glimpsed bothered me. I wanted to wrap my head around it.

I stood, and I pulled on something more decent to wear—the long top with the black hood and the Brockton Bay skyline across the front that I’d worn to first meet Jessica’s therapy circle. I fiddled with my hair, braided for overnight, tucking loose strands behind my ears as I made my way to the kitchen.

Kenzie was sleeping on the couch, drowning in an excess of heavy blankets and comforters, with only the top of her head and the buns of her hair sticking out of the top end of the blanket burrito. The coffee table was littered with tinkering stuff, a few plates, and a couple of glasses, and the television had been left on. In the sunless hours of the winter morning, they were running some kid’s show with a crew of a spaceship. I thought the protagonist looked a bit disturbing, but whatever.

From the fact the television was on and that she hadn’t done her usual routine for her hair, wrapping it up to protect it, I guessed she had gone straight from tinker stuff to turning out the lights, pulling blankets down on top of herself from where they’d been set up at the back of the couch.

Routine was important for kids in grief, and this wasn’t routine. I picked up two ends from ice cream cones that had been half-eaten, putting them on a plate. Two ice cream cones definitely wasn’t normal, nevermind that Kenzie liked to eat the top part of the cone, lick out the ice cream that had been packed in all the way, but didn’t enjoy the cones enough on their own to finish them. Didn’t matter on the cone type. Just your standard eleven-year-old type weirdness.

I found another two-inch long bit of uneaten cone between two glasses.

I was indulging her. Letting her do her thing and find her own routine. If she wanted something, I let her have it, within reason.

I was careful not to make any noise as I collected dishes, avoiding moving any tinkering work.

“Breakfast?” she asked. She didn’t poke her head out.

“Did I wake you? Sorry.”

“I set an alarm to wake me up if you got up,” the Kenzie burrito said. “You look healthier than you did yesterday.”

“I feel better. Eight out of ten.”

“Good. Do you want breakfast? I can make stuff. My foster dads used to teach me.”

She wiggled and struggled until her head was out of the burrito, and craned her head around to look up at me. She gave me a half-smile, only one side of her mouth turning upward.