“Okay, you should already know she’s dangerous,” I said.

“I’m more dangerous, I’m not worried. I want to go. Sooner than later.”

“Do you still want to do the eye thing?” Sveta asked.

“If possible. I’ll take my mask off when I’m with others.”

Sveta turned to me. “Did you find anything usable?”

“Mascara.”

“I have stuff, plus the white cover-up. Erin? Do you have anything?”

“I have stuff,” Erin said. “What are you doing?”

It was a series of last-minute tasks, Sveta, Erin and I helping do up Ashley so she could present a good face. Kenzie was high-energy, switching from watching to fiddling with the yet-to-be inserted eye camera to talking to Chris about what he was doing when he went out.

“Any word on Snag’s group?” Rain asked. Ashley was in a chair with her back to the table Rain was using for work on his hands.

“We’ve seen Snag and Love Lost around,” Kenzie said. “Love Lost more than Snag. She was in a bad mood yesterday. She went away for a while.”

“Snag is tinkering, and if Victoria’s description of how he operates was any clue, he can tap into his other powers through his tech,” Rain said. He slapped something metal down on the table, hard. “And I’m struggling with something that should be simple.”

“I want to talk to you about tinker stuff after,” Kenzie said.

“I had some small arms for you to mess with, but they got broken,” Rain said. “I have the contact pads.”

“Awesome,” Kenzie said. “I think we can figure something out.”

Ashley was patient as we applied some white and black eyeliner, then used Sveta’s cover-up to fix the color around the eyes.

“I wish I could do this,” Sveta said. She was handling the holding of the various brushes and objects, so we could hand one to her and take another. “But my hands can’t hold the brushes and pencils, and I wouldn’t feel safe with my tendrils out so close to Ashley’s face.”

“Tendrils,” Erin said.

“I don’t know what Rain told you, but I’d probably accidentally rip out Ashley’s eye.”

“If they do a bad job, we can wash it off and you can try,” Ashley said. “If you rip out my eye, then I’ll have the intimidation effect I want. Of a different sort.”

“Of course,” Sveta said, with an unusually sarcastic tone. “You’re fine with losing an eye, that’s badass. But you can’t wear a wig, because if it was knocked off, that would be embarrassing.”

Ashley sighed. I nearly stabbed her in the nose with the eyeliner pencil.

“Don’t move,” I told her.