“Don’t try to mollify me or distract me. Not while we have company,” Sveta said. She pointed at me. “She needs to unwind. I thought we could do that and still hammer out the essentials.”

“We’ll try,” Weld said.

“Make yourself at home,” Sveta said. “I’m going to go rinse off. I’ve been cooped up in this body and I’m all waxy and gross inside here. I’ll be back out in a minute.”

“Do you want me to take your body?” Weld asked.

“I’m okay. I’ll bring a change of clothes in with me.”

Sveta broke away from him and half-crashed-into, half-hugged me. Clearly happy, she went off to do her thing, leaving Weld and I.

“Make yourself comfortable. I’d offer food and drink, but I’m not sure what we have. I don’t usually partake—”

Weld paused as Sveta closed the bathroom door.

“—unless she’s inflicting an experiment on me.”

“I heard that,” Sveta said, opening the door, before shutting it again.

The apartment wasn’t what I would have called ‘messy’. In a way, it was very different from Crystal’s place. There was no detritus, nothing left lying around.

Drawers had flat, painted metal faces, with no handles. Furniture was divided into things with no legs with what looked like it might have been stone framing the edges, and Sveta’s favored grappling structures, which were poles extending from floor to ceiling with various platforms and things to hold on to. Even the walls had metal bracing at the corners, painted over so Weld wouldn’t stick to them.

“Case Fifty-Three living,” Weld said.

“She said it was messy. I don’t see it.”

“Then I did a good job with my last-minute sweep and clean up,” Weld said. “Living room?”

I let him lead me to the living room. I put my bag down by the coffee table and sat down on the couch, which looked homemade to withstand someone who weighed a few hundred pounds sitting on it. It was so firm I nearly bounced off of it while sitting down. Once I set my weight down, though, it gradually eased up, hissing as it adjusted to my weight.

Leaning forward, I looked outside into the yard. A toy plane was parked on the lawn, the kind a kid could sit in and push with their feet.

“Did Sveta tell you what’s going on?” I asked.

“Some. I had trouble following who was who, sometimes, but I got the gist of it.”

“There’s an attack planned on the Fallen tomorrow. One of our… not sure how to put it, or how much you know. Our contact, they’re at risk. There are innocents there, and I’m not sure the villains care about sparing them.”

“How can I help?” Weld asked.