Jeanne looked at her hand, then at Kurt’s. The bands were Damascus, not gold. Hers had a yellow diamond inset into it. Gold had seemed crass, but a yellow gemstone had seemed essential.

“And,” Sierra said. “I couldn’t help but notice you haven’t denied you want to be in charge.”

“Humanity is wounded on an extradimensional, macro level,” Jeanne said. “Finding solutions for this kind of damage requires the perspective of people with a sense for the big picture. The biggest kind of picture.”

“But do you want it? That position, where you’re finding the solutions and looking down on things from that high a seat?”

“Yes,” Jeanne said.

“You might be the only person that really wants it,” Sierra said.

“We might be the only ones who can do it,” Jeanne said.

“Gary’s right. That’s spooky,” Sierra said.

“I don’t think that’s fair.”

Sierra nodded. She gathered her things. No umbrella or raincoat. Jeanne had always felt Sierra was more the type to walk in the rain and let it pour down onto her than to be wearing business casual in a room like this.

The book was the last thing Sierra picked up. She looked at the cover.

“Want another copy to give to Tattletale?” Jeanne asked.

“Sure.”

Jeanne tapped her power, covering the table’s long surface with a yellow tint. In a second mind’s eye, she could see that slice of space as a world unto itself. There were around sixty thousand variables that Jeanne was aware of, but she had to look for them to grasp them. Friction. Tuned… seventy-five units.

She gave the book a push, and it sailed across the table like an air hockey puck, rotating. Sierra stopped it with one hand.

One of Sierra’s fingers tapped the cover. “Accord?”

“Yes.”

“Spooky,” Sierra said, again. She collected the book, putting it with the other, and gathered her bag.

Jeanne continued to feel it wasn’t a very fair assertion. She sat back down beside Kurt, at the empty table in a hall that could have hosted an elegant ballroom dance, with tables at either end, a bar, and more room for groups to gather by the windows and socialize.

She poked at the key on her keyboard to refresh the page.

No news.

She moved over to the side of the keyboard to hit the key combination to switch windows, and her fingers met Kurt’s. He was already there, reading her mind, switching the window for her. She hit the key to refresh that page too.

More deaths. Tattletale had broken away while the other Undersiders had ventured into the fight, and Jeanne had no idea why. What was Tattletale doing?

Her fingers knit together with Kurt’s, but backward, knuckles crossing knuckles. The smooth surface of her ring grazed his finger.