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her weight just fine, once she gets used to things " and he grinned at the jar of river water next to me.
"You we'll find a place for you too, I'm sure. Make yourself comfortable." He nodded and left the
room. The bolt slid home.
I heard Caramel scramble across the floor to me. "Are you " she began in a whisper. "Oh, shit, of
course you're not okay. Can I do anything to help?"
"No. Thanks." I wasn't whispering to keep them from hearing us. I was whispering to keep me from
hearing us.
A moment later she lifted my head, very carefully, and put something soft under it. "My jacket," she
explained.
The cloth smelled like soap and clean cotton. And I'd thought she lived in a building like this?
"When they brought you in& I thought you were dead. There's blood on your face." She paused, men
said, "I know you shouldn't drink this stuff, but is it safe to wash in?"
"Yeah. Better wash it now, though, before we get desperate."
"Desperate?"
"Before long we're going to be very thirsty. That's why it's there."
"Should we throw it out, then?"
"They'll bring us more."
She didn't answer that. After a moment I felt damp cloth against my cheek and smelled the water. I
opened my eyes finally.
She looked older than she had last night. That's not quite true; she still looked sixteen. It was just an older
sixteen. Ah, Bordertown, with its little rites of passage.
"You have a concussion, I think," she said.
"How do you "
"Your right pupil looks a little bigger than the left. What are you doing here?"
That last sentence sounded yanked out of her. I smiled, sort of. "I told you I'd find you if I needed you."
"How?"
I told her about my talent. It was a little perfunctory, since I felt out of breath the whole time. But when I
finished, her eyes were round and wondering.
"That's marvelous!"
"Not always," I said.
She was startled. Then she looked down and seemed very intent on wringing out her scarf. "I guess this is
one of those times."
"No!" I reached toward her with my right hand. She was on my left side so it didn't quite make it. "That's
not what I meant."
I now know what a searching look is; she fastened one on me. "You're a nice guy," she said, as if it was
not a compliment but a simple observation of fact.
My conscious mind was beginning to go out with the tide. "Not always," I repeated, and went off into the
dark again.
Waking up was much simpler the second time. I shifted position in my sleep, and my left wrist hit the
floor. I made some noises, some of them profane. I had the good sense to raise my head to look at it,
rather than raising the arm. My wrist was plum-colored where the tire iron had connected, and
impressively swollen. "Should splint it," I muttered to myself.
"Working on it," Caramel said. She sat down next to me and held up two pieces of wood. "Dividers from
the desk drawers," she said cheerfully.
Neither of us really knew how to apply a splint, but I helped by lying still and gritting my teeth. When she
was done, I felt like a seal with a wooden flipper, but the joint was immobile.
I hadn't known there was a desk in the room until then. I got my right elbow under me and checked out
the cell.
It had been someone's library once, high-ceilinged, with tall windows and decorative plaster friezes at the
tops of the walls. Most of the wall were fitted with built-in shelves, all of them empty now. There were
water stains on the plaster from leaks in the roof. One window had been in-expertly bricked up,
probably right after the Change. The other window was barred, and the light came dimly through a layer
of pea-green paint. There was a fireplace between two tiers of shelves, closed up with a sheet of
plywood wedged into the opening. The floor must have been handsome once, but damp and neglect had
weathered the planks gray. A heap of what looked like bedding occupied one corner, and the
aforementioned desk, one drawer missing, stood in another.
"All the comforts of home," I muttered. Caramel didn't answer.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
She snorted. "Yeah."
"They& didn't hurt you, did they?"
She shook her head, then realized what I was really trying to say. "No. A couple of them thought about
it, but I talked them out of it."
"You talked them out of it?"
She grinned. "This is kind of embarrassing."
"I won't laugh. I'm not sure I can."
"Well, I told them something from an old story I heard once. I told them I was fey, and that everybody in
my family turned into tigers when they lost their virginity, and ate their lovers. And that I was still a virgin."
I had to laugh after all. "That's really dumb."
"I know." She was laughing, too. "But they were all pretty high. I don't think they'd have swallowed it
otherwise." She folded her knees up under her chin. "I hadn't been in here long before they brought you
in."
"Did they bring you here?"
She shook her head. "I followed them from Danceland. I managed to get myself locked in the garage
downstairs. That's where they found me."
"You shouldn't have followed them."
Caramel fell silent for a little, then said, "They killed that guy."
That was hard to reply to. So I didn't.
"I think they were waiting for him. I saw him turn the corner into the alley, walking with one of them, and
when I got to the corner, the rest were there. The guy with the glasses held out something in his hand and
said, 'Looking for this?' and the elf went for his sword thing. Then they closed in on him and started
sticking him, and& and cut off his braid. And& " She covered her face with both hands. I thought she
wouldn't go on, but she said, "The one with the glasses said something about the river, that it was the
blood of Elfland. And that if it was good, what would the blood of an elf be like?"
Then she stopped. I was glad of it.
I wanted desperately to know where Wolfboy and Tick-Tick were. Wanting should have been enough to
give me a bearing on them. Nothing happened.
The jar of river water was beginning to stick in my thoughts. I wondered how Caramel was feeling. My
mouth was dry and still sour-tasting, and my throat scratched a little. When had I last drunk something?
At Danceland? I'd had coffee and beer there, both good for drying you out eventually.
"Why did you follow them here?" I asked Caramel.
"What was I supposed to do, go home and stick my head under the pillow?" she snapped.
"I would have."
She looked at me for a long moment. "Would you have? When they started splitting up to leave, and you
knew you were the only person who could find out where they were going?" She looked like an
empty-handed person who wanted something to throw. Then her eyes got wide and a little bleak and she
turned back to me. "You could have done it, couldn't you?"
"What?"
"You could have tracked them down. You could have found them."
"No. Not unless I'd seen them. Otherwise I wouldn't know who I was looking for, and I couldn't do it."
"Really?"
"Really."
She rubbed her face and swept her hair back. She had a very high forehead. "Well," she said, "Well.
Like I say, they split up when they left, to cover their tracks, I guess. The guy with glasses had a bike,
and he drove off on that. But before he left I saw him put whatever it was he held out to the elf in his
saddlebag. So I followed one of the ones who were on foot, and got here. I snuck into the garage, to find
that thing. It seemed important, and I was afraid that if I didn't take it, the glasses guy would get rid of it
before anyone could get back here. And I found it, and hid it and then they caught me."
"But you said you hadn't been here long before they brought me in."
Caramel looked rueful. "It took me a long time to get up the nerve to break into the garage."
That made me laugh a little, which made her do the same. "So what was it?" I said. "The thing in the
saddlebag."
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