Rachel started moving before I finished telling her the address. Shooing me out the door, down the hall to the elevators, talking into her cellphone to Jason Umlaut.

She rattled off Maddie’s information then said, "Get everything you can. Employment history, bank statements, rental agreements. Medical records? Can you do that? Can you trace ..." She looked at me. "What’s her number?"

I told her.

"Can you put a trace on that or--" She paused and listened. "How the hell should I know how to request a trace? I'm more criminal than cop. Do some of that illegal wiretapping stuff the feds are so fond of. Well, find out."

"How’s Shandra?" I asked.

Rachel raised a finger, telling me to wait. "Check her, um, utility bills--and like her credit card statement. Yeah. And can we get an actual cop on board, to tell us what to look for? Uh-huh. Well, ask her. Okay. How’s hammock girl? Uh-huh. Uh-huh." She snorted. "No, that’s fine. Long as she’s doing better."

"She’s doing better?" I said.

Rachel nodded to me but kept speaking to him. "Call Maddie's landlord about getting into her apartment. Do we need a warrant or something?" She listened for a moment. "Really? Huh. Well, explain his patriotic duty first, and we’ll get the warrant if he hates America." The elevator doors opened and she led me in. "Text me if she’s at work, okay? Got to go."

She ended the call and the elevator doors closed, and I said, "Shandra’s better?"

"She’s not scratching herself anymore. I guess the hammock’s working. She’s currently suspended in a stairwell."

"In the hospital?"

"Yeah, in some quiet corner, off-limits to the public."

"How do you know to do all this?" I asked, as we stepped from the elevator.

"I don't," she said. "I'm faking."

"Sure, you got sent directly from prison to save a city and hunt down longshots because you're good at faking."

She nodded. "That and they're desperate."

"Oh," I said. Because she was serious. "Well, do you at least ... uh."

She pushed through a ‘employees only’ door into a narrow hallway. "'Uh' what?"

"Do you know what I am now?"

"I'm hoping you're an asset."

That stopped me for a second. Who talks like that? What kind of childhood did you have to have before you thought about people as assets? So I asked the question I’d been circling around. "Well, how about you? What are you?"

She looked at me. I couldn’t read her expression, but for the first time, she looked almost her age. "I don't know," she said. "I'm not sure."

"Any guesses?"

She took an ID from her pocket. "This says I’m a Special Missions Unit of the Homeland Security Joint Operations Command."

"I don’t know what that means."

"Me either." She pushed through a door onto a loading dock. Fresh air and traffic noise swirled around us. "But it beats ‘elevator mechanic.’"

I was afraid to ask what she was talking about, so I just followed her to the curb.

She unlocked a rental sedan. "Do you know the city?"

"A little. I grew up here, but that was ten years ago."

"Can you drive?"

"Sure."

She tossed me the keys. "Good."

"Where are we?" I looked at the surrounding buildings. For all knew, after Maddie knocked me out, Rachel had taken me to Chycago. "Still in Manattan?"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"That’s what I like about you, Lark--you make me look informed. Yeah, we’re in Manattan. Umlaut's got the GPS in the car giving you directions."

"You can't use your phone?"

"I've never had a phone before. Took me ten minutes to turn off the fucking flashlight thing."

It turned out that the hotel was only ten blocks from the excavated street where I’d met PJ. I adjusted the driver’s seat--Rachel was shorter than she looked--and the GPS hectored me across the city.

Rachel did a little hectoring, too, asking about Maddie, about Shandra, about me. Keeping the conversation casual as she flipped through a stack of paperwork, but I saw her filing away every hesitation and evasion. She'd learned more from her father than she knew.

"Parking’s tough around here," I said, after I found Maddie's neighborhood.

Rachel tapped a permit on the dash. "Park anywhere."

I chose a spot directly under a No Parking sign, and Rachel grunted at a text message on her phone. "Maddie hasn't worked at the sandwich place for six months."

Which meant what? She'd been with PJ all that time? He controlled her completely? I stepped from the car, lost in worry. Didn’t hear the traffic, didn’t see the crowds, just followed Rachel down the block.

She stopped at the battered green door of Maddie’s apartment building and I realized she’d been watching me.

"I’m fine," I told her.

"You’re in love," she said, "which makes you stupid."

"That sounds like a Valentine's card. And what do you know about it, you've been in prison since you were seventeen."

A glimmer of hurt might've flashed in her eyes. Hard to tell. She said, "I watched a lot of daytime TV. Is Maddie like you?"

"Well, she’s not stupid."

"I mean, is she an active?"

"Oh," I said. "No, she’s normal."

"Inert." She rang for the manager. "You’re clear on this, right?"

"Which part?"

"That Maddie’s working for PJ."

I shrugged. "Maybe."

"That’s how they knew about the orbs, Lark. Maddie led you into that excavation like a--" She shook her head. "Like some kind of dumb animal."

"Well, Shandra might’ve told them. She gets confused."

Rachel rang the buzzer again. "The psych ward said that nobody talked to her but me."

"That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe they have a longshot who sees the future in pigeon droppings."

"This is not your girlfriend, Lark. She’s not herself. Her face is Maddie, but her soul is PJ, you understand?"

"Yeah."

"Why don’t I believe you?"

"I understand," I told her. "She dented my skull."

"She broke your heart, too, but you still love her."

"I never said she broke my--"

The door opened, and a skinny guy with long black curls stood there. He looked from Rachel to me, in my jeans and hoodie and said, "Yeah?"

"Agent Kravitz." She showed him her ID. "You’re expecting me."

"Oh! You're younger than I was, uh--well, I'm happy to help." He ushered us inside. "I mean, be my guest. Here’s the key. You need anything else?"

"No, that’s fine," Rachel said, and after he left she shot me a crooked smile. "I could get used to this."

I followed her to Maddie’s apartment. And I enjoyed watching her walk upstairs, too. What can I say? Being in love didn’t mean I couldn't look.

Rachel knocked at Maddie's door and waited, then unlocked it and looked inside. "You said she doesn’t have roommates."

"She doesn’t."

"She worked at a sandwich shop?"

"Uh-huh."

"Her parents help out?"

"She won’t let them."

Rachel crossed to the center of the room. "Then how’s she affording this?"

"Um, it’s six hundred square feet. It's a garden shed."

"Yeah, and she’s paying almost two thousand in rent."

I looked at the cramped room. "For this? How do you know? You spent the past few years in a cell."

"They're called 'rooms' in juvenile," she told me. "I spent some time there, too. And I checked the real estate listings, that's how I know." She turned slowly, inspecting the apartment. "Where are you from? After you left the city, where'd you go?"

"Mayne."

"Like lobsters and moose?"

"Mostly the former. Why am I here? I mean, why’d you take me along?"

"Because you know her, and I’m running out of time." She looked at the cluttered workbench. "What’s that?"

"Her art."

"She’s an artist?"

"She makes those … things."

Rachel read a notecard taped to the wall. "Mozzies."

"That’s what she called mosquitoes as a kid."

She crouched beside one of the vises. "Huh."

"Maybe she sells them, that’s how she pays rent."

"Who’d buy art too small to see without a magnifying glass?"

"A collector?"

"You know what these are made of?"

I shook my head. "Fishing line? They look like lures."

"No. Her."

"Her what?"

"They’re made of Madeline Dougherty. Her hair, her blood. Her fingernails and skin--and worse."

So I read the notecard, Maddie’s artist’s statement. It said something about conceptually-based deconstructions of the arbitrary division between creation and creator, explorations of the artist as the source of raw materials, mining the self. She talked about the scope of her work--meaning the size, I guess--and ‘minimal form and maximal intent.’

The only part I understood was the list of materials. She crafted her skin and hair and fingernails and ... emissions into elaborate little fishing lures. Maybe I winced a little.

"Yeah," Rachel said, sorting through papers on the table. "I prefer watercolor. What’s in the boxes?"

I followed her gaze to the shoeboxes. "Specimens, she told me. Art supplies. In little sealed baggies."

Rachel opened a box, unsealed one of the plastic bags, and grimaced. "That’s nasty."

"What’d you expect?"

"Jellybeans." She opened two more boxes, and recoiled both times. "She always been interested in, uh, cataloging her scabs?"

"Well, she wasn't shy about picking her nose," I said.

Rachel searched the apartment, collecting photographs and receipts while I wandered around looking for anything unusual. Most of Maddie's stuff didn’t seem much different from what I expected. She still dressed like a tomboy, except for two skimpy dresses and one pair of heels and gave me a hollow feeling in my stomach.

"What's that noise?" I asked.

A muffled buzz, like a thousand mosquitoes trapped in a bottle.

Rachel turned toward the window, where a breeze ruffled the pages of hardcover book on the sill. When she pulled the book away, the noise grew louder.

We looked at each other in confusion, then glass shattered in the kitchen.