"Hey Kate," Hellboy said. "What color's your room?"

"Here?" Kate Corrigan leaned against the wall. "Light brown. In my apartment? Blue."

"What color's my room?"

"Oxblood."

"What the hell's oxblood?"

"The color of your room. Oh, you've been talking to Liz. It's good she's decorating, isn't it?"

"It is?"

"You know what it's been like for her. She was like a lab rat here." She glanced around. "There are people in the Bureau who'd still rather she was kept in a fireproof cell. It's Manning who insisted she got a proper room. So if she's doing her place up, she's decided it's home. So yeah, it's good. I'm helping her out. Said I'd help her pick furniture and paint. She's looking through stuff from the licensed suppliers."

"Licensed?"

"Anyone who does decoration here has to have clearance, because they're going to see stuff. There're three interior-decorating companies licensed by the B.P.R.D. Tell us if you want to do your place up."

"Nah. I'm good. With the ..." He opened the door and peered. "That's oxblood? Doesn't that clash with my skin?"

Thar night Hellboy got called on a mission. Ten days later he returned, tired and crotchety, with his coat still smoldering. His bed was reinforced but it made its usual panicked noise when he sat on it and threw his bits and pieces onto the floor.

"You stink," Kate said. "How was France?"

"Don't you knock? France was nice, except for the zombies. How's it been here?"

"Fine. Come see Liz's room."

"You finished it?"

"Pretty much." She led him through the hallways. "This one decorator, turns out they're the ones who did Professor Bruttenholm's apartments in the center, back in the day The woman who runs it now just took over. Anyway her pop's pop, who started the business, was friends with the professor from way back. Maybe you remember him? They used to sit around and talk literature and interior design."

"Design? Professor Bruttenholm?"

"Said she overheard. Mr. Margolyse? Any bells? She remembers them arguing what color the front door of Wuthering Heights would be. That's one of their schticks, they'll print up stuff from old stories, pictures, whatever. Sirbilex Designs does lots of the olde worlde stuff." She said it oldee worldee.

"Liz likes that? Would think she'd want something a bit more ..."

"Funky town? Yeah. Turns out she's got time for a bit of old-style stuff, found some cool old designs there. Furnitures more Ikea though. Be nice, Hellboy She's mixing it up a bit."

She was.

"Hey Liz," Hellboy said. "Wow."

"I'm not taking any home-furnishing advice from you, Hellboy," Liz said, turning up the little stereo on her desk. Liz sat in an uncomfortable but expensive-looking plastic molded chair. The desk she leaned on was some chrome-legged thing, the sea scenes and landscapes that had come with the room were replaced with old movie posters, and there were new garish greenish-orangish-reddish curtains (all the colors that went into them were -ish, like they were loath to commit). Surrounding the whole thing was a jaundice-colored wallpaper printed with flouncy scribbled designs.

"Holy ... ," Hellboy said.

"Too kind," Liz said. She grinned.

"If it cooks your potatoes, I'm happy for you." Hellboy prodded the wall with his stone forefinger. "That is impressively ugly."

"Isn't it?" said Liz. She touched it herself. "How are you supposed to walk away from that?" she said. "I like all the little paths." She traced one of the pee-coloured curlicues with her fingertip, almost dreamily, getting it lost in the design's maze.

"Big seller?" Hellboy said.

"Custom job," Kate said, when Liz didn't respond. Hellboy shook his head as he retreated from the sickly buttery walls.

Even in a slow period the B.P.R.D. had regular briefings a" somewhere someone was always hearing a banshee, finding their crops flattened in a mandala, getting their goats sucked.

"Still no word on what that thing in Bodmin in England is," Manning said, flicking through his papers. "We're hearing some weird stuff coming out of the Ivory Coast... Where's Agent Sherman?" Everyone looked around. The corner of the table where Liz usually slouched was empty.

"Maybe she overslept. She's been working hard fixing up her quarters," Abe said with a riffle of his gills.

"On it," said Hellboy. "Quick look at that room should shock me awake, at least." Manning folded his arms impatiently. "Back in a minute," shouted Hellboy without turning.

The silence dragged out. When Liz walked in she stopped.

"Whoa," she said. "Did I win a prize or something?"

"Good of you to join us," Manning said. "Where's Hellboy?"

"How should I know?"

"Isn't he with you?"

Liz stared. "I'm not in the habit of bringing Hellboy with me to the John."

"He went to find you in your room," Abe said. "I don't know what's taking him so long ..."

"I'll go get him," Liz said. "What's the point of me calling meetings if... ," Manning started. "Amen," muttered Liz as she went.

The door to her quarters was ajar, but there was no sound from inside. Liz thought Hellboy must have gone. But there he was, standing in the middle of her room, lit up by the morning, staring at nothing. She waited several seconds. She whispered: "Hellboy."

"Yeah," he said, immediately. "Hey Liz." He did not stop staring at whatever nothing it was that held his attention. "You are here. I thought so."

"I'm here now," she said. "What are you doing?"

"... Thought I ..." Hellboy hesitated. Looked at her at last. That big jaw and brow and those red stubs made his expressions hard to read. "Thought I saw you. Or heard you or something. It doesn't matter. Come on. Where were you anyway?"

"Jeez, since when is everyone so concerned with my bladder?"

Everyone was still waiting and staring in silence when they returned to the room.

"Liz, Hellboy, this isn't for my own pleasure, you understand?" Manning said. "I need to know you're going to do as ordered. So would you please sit down and listen to the damn briefing."

Kate watched Hellboy sit, grumpily obedient. In a place like this, even someone like Hellboy chose to do what he was told, most of the time.

Something woke Liz, in the pit of the night. For several seconds she sat still in her new bed. She stared at the curtains, all colorless in the dark, at their lumpy shadowy shapes. Stared at one particularly large shape, a massive presence of black which she realized, scrabbling upright, was not on the curtains, was something standing at the foot of her bed.

The surge of adrenaline made her occult fire-muscles twitch, and Liz's clawed hands ignited, ready to burn. In the sudden, guttering light, the looming figure was visible, and it was Hellboy.

"What are you doing?" she gasped at him. "Are you out of your mind?"

Hellboy was in his boxers. He was facing the wall. He did not move.

Liz could not extinguish her flaming hands, and would melt the light switch if she tried to flick it now, so she watched him in the light of her unnatural combustion.

"Hellboy," she said. "What's going on?"

"I needed to check," he said abruptly.

"What?"

"Look." He traced one of the coils on the wallpaper. "Eyes," he said. Pointed to one, two, nubs at the end of the shape. They did look a bit like eyes. "Like I thought. You were in there. I was trying to help."

Liz stood, and shook her hands, and clenched her innards until the fires went out.

"Hellboy," she said. "Come on now." She put her arm around him. Glanced at the wall, as if she could see anything. She remembered the outrageous angles and uncertain curves, the ill unclean smoldering faded color. Liz led Hellboy to the door, gently steering his bulk.

"I saw you, Liz," he said. "I think it was you." He shook his head twice. "What the hell? Guess I should lay off the, uh, cheese before bed."

"You going to be okay to get back to your room?"

"Sure."

"Okay. Sleep well." Liz stood, arms crossed, blinking against the corridor light, watching Hellboy stomp slowly back to his room. He moved normally enough. He sounded like himself. When she went back to bed she even convinced herself, more or less, that that was the last of it, that whatever little brain fart had happened to him was done now. But she wasn't really convinced. She knew that because, when she woke up in the morning and he was there, again, at the foot of her bed, staring at nothing, she was not surprised.

"Liz," he said. "I need to swap rooms."

Liz came to the briefing that morning with a suitcase full of clothes. Hellboy did not come at all. When she told them what had happened, there was something spooked enough in her demeanor that, though Manning had started striding quickly enough toward her room, he'd slowed considerably by the time he got close to the door. Abe, Kate, and Liz followed him.

"I told him no," Liz said. "He kept saying yes. He kept saying, 'I have to find you, I'm sure you're there.' His voice was so weird I got spooked and left him to it."

"Spooked?" Abe said. "Frightened? You don't mean to say ..."

"No," Liz said. "He may be acting weird but it's Hellboy. He wouldn't hurt me. He kept saying, 'I need to help you.' It wasn't me I was scared for. It was him."

"Hellboy." Even Manning's voice was careful. The B.P.R.D. dealt with possessions, doppelgangers, illusions, and shape-shifters, and out-of-character behavior was a red flag. Manning knocked gently. "Hellboy?"

Hellboy stood, his flesh left forefinger tracing a pattern in the wall.

"It's like they commit suicide, the lines in the paper," he said. Spiral-spiral-stop, went his finger. Spiral-spiral-stop. "They're like bars and someone's behind them. Liz, I can see you. I promise, I'll get you out." Spiral-spiral-stop.

"I'm right here, Hellboy," Liz said.

"Yeah," he said, looking at the wall. "Here."

"Hellboy," Manning said. "Come out please. We need to talk."

"Sorry, Tom. I can't come out. How can I? Not with her stuck behind the bars. Aren't we here to help people? There." He prodded. "The woman. Behind the ... what is that, like a broken neck thing, right?"

There was a long silence.

"I don't see it, Hellboy," Abe said. "Can you come out?"

There was a growing growling sound, something deep, vibrating the knickknacks on Liz's shelves. It grew louder. It was Hellboy. Hellboy was growling. He showed his teeth. Everyone backed away.

"We help people," Hellboy shouted. "So let me help her. Liz, if you're not going to help me help you, leave me alone. This is where it's at. Who doesn't need a room of their own? Get the hell out."

They got.

"Liz, he thinks he's helping you." Kate said. "Did something happen?"

"No," said Liz. "I don't know what he's saying. I'm fine." Kate, then Manning, then Abe all stared at her. "I know what you're thinking," she snapped. "Test me out."

In the B.P.R.D. labs, the reading was conclusive a" Liz was Liz, not some Liz-aping monster of the void, trapping the real Liz behind the wall, for Hellboy to sense. Nothing like that.

"Whatever he's seeing, its not Liz," the tech said.

"There's something I cant remember," Kate said. "I feel like I know what's going on." A crackle and fuzzy noise interrupted.

"How is he?" Manning asked his radio. There was a long, staticky pause.

"Boss," a distorted voice said finally. "You should maybe sort of come see."

"It's like you said," the agent said, scurrying to keep up with Manning. "We kept on like you asked, boss, trying to coax him out, but he got madder and madder, and in the end he just slammed the door, and he was screaming, 'Either make this place nice for her, help me help the lady, or get out'."

They were in the room above Liz's. It was an anonymous office, in which now crouched a little team huddled around a monitor. Attached to it was a wire coiling through a hole in the carpet and the floor.

"Fiber optics," one of them said. "We just acquired the subject."

"You're getting rid of your little spycam from my ceiling when this is done," Liz said. She stopped abruptly when she saw what was on the monitor.

There was Hellboy, in black and white, interrupted by bad reception. He was sitting on the bed. Staring at the walls. Absolutely still.

He was wearing a dress.

"He went through your wardrobe," said an agent. "That's ..."

"I know exactly what that is," Liz said. "I don't have enough dresses that I don't know them individually."

In tugging it on, Hellboy had split it until it was an obscene drapery of rags over his red skin. He sat, still.

"He's moving his eyes," Kate said. He was. His only motion. "What's he watching?" She closed her eyes, opened them suddenly. "Liz. What did that woman say about her grandfather?"

"What woman ... ?"