"She only wakes early when something's bad," Sissy said. "When something's really, really bad." She ma.s.saged the back of her hand with a hard thumb. She looked at the two of them, eyes wide. "So that means something's really bad, right?"

* Tender *

V retreated to a corner of the bookcase. Consuela glared after him, hating the fact that he was avoiding something, hiding something. Coward! He was supposed to be brave. He's supposed to get me out of this. He's supposed to get me home! Now people were dying in the Flow? No one mentioned that could happen!

V pretended to read the spines of old books.

"Well, if Maddy's up, I'll find her," Sissy said. "But she'll be grumpy. Hopefully, I can steer her back to bed."

Consuela blew past them in a gust, not looking at V; flowing over the carpet, she coalesced by the door. She knew the way to Abacus and wanted to go, get out, get far away from here. And V. She paused at the exit.

"What about Joseph Crow?" she asked.

"Joseph Crow knows," Sissy said. "Somehow, he always knows."

"And you don't find that suspicious?" Consuela asked.

Sissy pursed her lips angrily. "Again, I don't 'suspect' anyone," she said. "And neither should you. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Sound familiar?" Her voice quivered. "Think about that before you accuse anyone else of anything else."

Consuela flushed invisibly. Her palms felt hot and moist. Just when she thought she understood something, someone, everything changed.

"Fine. I'm on it," she muttered, and flung herself through the field.

She would do her part, for now. But Abacus also happened to be the only one who had a map of both worlds. She didn't have to wait to talk to him. She was going right now.

One way or another, she was going home.

QUANTUM hurt her brain. She winced against its bizarre majesty and kept her head down. Why couldn't she appear at the front door or, better still, inside? The Flow worked in ways that were less mysterious than annoying.

Abacus hadn't come out to meet her and she didn't know how to get in. Tapping the crystalline spires failed to produce a door. Knocking made no difference and hardly any sound. It was like rapping on concrete: dull and dead.

"d.a.m.n," she muttered under her breath.

"h.e.l.lo?" a familiar voice called. "Hey, there you are!" Tender shook out his bangs and emerged from behind some random corner. Consuela knew he hadn't been there before. "You look . . . amazing," he said, the confession apparently surprising them both. "What did you do to yourself?"

"I'm wearing a skin of air," Consuela said dismissively. She didn't want to talk to Tender. She hadn't expected to see him here and V's unspoken worry still echoed in her head.

"Huh," Tender said, impressed. "So are you made up of air or do you wear air? Is air a part of you, or vice versa?"

"I don't know," Consuela said. "I'm looking for Abacus."

"Chang? He's not here," Tender said. "I was hoping that he'd help me out with something, but n.o.body's home."

Consuela was secretly relieved. At least she didn't have to be the one to tell him about Nikki's death. But she was selfishly disappointed she couldn't ask the friendly mathematician more about the possibility of crossing over and getting out right now.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes," Tender said, pointing. "You can tell by the suanpan ." He knelt down to show Consuela the old hardwood frame with ten metal rods; the small, redwood beads were arranged in random intervals. It looked more like an abacus than an answering machine.

"What do you mean?"

"It's a message." Tender laughed. "In a conversion code Chang likes to use. It's a bi-quinary system of base-two and base-five for decimal and hexadecimal computations corresponding with . . ." He trailed off as he noticed her drifting. He smiled apologetically. "It says he's gone out," Tender finished.

Consuela could have left it at that, but something held her back. She felt . . . unfinished. Almost like she had when she last saw the Yad. You never know how long you have-there might not be a later. It bothered her enough to say what was on her mind.

"Nikki's dead," she said.

Tender nodded. "I know. I was there."

"What?" Consuela felt an eerie rush along her limbs.

"I had to go clean it up," he said. "I had to . . ."

Consuela flinched, horrified. Her mind swam with slasher-movie gore.

Tender read her thoughts like splashed canvas.

"It's not like that!" he said hastily. "I don't eat people, just the karmic backwash. The black aura. The shadow. The feelings left behind." Tender sighed and tucked his thumbs behind his belt buckle.

"Violence and pain taint the Flow, and us, and everything. Gunks it up." For a moment, he deflated, as if his explanation were a confession. "I have to keep it clean; it's what I do." His voice dipped to a whisper. "Besides, I get hungry."

"Hungry?" she said, shivering, an all-over ripple.

"Yeah," he said. "That's my compulsion. I have about as much choice as you do. It's a need-you know that." That was true, she did, but she didn't like thinking of it as a hunger.

Tender saw her discomfort and shrugged. "You haven't been here long enough to get shadow," he said. "When you do, you'll need me. Then you will understand."

What Consuela needed was an excuse to leave. Now. To stay here felt dangerous, wrong, sliding on the edge of something sharp. But she wasn't going to leave this unfinished. She'd come to help, she'd see it through.

"Right now I need to leave a message for Abacus to go see Sissy," she said. "Right away."

Tender looked at her approximate face. "No problem." He picked up the ancient calculator and began snapping the beads about, rearranging the suanpan with quick flicks and clicks before setting it down again. "There. That says for him to go see Sissy ASAP. He'll see it first thing when he gets back." Tender smiled. "So that's that. You ready?"

Consuela balked. "For what?"

"Don't you remember?" he chided. "Last time we took a walk you said you might want to know more. See more. Still interested?"

"Not right now," Consuela said. "I should get back to Siss-the Watcher. Tell her I left a message. Maybe later."

Tender's eyes grew dark and daring. "She'd be the first to tell you, there may not be a later," he said. "If you don't come now, we may never know."

What hung between them could have been a promise or a threat.

She remembered * TenderTenderTender * and felt her chances slipping away.

"Okay," Consuela said, uncertain as a fly on a spider's thread. "Sure."

Tender tried to search her face. "Are you certain?" he asked graciously.

"Yeah. Why?"

He shrugged. "I can't tell," he said. "No face, no facial expressions, no eyes to the soul. Right now you're omnipotent-it's spooky."

She laughed. She couldn't help it. "I've been walking around this whole time as a skeleton, and that's the first time anyone's called me spooky!"

"Well, you're not spooky, then," he said. "You're exquisite."

The word trilled down her spine like a xylophone, every one of her hidden vertebrae a different key. She didn't know what to make of it.

"What did you want to show me?" she asked to cover her embarra.s.sment.

Gallantly, he conceded. "Follow me."

He moved left and the Flow bowed to admit him into another piece of its world. Stepping directly through its bubbling, shifting ma.s.s was nothing like the flip-book montage she'd seen while walking with V. It was less like they were traveling along its surface than punching straight through it.

When she and Tender emerged, Consuela recognized where they were.

"This is Wish's place," she said, standing on the long sidewalk by the high school fence and its familiar crab-apple tree.

Tender kept walking, boots shifting on gritty concrete. "Just the edge of it. Anyway, it'll do." He started searching the edges of the sidewalk with his eyes, his long blond bangs pointing straight down. "Just remember, Bones, none of this is real."

The disclaimer didn't soothe her sense of foreboding. She wasn't certain what he was looking for, but she felt strangely guilty trespa.s.sing on Wish's turf. She glanced at the crab-apple tree and shrank inside. We shouldn't be here. Not without Wish. Or his permission, at least. We shouldn't be doing whatever Tender's planning on doing . . . But she didn't know what to say or how to say it to make it stop. It was as close to breaking and entering as she'd ever been.

"There," Tender said triumphantly.

"What?" Consuela said. "Where?"

"Right there, look," he said, pointing.

Consuela frowned. "Ants?" she asked, feeling like the b.u.t.t of a prank.

"Look closely." Tender's finger traced the small trail of tiny black insects picking their way over a mound of sand pellets in the crack between two sidewalk squares. "How many worker ants would you guess are in there?"

"I don't know," Consuela said, vaguely, attempting to guess the trick. "Twenty?"

Tender looked disappointed. "I'd say closer to forty-two-it's the answer to everything-but I've done this before." He sighed and shook his head. "Anyway, let's say this represents, oh, about one forty-seventh of the active colony-workers, males, and one or more egg-laying queens, skipping over the eggs, grubs, and larvae. Now, that's one thousand nine hundred and seventy-four ants scurrying around, keeping things in order so that this colony has the maximum chance of overall survival." He held up a single finger in the middle of his lecture. "Now, here's the interesting question: who do you think has the largest impact on the colony as a whole?"

Consuela thought about it. "The queen?" she said.

Tender smiled wickedly. "No. Me."

He stomped one boot, flattening the mound of sand, stepping back to smile over the scattering tumult of terrified insects and broken bodies that lay twitching in the dirt. Consuela rippled in the breeze. It struck her as such a little thing and such a huge thing all at once. She cringed at the mad excitement that flushed Tender's face.

Tender tapped himself in the chest.

"Maximum. Impact."

She stared at him, horrified in one thousand nine hundred and seventy-four tiny little ways, but Tender dismissed the almost palpable accusation.

"Sometimes you have to think outside the box, then the answer becomes obvious," he said. "What are you willing to do to save someone, Bones? What sacrifices are you willing to make to achieve your objective? Hmm?" Tender's eyebrows shot up a question that she couldn't answer. Her stunned silence pleased him. "Think about it. Lesson one's over. Let's go."

Consuela kept staring at the undying ants. Tender glanced over his shoulder when he noticed her shimmer hadn't followed. Consuela couldn't seem to find the words to express what she felt. She drifted, feeling lost. He sighed dramatically.

"No actual ants were harmed in the making of this film," he said, chuckling, but it broke off in a snap. The black shutters behind his eyes slammed down. She floated back a step.

"Don't disappoint me, Bones."

A strange, feral growl upset the silence. Tender paused and touched the s.p.a.ce above his belt buckle.

"Ah. Now I'm hungry again," he said. "Excuse me-you know how it is." He paused as if about to say more, but decided against it, his voice tight with struggle. "Either obey like a sheep, or go like a hound set free." His eyes said it all: which do you choose? "Later, Bones." He nodded and turned in a quick twist, his next footstep blurring into the ether of the Flow. It warped and banked around his exiting tread. Two quick movements, and he was gone.

Consuela stared, shaken and confused. What just happened? Her brain couldn't register the half of it, but grasped one thing: Tender had gone to feed.

Feeding. Off the pain of the Flow. Bottom-feeder. Vulture. Tender. She thought of Nikki and V and Sissy's fingers trembling in her lap. This private compulsion left him as vulnerable and naked as she'd ever been, slave to the powerful pull of whatever called her across into the real world. She knew that she could learn something if she went after him; something n.o.body was supposed to witness or know-Tender at his most tender moment. His weakest. His weakness. She'd know more if she were willing to be brave.

I'm not a coward.

Consuela considered Tender's scent lingering like a fading note on the echo of his trail. All she'd have to do was follow it.

It was only fair. He deserved it for Wish, for the ants, for scaring me . . .

"You've been talking to him."

Consuela swirled around. Wish stood right behind her. She had no idea how long he had been there, watching, listening. She felt a flash of guilt for trespa.s.sing and another that he'd guessed right.

Wish fiddled with his pins. But while his hands fluttered, his eyes stayed solid, boring into s.p.a.ce. She didn't need to ask whom he had meant; his words were less an accusation than a statement of fact.

"Yes," she said. What else was there to say?

"Don't," he said flatly.

" 'Don't?' " Consuela echoed back. "That's it? Just 'don't'?"

"Yeah," Wish said. "Don't."

Consuela moved to brush past him, but he crossed his arms and stood his ground.

"We were just talking," she said. It sounded petulant, even to her.

"That's the most dangerous thing you can do, talking to him," Wish said as he picked the acne scabs on his cheek. "He can talk circles around you, like rope, and you don't know how tied up you are until it's a noose around your neck." He clicked his bitten fingernails against a pin that said THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR EYES, THIS IS HOW I REALLY LOOK. "I think Tender's real power is in his talking-he can get you to do anything. Anything. And then, later, thinking back on it, you think it must have been your idea all along, like you were going to do it anyway. But you weren't, and you wouldn't, before he started talking and making it all sound like it makes sense . . ." Wish gazed into the shimmering rift in the Flow. ". . . but it doesn't. None of it makes sense."

Consuela was about to say that Wish was the one not making sense, but was too distracted while trying to hone in on Tender's whereabouts. It was so easy if she didn't stop to think about how to do it, like a smell or a taste just out of memory's reach.

"Don't," Wish said, moving to catch her arm. She didn't think anyone could touch her, but his fingers gave a little resistance on the edge of her skin before pa.s.sing through. She didn't feel it.

"Don't follow him," he said in an almost-plea.

Consuela wanted to ask him why, but the expression on his face was composed of many things: terror, disgust, fear, and a strange protectiveness. She wasn't sure if Wish wanted to protect Tender or her.