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“I figured.”

She glanced up from his finger, which was resting on the
knuckle of her index finger like he was claiming it for Spain. He was grinning.

“If you say that's because all the girls want you to notice them, I will pelt you with mushrooms until your ego is small enough that we can walk out of here.”

His grin melted into a laugh so big they drew a few stares. Her fingertips suddenly felt sensitive against the table, some horrible fondness creeping up on her as she looked at the line of his throat. (This surprised her too, always; it surprised her as much as her anger.)

“We should go,” she said.

The car was several blocks north—New York didn't care how famous you were, you had to park like everybody else—and they made it a block and a half before the first round of flashbulbs.

Ethan tucked her under his arm—she gently pushed away the half of his jacket he was trying to wrap around her like he was the Phantom of the Opera—and they picked up the pace. She counted four photographers, all offering advice in English. They could be hers, speaking English for Ethan's sake, but it was unlikely. Magnus would never want pictures of her walking out of a pizza place. Ethan could slum it sometimes if he wanted; she had to prove her sophistication, every time.

“I told him not to call cameras,” Ethan muttered.
He never got angry (angry was bad for business) but he sounded like he really had wanted a night alone.

God forbid.

“Better make the most of it,” she said quietly, and when he looked down at her, he had on the smile he only wore when other people could see, and she met it with the smile she'd grown just to match. He pressed a kiss to her temple as they walked, and she tucked her head an inch into the crook of his shoulder, where she could feel the heat from his body through the fabric, and it would make a better angle for the
cameras.

The ID came through halfway into burgers and fries, and it was enough that Bo raised his eyebrows.

“If she's talking to more killers for hire, I nominate the night team,” Daniel said.

Bo glanced up at him, back at the phone.

“Shit. No. You're kidding. No.”

“No,” Bo agreed, setting it down before Daniel could decide whether to smack it out of his hand. “We got some audio off her conversations during the party. Whatever the US and Norway are working on right now is turning into the poster child for international cooperation. The boss wants to increase surveillance on Martine and Ethan
in case Margot starts courting them under the table.”

“What does Margot have on Martine?”

“Whatever she needs, I guess.”

They sat hunched over the little table, silently deciding the same thing: if Margot wanted you on her side, you were going to end up there, and how much of your life she ruined first was sort of up to you.

If Martine was smart, she'd be more selectively social and make her weaknesses disappear until she was wherever Margot wanted her to be. And if Ethan was smart, he'd know that any offer from Margot was going to include a clause that left Suyana in the dirt.

Daniel checked his watch.

× × × × × × ×

He got rid of Bo with nearly an hour to spare, because Bo would accept your first invitation but never your second, so after burgers it was going to be good-bye no matter how hard Daniel tried to make it look like he wanted company.

“The bar's supposed to be decent, and the river's really lovely at night,” Daniel tried, with passable enthusiasm, but Bo had only said, “I know. I'm all right, thanks. Enjoy it.”

“Someday I'm going to do something you've never done and you'll die of surprise,” Daniel muttered.

“You've done a lot of things I haven't done,” said Bo, looking at him sidelong.

Daniel exhaled carefully. “Just—go home, Bo. Good night.”

The crowd was thin this late, but it took him a few seconds to pinpoint Bo. Skill was skill. A guy who could vanish like that kept you up nights.

Daniel hit the bar anyway and nursed a beer for a while. Technically he was off duty and his feed would be archived unless he alerted them to a story, but Kate might be awake in Paris. When Kate was watching, he did exactly what he said he was going to do.

After the beer, he walked around with something that could map like aimlessness, a loose spiral that would bring him one block north of Suyana's apartment building.

The neighborhood was halfway to trendy and still had the occasional snarl of taxis at the bigger intersections. Daniel bet Magnus just loved working around tourist glut. But he knew Suyana had insisted on something a little farther away from IA's residential territory, and Daniel suspected that in the wake of Suyana's good publicity, Magnus could find no reason to deny her.

He suspected Magnus could find no reason to deny Suyana much of anything; in public, so close it was hard to keep him out of the shot, Magnus watched Suyana like the gunshots would start any second. Understandable for a guy who'd lost his Face in broad daylight. Daniel was a little
surprised Suyana hadn't traded him in, but she must have reasons. Who knew these days.

There had been a time she'd have told him what was going on, or he could have looked at her and known. But these days she looked like nothing; like a lantern, thin and ready to burn. Maybe Magnus could love her that way, made of nothing but paper. Some people don't notice those things.

The car pulled around the front of the hotel five minutes before time, and the half-dozen official photographers started their flashbulbs as Ethan helped Suyana out of the car. The two of them walked slowly enough not to ruin the shot, and waited until the lobby—better light, warm wood, mirrors, the Deco mosaic behind them—before she kissed Ethan good night, sliding her left hand around his neck to pull him closer. He tightened both arms around her and bent her slightly backward; her scar curving around his shoulder gleamed like a missing tile.

They separated soft and slow, as she looked up at him with hooded eyes. A year ago Suyana wouldn't so much end a kiss as break it, like she was surprised to realize what she was doing, and Ethan would be left closing his mouth around air and trying to get his dignity back before anyone could line up a shot of it. They'd worked it out since. Daniel never really thought about it. It did what they needed it to do.

As Ethan walked back to the car, the photographers
walked out with him (shift was over), so they missed the shot in the lobby mirror of Suyana turning away from them, her face dropping back into a mask that looked like a stranger as she punched the button for the elevator.

Daniel didn't miss it. He held perfectly still, to make sure he got it all.

He moved on before the elevator came; she wasn't going to get in, and that shouldn't be on camera.

“All right,” he said to no one, “guess I'm signing off.” He made a show of looking at his watch, and then pulled up the hood of his jacket, just far enough over the camera to cast a shadow over any images it picked up.

Suyana came out the back door of the building, prompt to the minute.

(She'd explained it the first time they'd met in New York, not long after Suyana had been officially returned to the fold. There was a storage unit in the basement under someone else's name, paid in cash, where she kept her things and changed when she was planning to disappear. If she ever died, she told him, the police should break into the storage unit for 5D, and Daniel should have half a dozen snaps nearby so nothing could get swept under the rug.)

She was wearing jeans and a thin coat with a high collar. Her scarf obscured the edge of her jaw that made her recognizable, and nobody so much as glanced at her as she headed west.

Daniel crept up to a block behind her after about a quarter mile, just enough for her to sense that he was behind her and the coast was clear. He trailed her west and south, until the city gave way in a single breath to the piers and the park and the flat black water.

He had the strangest impression, just for a second, that she was going to keep walking right into the river and vanish. His mouth went dry; he clenched his fists like he was going to run, but never moved.

She watched the water for a little while, like this had been her reason all along, to come to the edge of a river and stare at nothing until dawn. Her shoulders were rigid—Faces had postures like statues—and he didn't dare get closer. The breeze worried the edge of her scarf where it covered her ears.

When she turned again and headed down the line of the park, he didn't have the heart to follow very far. He found a bench under a light that would flood out whatever the shadows couldn't hide, and close enough to a busker that the audio feed would be laced with terrible electric guitar covers of sixties hits, and waited.

When she sat down next to him, he could just catch the last of her perfume.

“Lovely terrain,” she said quietly. The all's-well; it was his turn to reply with something about the light for all's-well, or something about the temperature if it wasn't safe.

“I think the Beatles have us covered,” he said. “You can speak up.”

Her hesitation was brief—diplomats knew how to rally after rudeness. “Are you all right?”

“Of course.”

He waited for her to ask him what was wrong. In his peripheral vision she was a smear of color, the burgundy scarf and her black hair. Something silver was still caught in it—she'd gotten sloppy taking the bun out. Her breathing was too steady and too calm; she was working at it. Chordata must have had bad news for her.

He'd have felt better if she was breathing heavy. If she'd cracked and told him what was wrong. He'd like her more if she felt like a person at all, and not some memory he sat beside for old times' sake, in a cloud of someone else's perfume. He hadn't met with her in three months. He hadn't looked her in the eye in nearly a year. She could send a stranger to this bench, and he didn't know how long he might be fooled.

That wasn't fair, he made himself think a second later. But she could look at him in a way he couldn't look at her; the fairness came a second too late.

She settled her shoulders, started to stand.

“Your boyfriend's going to be under more surveillance,” he said. “Margot's following up on America's environmental research partnership with Norway.”

She stayed perched at the edge of the bench, her hand braced behind her. She was in his field of view, nearly—he glanced over and watched her shoulders collapsing. An inch, no more; even with two bullet wounds, in a cramped room in a cramped quarter of Paris where she thought she was going to die, they'd never dropped farther than that.

Some of her hair had come loose from the scarf. His neck ached from sitting so still.

“They're building a facility back home,” she said.

It was so quiet Daniel barely heard it over the singer, who'd moved on to something high-pitched that required him to slap the guitar every so often to keep the time.

Of course. That was what her Chordata meeting had been about. They'd want it gone, and she'd need to help them if it was going to work. She had the path to the Americans.

Finally he managed, “You going to see it?”

Bad question—the answer wouldn't tell him whether she was just taking an anniversary trip with the boyfriend or actually planning to do something about it. He was still amateur at this. He didn't know how to talk around things that mattered.

“I think he'll want me to take him,” she said. (Vague, deliberately—he guessed Magnus for the first one and Ethan for the second.)

Then she looked over. He couldn't
see her expression, just the shift of her hair giving way to a crescent of her skin, one dark eye. “I don't know if I want to.”

That answered the question he'd asked, and one he hadn't.

“Well, send postcards, come back soon.” He saw one dark eye, the shadow along the curve of her nose, the corner of her mouth.

“If I don't come back, it's not because I decided to retire. Don't believe that, from anyone.”

Oh, shit. He hadn't even thought—he'd seen her slide a knife right through someone. He took it for granted she'd live through the tough years.

The buzz of traffic was beginning to drill right into his ear. “You'll come back,” he said. It sounded deeper than he meant it. He cleared his throat. “When do you leave?”

“As soon as I can convince him it was his idea.” She stood. “Any idea who . . . anyone I should be looking for once I'm abroad?”

For a second he could see her in the streetlight that carved circles under her eyes and sucked away the living depth of her until she was two-dimensional. He wished he hadn't looked. It was being thirsty and swallowing air. How could she go back to her country with some lie? What did it matter? What could she do about it except bring more weight on herself? Don't go, he thought. You're someone who can
never go home.

“The boss would never tell me. But you'll be fine. You're a good liar, and you can tell when the cameras are rolling. You'll see whoever it is.”

He felt like she was holding her breath, like he'd wounded her, and the flash of guilt was hard to hang on to. He needed some of his own back. If she hated being called a liar, she was in the wrong line of work.

Without knowing why, he asked, “How long did it take you to clock me tonight?”

The shadows sliced across her face as she looked past him and above him, east. “I knew where you were standing as soon as I opened the door. Take care.”

There were footsteps on grass, then gravel, then pavement, then gone. Daniel had a moment of vertigo, as if there was so much behind him that he must be tipping forward, sliding somehow. He gripped the bench.

The world ahead of him, where he knew there was a river and a far bank and roads for hundreds of miles, was nothing but black. It all dropped off suddenly at the edge of the lamplight; he had been staring at it so long he'd forgotten how close anything was.