Nancy tried to talk her out of the trips to the hospital. It would be safer, she said, for Veronica to go back to shooting up. The words alone brought back the memory of the rush.

The floor seemed to drop out from under her like she was in a high-speed elevator. "No," she said. "Don't even kid around about it." What would Hannah have thought?

On her first Saturday night in the attic, there was a meeting downstairs. People showed up all through the afternoon, and the sound of movement and laughter filtering up through the stairwell only made Veronica's loneliness worse. For a week she had been cooped up there, seeing Nancy for no more than ten minutes a day. She lived for her short bus rides to the hospital, where she might sometimes exchange a few words with a stranger. Her life was turning into a prison sentence.

On Sunday, when Nancy came up to check on her, Veronica said, " I want to join the organization."

Nancy sat down. "It's not that easy. This isn't NOW or Women's Action Alliance or something. Hiding fugitives isn't the only illegal thing we do."

" I know that."

"We only invite people to join us after months, sometimes years of observation."

" I can help you. I worked for Ichiko for over two years." She took a notebook out of the nightstand by her bed. "This is my client list. We're talking some major people here: restaurant and factory owners, publishers, brokers, politicians. I've got names, phone numbers, preferences, personal statistics you're not going to find in Who's Who."

There was more, but Veronica wasn't willing to tell her the rest, not yet, about her ace power. She still didn't know how it worked or how to control it. And she didn't know what Nancy's reaction would be. Veronica had been watching CNN there in the room and was just starting to realize how strongly the tide had turned against wild cards. Aces and jokers were even turning on each other, thanks to Hiram Whatsisname, the fat guy's, murder of Chrysalis.

Nancy stood up. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to have to say this, but you pushed me to it. Try and look at it from our point of view. You're a prostitute, a fugitive, and a heroin addict. You're not exactly a good risk."

Veronica's face felt hot, as if she'd been slapped. She sat motionless, stunned.

"I'll talk to the others," Nancy said. "But I can't make any promises."

Ichiko's funeral was on a Sunday. On Monday, Veronica was back at work. At the moment, she was the receptionist at a company that published trade journals: Pipeline Digest,

Catering!, Trout World. The owner, one of Veronica's former clients, was the only male involved in the business, and he was never there.

When she'd decided to go back on the job market, she'd gone straight to her client files. At her first two interviews, the men who'd once salivated at the sight of her naked body simply stared at her. She'd put on twenty-five pounds in the last four months, and her metabolism, still trying to adjust to life without heroin, had taken it out on her complexion. She wore no makeup, her hair was cut short, and she'd given up dresses for loose drawstring pants and bulky sweaters. The men smiled with faint distaste and told her they'd let her know if something came up. The third interview landed her a cooking job at one of the better New York hotels. After a couple of months, she moved up to a senator's office.

She'd been with Custom Publishing for six weeks. For the first time in her life, she felt comfortable, surrounded by competent women. She had even relaxed enough to stop for a drink with them now and again at Close Encounters, a fern bar across the street.

Which she did on the Thursday after the funeral. It was still only slowly dawning on her that Ichiko was dead, that the most significant part of her life thus far was finally and absolutely over. She needed a little companionship to ease the sudden fits of panic and loss that would sneak up on her. A drink would have helped, but she'd quit that when she quit the heroin.

She looked up from their corner table at the restaurant to see a man standing beside her.

"Veronica?" he said.

She'd gone back to using her own name, but none of her new friends knew about her past. She wanted to keep it that way. "I don't think I know you," she said coolly. Betty, a woman in her fifties with steel-gray hair, stared at the man hungrily. He was young, good-looking in a soap-opera sort of way, wearing an Armani suit.

"We… went out together a couple of years ago. Donald? You don't remember?"

There had probably been more than one man she'd forgotten, what with the heroin. "No," she said. "I wish you'd quit bothering me."

"I wanted to talk to you, just for a second. Please."

"Go away," Veronica said. She didn't like the touch of hysteria she heard in her own voice. "Leave me alone!" People all around them were looking now. The manDonald?-held up both hands and backed away. "Okay," he said. "I'm sorry"

Veronica saw, to her horror, that her wild-card power was affecting the man, without her conscious control. He had turned pale and seemed barely able to stay on his feet. He caught his balance on the back of an empty chair and walked unsteadily out the door.

Donna, a thirty-year-old blond who wore short skirts all winter long, said, "Are you crazy? He was gorgeous. And that suit must have cost a thousand bucks."

Betty said, "This is the first we've ever seen of your sordid past." She turned in her chair, watching Donald move away down the street. "You can't blame us for being curious. You never drink anything but club soda, you never talk about dates or husbands, none of us even know where you live…" Veronica tried a smile. It was supposed to be mysterious, but she could feel the wrongness of it. "My lips are sealed," she said.

On a Saturday evening, her third week in the attic in Lynbrook, there had been a knock on her door.

Nancy stood in the stairway, looking uncomfortable. "It's okay for you to sit in on the meeting. But for God's sake, don't say anything, okay? You'll just make me look like an idiot."

Veronica followed her downstairs. A dozen women sat around Nancy's dining-room table. They were all dressed casually; most wore little or no makeup. Three of them were black, two Latin, one oriental. One was a joker who seemed to have too much skin for her body; she had no hair, and folds of flesh hung off her chin and neck and hands. She looked like one of those weird wrinkled bulldogs that rich people sometimes had.

Only one of the women was under thirty, and she stood out like a panther in a rabbit hutch. She couldn't have been out of her teens. Even with her bulky winter clothes, Veronica could tell she was a bodybuilder. It showed in her neck and the width of her shoulders, in the way she held herself. Her hair was black, shoulder length, and to Veronica's expert eye, almost certainly a wig.

Veronica found a chair. The meeting started and lurched slowly forward. Every issue was put to a vote, and then only after endless debate. The young bodybuilder seemed as bored as Veronica. Finally she said, "Screw all that. Let's talk about Loeffler."

The joker said, "I can't see that being as important as the joker issue. Wild-card violence is tearing this city apart." She slurred her words, and Veronica found it hard to understand her.

One of the black women-Toni, her name was-said, "Zelda's right. This joker shit could take forever. Let's talk Loeffler."

The joker woman objected and was quickly overruled. Even W O. R. S. E., Veronica thought, was not completely free of prejudice. As the discussion heated up, Veronica put the pieces together. Robert Loeffler was the publisher of Playhouse magazine and head of the entire Global Fun amp; Games empire. The group intended to confront him and force changes in the magazine's attitude toward women. The problem was, nobody knew a way to get through to him. A slight woman in her fifties named Frances offered to use her locksmithing experience. Zelda wanted to use a bomb.