“Bullshit. That stuff was enzymatic. You can’t print it.”

“Did I say print? I will order for you, quick—”

“Nobody makes it anymore, Brandy, not even the Chinese. Too many suicides.”

“Don’t sound so angry! What I mean is that I can make you something like Clarity.”

“That’s what I’m looking for—something close. There’s a drug called Guanfacine that hits some of the same pathways—it’s sold under the brand name Tenex. Can you get me that?”

“Students ask for it by name! Why didn’t you say so?”

“I need it in an hour.”

He gave me the name of an intersection a half mile from me. “There’s a threading shop there. You know, Indian ladies doing that thing to eyebrows? Stand in front of that. Or go inside and get some work done.”

He laughed. I hung up on him.

“My eyebrows are fine,” I said.

The neighborhood grew shabbier the farther I walked. I put out my Don’t Fuck With Me Vibe, which deterred the homeless from hitting me up. I put away Bobby’s pen and took out Fayza’s phone. There were two messages, both from Hootan, asking if the analysis of the wafers was done yet. I’d told him it would be at least forty-eight hours, but here he was harassing me after one day.

Light flashed at the edge of my vision. I glanced up from the pen, expecting to see Dr. Gloria, but there was only a homeless guy, hunched over his black garbage bag. Fine, I thought. Play hard to get.

*   *   *

Sometime after dark, after Brandy’s custom-printed drug had frolicked for a few hours in her system, Ollie said, “That’s a person.” I’d just come back from another errand, and she was sitting where I’d left her on the couch, still wearing scrubs, staring at the chair across the room. Bobby was slumped in the chair, asleep. A hole in his jeans showed a white kneecap.

“Wow, look at you, noticing things on things,” I said. “You’re feeling better?”

“A little, but not too much. The calm before everything starts turning too … meaningful.” She nodded at Bobby. “He’s a sweet kid. He thinks the world of you.”

“God knows why.”

“I think it was the werewolf.”

I laughed. “Jesus, what did he tell you?”

“You saved his life.”

“An exaggeration.” I sat down beside her. “When Bobby showed up in the ward, he was getting bullied by a thug named Torrence, a huge guy who’d gotten his skull dented in a motorcycle accident and woke up remembering that he’d been a hyena.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah, and he could turn back into one at any moment.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“It’s called clinical lycanthropy, but the animal can be anything, even a cockroach.”

“So how’d you save Bobby? Shoot Torrence with a silver bullet?”

“You’re not listening—he was a hyena. Totally different.”

“Of course. My mistake.”

I checked to make sure Bobby was still sleeping. “It wasn’t much. I just told Torrence that if he didn’t lay off Bobby, I’d tell the doctors about his drawings.”

“Drawings?”

“Filthy stuff. I tell you, I’ll never think the same way about Lassie again.”

Ollie laughed, willing to go along with my bullshit. “So, you ready to talk?” I asked.

She found my face and kissed me hard. “Now I am. Tell me everything you can remember about the church.”

I went over the exits I’d seen: the heavy loading dock doors, the reinforced glass front door. I couldn’t tell her whether there was an alarm system.

As we talked she tipped over the duffel bag that I’d retrieved from the Thai place. It slammed against the floor and Bobby startled awake. Ollie froze for a moment, staring in his direction. The kid scrunched his face and yawned like a bear.

I said to Ollie, “It’s still Bobby.”

“Right,” she said. She unzipped the bag. There was no lock on the zipper, not even the tiny padlocks they put on cheap luggage. She started pulling out the contents, mostly clothes, and dumped them on the floor.

“Any security cameras at the church?” she asked.

“None that I could see.” I picked up one of the articles of clothing, a bulky camouflage jacket. It didn’t look like army, but something a hunter would wear. A hunter much bigger than Ollie.

From the bag she lifted out a heavy object that was a bit bigger than a toolbox. It was sealed in opaque plastic wrap. She turned it in her hands, spending a lot of time looking at the zigzag heat seal on the wrap.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Trying to decide if anyone’s opened it,” she said. “I think we’re good.”

She tore open the plastic seal. The object was a steel box, with a lid closed by a thick black padlock.

“I hate myself sometimes,” she said.

I looked at the lock. It was a mean-looking thing, embossed with the name Medeco. “Do you have the key?”

She rubbed at her forehead. She was sweating, but that was probably a side effect of Brandy’s jumpstart. “There is no key,” she said.

“You lost it?” Bobby asked, fully awake now.

“I melted it down. That way they couldn’t steal it from me, or force me to give it to them.”

“Who?” Bobby said, alarmed.

She smiled sourly. “You know. Them.” She hopped to her feet. “Let’s see what’s in the kitchen.”

There was a sharpness to her that I hadn’t seen since I first met her, in my early days on the NAT. She’d been palming her meds then, playing a game of chicken with her own crazy. Her paranoia was kicking in. As a newcomer I was of course under suspicion. Lyda Rose, Agent of Them. But I was a testy addict drying out, and of course eager to push anyone’s buttons, including those of the tiny chica with the dark eyes. In group, it was her reactions I watched the most. On the floor I could sense her tracking me, monitoring who I talked to. We were wary of each other and tuned in at the same time. The first time we had sex it was like full contact tae kwon do. Eventually I talked her into going back on her prescription, even though—or maybe because—I was in such rough shape myself. The meds soaked into her bloodstream, seemingly having no effect, then bang—the paranoia fell away and the agnosia kicked in. She became sweeter, softer, a little out of focus. Easier to love. And a lot less sexy. A flaw in my character, but there it is. I’ve always been a sucker for the beautiful and the batshit.

Ollie came back to the living room with a collection of junk: wire twist ties, a grocery store bonus card, a paring knife. Bobby said, “Don’t you have lock pick tools?”

“They’re in the box,” she said.

“But why would you—?”

“Shhh.” She kneeled next to the duffel. One night on the ward, during one of our after-hours kitchen runs, I’d asked her if picking locks was part of her government training. She laughed, said it was the tweaker itch, one of the side effects of Clarity. A mentor had told her not to fight it. Better to use the itch and get a hobby. So instead of taking apart old vacuum cleaners like a meth head, she attacked locks. Worked her way through the bibles of the field by a guy named Tobias, staying up all night, immersing herself in the craft like parachuting into a foreign country.

Ollie cut the grocery card in two. One half she shaped into a rough key. The other was a narrow strip. She slid the fake key into the lock, then rapped on it with the heel of her shoe. Next she took out the key shape and replaced it with the strip.

She spent the next few minutes poking at the lock’s innards with the wire twist ties. A dollop of sweat popped from the end of her nose. Her fingers trembled.

Bobby watched her, nervously gripping his treasure chest. He said, “It’s okay if you can’t open it.”

Ollie’s head jerked up. “What did you say?”

I said, “Kid, let her work.”

“I’m just saying, we could call a locksmith. One time when I was locked out of my car—”

Ollie jerked on the padlock and suddenly it was open. “When you’re popping locks, it’s not if it opens,” she said. “It’s how fast.” She sat back on her haunches, looking worn out. “I’m just not up to speed yet.”