But wait, there's more!

Once we had our “trash food,” as Baggett termed it, and settled ourselves on the nearest bench least plastered in gull shit, he cast his sharp eyes over me and said, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you never mentioning exactly what your thing is, that made the College of Rava so **** to have you they invited you again after already being turned down twice.”

“Extraplanar with visual affect, they call it,” I said, refusing to let myself avoid his eyes.

“No shit?” My constitutionally unflappable colleague actually did a double take. There was a pause while Baggett absorbed this, and then he added, “Curry does? Or doesn’t? Know that his ****-guard partner can see the dead.”

“Does know,” I said through a mouthful of fried fowl and breading. “Talk about awkward. I was behind on my suppressants and accidentally outed myself the first time I ever went to his house, by not realizing his dead mother was dead, and talking to thin air.” I glanced up at Baggett and added, “I know,” at his wincing expression. “They took it really well, considering.” I got through another bite and said, “Really the main part he doesn’t know, is that twice I chose him over going to a school where I could do something possibly useful with it instead of drugging it into groggy submission to avoid registering so I can stay a city employee.”

“Well, fuck me.” Baggett offered me an amused little smile. “Maybe the captain wouldn’t take as much convincing as I thought, to sign on a contractor who costs half again as much as the regular detective she used to be.”

I let Baggett take things in a moment longer, and because he was cleverer than either me or Curry he drew further conclusions pretty fast. “That’s why you two were poking around Lamb’s place that time. You thought you might be able to ask Lamb himself what happened.”

“Yeah.”

“How’d that work out?”

“We tramped all over the city and couldn’t ever find him and then you scared me off the thing altogether.”

Baggett nodded vaguely. “Think you’ll see about that leave of absence?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Can I be selfish with you for a minute?”

“Obviously,” I said between bites. “This whole conversation till here was me being selfish with you.”

“Selfishly, I’m very annoyed that I finally lucked into the kind of detective I waited my whole career to work with, and after only two years she has a valid reason to consider leaving the unit. I said annoyed—I just realized I probably meant sad. I’m bad at feelings that aren’t in my usual suite of diffuse generalized irritation.”

I knocked my boot against his. “Wouldn't mean you can’t see me.”

“Right, in all that fucking free time guild candidates so famously have.” Baggett glanced down at me. “You’re going to ask me to partner with him so he can survive the emotional desolation of serving on SCD unit without you. Aren’t you.” I understood from his unaffectedly neutral expression that he had purposely made this not a question.

“I said I don’t know yet. You’re the one said I should talk to him about it. Why, would you consider it?”

“Why can’t he be the special wizard and not you?” Baggett muttered.

“Thanks, Bag. Since you’re not willing to just say so, I really love working with you, too.”

There was a long pause, while we both contemplated the tremendous overlap between annoyance and sadness, and worked through the last of our fried bird. Then Baggett said, “So. When you told me he was dead. You weren’t only hysterical, were you? You saw something.”

I shook my head, suppressing a shudder. “Maybe not all the way dead. Almost, though. Mag was about the creepiest shade I ever saw. Totally silent. Most of them can’t shut up, if I’m off my suppressants, but all he did was stare at me like I was supposed to do something. Terrified the absolute shit out of me. While I’m panicking his mum turns up and—well, anyway, the original point was she said something about him being unable to return to his body while it was dying. So I don’t know if that creepy quiet shit was because he wasn’t properly dead yet, or something else.”

“Mm,” Baggett said, nonplused. “This would be—the aforementioned dead mother?”

“Yeah. She was the one told me what to do to save him. If it was up to me I’d still be in his room keening like a little old Csoglaran widow. I guess it’s good after all that we met that time before.”

“Right,” Baggett said, as if he were almost sorry he’d asked. “Right.”

“How much do you know about my thing?” I asked. “The reason I ask is, Lamb’s neighbor was this retired verifier and he said something to me about if I didn’t stay current on my suppressants I could accidentally trap myself somewhere like one of the hells. I never worked out whether that was his notion of a joke or something and I’d be lying if I pretended that never kept me awake at night.”

“Probably not joking,” he allowed. “He probably was just referring to the fact that the visual component can often be accompanied by some degree of transportative element. Occasionally unpredictably so. Why?”

I took a shaky breath. “I had this thing happen last night,” I started again. “I guess… it must be a dream. Calling it a vision sounds too bizarre. I was asleep, anyway. I think I was asleep. It didn’t feel like most dreams, though. I’m struggling to let it go.” I stopped, mostly to remember what my point was before I started to babble outright. What an absurd thing to have to try to explain to anyone.

“What happened?” Baggett’s expression was unreadable when I looked back up at him.

“So right now—and actually, I didn’t think of it before but I don’t know how I’m not mobbed by dead people right now. Usually if I’m not on my suppressants they flock to me like moths. But the last couple days were so absolutely fucked I never even thought about my normal routine. My last dose was… whatever day we last worked a shift,” I said, realizing I still didn’t actually know what day it was now.

“Firstday,” he supplied. “Today is Fifthday. And I suspect you haven’t been mobbed because first you were glued to his side, and according to the literature at any rate, the permanently dead don’t love being around the imminently dead if they can avoid it. And now you’re not mobbed because you’re glued to my side and my guard badge is warded out the ass.”

“Your—” I stared at him, startled. “Why—how the fuck much did that cost to have done?”

“A lot, and it was entirely worth it. For reasons nobody's business. Finish your story.” Baggett assumed a pleasantly neutral expression and pretended to be interested in a nearby gull carrying on a doomed but enthusiastic **** on some kind of beach debris that definitely didn't look like food.