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severance. You need to pack your stuff today. They don't want you back in the building."
    Wendy felt numb. She teetered to a standing position. "Did you at least fight for me?"
    "I only fight when I have a chance to win. Otherwise what's the point?"
    Wendy waited. Vic looked down and pretended to be busy.
    Without looking up, Vic said, "You expecting a tender moment here?"
    "No," Wendy said. Then: "Maybe."
    "Are you going to meet with Mercer?" Vic asked.
    She turned back toward him. "Yes."
    "You'll take precautions?"
    She forced up a smile. "Man, I just had a flashback to something my mom said when I was starting college."
    "And from what I know, you didn't listen."
    "True."
    "Officially, of course, you don't work here and have no standing. I should advise you to keep a safe distance from Dan Mercer."
    "And unofficially?"
    "If you could figure a way to nail him, well, heroes are easier to rehire than goats."

    THE HOUSE WAS SILENT when Wendy got home, but that meant nothing. In her youth, her parents would know she was home because her music would be blaring from the ghetto box in her room. Nowadays kids used headphones or earbuds or whatever they called them 24/7. She was fairly confident that was where Charlie was right now, on the computer, earbuds firmly in place. The house could catch fire, and he would have no idea.
    Despite this, Wendy shouted at the top of her lungs, "Charlie!" There was no answer. There hadn't been an answer in at least three years.
    Wendy poured herself a drink--pomegranate vodka with a splash of lime--and collapsed onto the worn club chair. The chair had been John's favorite, and yeah, that was probably creepy, keeping the chair here and collapsing in it with a drink at the end of the day, but she found it comforting, so tough.
    How the hell, Wendy had wondered before today, would she pay for Charlie's tuition on her current salary? Now that wasn't a concern because there was simply no way. She took another sip, glanced out the window, pondered where she would go from here. Nobody was hiring and as Vic had so delicately pointed out, she was damaged goods. She thought about what other kind of job she could do but realized that she had no other marketable skills. She was sloppy, disorganized, ornery, not a team player. If she took home a work report card, it would read, "Does not play well with others." That worked as a reporter going after a story. It worked almost nowhere else.
    She checked the mail and saw the third letter from Ariana Nasbro and felt a sharp pang in her gut. Her hands began to shake. No need to open the letter. She had read the first one two months ago and nearly vomited. With two fingers, she held the envelope as though it had a stench, which it did when you thought about it, walked into the kitchen, and stuck it into the bottom of the wastebasket.
    Thank God, Charlie never checked the mail. He knew who Ariana Nasbro was, of course. Twelve years ago, Ariana Nasbro had murdered Charlie's father.
    She headed up the stairs and knocked on Charlie's door. Naturally there was no reply so she opened it.
    He looked up, annoyed, pulled off the headphones. "What?"
    "Did you do your homework?"
    "Just about to."
    He could see that she was put out, so he flashed the smile, so like his father's that it stabbed every single time. She was about to launch into him again, about how she'd asked him to do homework first, but really, who cared? It was pointless to get caught up in all that minutiae when her time with him was flying by so fast and soon he'd be gone.
    "Did you feed Jersey?" she asked.
    "Uh . . ."
    She rolled her eyes. "Never mind, I'll do it."
    "Mom?"
    "Yeah?"
    "Did you pick up the food at Bamboo House?"
    Dinner. She had forgotten.
    Charlie rolled his eyes, mimicking her.
    "Don't be a smart-ass." She had decided earlier not to tell him her bad news yet, to wait for the right time, but she still found herself saying, "I got fired today."
    Charlie just looked at her.
    "Did you hear