"She was fine," I told Mandy. "Her boat was upside down, though, and she was moping on the hull. I think we need to make her a new one from scratch. And there was a little dirty trick at the end: a metal container that the machine kicked out, like a kind of escape pod."

"I thought nobody was driving?"

"Nobody was. The escape pod was full of little walky-talkies. You can hold them in your hand and smuggle them around. They go right to Doctor Harrigan's answering machine, cutting through straight to Earth. I think it's an effort to get people here to dissent, or something. Tell him they miss him being in charge."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Nobody misses that clown."

I shrugged. When I did it, she made a noise like heh-heh. "What's heh-heh?" I asked.

"Nothing. I can see you in here, you know. Ah…Owen. The Healing thing, the Aegis voice, told me I'd be done soon," she said. She sounded nervous. "I'll be able to move around without being in this tank all the damn time."

"Oh," I said. My face was hot. Blushing. "So what do you feel like doing when you get out?"

"Lotsa stuff," Mandy said, and uttered the most terrifyingly lecherous laugh I'd ever heard.

I swallowed. "Will you go out with me?"

"Out? Out where, the beach? It's a tiny island, it's all beach."

"Dinner and a movie. And this is our second date, so I'd like to keep it from having any giant heads on pikes or evil guys in cages, like our first one."

"How you gonna do it? There's dinner, sure, but since when do we have movies?"

"I'm amazing, that's how."

I didn't have any movies. I had no idea about anything at all and was far from amazing. Time to consult the expert.

Cassie Nilsson was a precise, leggy blonde with a perfect fashion-model face. All of these things had caused her a lot of trouble. Then, when she'd joined the Feast of Fools, she'd become a shape-changing monster. She was much happier nowadays.

But she could still look like herself when she chose to, and that was almost all the time. She was always helping her friend Schmendrick with the babies, Phobos and Deimos, who loved her.

She was my friend too. She wasn't Human anymore, not remotely, so it was okay. Her guy, Armand, was devoted to her, and she was devoted to him.

I was starting to think I really wanted that kind of thing for myself.

"Dinner and a movie?" She said. The babies were in a kind of pouch she'd made; it was adorned with purple hearts and almost always slung on Cassie's chest. Schmendrick's twins usually had their heads poking out like periscopes. We were in the Observatory kitchen, chopping up fish for them. "Have you got a movie?"

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"Obviously not. What about me makes you think I have any idea what to do here?"

"Nothing at all, now that you mention it." Her lips quirked. "I'll help you on one condition. Don't go running off to some fallen civilization to go steal a film projector."

"I'd never…" But the Ari Maspai had a media room, I recalled. The Cocaine Schmendricks had partaken of alien art there…

She clapped her hands. "Owen. Skip the fugue state please. I said no."

"Okay, Cassie. Thank you. Can I help cook?"

"Hell yes, cut up those onions, if you please. Can I pick the movie?"

"You sure can! Oh thank god. What else should I do?" I started chopping.

"It's not my courtship thingie, it's yours. So make it your own. She knows you pretty well, and she'll smell a rat if I do anything besides give you your movie."

"Oh. Make it my own."

Phobos was asleep, huddled down in the pouch. But Deimos was staring at me with huge eyes, occasionally exposing a fang. Deimos didn't like me today. Other days she was a lot of fun. Teething, maybe, but she already had that fang? I didn't know how Cazador babies worked.

Cassie scooped her chopped fish into a bowl. "Have you ever had a girlfriend?"

"No! And I never thought I'd get one! I'm really unprepared here."

"You never thought…" she looked up, met my eyes. "Rough for everyone, wasn't it?"

"What was rough?"

She shrugged. "I hear you did great at that field trip. Schmendrick was really proud of you."

"She was?" I was startled to find my eyes welling up. "What did she say?"

"Mostly she was sad about her boat, but she said at least Owen was a Human today." Her voice mimicked Schmendrick's perfectly. "And Owen made a Human friend. And she said Taylor wasn't as horrible as usual."

Confusion on my part. "Human friend? I made one?" Bizarrely, I thought of banging a Human together in Gary's workshop. With wooden tools, like one of Santa's elves. "When did I make a Human friend?"

"Gimme my onions, that's enough. You're Ezra's damn hero. He came in earlier and gushed."

I ran a hand through my hair, checking for rocks in my head. "Oh that's right, Ezra's Human. But I didn't do anything for those kids, they raised hell on their own."

"Oh of course. Here's my theory. You amped up their courage and turned them loose on an evil Harrigan machine that you'd already messed up."

"How would I sabotage something I'd never seen before? With such precision, I mean."

"Because you're a sneaky sneak. Keep your secret, you don't have to tell me you did that. But I know you did. Deny it."

But I couldn't. Cassie laughed. Deimos kept up her glare.

"You're good at Cassie things," I said grudgingly.

"Thanks, mister sneak. I'm going to set up some stuff for this movie. It'll be spectacular. Colossal!" She gestured grandly, spread-fingered and theatrical. Deimos snarled at me, all her tiny fangs out.

"Ezra…he found my machine," I said. "The reason I went there. It's called the Beacon, and it was actually located in that damn lighthouse."

"He's a nice kid. Elanor has it bad for him." Cassie smiled.

I left her to plan her movie. I had to set up the Beacon. As I left, I heard Schmendrick's voice as she joined Cassie in the kitchen: "What's the word cocaine?"

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