Yeah, great. I don’t even have any money. There was a phone in a booth outside the front door, but who the hell would I call?

I didn’t even know my own name.

“Well, good eveni—gooood gravy Marie!” The man hove into sight, two hundred fifty pounds if he was an ounce, most of it straining to escape his white T-shirt and the stained apron slung loincloth-style below his considerable belly. Despite that, he looked hard, and the lightness of his step told me he could do some damage if he wanted to.

If he had to.

But he simply stopped and stared at me. “Goddamn, girl, what happened to you?”

How the hell did I know? I’d just clawed my way out of a goddamn grave. I opened my mouth, shut it.

The door opened behind me. Instinct spiked under my skin; I jerked to the side. My bare, bleeding feet slapped down, braced for action. I ducked, my hand blurring up in a fist.

But broad, warm fingers closed around my filthy, naked upper arm.

He set me on my feet. Taller than me, stoop-shouldered and wiry, his dishwater hair laying close to the skull, and a shadow of acid-melt scarring over the lower half of his face. I stared, a sound like rushing water filling my head, and his ruined lips twitched. You could see where the scars had been really bad, but they were…were they?

Yes, they were retreating. I knew it because I’d seen him before. The black curtain over whatever had happened to me didn’t part, but I knew him.

“You,” I whispered.

“I’m about to call the Authority.” Apron Man crossed his beefy forearms. “What the fuck is—”

The scarred man looked up. His eyes were bright blue, and that was wrong, too. Something shifted under the skin of his face, and his mouth opened slightly. No sound came out on the slight, soft exhale, but the fat man shut up.