Lace looked up from her menu. “Speaking of funny diets, Cal, what the hell happened in my building last winter?”

I leaned back and sipped coffee. Evidently, Lace wasn’t up for small talk either. “You in a hurry or something?”

“My lease is up in two months, dude. And last night you promised you wouldn’t jerk me around.”

“I’m not jerking you around. You should try the pepper steak.”

“Vegetarian.”

“Oh,” I said, my parasite rumbling at the concept.

Lace flagged down Rebecky and ordered potato salad, while I crammed some bacon into my mouth. Potato salad is an Atkins nightmare, and more important, the parasite hates it. Peeps prefer protein, red in tooth and claw.

“So tell me what you know,” she said.

“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “First of all, I’m not really Morgan’s cousin.”

“Duh.”

I frowned. This revelation hadn’t provided the same oomph that it had on my mental flowchart of the conversation. “But I am looking for her.”

“Again: duh, dude. So you’re like a private detective or something? Or stalker ex-boyfriend?”

“No. I work for the city.”

“Cal, you are so not a cop.”

I wasn’t quite sure how she’d come to this assessment, but I couldn’t argue. “No, I’m not. I work for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Sexually Transmitted Disease Control.”

“Sexually transmitted?” She raised an eyebrow. “Wait. Are you sure you’re not a stalker?”

I reached for my wallet and flopped it open, revealing one of the items I’d picked up from the Night Watch that morning. We’ve got a big machine that spits out laminated ID cards and badges, credentials for dozens of city agencies, both real and imaginary. This silver-plated badge was very impressive, with the words Health Field Officer curving along the bottom. In the ID case next to it, my photo stared grimly out at her.

She stared at it for a moment, then said, “You know you’re wearing the same shirt today as in that picture?”

I froze for a second, realizing that, yep, I hadn’t changed since that morning. In a brilliant save, I glanced down at my Kill Fee T-shirt and said, “What? You don’t like it?”

“Not particularly. So what’s that job all about? Do you, like, hunt people down and arrest them for spreading the clap?”

I cleared my throat, pushing my empty plate away. “Okay, here’s how it works. About a year ago, I was given a disease. Um, let me put that another way—I was assigned a specific carrier of a certain disease. I tracked down all his sexual partners and encouraged them to get tested, then I tracked down their sexual partners, and so on.” I shrugged. “I just keep going where the chain of infection leads me, informing people along the way. Sometimes I don’t get enough specific information about someone, so I have to poke around a little, like I was last night. For one thing, I don’t even know Morgan’s last name.” I raised my eyebrows hopefully.

Lace shrugged. “Me neither. So let me get this straight: You tell people they’ve got STDs? That’s your job, dude?”

“No, their doctors do that. All I’m allowed to do is tell them they’re at risk. Then I try to get them to cooperate and give me a list of people they’ve slept with. Someone’s got to do it.”

“I guess. Wow, though.”

“So far I’ve spent a whole year tracking down the offspring—or rather, the infections from that one carrier.” I smiled at my cover story’s cleverness. Nifty how I worked the truth in there, huh?

“Wow,” Lace repeated softly, her eyes still wide.

Now that I thought about it, the job I’d chosen for myself did sound pretty cool. A little bit of undercover work, some social consciousness, an air of illicit mystery and human tragedy. One of those careers where you’d have to face life’s harsh realities and be a good listener. By now, she had to figure I was older than nineteen—more like her age, and probably wise beyond my years.

Her potato salad arrived, and after a fortifying bite of carbs, she said, “So what’s your disease?”

“My disease? I didn’t say I had a disease.”

“The one you’re tracking, dude.”

“Oh. Right. I’m not at liberty to say. Confidentiality. We have ethics too.”

“Sure you do.” Her eyes narrowed. “And that’s why you didn’t want to talk in front of my friends last night?”

I nodded. My cover story was sliding into place perfectly.

She put down her fork. “But it’s one of those sexually transmitted diseases that makes people paint stuff on the walls in blood?”

I swallowed, wondering if perhaps my cover story might have a few loose ends.

“Well, some STDs can cause dementia,” I said. “Late-stage syphilis, for example, makes you go crazy. It eats your brain. Not that syphilis is what we’re talking about here, necessarily.”

“Wait a second, Cal. You think all the people on the seventh floor of my building were shagging one another? And going all demented from it?” She made a face at her potato salad. “Do you guys get a lot of that kind of thing?”

“Um, it happens. Some STDs can cause … promiscuity. Sort of.” I felt my cover story entering the late stages of its life span and suppressed an urge to mention rabies (which was a little too close to the truth, what with the frothing and the biting). “Right now, I can’t be sure what happened up there. But my job is to find out where all those people went, especially if they’re infected.”

“And why the landlord is covering it up.”

“Yeah, because this is all about your rent.”

She raised her hands. “Hey, I didn’t know you were all into saving the world, okay? I just thought you were a stalker ex-boyfriend or a weird psycho cousin or something. But I’m glad you’re the good guys, and I want to help. It’s not just my rent situation, you know. I have to live with that thing on the wall.”

I put down my coffee cup with authoritative force. “Okay. I’m glad you’re helping. I thank you, and your city thanks you.”

In fact, I was just glad the cover story had made it through the worst of Lace’s suspicions. I’d never really worked undercover before; lies aren’t my thing. She frowned, eating a few more bites of potato salad, and I wondered if Lace’s help was worth involving her. So far, she’d been a little too smart for comfort. But smart wasn’t all bad. It wouldn’t hurt to have a pair of sharp eyes on the seventh floor.

And frankly, I was enjoying her company, especially the way she didn’t hide her thoughts and opinions. That wasn’t a luxury I could indulge in myself, of course, but it was good to hear Lace voicing every suspicion that went through her head. Saved me from being paranoid about what she was thinking.

On top of which, I was feeling very in control, hanging out with a desirable woman without having a sexual fantasy every few seconds. Maybe every few minutes or so, but still, you have to crawl before you can walk.

“Dude, why are you scratching your wrist like that?”

“I am? Oh, crap.”

“What the hell, Cal? It’s all red.”

“Um, it’s just…” I ransacked my internal database of skin parasites, then announced,

“Pigeon mites!” “Pigeon whats?”

“You know. When pigeons sit on your window and shake their feathers? Sometimes these little mites fall off and nest in your pillows. They bite your skin and cause…” I waved my oft-pinged wrist.

“Eww. One more reason not to like pigeons.” She glared out the window at a few of them scavenging on the sidewalk. “So what do we do now?”

“How about this? You take me back to your building and show me which apartment used to be Morgan’s.”

“And then what?”

“Leave that to me.”

As we passed the doorman I made sure to catch his eye and smile. If I came in with Lace a few more times, maybe the staff would start to recognize me.

On the seventh floor, she led me to the far end of the hall, gesturing at a door marked 704. There were just four apartments on this floor, all the one-bedrooms you could squeeze into the sliver-thin building.