As he trotted down the street, Frederick wondered how the weather could get so cold so fast. As Carmen's apartment came into sight, he wondered if she might not come along some days after and see everything in disarray--and then come after him. Carmen wasn't the violent type, but judging from her recent behavior he was sure she wouldn't be too placid about it, either. As he reached the stairs, he was surprised to hear the sound of things smashing and breaking inside the apartment; and he wondered if someone had beat him to it.

It wasn't the police, he knew that; they weren't quite that careless when they rummaged through a suspect's place. Curious, he wondered who else could be tearing the place apart. He peered in the window, and was astonished to find Carmen herself, frazzle-haired and wild-eyed, picking up a chair and hurling it across the room.

He figured he had better calm her down before someone called the cops to complain about the noise, so he yanked open the door and shouted, "Carmen! Carmen! Calm down! Do you want the cops in here!?"

She whirled round with her face twisted in a maddened expression, eyes afire and teeth clenched. "YOU!" she shrieked, picking up a dish fragment and hurling it at him. "What are you doing here?"

He dodged lightly and walked slowly toward her, hands spread. "Whoa, settle down! Are you all right? Take it easy, I'm not going to do anything to you..."

She stepped back, putting the table between the two of them. "Get away from me! Thief!" She gripped the underside of the table and suddenly jerked upward, pitching the table forward upon Frederick. He yelped and stepped back as the table crashed to the floor upside-down. "Get out of my sight!" she screeched.

Frederick couldn't understand why Carmen was suddenly abhorred by his presence. "What'd I do?" he asked fearfully as he instinctively held up his hands.

"You are a thief and a criminal!" she shouted madly, pointing an accusing finger at him. "You delinquent desalamaie! Nikra! Dishu!" She lapsed into a few words of the strange tongue.

Utterly confused and hoping he wouldn't get hurt, Frederick protested, "But so are you! You're not any different! Don't you remember all the places we got into together?" Her returning cutting look was like a laser blast, but he plucked up his courage and said, almost in a squeal, "I know about the case you worked! You're trying to get pardoned! For Pete's sake, give it up, please!" Her look turned murderous as she came slowly toward him, and he squeaked, "You're doing fine how you are!"

Carmen could scarcely conceal her anger, and she hissed angrily, "Watch your back, Frederick. I'll roundabout you for this."

Startled, Frederick stepped back and held up his hands, frowning. "What's the big deal? Jeez, I won't tell anyone. I just want to know why you're so adamant on this. Why would you want to go through all that trouble to work for Acme again? You're doing great how you are." He hoped that giving her what he thought was a compliment would calm her down.

He was completely unprepared for her reaction. "Stay here? A criminal?" she cried, flying into a rage. "Is that what you think? That I should stay a thief? I'm not a real criminal, Frederick! I NEVER WILL BE!" With lightning quickness she snatched him off his feet and forced him to the ground, his hands behind his back and his cheek to the floor. As he cried out in protest she shouted furiously, "I will never be anything else but a detective! I put people like you in jail, Frederick. I could do it now! I will be pardoned, and Muerganne will meet the fate of every criminal that has crossed me!" Her face was twisted with fury as well as anguish as she held Frederick to the ground.

Panicked, he squirmed under her iron grip and squealed, "Have you gone crazy? You'll never find him! He’s probably dead and gone, and you'll never be pardoned!" He realized what he had just said, and shut his eyes, cringing.

She made a fist and pulled back her arm, eyes blazing, intending to strike him; but she let her hand fall to her side. She got up off him and stood shaking, too angry to speak. Then, without a word, she turned on her heel and marched out the door, leaving Frederick looking after her, bewildered.

It was raining cats and dogs and the water was barely above freezing, but Carmen didn't care. She was warm enough, burning up inside after hearing Frederick's blasphemous talk. Stay a thief? Never! She walked even more briskly in the rain. No di’tela would ever even think of doing such a thing! What dishonor! What utter condemnation! And as for Muerganne and his cronies being dead, that was a lie. She knew they were alive somewhere; the task lay only in finding them. She only had to search a little harder, a little more. Then she would inform her friends of their whereabouts and she would be pardoned. Her pace slowed as she pictured herself in Suhara's apartment once more, drinking tea with Lynn and Jessica and the other survivors--survivors like herself--laughing and telling stories of their adventures.

But Stanley won't be there. The thought crept unwanted into her mind, and she dashed away the tears forming in her eyes. And Appoline won't be there, nor Lena, nor Khitu, nor Tachi. Her pace slowed and she bowed her head as she remembered those who had not been so lucky in the Case of the Crystal Chandelier.

All the more reason for me to find Muerganne, she thought to herself, and her pace quickened once more; but a few seconds after she slowed once more as she remembered Frederick's terrible words; "You'll never find them! You'll never be pardoned!"

Furiously she tried to beat down Frederick's reasoning. She had already found several leads. All she had to do was follow them, and she was home free. Perhaps no ordinary detective could do it, but Carmen was a Senior, trained in the Academy. You never forgot that Academy training. If anyone could do it, she could. It was only a matter of time and hard work. But what if he's right?

She stopped dead as her mind said it again, shouted it, very loud.

But what if he's right!

Her heart froze in her chest and she swayed as the thought entered her mind. What if he was right? If they really were dead, then no amount of any detective work could ever earn Carmen a pardon. Would she remain an exile forever?

Suddenly she felt chilled to the bone in the downpour, she looked for some sort of shelter. Crouching under the overhang of the roof of a house, her mind wandered to what the Seniors could be thinking of her. Would they think that she had betrayed them, that she had really left home because she wanted to? That she actually chose to lead this way of life? She shivered, but not from the cold.

And what of the Case of the Crystal Chandelier? What of her role, of her failure to stand her ground when confronted by fear? What would she say when they asked her what she had done? She couldn't deal with her failure herself, much less what the Seniors would say when they learned of it...or forced her to tell them. The simple truth was that the memories of her dead friends haunted her, like ghosts. During her mission to find the remaining Murgoes she had ingrained in her cover a way to cope--she kept her mind busy, and therefore herself from going crazy, by thinking up the schemes she and Frederick had carried out. Her hands trembled as she remembered tearing apart the plans she had made, as her hirelings watched her fearfully. She had tried--many times--to stop the habit she had created, for if she stopped committing crimes she knew that the Seniors would insist that she be pursued no further. Each time she had failed, waking from nightmares rooted in her friends' deaths, night after sleepless night.

She sat under the roof for maybe an hour, staring in front of her. Then she got up, walking listlessly in the rain. As she came to the end of the block, she realized with a kind of detached surprise that for the first time in her life, she had no idea what she should do. As she stared out to the blurry shapes of buildings in the rain, she realized that if she tried to continue her search she would eventually go insane. The only other option would be to do what Frederick had suggested; stay a criminal. If she did that, she knew that she would eventually be caught and locked away, quite possibly by people from the very place she had left. Perhaps it is appropriate, she thought numbly, that the people who I have betrayed decide my fate...She just wanted to let go, to forget everything that had happened, to feel nothing at all after so many months of grief...

As she stepped back into the rain she wondered how entering a true criminal career would affect her. She would stay with what she was doing. She wasn't like the others. Everything she took would be easily returned. Those who went after her would benefit from the experience. It would be almost like a game, a challenge...

It was if she had been clinging to a cliff, fighting to hang on, her hands bleeding from the sharp rocks, the wind battering her tired body. She let go...and it was if she was falling through the void, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, as the darkness swallowed her and claimed her forever...

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