When they get to her building, Gideon shoulders open the door and then holds it while Sextus steps through it. She lives on the first floor, so she ignores the elevator and lopes up the stairs, pulling her key out from under her shirt on a long chain to open the door. Inside, her apartment is cluttered but comfortable, the sofa loaded with cushions, draped in blankets. Paperbacks are piled on a lot of the surfaces. There's a bowl and a coffee cup on the coffee table and Gideon collects them on her way to the kitchen.

"Make yourself comfortable, Sextus," she says. "I'm going to take a shower. Because I? Smell fucking gross."