When Graverobber opened the dumpster, he wasn't expecting to find Shilo Wallace inside. Not quite the shock of his life, but close. She was sitting crosslegged, a patchwork satchel in her lap. She looked even smaller and more delicate than he remembered.

"I'm sorry, this one's taken," Shilo told him. She reached up, grabbed the lid, and slammed it back down.

Graverobber stepped back, then realized his mouth was slack and shut it quickly. Usually he was two or three hundred steps ahead of everyone else; he wasn't used to being caught off guard. He paced back and forth a couple of times, debating over whether to just leave her there. Finally he knocked lightly on the dumpster's lid. No answer. He knocked again.

Shilo opened the lid and stood up. She glowered at him. He tried his most charming smile and asked, "May I come in?"

Before he could say anything else, Shilo climbed out of the dumpster, slung her satchel over her shoulder, and stormed off. Graverobber ran after her, his longer legs easily matching her stride. Shilo glared at him, the effect somewhat ruined by the tears she was desperately trying to blink away. Something deep inside Graverobber's ruin of a conscience hissed at him.

"Looks like rain," he said as casually as he could manage.

Shilo wrapped her arms around herself. Her babydoll sleeves and stockings weren't doing much to protect her against the chill. "I won't melt."

When she reached the next street corner she stopped in her tracks. Either some survival instinct was telling her not to go further, or her burst of angry energy had worn off. Graverobber shrugged out of his coat and offered it to her.

Shilo's eyes were like a stab to the gut, but she put the coat on. Graverobber looked around at the darkened alleys, the pile of trash he'd just stepped over, the bum sleeping in a doorway. "You could've picked a safer area of town to crash," he told her.

She turned away from him, hunching her shoulders. "I made it before you, I'll make it after you."

He didn't have a response to that, so he ignored it and said, "Couldn't leave the City of Angels, was that it?"

Shilo whirled around, her expression pure exasperation. "I did go to Vegas, Graverobber."

He blinked and said, "You're back." No wonder he hadn't seen her around L.A. the last two weeks.

"Yeah. No thanks to your one-way ticket." Shilo shoved her hands into the coat pockets. Her brows knit as she pulled out a stub.

Graverobber coughed lightly as she stared at it, squinting in the poor light cast by the flickering streetlamp. "You went to Vegas, too?" she asked, waving the stub dated last week at him. "To look for me?"

"I had business there," Graverobber told her. He'd spent five days prowling the city, hunting through hobo camps and under bridges, asking every zydrate addict and pimp and hooker he came across if they'd seen a dark-haired girl with innocent eyes. He'd given up long after he should have. He told himself that Shilo was probably turning tricks for a pimp somewhere, or already had her cranium looted for the delicious chemicals obtained inside.

Shilo shoved the ticket stub back inside the pocket. "This doesn't mean I forgive you," she told him stiffly.

"I never asked you to," Graverobber reminded her. He walked her back to her dumpster, and told her to keep the coat for tonight. "I'll get it in the morning," he said.

Shilo frowned. "It's cold."

Graverobber laughed. "In L.A.? Never. You've never seen cold. In Alaska it gets so cold that your skin will crack open if the air touches it." He noded sagely, but he'd never been to Alaska, any more than Shilo had, but he'd read a book about it that he'd shoplifted when he was fourteen. "This is nice spring weather to them."

Los Angeles doesn't turn cold, but it's graverobbers do when they root around in piles of corpses, when they see girls younger than Shilo selling themselves, blood stains on the concrete (Repo Man's calling card), kidneys and intestines hawked on TV that could be financed with human lives. Graverobber thought about those things while scoring zydrate that night, trying to ignore the biting air and the temptation to rush back to Shilo's dumpster to check on her. What did it matter if she wasn't there in the morning? He could get another coat.

He had, in fact, liberated a nice silk tie from a wealthy gentleman who couldn't take it (or anything else) with him earlier that evening. It had amused him to put it on, as though he was one of those clean-cut businessmen who panted over Amber Sweet's ever-changing body. He fiddled with the tie idly as he asked a corpse, "Hey, you don't think I'm a bastard, do you?"

The corpse didn't reply. Graverobber sighed and chucked it back into it's tomb. "Never mind."

He was halfway across the cemetery when search lights exploded around him. He ducked behind a tombstone and then crawled under a fence, taking off into the labyrinthine alleys, trusting the night to hide him as it always did.

Shilo had ventured from her dumpster to find food. She draped Graverobber's coat over her shoulders like a cape, tying the arms across her chest in an embrace. She was digging in her pockets for the few coins she had left, wondering what she might buy with that little money, when she heard pounding footsteps behind her. A search light nearly blinded her when she turned around. Graverobber raced past her in a blur.

They were after him again, probably trying to capture or execute them like they had when she first saw him in the cemetery, when Repo Man saved her. Shilo made her choice quickly. "He went that way!" she screamed, pointing down the street. Rotti's goons (probably Amber's now, Shilo thought) raced off that way. Shilo leaned against a wall, panting, her hands sweaty. Suddenly, Graverobber's coat was choking her. As she pulled it off, a head popped out of a nearby pile of garbage.

"Thanks a lot, kid," Graverobber said as he climbed out. Shilo couldn't look him in the face. For a moment she'd wanted those men to capture him, to hurt him even worse than he'd hurt her. But Shilo Wallace wasn't a murderer. She'd been raised better than that. She offered him his coat but he shook his head.

"We'll share," he offered, and at Shilo's perked eyebrow he added, "The dumpster. It's a cold night."

That was hardly a lie, and it wasn't like Graverobber was likely to hurt or kill her. She had nothing to steal that he hadn't already taken. They walked back to her dumpster and huddled inside, wrapping the coat around them like a blanket. Shilo found herself grateful for his body warmth. Her anger hadn't kept her warm, and her resentment hadn't provided much company.

He dug around in his bag and produced a few vials of zydrate for light and a small packet of crackers. Shilo dug in, eager to sate the hunger that gnawed her insides raw. After gulping down a handful, she asked, "What's with the tie?"

"Oh, this old thing?" Graverobber sounded almost bored. "Just a little something I throw on from to time."

Shilo reached out and stroked the tie. It felt luxurious, softer than skin. She tugged a little and it came loose. Shilo laughed softly. "You don't know how to tie a tie?"

Graverobber shrugged. The zydrate lent his features an eerie blue glow, much like it had the first time she'd seen him. "Never had anyone to teach me."

Well, Shilo's dad had taught her, so she quickly tied it around her neck, primping a little to make him smile. He held up a zydrate vial to watch her tie it. "Does it ever stop glowing?" she asked.

"Not that I've seen," he replied.

They woke the next morning pressed the one against the other's side, her head resting on his shoulder, his chin atop her head. Her hair tickled his nose and Graverobber almost sneezed. Shaking himself, he woke her, too, and they climbed out of the dumpster. Stretching her sore muscles, Shilo examined Graverobber in the daylight. He had wiped his makeup off, and she thought he would look different, but he didn't, not really. His skin looked warmer, more real. There was a small scar on his right cheek that was hard to see at night. It looked almost like a starburst.

He caught her looking and gave her a half-smile. "Curious about something?"

Shilo reached out to touch the scar, but pulled back at the last moment. "What happened?" she asked.

Graverobber grimaced. "You ever cook with oil? Know how hot it gets?"

"No," she admitted. Shilo's dad had usually cooked.

"Yeah," he shook his head. "I hope you don't." Then he looked her over, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "You're still wearing my tie."

Shilo grinned and said, "It looks better on me."

"It does," he agreed.