No one moved for several minutes. George still felt dazed and slightly sick. Then a few people began to shift in their seats, glancing around as if awoken from a dream. The conductor jumped when he heard the seats creaking, and reached out and poked the first chair violinist. The violinist sniffed and blinked at him, puzzled for a moment, but then hurried into position. The rest of the orchestra followed suit, and halfheartedly started another waltz. A pair of mimes in blue overalls and broad hats stepped out on the stage, looked around as though surprised to find themselves there, and began going through their performance, one pretending to share apples from a basket with the other. They were obviously terrified.
“Excuse me,” said a voice. George looked up, and saw that the man beside him had stood and was trying to get past. The rest of the audience was standing up as well.
George, still confused, moved his knees to let the man by. “They put the shabby acts last,” the man confided as he passed. “To get the audience to clear out, you see.”
Even though George was utterly bewildered, he still managed, “Well, of course I know that. And they’re called chaser acts, for your information.”
The man shrugged, and joined the rest of the audience members lining up to leave. They all had mystified looks on their faces like they’d left something behind, but couldn’t remember what it was.
The pair of mimes onstage abandoned their act, and the orchestra wound down to a halt. None of them seemed upset by this development. Rather, they stared into the air with wistful looks on their faces, and the two mimes eventually shuffled offstage, smiling emptily. After a confused moment George followed the audience out.
Once outside he stood in the street with the rest of the crowd and took a deep breath. The night air seemed much fresher than the air in the theater, and George and the other patrons were desperate to get as much of it into their lungs as they could. But he noticed that there was something different about everything now. The night no longer seemed so thin, or so unreal. The moon did not feel so ponderously close and heavy. And unless he was mistaken, there was something different about the other patrons: they seemed to have more color in them, whether it was the deep grayness along a man’s trousers, or the rich navy blue of a lady’s purse. It was as if the song had put a light in them, one that made their skin and clothing shine much brighter than before.
“It is a beautiful evening,” said one lady with an enormous white hat. “A simply beautiful night.”
“Yes,” said a man. “It certainly is. Just like when I was a boy.”
“That’s it,” said the woman. “That’s it exactly. It’s like a Christmas evening from when I was just a girl.”
They smiled and milled about as if they were sleepwalking. George wondered what had happened to them all. It was as if they’d been hypnotized, though he did not think any hypnotist’s trick could ever make a person’s very color seem brighter.
But then George remembered that the fourth act had not left him untouched: that song had opened up a memory within him, but it felt totally unfamiliar. His mind was still bursting with scattered images of barrows, and root faces, and a squiggle of light in the dark, and the fleeting impression of summer days and green leaves and a secret corner of the world that only he could find. It was like remembering he’d once been a different person entirely. He felt nearly as dizzy and disoriented as the other patrons.
But the most concerning thing about that memory was the song. Unless he was mistaken, tonight was not the first time he’d heard the Silenus Chorale: he’d heard it once before, long ago, when he was but a child, yet he’d never remembered it until now. He couldn’t understand how this could be.
It took him a moment to realize that the one man who might know was currently packing up in the theater, readying to leave. George turned and hurried down a side alley to the back of the theater.
Though the Pantheon was a superior theater to Otterman’s, the layout was the same, and George slipped in through the loading door for the props. He looked around at the passageways stuffed with ropes and pulleys and curtains and backdrops, wondering which way to go. At first he thought the backstage was deserted, but then he saw he was wrong: there were two stagehands standing in a corner, but they were so still he hadn’t noticed them. They had small, confused smiles on their faces, and were clearly as stupefied as the patrons out front.
Then George heard voices coming his way. He walked to a drape of curtain and pushed it aside to see Silenus, the cellist, and the girl in white making their way toward him. His heart almost stopped, and he dropped the curtain a little and listened.
“Not bad, not bad at all, fellas,” Silenus said as he led them. In the quiet theater it was easy to hear him. He had shed the Shakespearean lilt he’d used in his performance, and instead spoke in a drawling growl. “Could have been a lot fucking worse, in my oh-so-unasked-for opinion. Ain’t as good as we done it before, that’s the damn truth, but it’s better than we were doing recently.” He puffed at his cigar and began wiping his face paint away with a handkerchief. “Hallelujah, a-fucking-men. Glory and grace and fortune abounds, or am I wrong?”
George was not sure what he should do. This seemed very different from the performer he’d seen not more than five minutes ago. He wondered: should he call Silenus’s name? Step in front of him? The man would surely say something then, and what could George say back?
“Who are you?” said a soft voice behind him. A hand took his shoulder, and though it was soft and small its grasp was iron-hard.
George cried out and leaped in surprise, and his suitcase clattered to the floor, spilling open. Silenus and the other two players stopped where they were. Before George could see any more the hand on his shoulder turned him around until he was looking into a tired, lined face whose many wrinkles were caked with the remains of white paint. It was the strongwoman, though now she was wearing an immense overcoat and a bulky sweater rather than her colorful bandages. She was joined by the professor puppeteer, who looked cold and aloof in his tuxedo.
“Yes,” he said snidely. “And what are you doing here?”
“What’s that?” said Silenus’s voice. “What do you have there?”
The strongwoman turned him around and Silenus approached, his face barely lit by the glow of his cigar. He was now nothing like the impresario from the show: in the dark of the backstage he was ferociously intimidating, his hooded eyes boring into George but betraying nothing.
“A boy,” said the strongwoman.
“A boy?” said Silenus.
“We found him backstage. And he’s awake.”
“Awake, you say?” said Silenus.
“Yes,” said the professor. He looked out the loading door and down the alley. “The rest are all out front, as usual.”
“Hm,” said Silenus, and he moved to examine George closer.
George had often wondered what his father would say when they first met. He had fantasized that perhaps Silenus would know him immediately, and he’d fall to his knees and throw his arms open and cry something about how he’d finally found his lost child. Or possibly Silenus would only slightly recognize him, and peer into George’s face, murmuring about how this young man seemed familiar. Or maybe Silenus would take a liking to George for reasons he couldn’t understand, and, should their relationship progress enough, sometimes profess that you know what, this here kid reminds me of me.
What he’d never expected was for Silenus to say, “Ah, geez. What the fuck are you doing back here, kid?” He looked George up and down. “And why aren’t you sleepwalking?”
There was a pause as George took this in. “S-sleepwalking?” he said. “I don’t… I’m afraid I don’t really understand…”
Silenus sucked his teeth and peered at him. His leathery face crinkled up around the eyes, and he tutted and pulled up the waist of his pants with one hand. “You don’t have any idea of what’s going on, do you?” he said. “This isn’t a good sign. I can’t remember the last time someone stayed awake. We’ll have to look into that later.” He nodded to the woman. “Franny, dispose of this young man. If he’s a thief, beat his ass if you’d like, but be discreet about it. Then we’ll hightail it back to the hotel.”
“No!” shouted George. “No, you can’t!”
“And keep him quiet, too,” added Silenus.
“No!” said George again, and he lunged out and grabbed ahold of Silenus’s sleeve. “You can’t go back to your hotel!”
The strongwoman pulled him back. Silenus ripped his sleeve free of George’s hand and looked up at the strongwoman, indignant. “Are you seriously going to let some fucking kid take a grab at me?”
“He’s just a boy,” she said sullenly.
“Are boys so incapable of carrying knives?” said Silenus. “I’ve seen many a ten-year-old admirably wield a pigsticker, and I ain’t keen on getting cut on by somebody who can’t even fucking vote.”
“He’s just a boy,” she said again. “Please don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry. Don’t get upset, girl.” Silenus turned his attention back to George. “What’s that you said to me? What about my hotel?”
“You… you can’t go back there,” said George.
“And why is that?”
“There are men waiting there for you. Men in… in gray suits. They’re looking for you. Or at least, I think they are.”
That disturbed them. Silenus cast a dark glance around at the rest of his troupe as they all began speaking.
“What is that he said?” said the professor. “Men in gray suits?”
“At the hotel?” said the girl in white and diamonds. “Our hotel? You said they’d never get that close to us!”
“Enough,” said Silenus. They all fell silent. He sucked on his cigar for a moment, then said, “What’s your name, kid?”
George badly wanted to say something about who he was and why he was there, but he could not muster the will to say anything beyond “George.”
“George, huh?” said Silenus. “Well, George, I’m going to grab your neck real tight right now. Are you ready for that?”
“What d—”
Silenus’s hand shot out and took George underneath the chin, his thumb painfully pressing up against the corner of his jawbone. George choked and tried to pull back, but the strongwoman held him still. Silenus’s blue eyes thinned into narrow slits, and he tilted his head up and down as he tried to get a better look at George.
“Hold still,” he said. “Just hold still, why don’t you?”
George tried, but Silenus’s hold was so strong and painful he couldn’t help but attempt to pull away. As the man examined him George got the queer feeling of being looked through, like Silenus could see all of his lies and memories in the recesses of his mind, or perhaps feel the shape of them through the skin on his neck.
“Now, George, tell me the truth,” said Silenus. His voice was very low and soft. “Did those men in gray send you to gut any of my company? Or me?”
George coughed and shook his head.
“You here to sabotage us? To spy on us?”
He shook his head again.
“You’re not coming at us in any way at all?”
Again, he shook his head.
“Why are you awake, George? Why aren’t you sleepwalking like the others?”
“D-don’t… don’t know…”
Silenus examined him for a moment longer. He grunted to himself and removed his hand. George gasped and rubbed at his neck while Silenus watched, his face unreadable. “Ain’t this interesting,” he said. “Just when I wanted it least.” He nodded to the strongwoman. “Let him go.”
She released him. She stroked his back as she did so. “Sorry,” she whispered in his ear.
“Well, now,” said Silenus. “Unfortunately it seems this kid is telling the truth, or he thinks he is. Which ain’t comforting.” He sighed and stuck his head out the loading door to survey the crowd. “We don’t have much longer on these yucks. Here, I tell you what—Stanley, you take Colette and Franny and our props to the train station. Professor Tyburn and I will go to the hotel with this kid and see if he’s a nut or if he just happens to be right. We’ll find you at the train station, either way.”
The cellist, presumably Stanley, frowned at that, and reached into his bags. He produced a largish blackboard with a piece of chalk hanging from it by a string, and took the chalk and quickly wrote in a smooth, clean hand: SAFE?
“I can handle myself,” said Silenus. “Kingsley, you got your cannon?”
“I do,” said the professor. He patted his side.
“Well, keep it handy,” said Silenus. “Keep it trained on this kid, especially if he starts getting jumpy. I don’t know what we’ll see there—I can’t imagine how they could’ve caught up to us at the hotel—but something fishy’s going on and I don’t like the taste of it.” He looked at George and said, “You don’t mind coming with us on a trip, do you George?”
George angrily looked back. He’d never expected their first meeting to go like this, but still he shook his head.
Silenus smiled. There was no humor in it. “Good,” he said. “But before we do, run and fetch me my hat, will you? It landed somewhere in the back.”
George was irritated to be ordered about in such a fashion, but he walked to the farthest corners of the backstage to search. Once he was away the troupe began talking quietly.
He found the top hat behind the curtain rigging, and when he picked it up he noticed it was peculiarly heavy. He looked inside and saw that the lining was stuffed with many strange things: a thin, sheathed knife, several small lenses, and half a pack of playing cards with notes scribbled on them.
He looked up at Silenus and wondered exactly what this man was. Silenus was not paying attention to him, but George saw that someone else was watching: Colette, the girl in white and diamonds. Something in his chest flared hot, and he managed a wave and a feeble smile. She did not return them, but frowned mistrustfully and turned back to Silenus.
George returned with the hat. “Ah,” said Silenus, and he snatched it from him, flipped it smoothly, and fixed it atop his head. “Very good. Then let’s get going.”
Silenus, George, and Professor Tyburn left the others outside the theater and climbed aboard a streetcar. Silenus’s hand never left George’s back, even when they took their seats. If they didn’t know better, someone would have thought the two of them dear friends who hadn’t seen one another in a long while. The professor sat opposite them, crooked in his seat as though his side pained him, but his hand never left his pocket. George guessed there was a pistol hidden there. He began to wish he had never come.
As they traveled Silenus asked him a variety of bizarre questions. Had George recently been forced to eat or drink something he would not normally consume? Had he found any scars on himself that he could not explain, especially under the left armpit? Had he ever been to southern Ireland in midwinter? Had he recently experienced any dizzy spells or feelings of weightlessness, and in these moments of weightlessness had he actually levitated several inches off the ground? Did he ever get the sensation that there was a small person forcing their way into the space behind his eyes? And did he have a curious predilection for shrimp that he had not displayed before?
When George had answered all the questions (the answer to each being no, except the first question, because he had politely eaten an odd, doughy bread of Irina’s), he asked how these things could possibly be relevant. “I know you think you’re telling the truth, kid, there’s no doubt about that,” said Silenus. “But there are methods of duping someone into saying what you want them to say, usually very nasty ones. That’s what I worry about. So what we’re going to do is go to the hotel and have a look-see, and if you’re right, well, then, you’re right. Why this boy felt the need to warn me about these gents in gray, well, that’s another question. But I won’t ask it now. Because it’s always possible that you are, unknowingly, a part of the machinations of my enemies.
“And I do have enemies, George,” he said calmly. “I got more enemies than there are stars in the fucking sky. A man can’t make a ripple in the ocean without another trying to give him the knife for it. And if you’re working for these enemies of mine, then we’re going to have to figure out what to do with you. See?”
“Good,” said Silenus. “Smart kid.”
“Can I ask you something, Mr. Silenus?” said George, now angry.
“You can call me Harry, kid. And my associate here is Kingsley. You put someone through what we’re putting you through, might as well be cordial about it,” he said.
“All right… Harry,” said George. “Is this sort of behavior common in your troupe?”
Silenus smiled. “In our troupe, kid, it’s as common as rain. Wish that it fucking weren’t.”
They came to the stop closest to the hotel, hopped off, and began walking toward it, Silenus strolling out in front with his arm around George and Kingsley walking behind them, hand in his pocket. George miserably thought of all the fantasies he’d had of taking a friendly walk with his father, and reflected that he’d never imagined this would be how their first would go.
Yet the street ahead seemed curiously abandoned: not only was there no one on the sidewalks, but the houses and shops were dark and shuttered, like those within wanted passersby to think no one lived there at all. It’d been a busy scene when George had visited earlier that evening. Had he not seen a lady in a raincoat just over there, next to the hotel, pulling her coat tight about her chest as she shivered? And a group of children playing with a tin hoop in that alley? But now there was no one.
George stopped. Silenus looked at him and nodded back at Kingsley, who stood ready.
“What are you stopping for, kid?” said Silenus. “Come on.”
“You don’t feel it?” said George. “Or hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“That silence,” said George. “Before I heard it around the hotel, so that’s how I knew the men in gray were there, but now…”
“Now what?” asked Silenus.
George looked around them. The building faces on either side of the street seemed gray and faint, and the streetlamps were sputtering as if fighting to stay lit. “Now it’s like they’re all around us…”
Silenus stared at him for a moment, and whipped off his hat and fumbled with the inside. “I hope you’re fucking wrong,” he muttered, and pulled out a large, scratched monocle. To George it appeared too scratched to see through, but Silenus held it up to one eye and looked through it at the hotel. Though George caught no movement in the windows, Silenus slowly took in a breath as if he did not like what he saw. Then he turned a full 360 degrees, taking in the streets around them through the monocle. “Well,” he said finally. “Things prove otherwise. You were right, my boy. Very, very, very right. As impossible as it seems, they were waiting for us. I sort of wish I had listened to you, kid, but I can’t be right every time.”
“So they are there,” said Kingsley. “Then it’s a good thing we didn’t go into the hotel.”
“They aren’t in the hotel anymore,” said Silenus, the monocle still stuck to his eye. “They were watching this whole neighborhood. Kingsley?”
“Yes?”
“Take that cannon out, and keep a sharp eye open.”
“Won’t people see it?”
“There won’t be anyone out,” said Silenus. He peered up at the sky and the surrounding buildings through the monocle. “When the wolves gather in such great numbers, things change… Light dies, the sky feels thin and stretched, and everything grows cold. No… no one will be outside with so many of them here. We’ll be alone. Which is what they want.”
“But we haven’t been spotted yet, have we?” asked Kingsley as he took out his gun.
“Oh, we definitely have. I’d say they had our scent the second we stepped on the street.” Silenus lowered the monocle and softly said to himself, “How did they resist it? Are they getting stronger, or are we weaker?” Then he put the monocle in his pocket and replaced his hat, and turned around and started calmly walking back. “Here. Come on, both of you. Walk with me. And don’t run. Not yet, at least.”
Kingsley and George both took up places beside Silenus, casually placing one foot in front of the other. George glanced back and saw the end of the street darkening as streetlamps near the hotel began flickering out, one by one. It was as though someone were pacing from lamp to lamp, turning them off, but he could see no one there.
“Yes, they’re following us,” said Silenus. “Don’t look. You won’t see them. They don’t want to be seen, not now. But don’t look. Since we’ve just heard the song we have some amount of protection, but if you look at them, that won’t matter.”
“Do you have any ideas about how to get us out of this?” hissed Kingsley.
“Not yet,” said Silenus. “But I’m thinking very hard.”
They turned down a main street lined with shops. The people before them deserted the sidewalks, ducking into restaurants or buildings as though suddenly remembering other business. They did not seem to know what they were running from; it was an instinct, like smelling smoke and knowing to flee.
George looked to the side and saw the smaller streets and passageways were flooding with darkness, the far corners growing dark and fading entirely until everything was pitch-black. Soon it felt like the entire world had fallen away until there was nothing left but this small, colorless island of street intersections and building faces afloat in a dark sea. He realized he was shaking.
“Don’t worry yourself too much, kid,” said Silenus quietly. “They want me, not you.”
“What are they?” said George.
“They are shadows,” said Silenus. “True shadows. Not merely the absence of light, but of all things. Gaps in Creation itself, given minds and gnawing hunger, and how they hate the light…”
“What the hell have you gotten me into?” breathed George.
“If you’d keep your mouth shut, and let me fucking think, then I can get you out of it all the sooner,” said Silenus.
They continued walking down the street, trying their very hardest not to look at the gathering shadow behind and beside them. Then as they passed one side street a lamp came on, illuminating someone standing below. The light was painfully bright in this muted, shadowed world.
“Don’t look!” said Silenus quickly. “Don’t look at it!”
George caught himself just in time. He kept his eyes fixed on the street, but in the corner of his vision he could see a figure standing below the lamp, its hands primly fixed behind its back. It appeared to be a man in a gray suit and a black bowler, but now George sensed that this was just a picture in a very real way, a thin and flimsy skin with something hiding just behind it.
“Hey!” cried the figure merrily. “Hey you, kid! Hey, come here to us! Let us get a look at you!”
“Don’t listen to it,” said Silenus. “And don’t look. It will want you to look.”
“We remember you,” called the figure. “Do you remember us? We met outside of the theater. You were the fan, weren’t you? We said we’d pay you, but we never heard back from you, such a pity. Imagine meeting you here. Imagine that.”
“Oh, God,” said George.
“Just keep moving,” said Silenus. “Don’t look.”
“We’d still pay, you know,” said the man. “We saved up, just for you. Leave that liar and that dying man behind, and come here to us. We won’t hurt you. We can’t say the same for them, but you can be safe.”
“Bastards,” whispered Kingsley.
“Look at us, child,” called the man. “Would we hurt you? Would we hurt a nice young man like yourself?”
George shut his eyes and kept walking forward, guided by the faint footsteps of Kingsley and Silenus.
The man laughed. “But hey, you know what, we thought you looked familiar. And now that you’re standing next to that awful liar, we see why! The resemblance is very faint, but we can see it! Family, how funny! But now, you know, maybe we can’t let you leave. Not if you are what it looks like you are.”
At that, George opened his eyes and looked sideways at Silenus. Silenus appeared confused, but he did not look at George, nor did he say anything until he spied a large sweetshop at the corner ahead.
“Do you both see that big window there?” he said quietly. “There in that shop, on the other side of that corner?”
“Yes,” said Kingsley and George at once.
“All right. What we’re going to do is walk toward that very quickly. We’re not going to run. If we run, they’ll do something. We’re going to get to it as fast as we can without running. Okay?”
“And then what?” said Kingsley.
“You leave that up to me,” said Silenus. “All right? Let’s go.”
They picked up the pace very slightly, moving quickly toward the corner. The man behind cried, “Hey, now, where are you going? Are you leaving us so soon? You know there is not far to go…” Then the light behind them winked out, and though George wanted to look back and see if the man was still there, he refrained.
When they rounded the corner, Silenus said, “Stand right there in front of the window, both of you. And look in.” George did as he asked, and saw that they were staring in at their own reflections. Silenus took off a glove, stuffed it in his pocket, and took out his monocle. “Here,” he said, and handed it to George. “You seem more sensitive to them than either of us. After all, you can hear the bastards. Now just keep an eye on them, and tell me when they’re close.”
George looked at the lens in his hand. It was scuffed to the point that it was opaque, but he put it to his eye and peeked through. The world was rendered milky white, with no distinguishable buildings or forms in it, but among all the whiteness he could see black figures and dark shadows slowly moving toward them. He gasped and took his eye away and saw he’d been staring into a brick wall.
“What is this?” said George. “It can look through the wall?”
“It’s lightning glass,” said Silenus. He produced a small knife and made a very small incision on his finger, and let the blood dribble down to collect in the palm of his hand. George winced, but Silenus said, “It’s what’s left behind when lightning strikes sand dunes. If you polish it the right way, it becomes very sensitive to light and dark. Especially the darkness that follows the wolves.”
“They’re wolves?” said George.
“That’s one word for them, yeah,” said Silenus. He picked up a handful of soil from the gutter and began mixing it with the blood in his hand. When it began to turn to clumps, he spat into it and kept mixing. “Are you going to keep a fucking eye on them or not?”
George brought the monocle back up again. He saw the mass of darkness grouping at the alleys on the other side of the sweetshop. “They’re getting close,” he said. “Why are they moving so slow?”
“Because they don’t want to give us any way to escape,” said Silenus. “All right, I’m ready here. Both of you hold still. Just look in the window, and do not blink.”
George put down the monocle and watched. Silenus reached toward the glass and began to paint the mixture of blood and earth and saliva around their reflections in the window, drawing along their edges. He did it very carefully, making sure to account for every bump or bend in their forms. His own was the most awkward, as he was painting himself with his arm outstretched. Once he was done, he blew on the outline of blood and dirt and began picking at one corner of it.
“What are you doing?” asked George.
“Shut up,” suggested Silenus.
“Yes, please do,” said Kingsley.
George was about to make an angry reply, but stopped when he noticed something: although they had all spoken, none of their mouths had moved in the reflection.
Once Silenus had picked at the corner of the outline enough, he took it between his thumb and forefinger and began pulling. George had expected it to flake away, but the outline seemed to hold together, as though it were made of resin. But then George saw Silenus was peeling away more than just the outline: there was something else coming off the glass, something ghostly and illusory…
When Silenus had gotten the thing off the window it collapsed in his hands like cloth or loose paper, and he began trying to stand it up on the sidewalk. When he finally got it upright, George saw they were staring into faint versions of their own faces, though Silenus’s was partially obscured by his arm, which seemed to be reaching out toward them. George looked back at the window and saw it was now blank. The reflections were gone; if he’d been seeing things correctly, their images in the window had been pulled from the glass to now stand on the sidewalk. They were faint, distorted things with the wrong dimensions in places, and they were all joined together at the hips, but other than that they looked almost exact.
“W-what?” asked George faintly.
“Now, kid, where are they coming at us?” said Silenus.
George jumped and looked through the monocle again. “From that alley there,” he said, and pointed.
“All right,” said Silenus. Then he whispered into the ears of each reflection. Up until now they had been static and frozen, but when they heard what he said each insubstantial face looked miserable and terrified.
“I know you don’t like it, but you got to,” said Silenus to them. “Besides, you wouldn’t have lived long anyways. Just until we passed out of the window. All right?”
The Silenus reflection nodded stiffly. “All right,” said the real Silenus. “Now—go.”
The three reflections turned around and began marching toward the alley George had indicated. They moved awkwardly, as they were essentially one mass with six legs, but they managed to stay upright.
“Back up,” said Silenus to George and Kingsley. “Up against the building, so they won’t see you.”
They flattened themselves against the wall and watched the progress of their reflections. When the three ghostly shapes made it to the alley they looked directly down it at whatever had been hunting them, and turned and ran away down the street.
There was a chorus of growls and cries as the things in the darkness gave chase. The mouth of the street grew murky, and Silenus whispered, “Don’t look! Look away and shut your eyes!”
They did as he said. The sound of hundreds of feet on paving stones filled the air, and if George’s ears were right it sounded as if the feet were clawed. The wind whipped around him and a chill trilled through his bones. He suddenly felt old, older than he ever had in his life, and he wanted to do nothing more than lie down on the sidewalk and never get up again. It was in this moment that curiosity overtook him, and George cracked open one eye, intending to look back. But when he did he saw Kingsley had already succumbed to that same impulse, and was staring over George’s shoulder at whatever was chasing their reflections down the street. His face was fixed in utter terror, and sweat ringed his brow. Then he saw George was watching him, and he scowled and shut his eyes and looked away.
Eventually the sounds and the chill faded. Silenus opened his eyes and looked around, then let out a breath. “They’re gone,” he said.
“Are you sure?” said George.
“I’m sure,” said Silenus. “I told our reflections to run clear across town if they could. They seem to have bought the ruse. Stupid things. We can breathe easy for a bit.”
Kingsley mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “How did they get so close? You said that after the song was sung they couldn’t get within miles of us.”
“I know that’s what I fucking said!” said Silenus. “That’s how it’s always been! Something’s changed, but I don’t know what.”
“Or maybe it’s just not working anymore,” said Kingsley.
“That’s something I don’t want to consider,” he said. “Listen, the trick I just pulled won’t last forever. Let’s hurry back to the train station before they figure it out. Come on, kid.” He and Kingsley turned to make their way down the street.
But after being ridiculed, choked, and forced into a dangerous trap at gunpoint despite his protestations, George was no longer feeling so amenable to the man he’d spent over half a year trying to find, whether he was his father or not. “Why should I?” he asked.
Silenus looked back. “Eh?”
“Why should I come with you? What good would it do me? You’ve done nothing but abuse and ignore me since I met you. I tried to save your life, and you went and nearly got me killed anyways. So why should I?”
Silenus walked back, nodding his head. “Fair points, fair points,” he said. “But you’re forgetting, of course, that the wolves now think you’re with me. So they’ll be looking for you. And while you might not know exactly what they are, you know they’re bad news, and I think I’ve got a little more experience with them than you have. So it’s probably in your best interests to tag along with us, at least until you’re safe.”
George knew that these were very valid observations, but he was still reluctant to follow him.
“Come on, kid,” said Silenus, now quieter. “I didn’t know. These are dangerous times. I had to make sure.”
“Why do you want me to come at all?”
Silenus paused. His face was still and closed again, and George could tell he was thinking hard. “Let’s just say you’re quite the specimen. But in any case, it’d be a poor thing to leave you behind with the wolves hot on your scent.”
George considered it. “If I come with you, will you hurt me again?”
“I can’t promise that I won’t. Sometimes what needs to be done needs to be done, even if it’s unpleasant. But I will promise to try my best to keep you safe, until I no longer can.”
“You will?” asked George suspiciously.
“It’s what I promise everyone who travels with me. Now come on before they double back, all right?”
George sighed. “All right.”
They jumped on a different streetcar and huddled at the end as it took them to the station. Silenus was grim and lost in thought, but he looked better than Kingsley, who sat crooked in his seat with one hand gingerly exploring his side. His skin was pale and waxy, and he kept licking his lips and whispering something, as if he was speaking to someone who was not there.
When they were near the station they heard them: first one howl, then two, then many, long, keening cries from somewhere far out in the city.
“Are those wolves I hear?” said one passenger.
“It can’t be,” said a woman. “There are never any wolves so far into town.”
George expected Silenus to say something, but he did not. He simply lifted his eyes and gazed in the direction of the howls, and settled down farther in his seat.