Harry stood, frozen, for a half a second. Below the window, a shadow arched itself and slid forward.

“Get out,” Harry said. “Everybody get out.”

They ran. And somehow, in spite of the fear that spiked the room like bad gin, they kept their heads. Cian, still almost naked, swept Sam along and herded Irene out the back. Pearl followed them, dragging Strickland behind her. And then it was just Harry and Oliver. Harry stared at the shadow. His fingers still bit into the desk. He wanted his revolver. What he had, though, was his magic.

And, waiting on the other side—maybe only a step, or maybe a mile—that headlong dive into madness.

Before he could decide, Oliver grabbed his shoulder and dragged him towards the back.

Harry resisted for the first step. Then he ran.

The rusted fire escape endured their descent, in spite of its shrieks, and in a matter of minutes they formed a rough circle in the snow at the bottom. If the cold bothered Cian, he didn’t show it. Then again, Harry doubted Cian would show it if he had a bullet between the eyes.

“Let me go,” Sam shouted.

“He’s burning up with fever,” Cian said.

“And you’re freezing to death,” Irene said.

“Zeph’s,” Oliver said. “Come on, it will be safe.”

Harry nodded. “That’s where we’ll go.”

“She’s rented a house,” Oliver said and gave them the address. “Wait outside; I’ll come and get you.”

And then, without waiting for an answer, he took Harry’s arm and dragged him towards the street. The last thing Harry heard was Cian’s complaint.

“Wait outside,” the Irishman said. “Easy for him to say.”

By the time they reached the street, Harry had recovered himself. “Oliver.”

Oliver ignored him and flagged down a cab.

Harry shrugged Oliver’s hand off. Or he tried. Oliver didn’t let go.

“Oliver, I’m not going to leave them back there.”

Still no response. The cab pulled to a stop in front of them. Gray slush washed and Oliver pulled the door open.

“I told you,” Harry said. “I’m not—”

Oliver didn’t wait for him to finish. He just pitched Harry into the cab and climbed in beside him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Harry asked. He tried to climb over Oliver to reach the door.

Oliver caught the cab-driver’s eye and rattled off an address. Then he planted a hand on Harry’s chest and shoved him into the corner.

“Drive,” Oliver said to the cabbie.

The cab edged out into the street. It was a hesitant move. A weak gambit by a poor chess-player. The cabbie drove like a man who already knew he was going to lose.

Harry looked at Oliver. Under those red-gold curls, the other man was ice. He stared straight ahead, not bothered by Harry’s glare.

Harry had two thoughts, and they were fighting like dogs. One, that he was Harry Witte, and Harry Witte kept his cool. The other, that he hadn’t realized how much stronger Oliver was.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Harry finally said. He settled back into the seat, straightened his coat, and checked the glimmer of a reflection in the mirror. With two fingers he pushed back his hair. “I’m responsible for those people.”

“You’re responsible for them?” Oliver said.

“Yes. I care about them.”

“Right. You’re responsible for them, you care about them. I believe that. And what about them?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do they care about you? The mick punched you in the face the minute he got through the door. His girl tried to shoot you. That boy was going to stab you.”

“Sam wouldn’t have done it. And Irene never actually fired a shot.”

Oliver shook his head and looked away.

The cab hummed along, the sound broken by the gargle of dirty slush. A bell had started to ring somewhere. Its notes sounded very far off. Harry didn’t know if that was from the car or the distance. He was thinking about those bells, though, and he was thinking about them because if he kept thinking about what Oliver had said, he was going to open his mouth.

But half a minute later, he opened it anyway.

“You left me for almost twenty years, Oliver. You don’t have any right—”

“I have all the fucking right in the world, Harry.” The words were fired—pop, pop, pop—from a revolver. “I heard those people. I heard what they said about you. And more than that, I saw what they thought of you. And after all that, you trust them?”

“I do.”

“Then you’re a fool, because they don’t trust you. You heard what the mick said—you’re not in charge anymore.”

“Cian only needs to cool his head. We’ll work things out.”

Oliver stiffened. His fingers tightened on the back of the seat. The cabbie gave him a quick look, as though he were about to protest and then thought better of it. Then Oliver gave the seat a shove and dropped back.

He was smiling. The smile of a man who’d caught a magician in a trick. “Cian, huh. Nice, big, red-headed fellow. You have a type, don’t you, Harry?”

In the front seat, the cabbie was frantic with embarrassment. He had found a new world inside his coat and was trying—desperately—to climb into it.

Harry let the sting of the comment fade. He stretched his leg as best he could, checked his coat. He could smell Oliver, the smell of rum and juniper. It was a smell that had Harry by the union suit. He didn’t know if he wanted to kiss the man or kick him to the curb.

A little of both, really.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” Harry said when the worst of the moment had passed.

Oliver rubbed his mouth. He nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Harry squeezed his shoulder. “Well, then. Tell me what I need to know about Zeph.”

“Fair enough. She’s . . . she’s Zeph.” Oliver laughed. It was the first normal sound he’d made in hours. “I know, that doesn’t help. When you meet her, you’ll see. She’s strong. She keeps going. And she’s tough, Harry. She doesn’t play games or mess around. She keeps a tight rein on her crew.”

Oliver paused and glanced over.

“It’s fine, I see your point,” Harry said.

With a shrug, Oliver continued, “I don’t think you should say anything about . . . about what you showed me at your offices. Zeph won’t understand. She might even think—”

“I’m a threat.”

Oliver nodded. “You should tell your people the same thing. Zeph doesn’t deal with any of that. If it can’t be shot or burned or driven away with a priest, we drop the job and run. It’s not worth the risks.” He paused again. “That’s just Zeph’s view, of course. I’m not passing judgment.”

“It’s fine, Oliver. She might not be wrong.”

“And Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“She’s a bit rough. She’s been through a lot.”

Harry nodded. He squeezed Oliver’s shoulder again. He thought of the teenage boy he’d known with red-gold hair. The boy who had vanished, and in his place had come this man.

“We all have,” Harry said.

When the cab came to a stop, they were in front of a large house. Yellow stone walls rose three stories and held a slate mansard roof. The dormer windows shone white in the afternoon sun. On the lower floors, white curtains blocked any view of the inside of the house. She was a grand old lady, that house. She was thirty feet high of style that had been stiffened and starched. If you could find a casket big enough, you could have buried her and had a hell of a funeral.

Oliver paid the cabbie. The man, still more interested in the inside of his coat than anything else, sped down the block as soon as the money changed hands. Harry had seen a few tormented souls in his life. He’d never seen any look as bad as that cabbie.

They entered through the front door and found themselves in a large, empty foyer. Dark paneling covered the walls, and a staircase with a frayed runner led up. An archway at the far end of the foyer continued into a large room with a fireplace. To the right and the left, double doors had been opened onto more rooms. In one, a well-made pallet sat against a row of cabinets that had been built into the wall. In the other, the curtains had drawn arabesques on the dusty floorboards. There was, as far as Harry could tell, not a single built of real furniture in sight.

“Where do you sit down?” Harry asked.

Oliver just smiled and started into the house.

Before they’d made it to the stairs, a burly man emerged from the rear of the house. He was short and wide and wore a brown tweed suit. He could have taught barrels a thing or two. He didn’t say anything. He had a gun holstered at his side, and it was doing the talking for him.

“He’s all right, C. E.,” Oliver said. “I’m taking him to meet Zeph.”

If C. E. agreed with Oliver’s evaluation, it was impossible to tell. It was impossible to tell if he was even breathing.

They took the stairs up. On the second floor landing, anoter man leaned at the railing that looked over the foyer. He had hair to the middle of his back—fine, straight, white-blond hair—and a smirk. He was the kind of boy who had been the first on the block to learn about sex and never let anyone forget.

“Who’s this, Oliver?”

“Never mind, Joe.”

“This one of your buddies?”

Oliver didn’t answer. Harry tipped his hat to the man, and Joe’s smile dropped off his face.

At the third floor, Oliver crashed into someone. Harry had a brief impression of an abundance of hair—cascades of it, Amazonian falls that had sprung loose and were working up the nerve to flood the earth. Then Oliver laughed, and a woman’s laugh answered, and the two disentangled themselves. Oliver stepped aside and gestured to Harry.

“Harry, this is Fannie. I’m sorry. I mean, Frances. Frances Sagerstrand. Frances, this is Henry Witte. He’s an old friend.”

Frances, or Fannie, or whatever her name was, was a plain woman with an enormous amount of frizzy hair. Heavy, black-framed glasses had taken over the top half of her face, leaving Harry with the impression that she’d surrendered from the nose down. She did, however, smell like apple pie, and so Harry gave her a smile.

“Call me Harry,” he said.

She smiled back. She gave him a long look through her glasses, and then an even longer one up at Oliver. When she finally looked back at Harry, she said, “Well, call me Fannie, then. Everyone does.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Fannie.”

Her smile broadened a bit. “You keep talking like that and you’re going to take Oliver’s spot here. He’s the only one that can string two nice words together.”

To Harry’s surprise, Oliver blushed. A hard, hot, fast blush.

“We’ve got to go, Fannie. I’m taking him to meet Zeph. Excuse us.”

Fannie smiled. She drifted down the staircase on a cloud of hair and apple pie. Her eyes, though, trapped behind those glasses, didn’t lose track of Oliver for one minute.

“Good luck,” she called. “You’ll need it.”

“What do you suppose that means?” Harry asked.

“Nothing,” Oliver said. The blush was taking its time coming down from his cheeks—checking every step, testing the ground, waiting, maybe, for a storm to pass. “Come on.”

He led Harry down the landing to a door at the far end of the house. At his knock, a firm voice with a distinct, French accent—Parisian, if Harry hadn’t lost his ear—said, “What?”

“Zeph, it’s Oliver. I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet.”

There was a long silence from the other side of the door. When it opened, it opened like St. Peter working the heavenly gates on a bad day. The door crashed into the wall and stopped, quivering, held there by a foot in a boot.

A very angry foot.

The boots led up to a pair of rather nice legs, Harry thought, if you were into that sort of thing. Zephirine Raimbault was tall. The kind of tall that might need cutting down. She wasn’t plain. There was too much character to her face, too much boldness in the nose and cheekbones, for her to be plain. But she wasn’t pretty either. A jagged scar ran from her ear to the corner of her mouth, where her lip was drawn up, ever so slightly, as though she were on the point of wrinkling her nose. Right then, though, she wasn’t wrinkling up her nose. She looked like she was ready to chew a tin can.

“Who is this?” she asked. She didn’t look at Harry. She looked at Oliver. She might have been looking at the family dog, after it had dragged a dead rat onto the davenport.

“He’s a friend, Zeph. The one I was telling you about. The one I grew up with.”

Zeph didn’t answer.

“Zeph, he knows. About all of it. He works the same kind of jobs here. I thought,” Oliver paused. Harry was half-surprised his friend didn’t scuff his shoe like a schoolboy. “I thought he could help us.”

For the first time since opening the door, Zeph turned to look at Harry. She took him in from head to heels. She was wearing a word like a new pair of shoes, the kind that might give her a blister, and that word was competition.

Oliver must have seen it too. “He wants to help.”

Zeph dismissed him with a gesture. Oliver swallowed. He looked at Harry. Harry felt a strange wash of anxiety, as though he were boarding a ship that might never return and Oliver was somehow staying behind.

Then, without a word, Oliver left.

Zeph stepped back, leaned against the wall, and allowed Harry to pass.

Her bedroom was large and, unlike the rest of the house, furnished.

Well, furnished might have been a bit generous.

Light came through the long row of windows facing south, painting a large mattress that lay on the floor in one corner. Four chairs sat around a folding card table that had been stabilized by gluing a beer cap to one leg. A pair of suitcases—closed—sat against the northern wall, and a lacy wisp of a camisole hung from an empty curtain rod, and a hand mirror had been set on one of the sills. You could have packed the room into a picnic basket and been gone in ten minutes. Harry was pretty sure that was the idea.

“Drink?” Zeph asked.

Harry nodded.

She had a bottle of scotch and poured them each a drink. Harry held his and waited until she sipped first. Then he tried the scotch. It was surprisingly good. Especially considering the room. And the house. And the general state of things.

“I’m Henry Witte,” Harry said. He held out his hand. She took it, pumped it once, and let go. She had a firm, dry grip. If she recognized his name, she didn’t show it.

“Zephirine Raimbault. Most people call me Zeph.”

“Paris?” Harry said.

She smiled. “Oui.”

“I’ve never been,” Harry said. “I’ve heard it’s lovely.”

“It’s a city. It might even be the city.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Who are you, Henry Witte?”

Harry pointed to one of chairs. Zeph nodded. Harry pulled back the seat for her and then took a chair for himself. He helped himself to a bit more of the scotch. It was smooth, and he needed smooth right now.

“I’m a lot of things,” he said. “A friend of Oliver’s, as he said. We knew each other growing up.”

“But not recently.”

Harry shook his head. “No. Not for some time.”

“And what else are you, Mr. Witte?”

“Please, call me Harry. I’m a private investigator. I do the jobs other folk don’t like doing. Especially the ones that get me paid. Oliver tells me we’re in a similar line of work. Things other people don’t know about. Things other people might not even believe exist.”

“La sagesse.”

“I’ve heard it called that.”

“Are you anything else, Mr. Witte? Any other surprises?”

He worked the scotch for another minute. Then he gave her his best smile.

“I suppose plenty of people say I’m a fair bit of trouble. That’s only true for the ones who get in my way, though.”

Zeph didn’t respond at first. She was still wearing that pinched look. She was still thinking competition.

“I’m not trying to cut in on your job,” Harry said. “My colleagues and I are simply offering our help.”

“Such generosity, Mr. Witte.”

“I’m doing it for Oliver.”

Zeph stood. She walked to the window and looked through the glass.

“Are these yours, then?”

Harry joined her. In the snow below, Pearl, Cian, and Irene waited. Cian, thank God, had found some clothes.

“They are.”

“Two women.”

Harry nodded.

“What do I need with you and your colleagues, Mr. Witte? I have a crew of my own.”

“We’re smart, and we work fast, and we’ve managed a pretty fair record against the Children in this part of the world.”

“The children?” she asked.

Harry paused. “That’s what they’re called here. The Children of the sleeping gods. The ones who participate in cultic worship.”

“Des moutons.” Zeph smiled. “We call them sheep.”

“That’s close enough,” Harry said.

“It seems to me, Harry Witte, that you came here for your own reason. I see three of your people standing outside in the cold. Waiting. What is it?”

Wishing he hadn’t left the scotch on the folding table, Harry nodded again. “Fair enough. Something came after us. A shadow. It’s killed a few people around town. For the moment—” the next words were bitter, “—for the moment, we’ve got our tails between our legs.”

“Oliver should have said so.”

“Oliver was being a friend.”

Zeph moved back to the card table. She capped the bottle of scotch, straightened to her full height, and looked Harry right in the eye. The sound of the house settling old bones filled the space between them.

“In this crew, we don’t have friends. We have trust, or we have nothing. Am I clear?”

Harry thought of the hospital for the insane, and the mask, and Dr. Strickland. He couldn’t manage a smile this time. But he did lift the empty glass in a toast.

“Absolutely,” he said.