When Cian walked into the kitchen at Zeph’s house, the smell of cinnamon and cloves boiled up from a pot on the stove where Fannie was working. Pearl sat at the farmhouse table, sipping a cup of tea, watching the frizzy-haired girl and pretending not to. Cian put the piece of paper in front of Pearl.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Trouble.” He wanted to slouch in one of the wooden chairs, but his wounds wouldn’t allow that. He settled for stretching out his injured leg and propping himself up against the the table. Fannie threw them occasional looks. The steam from the pot gathered pearls of moisture in her frazzled hair. She risked a smile, and she wasn’t the type of woman to let a smile take a stroll around the block. Cian didn’t smile back, though. He was all out of smiles. All out of a lot of things, but smiles were at the top.

“This is from Freddy?” Pearl said.

Cian nodded.

“And he’s certain?”

“Certain enough to show it to Sam.”

Pearl winced. She folded the paper and handed it to Cian, but he waved it off. Instead, she tucked it into her pocket. “How is he?”

Cian raised an eyebrow.

“I should go talk to him,” Pearl said.

“Pearl.”

“Yes?”

“I mean this with all due respect, but maybe, when he’s ready to talk to someone, it should be . . . well, another man, to say it straight out.”

Pearl’s smile was red and bittersweet like dried cherries. She nodded. “You didn’t see him after she died.”

“I’ve seen him since. I can see it as well as anyone, I think.”

“And after everything between you and Irene—” Pearl dangled the hook.

Cian shook his head.

“You’ll talk to him, then?” Pearl said after a moment.

“I’ll talk to him. What about Harry? Or Oliver? Any word on the two love-birds?”

A clang came from Fannie’s boiling pot. She dropped a wooden spoon on the stove and fluttered out of the kitchen on a broken wing, trailing a fog of clove and cinnamon and damp cotton. She didn’t look back.

“That was cruel,” Pearl said.

“I don’t like eavesdroppers,” Cian said. “Besides, she could have stayed.”

“You know how she feels.”

“The whole world knows how she feels. Except, I imagine, Oliver.”

“I think he knows,” Pearl said. “I think they always know.”

“It’s not the same,” Cian said. “You and Harry. You know that, don’t you?”

She gave him that same, dried-cherry smile, and it made her look old. Older than Cian had realized she could look. She stood up and pushed her chair in.

“We should go soon. With or without Sam.”

“I’ll check on him.”

Stiff and aching, Cian got up from the table. He had to search the house room by room, floor by floor, and he didn’t find Sam until he reached the top of the stairs. Cian was hot and sweating and his cuts itched like hell. Sam was in an empty room at the end of the hall. Shelves had been built into the walls here. They held scrolls of dust and dirt now, instead of books. No chairs, no desk, not even curtains. Sam’s tracks were the only disturbance in the dust, and he stood at the window, his breath turning solid as it touched the glass. He looked like he’d wandered out too far, like he’d looked back too late, like salt and stone.

Cian didn’t step inside the room. He was smart enough for that.

“We’re going,” he said. “To see if the piece is there.”

Sam turned. His eyes, red-rimmed, were still looking a long ways back, and then again, not that long at all. “An auction,” he said. “She bought it at a fucking auction six months ago.”

“That’s what the paperwork says.”

“She knew. She knew about all of this.”

Cian waited.

“Fuck it,” Sam said. “And fuck her.”

He walked over towards Cian. His steps erased the first set of tracks.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Cian said.

“There’s shit to talk about.” He brushed past Cian. “Let’s go.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Irene was waiting, already bundled in her fur coat. She didn’t smile, but then, neither did Cian. He was out of smiles. He was out of fight. He didn’t try to keep her at home. He was smart enough for that too.

And so they went. They went east into the city. They came to a set of streets where colored people lived. Pearl and Sam walked ahead and Sam gave directions.

“This is her apartment,” Sam said. They stood in front of a three-story brick buildings. Cement steps zigzagged up the front. The railing had been painted turquoise at some point, as had the iron shutters, but the paint had peeled, and a rash of rusted blisters covered the building. The day was a quiet day. A cat was yowling, distant and furious, but the street itself was silent. Thick smoke from a shoe factory came from the west, settling into the grooves of the street: hot rubber and leather and industrial fires.

Cian started up the stairs. Pearl and Sam, both uninjured, passed him. They moved like a team, those two. A pair who had stood back to back and faced death. They had the kind of trust that had one sharp edge, and it was always turned outwards. Cian waited for Irene to catch him up, and together—leaning on each other for support—they made their way to the second floor.

When Cian and Irene reached Minnie Varner’s apartment, the door was already open. A thick crust of snow clung to the sill. The door had spiderwebs of ice. Inside, the air was warmer and smelled of furniture in need of cleaning. Cian shut the door behind Irene. Her cheeks were red. Her eyes were bright. She covered her mouth with one hand.

“Are you well?” Cian asked.

She nodded. “It comes and goes. The strangest things set it off—smells and tastes.”

“Do you want to wait in the car?”

Irene didn’t move her hand, but he could tell she was smiling. She shook her head.

Pearl emerged from a back room.

“Anything?” Cian said.

“Sam has it.”

“You found it?” Cian asked. “The piece of the crown.”

“I said he has it, didn’t I?” Two tight circles of red marked Pearl’s cheeks. She straightened her long, heavy coat with a jerk. “We shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have come here. You and Freddy didn’t have any right—”

A knock at the door cut her off. Cian ushered Irene a bit deeper into the room. Then he opened the door.

He went for the Colt, but he was injured, and he was too slow.

The thing that looked like Harry Witte tossed Cian back into the apartment. He landed on the sofa and stared, dazed, as the thing that looked like Harry stepped into the room. Behind the creature, radiant, icy, translucent, came Marie-Thérèse.

“I told you we’d find them here,” Marie-Thérèse said with a smile.