Fort Freak

“‘Easy on me’?”

“It’s an expression.”

“A stupid one.”

Flipper sighed. “You don’t want to be mixed up with these guys. Demon Princes. Werewolves. They take, Marcus; they don’t give. Think about where you are now. You were nothing but a day’s amusement to them. You’re on your own. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the cops are your pals, but it don’t hurt to pretend sometimes. Just tell them what you can.”

♠

Marcus left the station just after 3:00 A.M. Two days later.

The alleys seemed particularly alive, the rats running in swarms that barely parted as he glided through them. He followed a disused train track for a bit and then climbed up to get to the rooftops as he worked his way east toward the river. It was good to get up in the higher air. He’d often taken in the expanse of Jokertown from on high, the rank upon rank of lights, shadows, and bulk of skyscrapers, the thick sludge of a brown night sky above it. Tonight he kept his eyes down and moved steadily, though. He was different from when he’d gone into police custody. He needed to find Twitch. The guy was shifty, but he knew his way around. He could get his opinion, at least. A little advice from the streets. That’s what he needed.

The last two days sucked. Seriously sucked. Damn if they hadn’t grilled him something serious. Officers Napperson and Tang, those were their names. Just beating him down and Tasering him wasn’t enough. They had interrogated him for hours as well. He didn’t know much of anything about Asmodeus, but they wouldn’t believe him. They kept asking about the drugs too. He kept saying, “What drugs?” and Officer Napperson would respond, “The ones here on my palm, see?” And then he would smack him. Happened three times before Marcus caught himself.

Tang didn’t exactly play the good cop, but if he’d known anything he might have spilled to her, especially one time when Napperson left and she came around the table and touched a finger to his cheek and turned his face toward hers. Her wide-set eyes blinked as they took him in, full of sympathy, and her voice bounced around with its own wonderful rhythm. Didn’t last long, though. Just a show. When she couldn’t get anything from him that way, she dropped it.

They took their sweet time fingerprinting and booking him. Wouldn’t even let him run a comb through his hair before they mug shot him. The whole thing was a jumble, a nightmare of glaring bright rooms and questions and being on the wrong side of the bars with a guy who liked to take long dumps while looking at him, smiling every time he pushed one out. The cops talked a lot about procedures, about how lucky he was the system was so benevolent and all that, but by the time the dude showed up with his bail he felt filthy dirty, as if every inch of him was tainted, grime under every scale. Fuck! He couldn’t go back to that. No fucking way.

Marcus skimmed along the rooftops a few blocks south of the brothel. He had crossed the gap between the two buildings and was sliding his rear half over before his mind registered that he’d seen something down at ground level. He twisted his body back around and peered over the edge. In the alley below, well to the back and hidden from the street, some figures stood. Not exactly the place for a casual chat. He slipped farther back along the roof to get a better view.

There were three of them. Two uniformed cops hemmed a third person in. Aggression etched every angle of the cops’ postures. The male cop was a joker, with a Chinese dragon’s head. He was bulky in the chest, with a scaly tail dragging the ground behind him. The other cop, female, looked to be a nat.

The focus of their attention stood against the wall, palms held up, looking jittery, managing to move about the hemmed-in space at a frantic rate without actually going anywhere. It was Twitch.

Marcus slid over the edge and down to a lower landing, along it and then down again. When he peeked over again, he was directly over them, a few stories up. He could hear them talking—Twitch trying hard to explain something and the cops interrupting him every few seconds—but he couldn’t quite make out their words. He could, however, see that whatever he was saying wasn’t what the cops wanted to hear. They both drew their weapons out. The female cop kept snapping her head around, checking the alley, but the scaly guy moved in closer, reaching out with one claw as if he wanted to get a hold of Twitch’s shoulder.

Marcus opened his mouth and shouted, “Hey,” but he didn’t hear “Hey.” He heard a sudden pop. Gunfire. The dragon cop tried desperately to get a bead on Twitch. But the ace danced about, frantic, faster than anything Marcus had ever seen. No way the cop was going to hit him. But then the female cop opened up. She shot high, but it must have distracted Twitch. The dragon kept shooting, and an answering spray of blood fanned out in the air, seemed to hang there, disembodied. A second later Twitch was on the ground, one arm flopping sickly, his legs trying to push him away but seeming uncoordinated, something wrong with one of his feet. The dragon cop moved in, gun low, to finish it.

For the first time in a long time, Marcus acted without hesitation. He surged over the roof edge. He dropped with the full speed of gravity as he yelled, “Nooooo!” Hitting the asphalt hard, he squirmed toward them.

The female cop spotted him first. She stood with her legs planted, gun supported in both hands, and aimed at him. “Back the fuck up! Police business.”

Marcus feinted to one side. His tongue concussed out of his mouth, as rapid as a bullet. He tagged the woman on her chest. By the resistance there, he knew she was vested. He aimed again. In the face this time, hard enough that her feet kicked out from under her. Her red hair lofted in the air as she went over backward. It felt good to see that. Good to taste the tang of venom hot on his tongue.

The dragon cop didn’t shoot, but he lumbered toward him. Fast for a big guy. Flame erupted in the air between them, a quick blast that vanished in an instant. When it cleared the cop was on him. He turned to his side and cocked his tail back, bouncing and twirling it like a baseball player warming up. Shit. Marcus’s snake portion surged in, tangling the guy’s feet in scaly coils of muscle, tripping him before he could swing that tail fully around on him. The dragon went down, cursing, scrabbling across the asphalt.

Marcus almost went for him, but fuck him. He grabbed for Twitch instead. He got his arm under him and hefted him up, balanced on his side, under his arm. A doctor. He’d get him to a doctor. He started to squirm away.

He’d nearly reached the street when the next shot came. He felt it thud into Twitch’s chest. The ace cried out in pain, instantly slick from the blood. Marcus lost his grip, dropped him, and stared down for a moment as a red-black bloom of death spread through the man’s shirt. He was still breathing, but it wasn’t real breathing. It was just the motions, growing weaker every second.

Another shot. A bullet skimmed his ear. That was enough. Marcus turned and slithered for it.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 4.

“WHY HERE?” LEO ASKED as he shoved the double doors and let himself into an antiseptic-smelling corridor that was brighter than a photo studio. “Why not one of the newer joints?”

“The clinic has the closest ER,” Michael told him. “And we know—” He dodged a nurse with a gurney by doing a swift little slalom and swung back to Leo’s side.

Leo completed his partner’s thought, since he’d already heard it over the radio. “The joker who laid her flat is poisonous.”

“Venomous, actually. Snakes are venomous. But yes, time was of the essence.”

“What room again?”

Before Michael could respond, a doctor appeared on the verge of halting the two detectives—but Leo flashed his badge and asked, “Angel Grady?” The doctor nodded and pointed with a clipboard, around the next corner.

Leo and Michael took the turn like a school of fish darting to avoid a predator. Around that turn, they saw Lu Long sulking with his massive arms crossed, standing beside a closed door. From the other side of the door, machines pinged and chimed, and urgent voices discussed what should happen next.

Michael gave a head bob to the dragon-headed joker, and Leo asked abruptly, “Puff, what the hell happened out there?”

Puff snarled, but then again, it always looked like he was snarling. “Slinky motherfucker, giant snake. Black, with red and yellow on him. He stuck out his tongue”—and here, Lu Long mimed a popping punch—“and brained her. Fast as … fast as…”

Michael supplied, “A striking snake?”

“I guess.”

“How’s she doing?” the younger detective asked.

The bulky, reptilian shoulders of the Chinese joker shifted in a wave that could’ve been a helpless shrug. He jabbed a thumb at the window on the closed door. “They’re still deciding.”

“Son of a bitch,” Leo said, to no one in particular. Then, to Lu Long, “What about Joe?”

“He resisted—and then that snaky fucker interfered, and things, things … they got out of hand.”

“Out of hand.” Leo frowned. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“You implying something?”

Michael took half a step forward, almost putting himself between them. “Guys, let’s not compound the situation by picking fights. This is a delicate situation—”

“I’m not picking anything,” Lu Long muttered, but his stance suggested he might be ready for one, just in case.

“I just want to hear the facts. And God damn it, I wanted to talk to Joe,” he grumbled, more under his breath than to either of his fellow cops, or any of the fretting, fidgeting uniforms who were cluttering up the hall.

The dragon man said, “He’s down in the morgue. Knock yourself out.”

The hallway around Angel’s room was growing crowded with a halo of uniforms and plainclothes. Rikki Michaelson was standing next to Bugeye, and they were talking with their faces close together, almost whispering like they were loitering in a library. Beastie was occupying one large corner, doing his best to keep his exceptional brown bulk out of the way and not doing a very good job. He wrung his big paws together and shared a few awkward words with Tabby. The undercover cop was holding a brown paper bag and treating it to furtive swigs between his nods of agreement. Both the big guys straightened sharply when the brass arrived, but not everyone in the hall even noticed right away.

Captain Mendelberg squeezed through what space was left, weaving side to side to pat the occasional back and grunt an “excuse me” when it was required. She shoved up to Lu Long and pinned him with her eyes. “How’s she doing?” she asked.

He gave her the same answer he’d given Leo, but with a better posture. “She’s alive. They’re working on her.”

The captain nodded, her lips crushed tightly shut. “That’s a start. And that’s all the press is saying for now, which is fine.”

Tabby made a face like he wanted to spit, and asked, “They’re here already?”

She responded, “Of course they’re here. The whole lineup—the usual suspects. Times, Daily News. The Cry’s made it at least as far as the lobby and I’ve been fielding phone calls from TV crews.”

Sergeant Choy jammed her way through the crowd, sweating from running, or maybe taking the stairs. “We’ll have to issue a statement,” she noted.

“And we will. But not yet. First, we’ve got to get our thumbs out of our asses and clear this goddamn hall!” the captain all but shouted. When no one seemed to know where to go, or what to do, she added, “Doctors, nurses, gurneys, and chairs need to fit through here, people—now either flatten against a wall or find someplace else to worry. We can’t help her like this.”

Lucas Tate chose this brief lull in the nervous hum to manifest by the far stairs. He was wearing gray suit pants and a white button-up with the sleeves artistically rolled, plus a flat black mask just barely too large to call a domino. “Could I—” he began, and all eyes snapped to him. Unsure if he should be anxious at the attention or delighted to have commanded it so easily, he continued regardless. “—get a statement for the Cry? A Fort Freak cop goes down, hovering between life and death—”

Captain Mendelberg’s skin began to blush hard, almost matching the color of her ruby-red eyes, as if she were a kettle prepared to steam. “You!” she said, and everyone assumed this would be followed with an order to get the fuck out, but everybody was wrong. Her face relaxed from fury to cunning. She pointed at him, then drew her finger back, summoning him close. “Are going to make yourself useful? Get over here.”

He scampered between the flattened rows of cops, ducking like he was running a gauntlet. When he reached her side, standing squashed between Lu Long, Leo, and Michael, the captain laid out her plan. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get this snaky motherfucker, and we’re going to get him fast.”

Chey Moleka crossed her arms and complained, “If we hadn’t let him go the first time…”

The captain said, “I know, but we did. And now we’ll catch him again. We’re going to do it like this: Tate, I want you to get together with our sketch artist Eddie and run whatever he gives you on the front page of the Cry. Hell, stick it on lampposts and telephone poles while you’re at it. I want this snaky bastard’s face on every doormat and driveway for twenty miles, and I want it there in a special afternoon edition.”

“I’m on it,” Tate replied, scribbling on his trusty flip-pad with amazing haste.

“Tabby, put down the goddamned bottle and do your thing. I want you on four legs and on the street in half an hour, tops. Likewise, K-10, put your nose in the air and have a word with every lap dog, guard dog, and stray dog in Jokertown, and, Tienyu, if you’ve got something mechanical up your sleeve that can gather any scrap of information, I want you to turn it loose.” One by one, the cops she named began to peel themselves out of the corridor and scuttle for the elevator banks or the stairs. “And that’s just for starters,” the captain growled.

For a split second, Leo almost felt a tiny sliver of pity for the snake. But then he glanced through the long rectangular window of Angel Grady’s hospital room, and he got over it.

Just as he was getting himself good and worked up to hit the streets, a pissy complaint began by the elevators. It rolled like a wave at a baseball game, jumping from unhappy cop to unhappy cop.

“Ratboy,” somebody bitched.

Vincent Marinelli smiled—or possibly grimaced, it was hard to tell on a hundred-pound rodent—at the assembly. His whiskers twitched and he cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I’ll need a word,” the Internal Affairs investigator said slowly.

Choy asked with great prejudice, “Now? For fuck’s sake we’ve got an officer—”

“Stow it,” the captain commanded, never taking her eyes off Ratboy, who had not taken any further measures to approach. “He’s doing his job.”

“And we’re trying to do ours!” Lu Long rumbled.

Despite Ratboy’s hunkering shape, long nose, small clawed hands, and narrow shoulders, it would be inaccurate to assume he ever sniveled. He spoke clearly and without backing down. “We’re on the same side, here.”

The captain sniffed, though whether it was disdain or something else, no one could say. She said to the entire corridor. “That’s fine. It’s fine. You all know how this works.” Then, so softly under her breath that only those closest heard her, she said, “You don’t have to like him, you just have to work with him.”

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

… And All the Sinners Saints

by Victor Milán and Ty Franck

Part 1.

LATE AGAIN. CHARLIE HERRIMAN stood up fast and spun away from his carrel. And smacked hard into something.

His case files went everywhere. He clutched at them, then converted the movement into a last-second save of his ironic Hello Kitty backpack, which was suicide-diving off his shoulder with netbook inside. He dropped to his knees, grabbing for wayward sheets and folders that flew everywhere like autumn’s last leaves.

“I’m so sorry. Here, let me help you.”

He looked up. His racing heartbeat seemed to stumble. A pair of bright blue eyes looked at him from a concerned female face. A very beautiful face, framed by long pulled-back black hair above a dark purple cardigan.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

I’m sorry I banged into you, he wanted to say. I’m just a bit flustered here, since after a morning’s research I just finally logged onto the news and found out that one of my clients is wanted for attacking a police officer. Oh, and murder.

But he couldn’t get anything but the apology out past his tongue, which seemed to have swollen to fill his mouth like a sponge dropped in water.

He had excuses. His ironic skinny tie had gotten askew and threatened imminent thoroughly nonerotic autoasphyxiation. The ends of his bangs had stuck in one eye and dug in like broken glass, making him blink so hard his whole face twitched.

Worst, his right-arm prosthetic had slipped, and its intricate array of straps and sensors was pinching his flipper fiercely. Which in addition to being uncomfortable was a real pisser, because it reminded him that no matter how expensive his myoelectric arms might be, under them he was still a flipper boy.

The young woman was kneeling right by him, almost touching him, scooping up papers and feeding them to him. He tried not to snatch them like a cartoon miser for a spilled pile of dollars.

She smiled at him. His stomach did a slow roll. “I’m so sorry I ran into you,” she said. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

He looked at her, blinking furiously at his dagger-tipped bangs, nearly choking on saliva.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded spastically. “Yeah. Fine. Uh, thanks.”

She smiled and stood up. Surreptitiously he made sure both mechanical hands still functioned. Pressing a wad of legal papers to his bony chest he managed to heave himself up onto his black Converse sneaks.

“Great. Later,” his benefactor said, and walked away.

He staggered back and dropped like a bag of laundry into the orange plastic chair he’d just vacated.

Why oh why am I such a chickenshit? he lamented, watching her walk down the whole line of carrels toward the door. In his head. Where he lived most of his life. Why couldn’t I even ask her name?

Oh, that’s right. I’m a dork. Plus I’m a joker freak with flippers for hands.

She vanished from his view. And likely his life. Which that was the story of.

♦

“Charlie!”

He stopped on the library steps and looked around. He had gotten the evil hair out of his eyes, splashed water in them, taken a hit from his environmentally friendly asthma inhaler that held half as much as the old ones did, and was generally back in as much control of himself as he’d ever been. As always the midmorning Manhattan sunlight dazzled him even after what seemed overly stark fluorescents inside.

“Mr. Herriman! Up here.”

He turned and looked up past the entrance roof with its weirdly flared corners. Its convolutions sported an extra feature: a face so black and shiny it might’ve been an obsidian inset. Except it blinked. It was the face of a kid. A late adolescent who was scared and out of his depth.

Again. And way farther out than he’d ever managed to get before. Which was saying something.

“Marcus!” he hissed back. He looked around frantically. No one seemed to be looking their way. “What the fuck? You’re, like, this far from starring on America’s Most Wanted.”

“We need to talk.”

“No shit we need to talk! Get your ass down from there.” And winced furiously. He was no good at hiding his emotions. He’d just made thoughtless reference to a joker’s deformity. The very thing he hated most when it was done to him.

But the kid was oblivious. “No can do, Mr. Herriman. Meet me in ten in the place you’d go to confess to a cephalopod.”

“Wait—” But the face had vanished.

♥

He had the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker to himself. He sat in one empty pew halfway between the door and the altar. Although he’d never been a fan of church he found himself tempted to be soothed by the quiet cool, lit more by the sunlight pouring in through windows at the top of the tall circular apse and the stained-glass panels at the front than the candles flickering vigorously before the Peace Altar—as effectual at bringing light as peace, really. The effect was somewhat lessened by the twisted Jesus hanging on a strand of DNA, while a two-faced Dr. Tachyon looked on. Still, for all its twisted brand of suffering-based theology, the church did tend to strike a chord with those who suffered the joker’s curse.

This is lame, he thought, shifting and scratching a fin with the myoelectric wonder of his other fake hand. He’d gotten everything back in place, he thought. But he still itched.

He wasn’t even sure he was in the right place. But young Marcus Morgan had been raised a churchgoing lad by a good upper middle-class black family. He knew Charlie’s mom was Puerto Rican, so reckoned he was raised Catholic. But Charlie wasn’t big on his sins. Inadequacies were something else. While no one would mistake Father Squid’s chapel for a Catholic church, the combination of piety and irony was probably irresistible to someone like Marcus.

An odd rustle-thump came from behind. He twisted in the pew. The hard wood bit into his back.

Down the aisle slouched a joker. The hood that covered its face appeared made from a burlap sack. Its upper body was swaddled in grimy rags that had maybe been coats in a prior lifetime. The lower half was stuffed lumpily into an army-surplus duffel bag faded near gray. It bunched and hunched like a thalidomide inchworm.

Everything about it suggested that if those strata of decaying cloth were removed, Hieronymus Bosch would puke.

The figure painfully hunched its way up alongside Charlie and poured itself into a pew. The hood turned toward him. He caught a faint glimmer on skin that shone like black glass.

“Nice disguise,” he muttered despite himself. Charlie was wondering how the kid made it around in daylight without being busted. His unnaturally dark complexion was bad enough. But a twenty-foot-long serpent body, in coral-snake colors of red, yellow, and black, was hard to miss.

Marcus had found a way. This one’s smart, Charlie reminded himself. A lot of his clients weren’t. The teenager was too smart for his own good.

White teeth flashed. “People don’t want to see you when you look like this. Their eyes slide right past, even here in Jokertown.”

“Listen, Marcus. You are in a metric buttload of trouble.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“This is worse trouble. This isn’t getting in a street fight. You attacked a cop. And you’re liable to be charged with the murder of that Twitch guy.”

“But I didn’t do that! The police shot him. The police say that!”

“The cops say you were his accomplice. Joe Twitch tried to shoot a cop. He died. You’re looking to get hung with it.”

“I was trying to prevent him getting killed in cold blood.”

“Felony murder rule, Marcus. If you’re in on a crime with somebody, and somebody gets killed—even one of your accomplices—you’re on the hook for homicide.”

“Fucking cops are lying! Listen. Joe Twitch met with those two cops, the scary dragon dude and that redheaded woman. Next thing I know they’re pulling out their pieces and blasting him. Just like that!”

“If that’s true, you need to get it to a jury. Trust the system.”

“Like Joe Twitch? No way! I saw two officers of the NYPD commit murder. I saw what I saw. Please, Mr. Herriman. If I give myself up they’ll kill me too.”

Charlie slumped against the smooth unforgiving wood. What if he’s right? This wouldn’t be the first time it was hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. “What do you want me to do, Marcus? I’ve given the only advice I legally can.”

“Help me.”

“I can’t harbor a fugitive.”

“That’s not what I mean. You need to help me clear my name. Somebody must know something. There had to be a reason they murdered Joe Twitch. Help me find it.”

Charlie sighed. “If I do you’ll give yourself in?”

“Yeah. You know I’m one of the good guys, Mr. Herriman. All I want to do is uphold the law.”

By whacking people with that ten-foot tongue of yours, he thought. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Keep in touch.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks, Mr. Herriman! You won’t regret it.”

And he was gone. Shuffle-thump, shuffle-thump.

Charlie rubbed his eyes with plastic palms that tried to feel like skin and failed. “That’s a lie, kid,” he said quietly. “I already do.”

♣

Embrace suffering, Charlie told himself. It had been his mantra since childhood.

“So you not only shot him, you cut up the corpse. A process which took so long that the cops arrived and caught you in the act.”

The Demon Prince gangbanger nodded his malformed joker head and grinned. It was hard to tell, because instead of eyes the man had two long white horns growing out of his eye sockets. He also had no ears, and only the barest hint of a nose. When he wasn’t speaking, he clicked his tongue constantly. The file on him said that his horns were actually extremely sensitive organs for detecting sound. The clicking allowed the joker to echolocate like a bat.

He paused his clicking and said, “Werewolf had it comin’, fuckin’ skag. Gotta make a statement, you know? The next guy decides to try and steal our shit, maybe he thinks twice.”

“‘He had it coming’ is not a legal defense, Clyde,” Charlie said with a sigh.

“My name is Nergal.”

“No,” Charlie said. “Your name is Clyde Drummond.”

“My slave name,” Clyde said loudly, followed by a barrage of clicks.

Charlie chose not to point out that Clyde was a fifth-generation white boy from New Jersey, and instead said, “It will not help you if you appear before the judge and demand to be called”—Charlie glanced at the known aliases section of the file—“‘Nergal, Lord of the Secret Police in Hell.’”

Clyde shrugged and grinned again. Or, possibly threatened Charlie with his mouth full of sharp teeth. Again, it was hard to tell.

It had come as an unwelcome surprise that most of his clients were guilty. That bothered him. To his surprised chagrin it didn’t bother him near as much as how self-destructively irrational they were, innocent or guilty. The real crotch kick, though, was how fucking annoying they could be—trying not to think of Marcus.

And sometimes he got one who was just plain scary. Like, oh, now.

The door opened. A horsy, café au lait face stuck in. “Hey, Flipper, there’s a rat to see you.”

Charlie clenched. He hated the name. But it had clung to him his whole life, like a psychic smell of dogshit he’d stepped in when he was five. The bitch about working Jokertown was, no way could he win a harassment beef against a guy with sorry-ass half-functional bat-wings sprouting from his shoulders.

But he wouldn’t retaliate by calling him “Wingman” back. Because he took the high road. And also he feared getting stomped. The joker cop was a head taller than Charlie’s five-ten. Wingman could take him.

Who couldn’t?

“Thank you, Sergeant Taylor.”

The door closed. And Charlie thought, Wait—rat? He couldn’t figure out why a police informant would be visiting him at all, much less here.

♠

“Mr. Herriman?”

The guards had taken Clyde back to lockup. Charlie was hanging around doing a quick review of the notes he’d just taken. He found little to comfort him. On any level.

He looked up to see a giant rat in the doorway.

“I’m Detective-Investigator Second-Grade Vincent Marinelli, NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau, Lower Manhattan office,” the rat said. “There are some questions I’d like to ask you, if you got a few.”

His voice sounded normal, if a bit nasal. The accent was pure Brooklyn Italian. He wore a black Ripstop belt around his furry middle, encrusted with the usual police pods and mods, most prominently his gold shield and blocky black handgun.

“Internal Affairs? Whoa, isn’t that kind of ironic—”

Too late, as usual, he caught himself. Way to be sensitive to a fellow joker, asshole.

Foot-long whiskers twitched. “Go ahead and say what you were gonna say.”

“It wasn’t important.”

“Maybe not. But please reflect on this: isn’t the real irony that you reflexively think of IAB as ‘the rat squad,’ when we’re the ones working to protect you from the worst criminals of all?”

“Worst—”

“Cops who betray their trust and abuse their power.”

“Oh. I guess I never thought of it that way.”

“Well, now you got no excuse, do you? So can we talk, or what?”

“Huh? Sure.”

“Then let’s take a walk.”

The glares seemed even harder than Charlie was used to walking out through the precinct house, the half-heard mutters more venomous. But this time nobody jostled them. It was like an invisible ten-foot bubble surrounded them.

It was a clear, cold early afternoon when they started walking past the white police vans, the garbage bags, and the Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Hospital branch next door to the cop shop. Elizabeth Street still showed a lot of influences from the days before the wild card, when this was the heart of Chinatown. There was a lot of red, a lot of gold, a lot of Chinese ideograms. And throngs of people, mostly jokers.

It was a long way from the Central Park and Long Island swank of his upbringing. But it was where Charlie Herriman felt most at home. So he kept telling himself.

It was a place where you could walk side by side with a four-foot rat with five feet of naked pink tail and nobody would notice. Comforting, in its way.

“Rattus norvegicus.” Marinelli said.

“Huh?”

“The unspoken question in your eyes. I was born like this. A joker in the shape of a giant brown rat. We’re the ones won the war with the black rats like 150 years ago.”

“I—I know what it’s like to be born a joker.”

“Yeah. I know. Charles Herriman Hermosa, your family calls you. Kids called you Flipper growing up. You didn’t much like it.”

“How do you know all that?”

“Dossiers. So, like I said, I need your help.”

“With what?”

“You got a client. Marcus Morgan, of the infamous poison tongue. I need to talk to him. Or at least, I need information from him.”

“I don’t understand. Does Internal Affairs investigate homicides?”

“We do when we suspect a cop is involved. Or, in this case, two. I was the IAB investigator who caught the call for the Joe Twitch shooting. The gun by his hand might as well have had ‘throw-down piece’ stamped on the slide. And Twitch wasn’t the sort to carry a gun. He was the sort of small-time ace who’d figure his piss-ass power would get him out of anything his even-feebler wits wouldn’t. It got him on TV, for Christ’s sake.”

“It did?”

“American Hero. Ace reality show?”

“I don’t follow reality TV.”

“So, well. Morgan’s your client. Has he been in touch with you since the crime?”

Charlie hesitated. “Yes.”

“And did he give an account of what went down?”

“I’m not at liberty to tell you. If he was involved, I can assure you he would only have taken action to prevent an illegal act.”

The pink nose twitched. “You tell him to turn himself in?”

“Of course. It’s my duty as an officer of the court.”

“He blow you off?”

“Of course.”

Marinelli paused to scratch an ear with a long hind foot. “Listen. I believe laws are to be obeyed, and enforced. It’s why I’m IAB. At some point your client’s going to have to answer to a jury for his actions in this case.”

“That’s what I told him, Detective.”

“That said, and this is strictly off the record, I think he’s wise to lay low for the time being. Coming in right now might prove hazardous to his health.”

“What do you mean? Surely he’d be in police custody.”

“It’s the police who’re suspected of doing murder, in this case. By me and Mr. Morgan, if nobody else. A lot of good officers believe in street justice. They’d see Morgan as a joker—a black one, to boot—who was accomplice to the attempted murder of two cops, and who almost killed one. You think one of them might not look the other way while your client suffered a fatal accident? Or hanged himself in his cell out of remorse? Also, keep this in mind, Mr. Herriman: no matter how dirty we think a cop is, we’re always worse. The blue wall will try and protect him even if only to screw us over.”

Naturally you’d think that as a member of the—of Internal Affairs. Charlie thought. Then he remembered his own take on Fort Freak.

“I just don’t know,” he said. “Officer Grady was decorated for bravery under fire with the Marines in the Caliphate.”

“Hitler won the Iron Cross twice in the First World War.”

“Goodwin’s Law—” Charlie blurted.

“Give me a fucking break, if you’ll pardon my French, Mr. Herriman. I use the Internet too. I’m a rat with the brain of a human, not the other way around.”

“Sorry. But what can I do for you?”

“First, you can get me everything Morgan knows.”

Charlie felt his face stiffen.

“All right.” Marinelli waved a hand. First impressions notwithstanding, Charlie saw it was a hand, not a paw, though unusually long and slender. And furry. “You can give it to me as the statement of an anonymous informant. Whatever. At this stage we’re not talking formal, we’re talking data.”

“I can do that. Yes.”

“Also I need you to talk to some of your other clients for me.”

“Other clients?”

The detective shrugged. “Jokertown’s got a million eyes, even if it’s got a lot less than half a million jokers, like the old joke says. This went down in Jokertown. Some of those eyes saw something. But however mouths are attached to those eyes, a lot got a prejudice against talking to the cops.”

“What are you looking for?”

“At this stage? Anything. Forensics shows dick about whether Twitch was actually pulling a piece. Officers Long and Grady shot from too far away to leave powder residue. We got squadoosh.”

“Shouldn’t you be questioning your shooters instead? Seems like they’re the place to start. Not my client.”

Vincent rolled his eyes. “Thanks for telling me how to do my job. But yeah, we start with them. Except that Angel’s in a hospital bed and the union rep and her doctor are talking about how questioning would be too stressful. Endanger her life. Lu Long’s talking shit, but he won’t crack without something to throw in his face. Without two stories to compare and poke holes in, I got nothing. Maybe you can help me find my second story.”

“How do I know you’re not angling for some cheap collars on my clients?”

“Listen, Charlie. Your mother’s family’s Spanish. You were raised Catholic? I was raised Catholic. As a Catholic, you know the name of the game is sins. And while I don’t go to confession as much as my mamma and Father Bonifacio would like, I still operate according to an intricate internal hierarchy of sins.”

Actually Charlie had not been raised Catholic. His father was Anglican. His mother was complaisant. He himself was agnostic. It was a perfect metaphor for the intricate internal hierarchy of doubts he operated by.

But Vince was on a roll. Which, it struck Charlie, was a really unappetizing visual.

“So, see, the worst sin you can commit is to murder another human being. Right? Right. Maybe the second worst is to abuse trust. These so-called cops may have done both. So while in principle I’m committed to busting all the scumbags on Earth, even I have to prioritize. Capisce?”

“Um, I—I think so,” Charlie stammered, desperately trying to recall such Catholic lore as he’d taken in through osmosis. “You’re all about the mortal sins, and haven’t got time for the venial ones.”

Vince reached up to tweak Charlie’s cheek with a black-taloned finger. “I knew you were a smart boy, Mr. Herriman.”

And Charlie tried really hard not to think, Ew, I’ve been touched on the face by a giant rat. But then he already had.

To cover any possible look of disgust that had slipped past his sketchy self-control, he said, “Call me Charlie. I mean, if we’re going to be working together informally and everything.”

“All right, Charlie. Call me Vince. Or Ratboy.”

“Ratboy? That doesn’t bother you?”

Vince laughed. “Everybody called me that since I was a baby. Even my own brothers and sisters. Especially them. It quit bothering me when I was eight. What I can’t stand is being called fucking Vinnie.”

♦

“I know your reputation, Marinelli,” the Chinese woman said across the interrogation-room table. She wore a businesslike pantsuit, dark blue, with a pale blue blouse. “I won’t help you bust my boys’ chops. Or girls.”

Vince sat back in his chair. It was one of those bright orange plastic ones, uncomfortable as hell, slid you right off on your butt if you didn’t pay attention. If you were a nat or a more-or-less normally shaped joker. If you were a giant rat, on the other hand, your tail fit right through the hole in the back and helped anchor you.

“You’re refusing to cooperate in an official investigation, Sergeant Choy?” he asked.

Vivian Choy pressed her lips tight shut. She had what looked like an Erector set spread across her desk. She was halfway through building something resembling a mouse with wheels and a camera on its back. “No. I just know you think even the slightest infraction makes a cop wrong.”

“If you break the teensiest little law,” he said, “you’re a lawbreaker. Right?”

“But we’re the only thing standing between decent people and the animals out there,” she said. “You need to cut us some slack. We’re the good guys.”

“Good is what you do, not what you think about yourself. Anyway, I’m not here to pinch people for skeeving free meals from New Big Wang. We’re talking murder, Sergeant.”

“Homicide. Clearly justifiable.”

“That’s what I’m here to find out. You were the duty sergeant when the shoot went down. You were one of the first on the scene. Tell me what you saw.”

“It’s in my report. Talk to Lu Long and Angel if you want more. By the time I got there, the thing was over.”

“We’ve got Long’s statement, and it stinks to high heaven. Angel’s out of action for the time being.” He pushed his pointy muzzle over the table. “Don’t you want the truth to come out? If you think I’m head-hunting here, fine. Then help find the facts to prove me wrong. And if I’m right—are you really down with fellow officers committing murder?”

She looked at him as if trying to set his fur on fire. Then she deflated. “I can’t condone that,” she said. “But to the best of my knowledge, everything happened the way Officers Long and Grady said it did. Moritz pulled a weapon on them. They drew theirs and in defense of their lives, shot and killed him.”

She gestured at the camera mouse on the table. “None of my toys were there, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Vince just sat regarding her with big black eyes. He knew the basic fact of interrogation: if you just sit and wait long enough, people will blurt.

“Don’t think I’d cover for them on something this heavy,” Choy said at last. She knew the trick too. But she couldn’t help herself. Especially not looking into uncanny animal eyes, when she knew a human intellect was looking back. “Grady’s an ice queen. Thinks she’s better than anybody else in the precinct. Then again, she’s got the medals to prove it.”

“Yeah,” said Vince. He was unimpressed with what jarheads called heroics. In DEVGRU they called that practice.

“Long, now—he comes on a little strong. More than a little, if you’re a woman, if you know what I mean. Sometimes he needs to be reminded what no means.”

“He tried to press it with you? A superior officer?”

“Listen, he’s a dick, but I am not interested in getting embroiled in any kind of sexual harassment beef. I’m a stand-up cop, Detective. And I handled it.”

“I’m not an HR ween looking to stick somebody in sensitivity training here, Sergeant.”

“All right. Let me put it to you this way: I’d go through a door with Angel Grady backing me in a Jokertown minute. Lu Long, not so much. Do I think that makes him a murderer? No.”

“So does Grady say yes to him?”

She laughed. “This is not for attribution, Detective, and anyway is just surmise. I don’t think he’s got the right plumbing. And it’s got nothing to do with his joker.”

“My paisans back in Brooklyn might take that as a challenge to their manhood. Lotta these local Chinese boys like Long think a lot like the Guidos, that way.”

“Think you’re telling me something? Lu thinks he’s tough. Angel is tough. She’d break him in two, that fire-spitting trick of his or not.”

“Okay.” He stood up, knowing the way his naked pink tail slithered from the chair would disconcert her. He wasn’t trying to make friends here.

He knew better.

“I got just one question to leave you with, Sergeant Choy. This Twitch was a superfast ace. Why would he throw down on a pair of cops with a POS Raven .380, which according to everything we know about him he hardly knew which end the bullet came out of, instead of just running the fuck away?”

♥

“Hunting heads for your trophy wall, Ratboy?”

Like most everybody above the age of twelve, the uniformed officer blocking the hallway stood taller than Vince. He wasn’t wide. But he was lean and tough as jerky.

“Got no time for this, Napperson. Act like a pro and stand aside, all right?”

“You’re trying to put it to my partner.”

“Your former partner. The Department finally figured one bad apple per pair was enough and split you up. Remember?”

“Lu’s still my boy. And you’re coming around trying to get people to lie about him.”

“No. I’m investigating an incident he was involved in. It’s the truth I’m trying to get from people.”

“It was a right shoot! Lu’s innocent.”

“Then as we cops so like to say, he’s got nothing to worry about, does he?”

“Listen up, people.” Snap raised his voice. “Nobody’s badge or ass is safe with this rat in the house. He’d frame somebody just for the credit!”

“You’d know a lot about that, wouldn’t you, Snap?”

“Your heart bleeds for the skels. I know. And you’d throw a brother officer to the wolves.”

Vince smiled. “Why would I want to share with a bunch of mangy wolves, Snap?”

“Hey, bro,” a voice said, coming up behind Napperson. “Take it down. We all got work to do. This isn’t helping anybody.”

Snap turned his balding head to look at the burly red-haired man. “But, Tabby, he’s looking to take Lu’s and Angel’s scalps! He’s a fucking rat!”

Vince was aware that the cop they called Tabby was a shapeshifter who spent most of his time as a big orange cat.

“Yeah, he is, ain’t he,” said Tabby with a toothy grin. Apparently, the irony was not lost on him, either. “But Puff can take care of himself. And you getting loud won’t change a thing. So do us a favor and shut the fuck up and let the rat go away.”

Face fisting, Snap started forward. As he passed he gave Vince a sharp elbow to the ear, accidental-like.

It hurt like a mingia muerta. Napperson had a black belt in hurting people without leaving marks. Vince toppled to the side, where a passing cop caught his arm. As if to regain his balance he lashed out with his tail.

It clipped Napperson’s ankles right out from under him. He dented a wall with his head.

“Oops,” Vince said.

The cop holding his arm helped him upright then let go. Vince looked up at him to say thanks, then kept looking up, hoping there was a head at the top of that mountain of beef. There was. An angry Chinese face six and a half feet off the floor.

“Looking to make friends, aren’t you?” the giant said in a comically high and squeaky voice.

“Yeah, thanks for stopping me from falling on my ass, officer?” he trailed off.

“Chen. Bill Chen.” The giant tipped his head toward the retreating Napperson. “Snap’s an asshole, but watch yourself. Nobody’s going to be in a hurry to save you if he decides to kick your teeth in.”

And up goes the blue wall, Vince thought. I’m standing right next to it.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

Sanctuary

by Mary Anne Mohanraj

Part 1.

KAVITHA EASED HER WAY out of her daughter’s room, closing the door quietly behind her. It had taken longer than usual to get her toddler down; Isai had insisted on telling her a long, incomprehensible story about Daddy and dragons. When Michael got home from the station, Kavitha would have to ask him if he’d said something to Isai. In Jokertown, it was entirely plausible that Michael had encountered real dragons in the course of his detective duties—or at least something close enough to pass for real. He was going to have to stop reading his daughter police reports; Isai was getting old enough to understand them. And even though the child appeared to be fearless, some of the things Michael dealt with on a day-to-day basis terrified even Kavitha; Isai didn’t need to hear all the gritty details of Daddy’s job. Not yet. Isai might be an ace, with fearsome shapeshifting abilities, but she was also only two and a half years old. Michael was just going to have to learn how to make stories up. Appropriate stories.

Kavitha was startled out of her newfound determination by a knocking on the door. Not loud, but somehow frantic. Who in the world…? They didn’t get a lot of visitors.

Kavitha took a few quick steps down the hall to the apartment door and peered through the little circle of glass. Her eyes widened as she took in the brown-skinned woman on the other side of the door, her face covered in blood and darkening bruises, her arm bent at an angle that was just wrong. Kavitha hesitated a moment, mindful of the child sleeping in the other room—but this woman was small and soft and broken. Kavitha couldn’t just leave her standing in the hallway. It wasn’t as if Kavitha weren’t able to defend Isai, if the need arose—in theory, anyway. Michael kept urging her to practice using her powers as a weapon, but she hated weapons. Ironic, considering her boyfriend carried one every day.

Kavitha opened the door, managing to smile at the woman on the other side.

The woman said softly, “I’m sorry to bother you. Is Michael here?”

Kavitha raised an eyebrow. “You know Michael?”

She hesitated. “It’s been a while. My name is Minal—he probably wouldn’t have mentioned me. But we were … friends, once upon a time.”

The way she said friends made it clear that they’d been more than friends. The woman was wearing an oversized T-shirt and a pair of jeans, nothing glamorous. The bloodstains didn’t help, or the glorious black eye. But Minal was still undeniably sexy. Smooth brown skin, waves of wild midnight hair falling down her back. Hair longer than Kavitha’s, and Michael did love long hair; every time Kavitha said something about cutting hers, he had to visibly bite his tongue to keep from begging her not to. Minal’s body was curvy, generously gifted with both tits and ass. Neither of which Kavitha had much of, which was a good thing for a dancer, but not so great when your boyfriend’s ex showed up at the door.

She said curtly, “Michael’s at work.” Kavitha saw the panic rise in the woman’s eyes, and repented of her harshness. Even if he was dragging his feet about actually proposing, she and Michael were solid—they had a child together, for gods’ sakes. She could afford to be more gracious than this. “But you can wait for him inside, if you want.”

Minal swallowed hard. “Yes, please. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Kavitha stepped aside and let the woman slip inside. It was strange—even with a bloodied face and terror in her eyes, there was a palpable heat rising from the woman, some sort of sexual signal, like pheromones. Kavitha didn’t think it was just in her head—something about Minal seemed to whisper sex, just under the surface. God, Michael must have loved her.

Kavitha closed the door, and then studied the woman with cool eyes. “That shoulder looks dislocated.”

Minal shrugged, and then winced. “It is. Not the first time.”

“May I?” Kavitha asked, gesturing to the shoulder. Minal nodded, and Kavitha reached out to probe the injury with light, gentle fingers. “It looks like an anterior dislocation, luckily, and I don’t think there’s any additional fracturing, though I can’t be sure. You should go to the hospital, get that fixed.”

Minal shook her head. “No hospital. I can’t.”

“A clinic? A doctor?”

“No, no. I just—I just need to talk to Michael.”

“But you have to be in terrible pain.” There would have been endorphins at first, blocking the pain, but they’d have worn off by now. Kavitha hesitated, then said reluctantly, “If you want, I can try to fix it.”

“Are you a doctor?” Minal asked hopefully.

She shook her head, not without regret. “No—a dancer. But I spent four years in med school before dropping out to dance professionally. I can try to fix it, if you want. It’ll hurt a lot, and I can’t guarantee it’ll work. And I have a kid who just fell asleep, so no screaming. I don’t want her to see … this.” Kavitha gestured at Minal’s entire body, her battered face.

Minal nodded. “I understand. I have a high pain threshold—I can take it.” She smiled wryly. “I can take a lot of abuse.”

Kavitha didn’t want to think about what that simple statement meant, the history it implied. Instead, she said lightly, “Someone sure wanted to test that today, huh? Okay, brace yourself.” If she was going to do this, fast and smooth was the only way to go.

She reviewed the procedure in her head, just once, and then reached out to take hold of Minal’s arm. Upper arm in resting position, check. Bend elbow at ninety-degree angle, check, ignoring the flash of rising pain in Minal’s eyes. Rotate arm and shoulder inward, toward the chest, to make an L shape. And now, a quick, deep breath for nerve and luck, and slowly, steadily, rotate arm and shoulder out. Kavitha couldn’t ignore the pain that blanched Minal’s brown face, but she kept going anyway. Seventy, eighty, ninety degrees out and there, there, she could feel it in her hands, the shoulder coaxed back into its joint, back home again with a sudden pop. And there it was, the immediate relief from pain making Minal’s face ten years younger and surprisingly beautiful, glowing as it turned up toward her in warm gratitude. So beautiful that Kavitha caught her breath, suddenly knowing that she was in deep, deep trouble.

All this time, worrying about Michael, and how he’d react to Minal. She’d been so stupid.

♣

Minal tried not to wince away as Michael’s girlfriend bent down and dabbed at her face with a wet paper towel. The woman’s fingers were very careful and gentle, but it still hurt. They were on the last stages of clean-up; Kavitha had already strapped her arm into an immobilizing sling and applied antibiotic cream to the open cuts. She’d even stitched up the deepest of them, the one right above Minal’s cheek, where the Demon Prince’s ring had cut her when his fist slammed into her face—no, no. Don’t think about that, don’t think about any of it. Time enough for that when Michael came home.

Kavitha had filled him in, tersely, when he’d called. He’d be here as soon as his shift was over. For now, Minal would just try to relax and enjoy the beautiful girl whose lips were so close to hers, so close that she could have just reached up and kissed them, hardly needing to move at all. Michael had certainly picked a pretty one, slender and graceful; Kavitha smelled nice too, like sandalwood. Minal was happy for him. Really.

She asked, trying to make the words casual, “So, you and Michael have a kid? I always thought he’d make a good father; he seemed the daddy type. Have you been married long?” It couldn’t be that long; it had only been four years since Michael had worked the vice squad. He’d started out being protective of Minal, then dating her. She’d broken it off when he’d started talking about moving in together. Michael had claimed that he’d be okay with it if she kept working, but it just hadn’t seemed wise to get serious with a cop.

Minal had been eighteen when they met, not quite nineteen when they broke it off. Michael had seemed like a good guy for settling down with, but she hadn’t been ready to settle down, not with the virus setting her blood to boiling. No one guy, or girl, could be enough for her back then, and the job had seemed a perfect fit. She was awfully popular, so the money was good. Really good. She could fit Michael’s entire apartment into her living room. Not that that made up for it all, in the end.

“We’re not married,” Kavitha said simply. She finished with Minal’s face, and sat back on her heels to consider her handiwork. Minal was sitting on a low futon, and Kavitha was still only a few inches away. If it weren’t for this stupid shoulder, Minal could just reach out and pull Kavitha down onto the couch, onto her. That would be a fun scene for Michael to walk in on! But with the shoulder, any such attempt would likely be disastrous.

So they weren’t married. Minal wondered what that meant. She was tempted to apologize for her assumption, but thought that would probably make things worse. Michael was probably just being a typical guy, afraid of commitment. You’d think he was smart enough to figure out that having a kid together was the ultimate commitment. One way or another, he was tied to this woman for life.

Kavitha asked, “So, you two used to date?”

Minal wasn’t sure how much to say. Best to downplay it, probably. If this girl got jealous and threw her out, she’d be back in real trouble. She didn’t know where else to go. “Four years ago, for a bit.”

Kavitha nodded, looking thoughtful. “That was just before we hooked up. I didn’t plan on getting serious with a cop, but I picked him up in a bar, we had a great one-night stand, and then, three weeks later, I called him and told him I was pregnant. Contraceptive failure, damn it.” She hesitated, and then continued. “I was going to abort, but chickened out the last moment. And then Michael got all noble when I got too big to dance and was having trouble making rent. So we moved in together, and then we had a baby, and as it turned out, eventually we fell in love.”

Minal felt an odd stab of jealousy, which stung much worse than any of the cuts on her face. Weird, when she’d been the one who didn’t want kids, didn’t want a boring, bourgeois life. “So it all worked out for the best. That’s nice.”

Kavitha said soberly, “We got lucky. When the baby and I caught the virus, I thought he was going to leave. But Michael stuck around, despite not knowing how it’d all turn out. I think that’s when I started to fall for him.”

Minal was startled, and again jealous. “You look … normal.”

Kavitha shrugged. “It only manifests when I dance, and it’s under my control.”

“Must be nice.” Minal couldn’t keep the bitterness entirely out of her voice.

Kavitha raised an eyebrow. “You look normal too.”

“If I took my shirt off, you’d see different.”

Kavitha smiled and said lightly, “Well, don’t go trying to take your shirt off now! With that sling, you probably should keep that shirt on for a day or two. Give the inflammation a chance to subside. And go easy on it after that—it’s going to take a long time to really heal.”

It was odd—Kavitha was telling her to keep her clothes on, but something about her body language was off. She was sitting a little too close, leaning in. Her breath was a little too fast. If she’d been one of her clients, Minal would have said that she was begging for it. Minal decided to take a chance. What the hell.

“Are you sure you want me to keep my shirt on?” It was her best hooker voice, the come-and-get-me huskiness low and dark.

She couldn’t be certain, with Kavitha’s light brown skin, but Minal was pretty sure that was a blush. Kavitha ducked her head down, but not before Minal caught the smile on her face. “For now,” she said, softly. And then she was springing to her feet, graceful as a gazelle. “I think I hear Isai waking up. I’ll be right back.”

Minal hadn’t heard anything, but she bit her tongue and kept her peace, wishing that she hadn’t said anything. Stupid. She didn’t need complications right now. What she needed was safe haven, and if she was smart, she wouldn’t do or say anything to jeopardize that. Even if Michael’s girlfriend did have beautifully long legs and a limber body. A dancer. In all Minal’s years as a working girl, she’d never slept with a dancer. Minal squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, digging her long, red fingernails into her palms. This wasn’t going to be easy.

♠

Michael felt thrown off balance even before he opened his apartment door. The place smelled wrong. It smelled … good. Like something delectable was cooking. Which was impossible, since Kavitha was a terrible cook. Michael could grill a decent steak, roast a chicken, steam some veggies. Nothing fancy, but decent; his mother had made sure of that. Kavitha burned rice. And pasta. And water—or at least she let it boil off until it was entirely gone and the pot scorched beyond all redemption. So he knew that his girlfriend wasn’t responsible for the complex blend of scents seeping out from under his front door. A savory blend of meat and spices and maybe something sweet—oranges? He’d come home braced for trouble, but suddenly all he could think about was how hungry he was. He took a deep, delicious breath and opened the door.

“Michael, we can’t let this girl get away. Taste this!” Kavitha was bent over the stove, stirring something in a large pot.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Isai ran across the apartment and hurled herself at him, half shifting midleap, so that for a brief moment he was enfolded in wings—and then she was herself again, naked and squirming.

“Little girl, you know you’re not supposed to shift without asking first. How many times have I told you?”

“Sorry, Daddy!” she proclaimed cheerfully, not sounding sorry at all. And then she was off, babbling a long story about ducks and chickens and oranges and limes and too much pepper and sneezing and how she got to play with the water and Aunty Minal said that she was very pretty and she was a pretty princess, wasn’t she, and Mommy did cooking! The last delivered in a tone of absolute astonishment.

“Your mother cooked this?” Michael asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow.

Kavitha shook her head, laughing. “I did some chopping and stirring, but under strict supervision. This is all Minal’s work. And you still haven’t tasted anything.”

“In a minute, I promise. Where is Minal, anyway?”

“Here, Michael.” She stepped out of the hallway shadows, and even though he was happy with Kavitha, very happy, almost-ready-to-propose happy, Michael was hit once again by the sheer sex of Minal, tightening his groin, sending his thoughts spinning off in a dozen directions. That’s why she was so good at her job, of course. The wild card had left her a curse, but also a gift. If you chose to take it that way.

“It’s good to see you again,” he managed to say. And then he took a step closer to Kavitha, still holding Isai in his arms, a domestic talisman. He bent to taste the spoon his girlfriend held out to him. Some sort of pan-Asian duck stew, sweet and hot and mind-numbingly delicious. Just like Minal. “That’s—nice.”

“Michael!” Kavitha scolded him, smiling. “Damning with faint praise, and you know she doesn’t deserve it.”

“I’m sorry. This is all a lot to take in. And I think it’s this little girl’s bedtime, isn’t it?”

“Overdue,” her mother admitted. “Good night, princess,” she said, bending to drop a kiss on Isai’s forehead.

“I want Aunty Minal to put me to bed!”

Kavitha asked, “Are you sure, princess?”

“Yes! Yes yes yes!”

Kavitha turned to the other woman. “Minal, if it’s all right with you? She doesn’t need much—just a trip to the potty, pajamas, a story, and a song.”

“That sounds lovely,” Minal said, coming forward to scoop the little girl into her good arm, coming disturbingly close to Michael as she did so. “Just what the doctor ordered, at the end of a very long day.”

Michael said softly, “I’m going to want to hear about that day when you’re done.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Why don’t you eat your dinner first? I’ll be back soon.” And then she was turning, walking away down the hall carrying his daughter. Looking oddly comfortable doing so, even despite the awkward sling. It was funny—he’d never thought of Minal as the maternal type. Although he supposed that wasn’t surprising, given the circumstances under which they’d met.

He turned back to his girlfriend. “We have to talk.”

Kavitha handed him a plate laden with rice and duck stew. “We’ll talk while you eat. I think I’ve gotten most of her story out of her, though she won’t tell me exactly who beat her up. And I have an idea to run by you.”

♦

Minal sang softly to the little girl, a Tamil version of “Are You Sleeping” that her dad had sung to her. She hadn’t thought of her dad in quite a while; her card had turned when she was fourteen, and he’d been completely unable to handle what it had done to her. He’d basically kicked her out of their apartment, and with her mother dead for over a decade, there hadn’t been any reason to try to stay. She’d hitchhiked her way up to New York, and ended up in Jokertown. Went hungry for a while, when she couldn’t get any real jobs, and then, when hunger and her own sex drive got too much for her, she’d started turning tricks.

Still, it hadn’t been so bad. She’d become a hooker, sure, but a high-class one. No drugs, no pimp—she’d been lucky enough to meet some other girls who invited her to join their co-op, so essentially she worked for herself. And if she got beat up occasionally, she made damn sure the client paid for the privilege in advance. She even got to be friends with some of her clients—like poor Joe Twitch.

He’d been so scared, when he showed up at her door. Not her real door—she kept her apartment safely separate from the house she rented along with some other working girls. It was a nice house, with a bouncer within easy call and panic buttons built into the headboard of the beds. A safe place. Maybe that’s why Joe seemed to relax when he stepped in the door, or maybe that was just her, the pheromones she couldn’t help emitting anytime she got aroused. She got aroused so easily, since the virus. It was a nuisance a lot of the time, but the clients liked it. Especially Joe—he was so quick, at everything. He really appreciated that she was ready and willing at pretty much a moment’s notice. With Joe, a few steps across the room and he was pulling down her skirt, turning her around, bending her over. Sliding one hand under her shirt, across the tiny nipples that spread across her torso, the wild card’s gift and curse. Just the brush of his hand sending her arching back, pressing against him, wet and ready. And then he was dropping his pants, sliding into her—one, two, three, and he was done, but that was okay, because by then, she’d usually come too. The easiest of her clients, and sweet too—one of the ones who liked to cuddle afterward.

She’d actually fallen asleep next to him, something she rarely did, but it had been a long day, followed by a long night. One of the other girls was sick, so she’d pulled a double shift; Joe was her sixth client. When she woke up, it was to find him almost in tears. What’s the matter? she’d asked. But he’d just shaken his head. Said, Never mind—better if you don’t know any details. I’m going up against someone, someone big. But I can take him. I’ve got the four-one-one on him; he owes me, and I own him. He’s going to pay up. He’s going to pay plenty for what he had burned, or he’s gonna be the one burning, burning in hell. As soon as I get that money, I’ll come back here and pay you first, sweetheart, I swear—at which point, the conversation took a sharp turn, because even if Joe was a regular, extending credit was not normally a part of this business, and he should have known better. He worked at a house himself, although granted, a much lower-rent version. Joe had apologized so profusely, and seemed so freaked out, that in the end Minal sighed and let him leave without Jimbo marking him up any. Just this once.

And then she’d gone back to sleep, and woke up to find herself paying for her mercy. A stranger stood at the door to her room, his face and arms covered in angry red blisters, some of them popped open and weeping. His body was wrapped in black and silver leather. Another man was standing much closer to the bed, dressed in pin-striped pants and a white undershirt, his head wreathed in a crown of jagged horns. Demon Princes, from the garb—Minal had just enough time to figure that out, and then the horned man was grabbing her arm, hauling her up to her knees in the bed, slapping her across the face, back and forth, rhythmically, demanding to know what she knew. C’mon, bitch. We know he was here. What did Joe tell you? What do you know? And she was trying to tell him nothing, but he didn’t even give her a chance to catch her breath, much less say anything. And his partner saying, Hey, hurry up, someone’s coming, and then, thank the gods, there was Jimbo, all nine feet of him ducking down into the room, flailing with all four of his extra-long arms, slamming the door guy into the floor.

The sight of Jimbo must have made the horned guy holding her go a little crazy, because that was when he punched Minal in the face, hard, before he dragged her off the bed with a sharp yank, dislocating her shoulder in the process. He held her naked in front of him like a living shield as he backed away from Jimbo, pulled her back across the room until he reached the open window, and then he shoved her away, to the floor, and he was gone, out the window. But she didn’t know when he’d come back, and as it turned out, Jimbo had hit the other guy a little too hard, and he wasn’t going to be answering any questions for anyone. Minal knew his friends would be coming back, with reinforcements. If the Demon Princes were after her, her safe place wasn’t safe anymore.

So here she was, and now the kid was asleep. One side benefit of her card turning had been that she healed a little faster than normal; the throbbing of her face and shoulder had already calmed down. She wouldn’t be up for serious acrobatics anytime soon, but she was closer to healed than a nat would be. No more excuse for lingering in this quiet sanctuary—it was time to go out and face the music.

♥

Michael shook his head at the end of Minal’s dry recitation of events. She’d covered everything from the moment Joe walked in her door to Jimbo telling her the second Demon Prince was dead. Michael frowned. “I can’t figure out what this was about. Joe was blackmailing someone, going to meet them for the payoff—listen, did he have a gun on him when he left you?”

Minal shook her head. “Joe never carried a gun.”

“And is there any chance any of this was drug-related?”

She said, “I don’t think so—Joe didn’t use, and he never sold drugs.”

Michael’s frown deepened. Hell, this was getting ugly. “What about the dead guy? You called that one in?”

Minal nodded. “Yes, of course. We run a respectable house.”

He said slowly, thinking out loud, “Jimbo will do okay; it was self-defense, and you said they broke down your front door?” She nodded. Michael paused, then said reluctantly, “I don’t think you should go back there.”

Minal squeezed her eyes closed for a second, then opened them again. “I was hoping you could arrest me? Keep me safe in the cells until you figure out what’s going on?”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell is going on. All that talk about burning in hell—maybe Father Squid is involved in whatever this is? I’ll have to talk to Leo, see if he has any idea what this is all about. But I don’t know that the station is the best place for you.” He paused, before continuing on, not sure how she would take the news. She’d been pretty stable, back in the day, but it had been four years since they’d been together, and four years on the street could be hard on a working girl. “Here’s the thing—Joe is dead. He was found with a gun in his hand and crack in his pocket. And there are two cops testifying that he resisted arrest and opened fire on them. One of them is Lu Long.”

Minal’s face went still, all the life draining out of her. For a frightening moment, she looked like an old woman. “Puff?” She swallowed and asked, “But shouldn’t I go in? Testify? Isn’t that the right thing to do?”

He hated to say it, but it was the truth. “Your testimony against theirs isn’t worth shit. It wouldn’t change anything.” Michael hesitated a moment, and then said, “Kavitha thinks you should stay with us for a while.” He wasn’t sure this was the smartest idea in the world—but what else could they do? He wasn’t about to just throw an ex-girlfriend out into the cold. He just hoped Kavitha knew what she was getting into, because while he wasn’t normally the cheating type, there was only so much a man could reasonably be expected to take. Even scared and injured, Minal sitting there was an open invitation to sin.

♣

Minal turned to the woman sitting next to her on the small red love seat. Kavitha had been silent all through the recitation, but her warm body beside Minal’s had somehow felt supportive, had helped Minal get through all the gory details. “Are you sure?” She couldn’t stay—could she? Honestly, she really didn’t know where else to go. Minal wasn’t even sure why she’d come here—the memory of someone who’d once been nice to her. She hadn’t expected a girlfriend and a kid; she hadn’t expected Michael to turn so domestic. Minal didn’t belong in this cozy familial scene, but even the thought of leaving it left a tightness in her throat. “I won’t be in the way?”

Kavitha smiled. “I know the apartment is small, but we can squeeze you in. You’re great with Isai—if you don’t mind doing a little babysitting, then I could use some extra practice time at the studio. I have a show coming up, and I’m underprepared.”

Minal shook her head, bewildered. “No, of course I don’t mind. I’m happy to cook too, and clean—this is so nice of you.” Was this really happening?

Kavitha shook her head. “Oh, no. It’s not all that nice. See, I have ulterior motives…” Her face flushed, and her voice trailed off.

Minal had seen that look too many times not to know what it meant. Desire. And if she were honest with herself, that desire was definitely returned. What would happen if I…? It might be wiser not to answer that question—but wisdom had never been Minal’s strong point. Passion, on the other hand … It had been a really long day. She was entitled to a reward for surviving it.

She leaned forward and very gently touched her lips to Kavitha’s. Kavitha froze for a second—and then was kissing her back. Minal closed her eyes again, this time an involuntary reaction to the shock of electricity running through her. It was just a kiss, the merest brush of lips against lips. Just a kiss, but all her nipples were tingling, a wave of heat racing across her torso. If it weren’t for the sling holding her arm rigidly still, she’d have slid forward and pulled Kavitha against her. Well, the sling and Michael. What the hell did he think of his ex kissing his girlfriend?

Minal pulled back and opened her eyes to see Michael staring at them both, looking as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his head. Utterly stunned. Minal opened her mouth—and then realized she didn’t know what to say.

Kavitha spoke up then, with only a hint of apology in her voice. “We probably should have checked that with you first.” She was looking at Michael as she said the words, but her hand slid blindly across the couch to touch Minal’s. Minal curled her fingers around Kavitha’s.

Michael shook his head, his eyes wide. “No, no. That’s okay.” He hesitated, then said firmly, “But, Minal—you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do anything sexual in order to sleep on our couch for a few days. That offer had no strings attached.”

Kavitha looked horrified. She said quickly, “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I forgot about your…” she trailed off, clearly embarrassed.

“… my profession?” Minal found herself smiling. “The fact that you actually forgot that I’m a whore—that’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a long time.” She squeezed Kavitha’s hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry—I didn’t kiss you out of any sense of obligation. I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you.” She grinned. “And if Michael’s okay with it, I’d very much like to kiss you again.” She took a deep pleasure in the way Kavitha bit her lip at her words.

Kavitha started to lean toward her, and then paused, turning back to Michael. “Are you okay with that?”

Michael grinned. “Anytime you want to go kissing hot girls, it’s okay with me.” He hesitated, then added, “Well, maybe not just any hot girl. Not without checking with me first. But this one…” Michael now looked completely bewildered. “Umm … am I allowed to kiss her too? I have no idea what the rules are here.”

Kavitha laughed then, shaking her head and setting her long braid bouncing. Minal found herself wondering what her hair would look like if she set it free. “I don’t know what the rules are either.” Kavitha hesitated. “And—I’m not sure what I think about you kissing her. But it’d be pretty hypocritical not to let you try it, I think. If it’s okay with Minal.”

“Is it okay with Minal?” Michael asked, softly.

Minal wasn’t sure what exactly she had done to deserve such a confusing day—but she didn’t want to stop now. She didn’t know if it was the wild card urging her on, or just the memory of Michael’s strong hands on her body. But she leaned forward as he came up out of his chair, dropping to one knee in front of the couch. Their lips met in a kiss that was first tentative, then sure. Memory blazed a trail and yes, that was how it was, how it used to be. Michael’s breath cinnamon-sweet, his mouth hot and urgent against hers, and it seemed like forever until they finally disengaged.

Michael turned to Kavitha then, a query in his raised eyebrow. She was biting her lip, and for a moment, Minal couldn’t read her. Was that jealousy, anger in her eyes? Was she about to throw Minal out on her ass?

And then Kavitha was against her, pressing her back against the couch, heedless of the injuries to shoulder and face, and Minal probably should tell her to be careful, but if there was any pain remaining, it was lost in the heat of Kavitha’s mouth ravaging her own, Kavitha’s hands, digging into her ass, pulling Minal’s hips up to grind against her own. One knee sliding between Minal’s legs, urging them apart, and Minal was suddenly sure that this wasn’t Kavitha’s first time with a woman. This girl had done this before. And now Michael was sinking to his knees beside the couch, his hand tangling in her hair, pulling her head back, so that as Kavitha started to slide down Minal’s body, her teeth tracing a sharp, wet trail along her neck and collarbone, Michael’s mouth came down onto hers again, and she moaned helplessly in response.

Minal’s last thought, before she sank more deeply into the couch and gave herself up to pleasure, was that she had chosen the perfect sanctuary after all.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 5.

IN THE HOSPICE’S LOBBY Leo Storgman ignored the signs pointing to the cancer ward. He already knew where it was and how to get there, and even if he didn’t, he could’ve just followed his nose. The whole fourth floor had that strange, off-color stink that cancer centers sometimes acquire. Room 419 in particular reeked gently with the smell of cigarettes long-ago smoked, fresh flowers, and antibacterial solution.

The door was ajar.

Leo put his hand on the door and pushed it far enough to admit him.

Propped on the adjustable bed, lying lashed to needles and bags, was Ralph Pleasant. He opened one eye at the sound of Leo’s footsteps, and the soft squeak of the hinge. He said, “Well I’ll be damned.”

“How’s it going, Ralph?”

The older man twisted himself on the bed, arranging himself so he was slightly more upright. He coughed, a guttural sound that sounded like boiling tar. When he’d finished expectorating, he said, “Been better. First time I’ve seen you here in … in a while.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Leo approached the side of the bed, noting the chrysanthemums, the good bedding, and the menu beside his supper tray. He was sorry, about a lot of things. His failure to visit his dying ex-partner was just one more thing on the pile. “But it looks like you’ve got a good setup here.”

“Can’t complain. Even got a pretty nurse for my sponge baths.”

“Right on,” Leo said lamely. “So. Um.”

“Did you bring me a present, kid?”

“Course I brought you a present. What am I, some kind of barbarian?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim glass bottle of Ralph’s favorite fifth—old-fashioned stuff with a black label and a smell that would melt rocks. Leo palmed it to Ralph, who grinned wide and slipped it under his pillow. “Don’t let the nurses take it away.”

He hacked, swallowed, and said, “It won’t last long enough for them to find it.”

“It’d damn well better not.” Leo smiled too. He knew it looked awkward, and it shouldn’t have. He’d spent a decade and a half next to this guy. It hadn’t always been good, but it wasn’t always bad, either. They’d smiled a lot together. Ought to be easy, after all this time. But it wasn’t.

Ramshead turned to nab a chair and paused, looking out the window. He was on Staten Island, a nice long way from Jokertown. Ralph was a nat, after all. He could get good health care anyplace, and the place he’d picked was pretty damn nice.

“You here to check the view?” Ralph asked.

“Just noticing it,” Leo told him, pulling his eyes away from Kill Von Kull and tugging the chair closer to Ralph’s bed. He cleared his throat. “How you been, anyway? They treating you all right in this dump?”

Ralph laughed. It was a horrible sound, old gum from the bottom of somebody’s shoe. “Yeah, it’s a shithole, ain’t it?” he jokingly agreed, both of them knowing that money couldn’t buy much better. “But I don’t have a lot of time left in it, anyway.” Before Leo could muster some kind of polite protest, he also said, “I hear you don’t have much time left either. On the force, I mean.”

Leo took a deep breath, and let it out slow. “Birthday’s in January.”

“Then what?”

“Then … I don’t know yet. You remember my daughter, Mellie?”

Ralph nodded, but coughed. He gestured for a Kleenex box. Ralph handed it to him.

“Well, she’s got this thing—this planned community, down in Florida. First jokers-only retirement neighborhood. She’s trying to con me into buying a house down there.”

“You won’t last six months.”

“Maybe an alligator’ll get me. Or a shark.”

“Naw.” Ralph shook his head. “You’ll die of boredom.”

Leo said, “Yeah.” Then, rather than leave it on that note, he said, “Hey, you remember Wanda Moretti?”

“Hard to forget, that one.”

“She’s coming back around again.”

“What for?” Ralph asked.

“For … for me, I guess. And, you know. Vicki’s been gone for years. Mellie’s down south. Sometimes I get tired of eating alone.” And drinking alone, and sleeping alone.

Leo was pretty sure Ralph knew about the ill-advised one-nighter back in the eighties. But he’d never said anything about it before, and he didn’t start now. “You could do worse. She could do better.”

“Amen.”

Ralph spit into the tissue box and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So how’d Wanda get back in the picture? She’d been gone a while, even when I retired.”

Leo hemmed, then hawed. “It’s a funny thing. There was a fire over at the courthouse, down in the basement where they keep all their old shit. The clerks were going through the mess, cleaning it up, and found her initials on some old hearing transcripts—and my name was on ’em too. They were from the arraignment hearing for that guy we picked up on the Rathole case. You remember that, don’t you? That diner shoot-up, back at the end of ’78. Right before Christmas.”

“Sure. I remember the Rathole.”

“Dr. Pretorius was going to give the case another look, doing that justice project stuff with the law kids. But the fire happened first, and Wanda thought it was pretty convenient. She thinks … and Pretorius thinks too … that the kid we nabbed didn’t get a fair shake. Neither one of them thinks he did it.”

Ralph scowled deeply. “Pretorius never thought anybody ever did anything.”

“I know. But I looked at it some more, and maybe, now.” He shrugged. “I’m not as sure as I used to be.”

“You’re only second-guessing because of your new girlfriend. Maybe you should go down to Florida after all, if you’re going to let some woman get in the way of your judgment—”

Leo cut him off. “Okay, but let me ask you: why wouldn’t you look into it? When that kid got killed, why’d you make such a stink about leaving it alone and calling it a wash?”

“The kid was good for it,” Ralph insisted.

A scene flashed through Leo’s mind: a body, covered in rust-colored hair and blood the shade of port and strawberry syrup. Its bones so broken that one arm appeared to lack them altogether, and it hung in a coil from his socket. A rib cage pounded flat on the right side, as if an enormous foot had stamped it like a bug. He recalled the smell of the alley, piss and wet newspaper, and rotting crates and yesterday’s garbage. He remembered the colored lights, filtered kaleidoscope-style through the windows at the old church building.

Leo said, “You could’ve pointed him out.”

“To who?” Ralph asked, squeezing the corner of the tissue box until it began to crumple in his hand.

“I don’t know. Mob boys, maybe. They wouldn’t have given a shit about the people in the diner, but they were mad about Hash’s stash—Deedle definitely took the money and drugs.”

“I don’t like what you’re getting at.”

“Oh, come on,” Leo said, sitting back and leaning his elbows on the armrests. “Getting someone else to hunt him down and wipe him out, even I could see—even back then—it looked easier than booking him.” He could’ve said, “And it’s not like you never did that before,” but he didn’t. They both knew about Ralph’s inherent laziness, just like they both knew about Leo’s long-ago infidelity. But between old partners some things stay off the table, for old times’ sake.

Ralph said, “Fuck you.” The words slurred through the black phlegm that filled his chest, and came out with a spit. But it was not a protest, and it wasn’t even personal. He just didn’t want to talk about it.

Leo tried to make him anyway. “Is that all you got? It doesn’t even matter anymore, no one could tie you to it. No one’s going to yank you out of your cushy deathbed.” Something about the room bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Not right then.

“Like you said, it doesn’t matter now. Everybody’s dead.”

“Except for you,” Leo pointed out.

“Except for me, and it’s not like I shot anybody. It’s not like I killed a diner full of nobodies for cash and blow.”

“I didn’t say you did. I’m just saying, I think you fingered Deedle—and you did it knowing that someone would off him sooner rather than later.”

“Well ain’t you something,” Ralph said. The gummy muck in his chest fought the words. He paused to wheeze and spit. His arm dragged an IV line over to a fresh box of tissues, and he coughed up more goop before speaking again. “Everybody knew he was going down for it, and I might’ve mentioned it here or there. You can’t prove it though, not after all this time.”

“I’m not trying to prove it,” Leo said. “I’m just trying to sort it out for myself. I want to know who really shot up the Rathole, and you’re the man who got our suspect killed, when he might’ve only been some opportunistic jackass passing by. Hell, Ralph. The kid could’ve been a witness. He might’ve told us something.”

Ralph’s bloodshot eyes brimmed with tarnished contempt. “He didn’t tell anybody shit.”

“Maybe he didn’t know shit. But you know something, Ralph.”

Ralph sneered, ugly and imperious. He settled back against his pillows. “I know a lot of things. None of ’em are any good to you. And none of ’em matter, not anymore.”

“Ralph,” Leo used his name again. He tried not to make it sound too much like begging. “What happened at the Rathole?”

“Damned if I know that,” he answered. “Damned if anybody left alive knows anymore. All right, I know why that joker kid got done in—you can have that one, on the house. But the rest of it…” His gaze wandered from his old partner, to his flowers, and back again. He went on. “There isn’t any ‘rest of it.’ Not that matters to anyone but me, and I’ll be dead before New Year’s.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Who’s being an asshole? I’m just looking out for Number One. Now get out of here. Let an old man die in peace. And,” he added, just when it sounded like he’d said his last, “congratulations on your retirement. I hope they give you a goddamn watch or something.”

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

Hope We Die Before We Get Old

by Stephen Leigh

Part 1.

ON WILD CARD DAY, the stinking, twisted pustule that was Jokertown burst open and spilled its gruesome contents on the street for display.

Just find the snake kid … What’d the Cry call him last issue? Black Tongue? Find him. That’s why you’re here. Remember what Snap told you. Said that the snake kid was in with Joe Twitch, that he sent Grady to the hospital after he attacked her.

[John?] a voice interrupted his thoughts. [Are you okay?]

On Wild Card Day, even Oddity wasn’t odd. They mixed in with the throngs on the streets, and no one stared at the hulking, tall figure in their black, cowled cloak, their face obscured by the wire mesh of a fencing mask. No one remarked on the mottled, piebald, and mismatched nature of the arms and hands that emerged from the sleeves, no one commented about the strange, furtive movements under the clothing, as if something were writhing and changing underneath. No one glanced about as the creature moaned and clutched itself suddenly, as if someone had just shoved a knife into its side.

Oddity: three bodies and three minds merged horribly into one grotesque. Patty Roberts, John Sheak, and Evan Crozier, who had once been lovers in what they’d called an expanded marriage, and whom the wild card had cruelly bound together for life.

They were on Chrystie Street at the north end of Roosevelt Park. Most of the people moving by and past them were heading to the park. Most of them were jokers as well, young ones. John didn’t remember their names, though Patty or Evan might. John didn’t remember names well at all anymore. There: the woman with the peacock feathers for hair and fine down covering her skin, who was she? Or the kid with the bright red and orange carapace, scuttling down the sidewalk on crablike claws; or that one oozing gelatinous streams from a quartet of pores around his neck, his clothing soaked with the snotlike substance? There were hundreds on the streets, all of them wearing their deformities for the world to see.

In the days when Oddity had first walked these streets, it had been fashionable to wear masks. Now, few did that. It was not a change John preferred.

The crowds were spilling over onto Chrystie—both Chrystie and Forsyth had been closed between Delancey and East Houston, due to the audience expected for the Joker Plague concert in the park. Oddity had passed Tinkerbill and Francis Xavier Black, two of the Fort Freak beat cops, lounging at the traffic barricade at Delancey. Chen had nodded as Oddity passed, as if they shared a secret, but John had no idea what. He’d ignored the gesture.

Find the snake kid. Go to … Go to … John couldn’t remember the street. How could he have forgotten it already? Another spasm of pain rippled through their abdomen, like a fist trying to beat its way out of their skin.

“Fuck,” Oddity said. The body doubled over briefly. Somebody bumped into them from behind and stumbled away with a muttered apology. “Jesus bloody Christ.”

[John,] Evan said, [do you want me to take over? Patty can come up to Sub.] Evan was Sub-Dominant at the moment, as Patty rested at Passive far below, where the eternal agony of Oddity’s three merged bodies was only a faint prickling. It was John, in control of Oddity’s body, who bore the brunt of the pain, though Evan could feel it as well.

[No, damn it! I got it. Just give me a fucking second, would you?] The alley off Rivington … Yes, they’d talked to Ears, one of the hundred informants Oddity had in J-Town. Ears, named for the huge, batlike flaps of flesh on either side of his face, heard everything for blocks around him, and retained it all—if you could manage to coax it from his addled brain. I hear the snake’s living in an apartment in the alley of Rivington. Talk to Skeleton Key; he rented the kid the room.… The names floated through his consciousness again and John reached for them, saying them over and over again in his head, trying not to repeat them so loudly that Evan or Patty could hear him and notice his forgetfulness. The alley off Rivington …

[… please let’s not fight among ourselves …] Patty whispered, down in Passive. [… we only have each other only each other remember don’t argue please …]

John gave a throaty snarl that might have been a response or might have been simple pain. Oddity straightened and glanced around, disoriented momentarily. Weren’t we on Bowery? Weren’t we going to see Hart— No.… What are you thinking? No, he’s long dead.… John shrugged away the errant memory; they plagued him more and more often, like dead autumn leaves blowing eternally in his face. He looked around at the crowds, half expecting to see Peanut or Gimli, Chrysalis or Tachyon, all those people he remembered so well while the people around them now seemed more wisps and ghosts. Reality was increasingly less real than the past.

Have to find … He couldn’t remember who they were supposed to find, only that it was important and there was a righteous anger involved. He roared to the night sky, and this time the jokers passing him did look. “That’s Oddity,” he heard one of them—a young woman whose face was studded with wriggling cilia—say to her companion, who had no legs at all, only a slug’s tail emerging from under her dress, leaving a trail of slime on the sidewalk. “Poor thing…”

As Oddity paused, spotlights flared in the park, tossing the shadows of trees over the street and pinning the stage erected on the tennis courts in their glare. The crowd packed onto the grass outside the courts roared, and a roll of drums echoed from the buildings. “Hey, fellow freaks! You ready for a show?” someone roared, the voice heavily amplified. The spotlights followed a six-armed, muscular joker striding into the center of the stage. He beat on his chest and a cascade of thunderous drums followed. Three more jokers followed him onto the stage as the crowd screamed in response: a guitar shrilled, a bass thumped, and a synthesizer hissed and shrilled. The band kicked into a song, a deep and powerful voice singing with them.

Gasping, slack-jawed, spittle-dripping:

Rise, Fenris.

Padding the spine of man’s serpent,

Urban Midgard encircled.

In the reflected light from the stage, Oddity could see a sea of heads bobbing in time to the music as the crowd rushed to barriers set in front of the stage. Jokers—masked and unmasked—were moving across Chrystie, trying to push into the crush. They could smell the scent of pot, heavy in the breeze. [That’s not fucking music. That’s just shit.] John nearly said it aloud. [Just goddamn noise. No one makes good music anymore.]

Thinking of music, John remembered other nights, and the world seemed to shift around him. For a moment, he saw himself as he once had been, alone, sitting on the grass of Central Park with Patty between him and Evan, listening to Simon and Garfunkel playing while the three of them passed a joint back and forth. But the memory slid away in the cacophony dinning in his ear, and he cowered back into the shadows, afraid that one of the cops would see them—another memory, another time, when the police were after them—something about having killed a kid they said was a “jumper.” [Bastards. They don’t realize we’re just trying to protect our own.]

[John?]

The present snapped back with the roar of the ending chords of Joker Plague’s song, and he realized they’d been standing there too long. Have to find the snake kid. The alley off Rivington … The snake kid was in with Joe Twitch …

Oddity snarled and moaned as they moved southward down Chrystie, turning right at Rivington. Joker Plague was only a low rumble here, and there were fewer people on the street. Oddity glanced around at the grimy, small shops and the equally dingy apartments over them. They turned into the alleyway between a sandwich shop and a convenience store. A single bare lightbulb over a doorway halfway down the narrow lane was the only illumination. Rats glanced up from rummaging among the trash cans and slunk away. Something had died not far away; they could smell it through the fencing mask’s screen.

What was it Snap said about the snake kid? He warned us about something … I can’t remember …

Oddity stood there, frozen. [John? You want me to take us?] Evan asked again.

“No!” John shouted the word, not caring that he spoke aloud, the word tearing at Oddity’s throat and sounding disconcertingly like Patty’s voice. As the call echoed, audible even over the bass grumble of Joker Plague a few blocks away, Oddity saw movement at one of the windows farther down the alley: a flick of a curtain and a moment’s light. John thought he saw a young African-American face.

He forced Oddity to stand stock-still in his black cloak, his head angled down so that the mesh of the fencing mask didn’t catch the light of the bulb. From under mismatched eyebrows, he watched the face—the youth didn’t show any alarm, and a moment later, the curtain slid back over the window.

Oddity moved to the door. A hand—partially Evan’s, partially John’s own—grasped the knob and turned. Locked. He knocked, and someone opened the door from inside. “You’re late,” a voice said. “Told me you’d be here an hour ago.” The voice came from a thick-framed figure. Hands moved in the dim light of a small office: the fingers were silvered, each of them ending in a knobby, intricate protrusion like door keys from the 1920s.

“Sorry,” John said. “Ears said … Snap…” Oddity’s head shook. “Snake kid,” John grated out.

“Yeah, I know who you mean. Up on the second floor. You ain’t gonna do anything physical, are you? I mean, I gotta keep this place up, y’know.”

The fencing mask shook, a quick back-and-forth negative.

“Okay,” Skeleton Key answered. “Then come on, I’ll open his door for you.…”

They followed the joker through a back door of the office, down a hallway, and up a flight of stairs to another, equally dimly lit hall. John’s thoughts were as murky as the atmosphere of the apartment building. Why were they here? Was this another one of the drug labs of the Demon Princes, another intervention into the ongoing gang war between the Princes and the Werewolves? Snap had sent tips about them often enough recently.

There was so much to do, so much that had to be done to keep Jokertown safe.

“The snake kid … Black Tongue…”

“What?” Skeleton Key asked.

John wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud. He scowled, grinding their mismatched teeth together. “Nothing,” he answered. “Where’s the kid?”

“Just down here…” Skeleton Key stopped in front of a battered, warped door with scratched, peeling paint. He stuck a finger into the keyhole and rotated his wrist. There was the snick of a lock opening. “Now remember, I don’t want…”

John wasn’t listening. He turned the doorknob, felt it catch on a chain. He put their massive shoulder to the door and pushed; the wood gave around the screw of the chain holder as Skeleton Key gave a “Hey!” in protest. Oddity saw a flash of red, yellow, and black scaled rings in the light of a lamp inside. Oddity’s hands pushed the door wide open; hinges shrieked in protest.

“You!!” he yelled. “Snake kid!” John’s head was filled with a red rage. He ignored Evan and Patty’s protests. [John, we have to be careful. Snap said the kid’s tongue is poisonous; that’s why Grady’s in the hospital.…]

Oddity pushed through the remnants of the door. Something hit them hard in the chest, and they felt a stab of pain, though the blow wasn’t hard enough to stagger him. Oddity was already reaching for the movement even as the blow came: the snake kid’s tongue. John had hold of it just below the fist-sized protrusion at the end; he heard a muffled, strangled scream from the kid. Something green, foul, and wet splashed over their multitoned hand. John yanked hard on the tongue; the snake’s tail lashed at him, sending Oddity reeling into the wall hard enough that they broke through into the next apartment. Someone screamed; John saw a pale white form fleeing on what looked a deer’s legs. “Damn it, I didn’t do anything…” the snake kid shouted, but John only heard the sound, not the words. A bloody rage filled John, and he wasn’t certain who they were fighting. There was only the fury. Oddity shouted as he staggered back into the apartment.

The snake kid was already fleeing. John saw the tail slithering out from the door, and he pursued the joker, pushing past Skeleton Key. The kid was halfway down the hallway, heading for the stairs. Oddity followed: down one flight, and down the next into the basement of the building. As they entered the basement, John tore a cast-iron pipe from the wall as a weapon. Water sprayed everywhere.

[John—that’s the water line! What the hell are you doing?]

John could feel Evan trying to wrest control of Oddity from him, and that only made him angrier. Oddity waded into the basement, glimpsing the snake at the rear near the octopus arms of an ancient furnace. The tongue lashed at him again; he swung the pipe like a bat, striking the lump at the end and causing the kid to scream. The snake’s tail lashed out, knocking them from their feet. Oddity flailed at the tail with the pipe, heard the joker scream again as he connected. He saw ebony skin, and he dropped the pipe to grab the kid’s torso, tossing him bodily backward. A plasterboard wall cracked and broke. The water soaked their heavy cloak, already a few inches deep and rising.

[John, we have to get the hell out of there! John!]

The kid stared at Oddity: his tongue was hanging from his mouth like a piece of frayed rope, dripping blood. Faintly, John heard sirens over the subdued din of Joker Plague. The snake body below the torso writhed, and the kid dove for a casement window, crashing through. Oddity pursued, tearing through the frame with a shout, but it was too small for Oddity’s massive body. He turned them back to the stairs, slogging through the water and up to the ground floor and outside.

He saw the snake at about the same time that the tongue hit them square on the fencing mask, crumpling the steel mesh and staggering them again. Venom bit at their disfigured flesh.

The impact was enough that Evan was able to wrest the disoriented and confused John from Dominant, taking control of Oddity, who slowly pushed up from the ground, assessing their body and glancing around. The boy was gone. As Oddity stood, Evan could see the pulsing lights from a police cruiser at the end of the alley. He turned Oddity and limped away down the alley, moaning now not only from the eternal torment of their shifting form, but from the pains of their newly bloodied body.

♠

Evan saw the scowl of Dr. Finn’s face as he bandaged Oddity’s uncloaked body in the Jokertown Clinic. Evan imagined he saw disgust there. He couldn’t blame Finn; it’s what all of them felt when they looked at themselves in a mirror.

“I’ve stitched up the worst of the cuts, and put ointment on the scrapes,” Finn said, “and this”—he held up a syringe—“is antivenom, since you say the Black Tongue’s poison splashed all over your face and body.” The centaur’s tail flicked as he spoke: an angry back-and-forth, and he jabbed the needle into Oddity’s arm. Pulling it back out, he tossed the syringe into an orange-colored box on the wall. “Not that any of my needlework will stay, with the way your body changes, but it’s the best I can do.” He took a long breath, exhaling loudly through his nose.

“I’m more worried about the way John’s been behaving than any of this,” Evan told Finn. “He’s forgetful, he’s getting more aggressive and stubborn. His personality’s changing, Doc, I swear it is.”

Finn scowled again. “Tell me more,” he said.

Evan related everything he and Patty had noticed in the past few months with John’s behavior, with Finn nodding and frowning as he spoke. Down below, he could hear John in Passive. [… shut the fuck up you asshole it’s none of his business none of this …] “I swear, Doc, sometimes I don’t think he knows what year it is. He talks about Hartmann or other people who have been dead for years like they’re still there.”

Finn’s hooves clicked on the linoleum. He made a note on the chart he was holding. “I can’t make a true diagnosis without more information and tests.”

“But?”

Finn took a long breath. “But the symptoms you’re describing sound like early onset Alzheimer’s, and from what you’re telling me, it’s progressing fast.”

[… fuck him fuck him he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about …] Evan heard John muttering.

Patty, in Sub-Dominant, almost seemed to sob. [Evan, if that’s true …] She didn’t say the rest. She didn’t have to. They both could feel it. The truth was that they’d both suspected it for a while now; they simply hadn’t dared to vocalize it or even think it.

The examination table was cold under their rear. Evan longed to put on their clothes again, to cover their twisted form with the cloak and fencing mask. “What can we do?” Evan asked Finn.

The lift of Finn’s shoulder was visible under the lab coat. “I can give you information to read. There are drug treatments for behavioral and psychiatrical issues: antidepressants like Prozac, or Ativan for anxiety and disruptive behavior, antipsychotics like Abilify…” The shrug came again. The tail flicked. “But I’m hesitant to prescribe anything. Given your situation, the drugs might only affect the dominant personality, or all of you equally. I don’t see a way to treat John alone.” Again, there was a long hesitation. Evan could hear John still muttering and cursing down in Passive. [… full of shit the bastard I’m fucking fine screw him …]

“Unless?” Evan prompted. He closed their eyes and grimaced as something—an elbow, a leg, a section of someone’s skull?—thrust up from their abdomen, pushing against the piebald skin and submerging itself again. The kid’s tongue seemed to have cracked ribs. He fisted the hand on their lap against the pain: the hand was mostly his, but the last three fingers were Patty’s, and that was John’s thumb.

“We could try the trump virus,” Finn said. “It’s been improved—there’s a forty percent cure rate now.”

[… no fucking no don’t let him do that to us …]

“And it kills, what, one in five?” Evan said. “And the rest it doesn’t touch at all. That’s our choice?”

[Evan, we should think about it,] Patty whispered. [Maybe that’s the best way.]

Finn shrugged. “Honestly, the odds might be worse than that,” Finn admitted. “You’re three people in one body. If I inject the trump into Oddity…” He lifted his hands; let them fall again. “Well, I don’t know what the trump would do with you. I don’t know if it would kill all three, or maybe spare one of you, or two, or all. And what happens if it just cures one of you? There’s no way to—”

Finn’s head jerked around as loud voices came from beyond the curtains of their examination room. “They’re in here? Where?”

The curtain was yanked aside. Two of the Fort Freak cops were standing there, with Troll, chief of clinic security, just behind them: Tinkerbill and Franny, who’d been at the traffic barricade earlier. “Jesus!” Tinkerbill said as he stared at Oddity’s naked body. Evan knew what he was seeing: the wide, distorted torso with its mixture of three skin tones, with portions of each of their bodies visible and slowly moving across it, the face with its mismatched features, the way his arms and legs were of varying lengths. At least there was a towel over their lap; their genitalia was more often than not confusing. When Evan stared at the cop, Tinkerbill just glared back. Black simply appeared amused, giving them a wide, toothy grin without saying anything, letting the larger, older cop take the lead.

“Nice bandaging job, Doc,” Tinkerbill said. “Very impressive.” Chen looked like a poster cop; Evan noted the way the uniform pants were creased, the fact that the shirt was buttoned all the way up over the Kevlar vest, the muscular body that the uniform couldn’t hide, the regulation hat, but the voice … His voice was high-pitched and thin: a voice that could cut glass.

“What the hell are you doing here, officers?” Finn demanded. “The two of you are interfering with medical treatment.”

“Oddity here looks awful banged up,” Tinkerbill commented. Six and a half feet tall, he was nearly as intimidating a presence as Troll.

“I slipped and fell down,” Evan said.

Both officers laughed at that. “Yeah, and you did a hell of a lot of damage to the apartment building at the same time,” Tinkerbill said. “They’re still pumping water out of the basement, and Skeleton Key’s pressing charges over the damage to doors and apartments. Not to mention that we already have Angel Grady here at the clinic because of the guy you were tangling with … and thanks to you, we’ve lost him. You’ve been warned about vigilantism, Oddity. Way too many times. All you’re doing is making it harder for us to do our job. Get dressed—we’re taking you to the station. You’re under arrest. You have the right—”

“I haven’t released him,” Dr. Finn interjected. Tinkerbill just looked at him; Black grinned again. “I mean it,” Finn told the two. One of his hooves stamped against the tile floor. “You can wait outside. Troll, make sure they don’t bother us. I need a few more minutes with my patient, then you can have him.”

“Sure,” Tinkerbill said in his falsetto voice. “We’ll be right outside the curtain.” He nodded to his partner, and they both stepped back. Black swept the curtain around them again as Finn shook his head. “I want you to know that I didn’t call for them,” the centaur said.

“S’okay, Doc,” Evan said. “We’ll phone Pretorius when we get to the station. It’s nothing particularly new.”

[… damned cops can’t trust cops except maybe Snap and a few others assholes not like it used to be not like it should be …]

“Evan, I want you and Patty to think about what I said.” Finn glanced significantly at the curtain. “You need to be very careful. If … if it’s what we think it is, he’s only going to get worse and more erratic.”

“I know,” Evan answered. “And we will.” He moaned as something shifted inside, sending waves of pain down his side. One of the cuts that Finn had stitched gaped and broke open again. Blood streamed sluggishly toward their—Patty’s—hip. They both looked at it. “Can you hand me our clothes, Doc?” Evan asked. “I suppose I should get dressed.…”

♦

The trip in the squad car to Fort Freak was like a carnival ride. There were fireworks being set off right and left from the rooftops and down the dark alleyways. The streets were crowded with revelers, surging across the roads so that Franny Black, driving the car, had to stop frequently with a curse. An impromptu parade was marching along Canal Street, hundreds of jokers walking or limping, crawling and flying, slithering and lurching down the middle of the street. Atop a float that was a cardboard and aluminum foil replica of a Takisian ship, a quartet of jokers was tossing plastic DNA strands as if they were Mardi Gras beads, the onlookers cheering. Oddity saw a woman lift her blouse to the neck as the float approached, showing six individual breasts in two lines down her chest like the teats of a dog; the float riders showered her with colorful DNA strands.

Just down the street from the station, a spiderlike joker was running wildly back and forth across the street between the parked cars, while a dozen other jokers clapped and applauded. As their cruiser approached, they saw—too late—that nearly translucent thin ropes sagged across the blacktop where the joker had been running. The cruiser plowed into the ropes. They clung stickily, but when they broke, green fire sizzled and sparked and hissed, sending off fierce, blinding bursts that flew into the air and dripped onto the pavement as the jokers laughed and applauded, then fled between the nearest buildings.

“Great,” Black said. Where the strands had touched the car, waxy lines remained behind. “Now the captain’s going to make us clean the damn car.”

Given that it was Wild Card Day, the station was even busier and more chaotic than usual: uniformed cops, both joker and nat, hauled in a steady flow of people—also both joker and nat, some (usually the nats trying to “pass”) with masks around their faces—for public intoxication or exposure, for selling drugs, for prostitution, for assault. The lobby of the station looked as if a roving street party had invaded it.

Sergeant Vivian Choy had the desk; she glanced up wearily at Tinkerbill, Franny, and the looming, massive form of Oddity. Behind her, the station was a loud cacophony with frenetic movement: cops on the phones, cops talking with one another, cops with suspects. “Room two’s open. Stash them in there, then come see me.”

Oddity shuffled along behind the two officers, and took a seat at the bare table in the center of the room. The metal chair with its frayed seat groaned metallically as they sat. Evan brought their hands from behind their back as Oddity sat: the links of the Black’s cuffs had been pulled apart. “Sorry,” he said to them. “Cheap metal.”

Tinkerbill sniffed; Franny grimaced and took the remnants of the broken cuffs from their wrists. “Stay put,” he said. “They’ll be in to talk to you soon.”

“And my lawyer?” Evan asked. “Since you’ve arrested me, I get my call, right? If you’ve changed your mind, then I have places to be.”

“Yeah, so do we. I’ll have someone bring in a phone. You stay here, or we’ll have Squinch put you in lockup. Got it?”

Evan lifted their shoulders in showy nonchalance. “I’m thirsty too,” he said.

“Sure, we’ll have the waiters bring in our dinner menu with the phone,” Tinkerbill answered. “C’mon, Franny, we’ve wasted enough time with them already.”

The door slammed and locked behind them. Oddity stared at the mirror on the opposite wall, wondering if there was anyone there watching. Evan could hear John muttering at the edge of his consciousness. [Patty?]

[I’m okay Evan. Can you stay in Dominant? I’ll hold John down—he really wants Oddity back and we can’t risk it right now.]

[I’ve got us.]

[What are we going to do, Evan?]

[I don’t know. I really don’t know.]

One of the clerks, a too-thin kid with blue skin, knocked and brought in a cell phone. “Sarge says to make your call and give me the phone back,” he said. Evan dialed Pretorius’s pager—they all knew the number by heart—and handed back the phone. Evan didn’t know how long they sat there after that. He could hear the faint roar of activity outside the door, an occasional snippet of voice. The cheap fluorescent lights flickered. He let Oddity rest, though the body released the intermittent, involuntary moan as the body shifted and changed. He watched their hands go from being mostly Patty to a fair amount of John, to Evan’s mocha skin coloring, the joints, bones, muscles, and ligaments sliding painfully past one another underneath the flesh.

The door opened and Leo Storgman—Ramshead—walked in, a forefinger scratching at the ram’s horns atop his skull, a thick file in his other hand. He tossed it on the table; Evan wondered if that was a file on Oddity as he saw the detective glance at their hands. “Evan?” Storgman asked.

“Good guess, Leo,” Oddity answered. “Yeah. Patty’s Sub at the moment.”

Ramshead nodded and took the chair opposite them. “John had the body when you went after the Black Tongue kid?”

“What’s this about a Black Tongue? Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Evan said.

“Right,” Leo said. He sounded tired, and he scratched again at the base of the ram’s horns. “You were out listening to the Joker Plague concert and hoping to score some backstage passes.” His finger came off the horns and tapped the folder. “Look, I don’t give a flying fuck about the Black Tongue, Evan. I’ve been thinking about something else. Something a lot older.”

“Like what?”

“Like who murdered Deedle.”

“That’s ancient history, Leo. We still miss the diner, though, and poor Lizzie. Deedle … he got what he deserved.”

“He claimed all along he didn’t do it, and there was never a trial.”

“Because he chewed off his own damn thumb and ran. Just like any innocent person would do.”

Leo nodded. “Uh-huh. Still, not many people could have done what was done to Deedle.”

“Only about a couple dozen I can think of, just off the top of my head,” Evan answered. “The wild card virus loves superstrength. It’s almost as common as jokers with animal parts.”

A trace of a smile slid across Ramshead’s mouth. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The door opened then, and Dr. Pretorius swept in, looking elegant and dressed as if he’d been out to a society affair, his white beard perfectly trimmed, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail, his genteel face tanned. His lithe movements gave no indication that his right leg was an artificial limb below the knee.

“That’s enough talking,” he said to Oddity, then turned to Leo. “My client is done here,” he informed Leo. “I’ve talked to the assistant D.A.; it seems she isn’t inclined to waste the city’s money and time yet again with the Oddity, especially with the Black Tongue being the one you people actually wanted. Oddity saw the kid and tried to apprehend him long enough to call the station—Oddity was only trying to be good citizens. A shame about the damage, but that was the Black Tongue’s fault. My clients were just defending themselves. So unless you’re planning to charge them with something else…” He lifted one eyebrow.

Leo shook his head. “Not at the moment.”

“Good. Then we’re out of here. Oddity, please.…” Pretorius gestured to the door with a sweeping hand. Evan pushed Oddity’s hands against the table and rose, the table bending slightly under their weight. They walked to the door, held open by Pretorius.

“Oddity. Evan,” Ramshead called out as they reached the door. Evan turned to see the detective tap the file folder in front of him. “I’m not finished with this yet.”

Evan shook their head. The grid of the fencing mask slid over Leo’s figure. “That was finished a long time ago,” Evan said. He turned again, and Pretorius shut the door behind them.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 6.

“ANOTHER MORBID LUNCH DATE,” Wanda observed. The sign above her head read, SUPERGYROS. The restaurant was half empty, but it was past lunch and not yet supper. “How long has it been this Greek place?”

“About ten years. But it used to be the Rathole.” If Leo closed his eyes he could almost see it, that night in 1978—or so early in the morning that the distinction didn’t matter any. Small and rectangular, the whole diner had been barely the size of a boxcar and only half as appealing. Sloughing paint, chipped steps, vinyl seats scored with splits and tears from too many heavy asses on too many nights. The stools up at the bar would spin if you kicked them; one had lacked its cushioned round head. Neon signs once advertised Coca-Cola and some brand of chili Leo couldn’t remember … and those signs had only been half lit, half burned out or busted.

All the old details straggled into focus.

He rubbed at his eyes, and his knuckles were cold. Everything was cold, same as it had been that night, when the filthy little dive was splattered with blood from floor to ceiling. But today, the sky was pale and sterile and streaked with gray like dirty gauze.

Wanda said, “Whatever happened here—back then—”

The detective recalled stepping over Lizzie Wallace, and seeing the blood pooled around her mouth on the nasty tile floor. He remembered the window that’d been taken out by a shotgun blast, and the tinkle of shattered glass still dropping, one dull icicle at a time, from the frame. Like it was yesterday, he saw Don Reynolds lying half in the window and half out of it, his throat cut by the glass. That wasn’t what killed him—it just added insult to injury. And there, in the doorway that separated the dining area from the kitchen, Hash Crowder had been splayed. His body propped the door open and let the kitchen smoke billow into the rest of the establishment. The whole place smelled like burned burgers, gunpowder, and blood.

“It was a mess.” It was all he could think to say.

She told him, “It’s still a mess. Are you going to clean it up?”

“I’m trying,” he insisted. “But the leads are stale, and they aren’t getting me anywhere.” He kicked at a small chunk of concrete and tried to look away, to look at Wanda, but he couldn’t. “Everybody’s dead. And the people who aren’t don’t remember anything.”

“Who have you talked to?” she asked.

He sighed. “I found Stella Nichols’s sister, buried upstate. Stella’s daughter was just a first-grader when her mother died. The guy she’d reported, her stalker or whatever, his name was Fred Winney. She filed a restraining order a few weeks before she died. But he fell off the map fifteen years ago. I’m still asking around, still trying to find some trace of him. And I’m not meeting a whole lot of luck.”

“That’s a start.”

He continued. “Joel Arnold wasn’t long away from retirement himself. He was a widower, and he lived alone—no kids. He’d been working at the precinct a long time, and a lot of cops trusted him. He could’ve seen a lot of stuff he shouldn’t have, but I’ll be damned if I can tie any of it to what happened here. I found his supervisor in an old folks’ home. Had nothing but good things to say about him.

“Then I moved on to Lizzie Wallace, the counter girl. As far as I can tell, everybody everywhere loved her. No one wants to talk about her asshole boyfriend, though. I’m still working that angle.

“Poor Don, the Drip—when his card turned, his wife left him and took their daughter too.” He shook his head. “He ended up on the streets, got picked up for a bunch of petty stuff. And they think he was driving that Mercedes. The whole thing,”—he stuffed his hands into his pockets, even though they weren’t cold—“it’s impossible. The Rathole could’ve been a robbery like everybody thought. Or maybe it wasn’t—maybe it was a hit that went wrong. Any one of them could be the key, I can’t find anything that makes any of the victims look like a specific target, except maybe Hash. He’s the one I keep coming back to—he was definitely mixed up with real trouble. Could’ve been a rival dealer wanted to shut him down, or it could’ve been the mob. But if that’s the way it went down, why wouldn’t the mob have taken its stash back? Doesn’t make any sense for them to have left it behind for Deedle to snatch.”

He wiped his fingers on the end of his coat and then rubbed at his eyes, and adjusted his hat. Thirty years after the first murder of his career, he stared at SUPERGYROS as hard as he could, and strained to recall anything else.

But the smoke of that night colored everything; it smeared against the glass and left a greasy film on every surface. He remembered the feel of broken glass crunching beneath his shoes as he tried to find someplace to stand that wouldn’t be in the way, and wouldn’t compromise the scene. He’d looked out through the shattered window and he’d seen a crowd gathering, pushed back and strapped onto the sidewalk by the crime scene tape someone was just then getting around to unfurling. The faces had lined up behind it, curious and concerned, interested and disgusted.

And one face, standing out from the rest. Its tentacles billowing in yesteryear’s brisk, frigid air. “Squid was here,” Leo said suddenly.

“What?”

“He was in the crowd. I talked to him. Huh. I’ll have to ask him about it later. But for now,” he said, slipping an arm around Wanda’s waist, “I’ve got to call it a lunch, and get back to the precinct before they miss me. See you later?”

“Later,” she said, and she leaned in to kiss him.

Back at Fort Freak, Michael was at his desk, alternately chewing on a pen and tapping it against a photo of his daughter, who was smiling and chewing on something else. When Leo dropped himself back into his seat and shuddered, his partner looked up with a soft frown and asked, “How was lunch?”

“It was great. Why?”

The younger man shrugged and said, “You look … pensive. And not in a happy way.”

Leo levered himself out of his jacket and let it fall over the seat’s back, pinned by his shoulders and spine. He rubbed his hands together. “Just the usual. Look at all this shit,” he said, gesturing at the paperwork rising in small heaps across his workspace.

Michael made a point of looking back down at his own tidier desk. “But that’s not what’s bugging you, is it? Not really. Where’d you go for lunch?”

“Out,” he said gruffly.

“Didn’t run by Supergyros, did you? Isn’t that what the Rathole is, these days?”

“Stuff it, kid.” Leo reached for the most pressing folder and opened it, then smacked it shut again with a puff. “Actually, maybe you can help.”

“Help?” Michael looked up again. “What do you need?”

Leo appreciated how he didn’t say no outright, even though he probably should have. He said, “So you’re not an idiot, and you know I’m fiddling around with that old case.”

“Thanks. And yes, I know.”

“Plenty about it bugs me,” he went on. “But right now I’m trying to sort out if any of the victims might’ve been a target zero, you know what I mean? Maybe it wasn’t a robbery that went bad, but a personal gripe that got out of hand.”

“All right,” Michael said, and he pulled out a notepad from his top drawer. He clicked at the pen that had only moments ago been in his mouth. “Hit me.”

“The Mercedes. The Drip was driving it, they found his shelter card wedged in the driver’s seat cushions. We’ve been assuming he stole it, but from who? You think you can look into that for me?”

“Shouldn’t be too much trouble. Just a little file-surfing ought to turn it up. What’s your next move?”

“I’m going to scare up a name for the counter girl’s asshole boyfriend. Either no one knew in ’78, or no one was talking. And maybe, while you’re at it,” he amended his request, “could you dredge up the old ballistics? We know Hash squeezed off a few shots before he went down. I want to know who he hit. Maybe we can chase that. Maybe someone ended up in an ER peppered with shot. I should check that too,” he mumbled, jotting it on the corner of whatever was closest.

Captain Mendelberg chose this moment to swan past his desk, her ruffly little fish-fin ears flapping against an updo that kept her hair off her collar. Wispy ears or no, they could hear like hell—and the captain didn’t look happy. “Detective,” she said unhappily, and without slowing down. “A word with you?” She continued swanning, right into her office.

Leo lifted his eyebrows, then dropped them again. Michael looked worried, but said, “Good luck.”

“I’ll need it,” Leo muttered as he rose from his chair and followed in the captain’s wake.

Inside her office with the door shut, she didn’t quite yell at him. Instead, she stood behind her own desk and looked one part annoyed, one part exhausted, and completely short-tempered. “It’s the Rathole again, isn’t it?”

“What?” A careful answer that admitted nothing.

“Don’t pull that shit with me, I know what you’ve been up to. The case is thirty years old, Leo—what the hell do you think you’re going to prove?”

“I’m not trying to—”

“Look, I don’t give a good goddamn what you do in your spare time. I don’t care if you plant roses, or take up dancing, or build stupid little boats in bottles—and I don’t care if you peek into old cases on your own time. But you’re burning office hours on it, and that’s where I draw the line. I sure as hell draw the line before you drag other people into it. We’re up to our asses in right-now, happened-today, extremely pressing crimes that we actually have half a hope of solving! Look out the fucking window—we’ve got a gang war we can hardly dent, a veritable tidal wave of phony DVDs all over the street, a bunch of weird-ass burglaries that nobody has a hint about … never mind the usual rapes, murders, robberies, and car thefts. Do you hear me?”

She paused, and he stood there, arms crossed.

Finally he said, “I hear you. And I get it, yeah.”

“You get it?”

“That’s what I said. I’m sorry,” he tacked on, because the situation seemed to call for it. “It won’t happen again.”

“It damn well better not. We’re swamped here, and you’re not off the force yet. We need you, you know. We need everybody, working together, and working on the stuff that’s eating us alive right now. Okay?”

“I said I heard you. Are we done here?”

She leaned forward and put her hands down on the desk, looking tired more than furious. “Yeah, Leo. For now. We’re done.”

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 7.

LEO LOOKED UP FROM his hand and folded, dropping the cards faceup onto the green and conceding that he was out. It was only forty bucks, but he would’ve liked to keep it. He said, “My luck tonight is nothing but shit,” and Cosmos laughed.

Lucas Tate observed, “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”

But Father Squid promised, “Next hand, things’ll be different, I’m sure.”

And Harvey Kant grumbled, “Easy for you to say. You’ve won the last two.”

“Heaven is smiling down on me tonight, indeed.”

“More like, the sun shines on a dog’s ass every once in a while,” said the lieutenant. He was only joking, and no one took the losing too seriously. Everybody knew Father Squid’s take went straight to the poor box at church.

Tonight they were losing by divine providence at Tate’s sprawling apartment with its bay window view of the Bowery. Everything was clean and most of the surfaces were glossy, with sharp, modern angles; except for the profusion of masks, the place looked like a show condo. But the masks were ubiquitous—mounted on every wall, stacked inside display cases and running along bookcase shelves in every corner. He must’ve had thousands, and all of them stared, the empty eyes following, watching, like a funhouse painting. Some were expensive and beautiful, porcelain-painted pieces that must’ve cost a mint; on one wall, a harlequin and its lover were seated side by side, while a king of hearts looked on. Some were cheaply made or old and yellowing around their brittle edges. They could’ve been picked up at any street vendor—a bulldog and a tomcat hung together, and a wise old owl perched alongside an off-color domino with black and silver squares. Frankenstein’s monster hung next to Cthulhu, just above the Phantom of the Opera.

The Venetian blinds were open, so the multihued city glow oozed inside, complementing the dimmed compact bulbs and the orangey shimmer of the lit cigars.

Their host was wearing a collie mask with a long, pointed nose that made his voice sound more nasal than usual; Cosmos was in his usual unflappable spirit, hovering at the table’s edge in a lotus position, shuffling his cards without touching them—and of course Chaos was absent. Charles Dutton, in his ever-present death’s-head mask, had brought the cigars. Dr. Pretorius had contributed enough Guinness and champagne to make Black Velvets for everyone, but only Lucas and Kant were partaking. Sibyl lurked by the bar, playing with the glasses, making drinks and setting them aside, or pouring them out while no one was looking.

Leo pushed his cards back toward Tate, who gathered them all up and began to shuffle. Pensively, as Tate’s fingers flipped through the cards, he asked, “Hey, Leo, did you ever get around to reading my book?”

“Yeah,” he only halfway lied. He’d read most of it over the last few weeks, here and there. Before bedtime, and over lunch. “I don’t know what strikes me as crazier: that you ran undercover with the Demon Princes, or that you went and wrote about it afterward.”

Tate shrugged and said, “I was young and stupid. I wanted to jump into journalism feetfirst. But the reason I ask is, did you get to chapter seven, the one about the mob?”

“Yeah,” Leo told the truth this time. “All that stuff about the families providing the drugs and guns. Nothing personal, Tate, but that’s not news. It wasn’t news in the seventies. It’s not even news tonight.”

“I only bring it up because Harvey mentioned you were still chasing Alice down the Rathole.”

“Yep. Running into a lot of dead ends, but a lot of interesting stuff too.” Leo shifted in his seat. He tried to keep the sourness of Ralph’s quasi-confession out of his voice, but didn’t altogether succeed. “There was a lot that didn’t get checked out back then.”

Lucas spoke, “I was thinking, the other day. I was wondering if the name Raul Esposito ever turned up in your investigations—past, or latter-day.”

It hadn’t. Leo said so, and then added, “But it rings a bell.”

“He was a family man,” Lucas said. “And I’m fairly certain he was around in ’78. To make a long story short, I heard through the restaurant grapevine that he’s back in town.”

“Through the restaurant grapevine?”

Lucas waved a little shrug and said, “Apparently he’s out of the killing business, and moving into food service. He wholesales rare mushrooms and aged steaks and the like.”

Dutton’s interest was piqued as well. He asked, “They used to call him the Button Man, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” Their host pointed the pack of cards at Dutton and said, “He was one of Gambione’s triggers, but there was an incident in Vegas, years ago. For the longest time, everyone thought he was wearing concrete shoes under a pier someplace, but he’s living a couple miles from here, in an apartment off Crosby.” Lucas Tate began to deal.

Leo said, “And you think he had something to do with the Rathole?”

A card landed facedown in front of the detective. The dealer said, “It’s possible. Esposito was an enforcer and Christ only knows if Hash was dealing honest. If you asked me to speculate—you didn’t, but please permit me to do so—I’d guess that Hash was the real target all along. And even if Esposito’s clean, he might know who’s dirty.”

“Thanks,” Leo told him. He asked for a few extra details, and he got them.

The next night after his shift, he went wandering down Crosby Street to the address he’d pulled off Tate, augmented with the information he’d gathered from Jack Dobbs, a chef at High Hand—a high-class joint that was, in some ways, the spiritual successor to the dearly departed Aces High.

He reached a nondescript gray brick building that was neither high-end nor low-end, and generally well kept. He stood in the glass-fronted foyer and ran his finger down the call buttons, settling on one that was labeled merely “R.E.” and pushing it. After a moment of buzzing, a voice answered, “Hello?”

“Hey. I’m Leo Storgman. I think Jack told you to expect me,” he added, because he was pretty sure that Dobbs would’ve passed it along.

“The detective,” the voice confirmed. It was a low voice, and it probably once was smooth. Now it cracked very slightly.

“That’s right. I’m looking into an old case, one from ’78. Lucas Tate thought you might be able to—”

“Tate,” grumbled the voice. “Might’ve known.”

Leo waited.

“You may as well come up.”

The buzzer sounded, and Leo pushed the door to let himself inside a hall lined with age-fogged mirrors and tile-work floors. He took a cage elevator up to the eleventh floor and found apartment 1129.

He knocked.

A slender man with salt-and-pepper hair answered. He was quite tall—and he’d acquired a slight stoop when addressing shorter people, or perhaps he was only getting old and his posture was failing him. He wore a turtleneck that covered his flesh up to his chin and down to his wrists, and wool slacks with shiny black shoes.

Again he said, “Hello.” Then, “Yes, Jack said I should expect a visit. Should I assume this is a courtesy call? You haven’t flashed a badge.”

“I’m off the clock. I just want to talk.”

His eyes narrowed. He asked, “Do I need a lawyer?”

“Nope,” Leo said.

With a sigh, Raul Esposito stood to the side and held the door open. Leo stepped through it, into an apartment that was sparse and tidy. Although the curtains were open, he could see that they were thick—the kind that could block out all traces of light when closed and sealed. Through a cutout in the nearest wall, he could see a kitchen with a coffeepot on the counter and a teakettle on the stove. The whole unit smelled dimly of something compostlike and alive. Topsoil or mulch.

“Have a seat, if you’d like.” Raul gestured at a mid-century style couch. While Leo sat down in the middle of it, Raul settled into a leather wingback chair that looked as worn as a saddle. “And what can I help you with, Detective?”

Leo wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but this wasn’t quite it. He didn’t feel particularly nervous, but something felt off. He said, “I’m taking another look at the Rathole murders. Do you remember the Rathole?”

If Raul was startled by the question, his lean, thickly lined face did not betray it. “I remember hearing about it. That was a long time ago, Detective.”

“Nineteen seventy-eight. Right before Christmas.”

“Then we must be coming up on its anniversary, shortly.”

Leo hadn’t thought about it like that, but he was right. Another couple of months. “Yeah. Some new evidence came to light,” he exaggerated.

“And it somehow brings you to me.” Raul crossed his legs at the knee, and the leather chair squeaked beneath him.

“Indirectly. And look, I’m not going to tap-dance or snow you. I know what you were doing back then, and who you were doing it for—but this isn’t about that.” It was half a lie, but Leo’d been doing a lot of that lately. “I know Hash Maddox was dealing dope out of the diner’s kitchen, and I know he was getting it from your bosses.”

Raul’s fluffy white eyebrows sank to a line that pointed at the bridge of his nose. “My former bosses,” he corrected. “I’m … retired from their employ. And anyway, the Gambiones are all in Cuba now.”

“Yeah, I know. And my mistake. But you were here in town, or that’s what I’ve been told. And I’ll go ahead and assume that a professional like yourself wouldn’t have made such a mess of the place; but I was hoping, since you’re no longer with the mob’s employ, as you put it, that you might be willing to point me at”—he almost said “the button man” but he stopped himself in time to say,—“the trigger man.”

Raul considered this. He folded his hands in his lap and tapped his thumbs together. “Let me be clear, Detective. I did not learn about the Rathole until after the fact, but yes, I was acquainted with Hash and his activities. As you’ve implied, they weren’t a secret. And when the money and merchandise went missing from the diner’s kitchen, my employers were quite interested to know what had become of it. To the best of my knowledge, family involvement occurred only after the murders.”

“Are you sure?”

“No,” Raul admitted. “But I was only an employee, not a manager. I wasn’t the kind of man who made decisions, I was the kind of man who followed directions. So I can’t tell you that Don Gambione had nothing to do with that crime. I can only tell you that if he did, I was unaware of it.”

Leo sat forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “You seem pretty open about this. Pretty willing to talk, for a man with a résumé like yours.”

He shrugged, a slow, apathetic gesture. “I’d never be so bold as to say that I’m beyond their reach or their concern, be they on an island or Mars—but on this matter, I have nothing to hide.”

The detective sat back again, unsatisfied. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he mused. “Somebody, somewhere, has to know what happened. People don’t randomly walk into—”

A key wrestled with the front door lock.

Raul Esposito did not appear concerned. “Don’t worry, Detective. It’s only Maggie.”

She stepped around the door sideways, opening it as little as possible. She froze when she saw the detective on the couch, and Raul in his leather chair.

Raul said, “Magdalene, dear. This is Detective Storgman. He’s come to ask me some questions.”

“About what?” she asked, and even in those two short words, Leo knew she wasn’t local.

The girl had a corn-fed look to her, with the wide cheekbones and slim shape of a Midwest farmer’s daughter. Her hair was brown with a wide blue streak that began at her bangs, and her skin was freckled. She was perhaps as young as fifteen, perhaps as old as twenty. She was wearing a strange outfit of black spandex and a faux-leather overcoat, plus a pair of fitted black gloves that looked more expensive than everything else she was wearing put together.

Raul answered her. “About something that happened a long time ago. I’m afraid I’m not much help to him.”

“It may have happened a long time ago, but there’s no statute of limitations on murder,” Leo said flatly, eyeing the newcomer.

“That’s true, of course. But as you said at the beginning, I don’t need a lawyer. This is only a conversation,” Raul said, more to the girl than to Leo, or so the cop inferred. “Nothing more.”

The girl hadn’t moved. One hand remained on the interior doorknob, as if ready to whip it open and flee. But she released it, and turned to flatten her back against the wall beside the entryway—never once taking her eyes off Leo. Never even blinking.

“Your … granddaughter?” Leo chose to make a polite guess, and not jump right to jailbait.

“My … ward,” Raul said, clarifying no further. Then, to Magdalene, “It’s all right, dear. I promise.”

She didn’t appear to believe him, not really. But she forced herself to assume a more relaxed posture, her hand sliding to her side. That’s when Leo saw the plastic grocery bag. He recognized the logo from a nearby hippie store, one of those joints that sells everything organic, free range, and hormone-free. She said, “I brought … supper.”

“Excellent,” he said, rising from the chair and meeting her, taking the bag and walking it around the corner to the kitchen. “We’ll take care of this later, or in the morning.”

Leo thought that was a weird thing to say about supper, but for all he knew they ate at midnight. He stood up as well, feeling like his welcome there was nearly worn-out, given the rabbit-scared look the girl continued to give him. “One more thing,” he said. “Just real quick. You admitted you knew Hash. Did you know any of the other victims?”

Raul’s cool demeanor didn’t crack, but it became more carefully blank. “I’m sorry, Detective. But I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That changes nothing. Please,” he added, and opened his arms, spreading those long, thin limbs into an ushering pose that urged Leo back toward the door.

Giving up for the moment, Leo pulled out his wallet and removed a business card, palming it to the man and then shaking his hand. “Well, thanks for your time,” he said. “And if you think of anything, or hear of anything, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.”

“Of course. And Maggie, dearest. Would you kindly see Detective Storgman out? These corridors twist and are dark, in places. Please see to it that he reaches the lobby safely.”

She did see him out.

And unless Leo was mistaken, she saw him downstairs—from behind him, behind corners. And she saw him into the street and down it; he could hear, every once in a while, the girl’s soft footsteps keeping time with his, until he finally lost her on the crowded sidewalks of the Bowery.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

More!

by Paul Cornell

I DIDN’T MEAN FOR any of this to happen. Let me make that clear right from the start. It all happened to me. And I’m glad it did. In the end. But there were points there where it all got a bit choppy.

Honestly, it seems you can get arrested for just about anything in this city. Even involuntary public nudity. When I’d just been going about my business, walking down the street, and suddenly there I was, au naturel. I had to spell the word “involuntary” out to the arresting officer, who was about twelve. He looked at what he’d written and said “oh” like he’d just realized what an oaf he was being, and then said he’d “been a little distracted.” Then he and his fat, laughing partner hauled me off downtown for, basically, the crime of being in the theatrical profession.

The involuntaryness of the offense ought to make a difference, I feel. The police finally told me that my sudden nakedness in the street had been because I had been the victim of some perving ace called the Stripper. And that time, I can only assume they were right, because, just for once, I didn’t feel like it was the fault of my own special talent. It’s a shame I didn’t have time to realize what was going on and give him a taste of his own medicine. I was finally released without much in the way of apology, despite being the victim rather than the perpetrator. Maybe I just look guilty? Maybe I protested too much.

And then there was that business with that valuable necklace that was in, and then suddenly out of, that shop window. Just as I was admiring it. The same officer appeared at the scene of the crime: the twelve-year-old. He remembered my face, made the connection, and acted like he was the great detective, until various wiser heads started pointing out that I’d initially stood there gawking at the jewelry that had appeared in my hands, that I had started waving to the jeweler and pointing at it, and that involuntary nudity was hardly the best preparation for a stealthy jewel heist. Once more, I told the truth, and let them draw their own conclusions, the wrongness of which, this time, I felt guilty about not in the slightest. They assumed it was because of someone else’s power. And that must have been true this time. Sort of.

After I was told I was free to go, the twelve-year-old followed up his police brutality with another invitation to go on a date with him. Presumably because he felt that, having already seen the goodies, he felt he was some way into the process already. Needless to say I declined, quite vocally. Aren’t there rules against that sort of thing? I was on my way to what turned out to be a disastrously failed audition for a dog food commercial. Following my public humiliation, I couldn’t quite summon up the confidence to assert that my little Jack Russell had become supercharged with health. I think if I were American, I’d be suing someone as we speak.

So that’s the summary of my previous encounters with the law. Before I get to what I’m about to recount, that is. Which is all sorts of legal hoo-ha. So far, at least, I haven’t had to call my mum and ask her to send over bail money.

But those are old wounds, and I have quite a lot of new ones to get to. So. Right. Sorry. Anyway—

♥

Hello. My name is Abigail Baker.

I am a serious actor.

I’m also basically a serious person. If you’re looking for a coquettish sense of humor or, it turns out, delirious enthusiasm about dog food, I am not your go-to girl. One of my tattoos even says “serious person” in Korean. Or at least the tattooist said it did. If I get laughed at by the staff and customers of one more Korean restaurant, I swear I’m going to get that laser thing done.

Sorry. Anyway—

During what I’m about to relate, all of this … havoc … that I did not seek or cause, I really can’t emphasize that enough … I suppose I was being even more serious than usual, because I was doing my damnedest to get into character for a role that I’d been understudying. That of Anabeth Grey in Grey Hearts. Everyone knows the story. She falls in love with a secret joker. On their wedding night, he uncovers his secret, that he is, well, not quite as other men, let us say, but rather more … insecty. In disgusted horror, she kills him. She manages to cover up the crime, but, echoes of Lady Macbeth, his ichor is on her hands, and she keeps making slips that could give her away. Until, on her next wedding night, to a humane and tolerant man, her guilt, or perhaps something more solid, bursts from her and flies off into the night, forever damned.

She is not a bundle of laughs.

I work in the theater. Guilty as charged. To be specific, I worked in a theater, the Bowery Repertory, the lovely Old Rep. Though it hasn’t run real rep for decades. I was, and thank God still am, just about, on a work placement, which was initially just over the summer, but ran into my new term, at the New York School of Performing Arts. Yes, like in that movie, which I still haven’t seen, and people still mention all the time, weirdly enough. The School’s great, but it was the placement I was after, and thanks to what I gather were some gentle words to the School from the theater owner, Mr. Dutton, I’d been able to hang on to it. I don’t know if you can tell by the accent, because when I go back home they all think I’ve turned into, I don’t know, Popeye, but I’m not from round here. I’m British. From deepest rural Dorset. Though I’m the sort of British person who, I suppose, regretfully, would rather stare at the old country with some horror from a safe distance from over this side of the Atlantic than actually trudge through it every day. I suspect however that, emotionally, I’ve become a bit more British, now I’m seen against a different background. Perhaps sort of pretend British. Billy Idol British. I’m sure Quentin Crisp, for example, was capable of the occasional use of “guy” or “truck” when across the pond, but as soon as he pitches his tent here, it’s all English muffins and having his toast done on one side, neither of which I’d even heard of before I got here—

Sorry. Anyway—

I came here for Broadway. Okay, so there’s the West End in London, and that’s great, wouldn’t kick a job there out of bed for farting, but it isn’t Broadway.

And neither is the Bowery, I know. But at least it’s on the right continent.

I mostly did odd jobs for the Rep. I worked in the office, I refilled the water cooler, I emptied the wastebaskets. But that was awesome. Because I was emptying the wastebaskets in a theater. And during the production of Grey Hearts I also helped out during set building, got shown the ropes, literally, by the stage manager, Jan, and got to watch Alfre use the lighting and sound decks, with all those arms of his. I’d been up in the rafters with the riggers, who were … just a bit too spidery for me, actually. Sorry. I’d actually been prompter, which is a highly skilled task, I’ll have you know, for a couple of matinees, with Klaus looking over my shoulder. With that eye on the end of his finger. Which did rather freak me out.

All of this was solid gold for me. The fulfillment of my dreams. Almost since I was old enough to think of what I wanted to be when I grew up (when I was five I wanted to make chocolate biscuits and that would have been a damn sight easier as a life’s ambition, let me tell you) I’ve wanted to act professionally.

I mean I’ve wanted to act. Professionally.

So, when Eliza Baumgarten, the lovely Liz, went down with chicken pox, I was ever so slightly delighted. Liz had been understudying for Anabeth Grey, watching Shauna Montgomery’s performance, matching her tic for tic as it were, having learned the lines, ready to step in. Shauna, of course, is here from Accident! on Fox, taking about a hundredth of her normal paycheck, keeping the theater alive with a short run as a favor to Mr. Dutton, who, a few years back, put her joker son through exactly the sort of on-the-job experience I’d gone through. But she’s also a proper trooper: full of stories; respects the craft; nothing but kindness for noncombatants, seems to love jokers, really really nice.

Which made it all the more awful when that enormous light fell on her.

Thank God I wasn’t up there at the time. Because I do seem to get blamed for things. Usually things that, as I may have mentioned, I did not do.

The chicken pox was nothing to do with me either. I mean, how could it have been?

Sorry. Am I starting to sound guilty because I keep protesting? I mean, because I doth protest too much? I suppose I may still be a tiny bit in character, then, after all these months, because I really did have nothing to do with—

Sorry. Anyway—

I was, however, the (unwitting) beneficiary of said accident. Because with Shauna in the hospital having bits of stage picked out of her and her ankles reconstructed, and Liz looking like Jackson Pollock was her beautician, the Rep were suddenly desperate for someone, preferably someone nat, to play Anabeth. As in that very night. Because a full house had been sold, the show must go on, as Shauna had said before they put the oxygen mask on, and the hole in the stage was very easily repaired.

“I can do it,” I said, stepping forward, perhaps a bit too hastily, but I got the feeling every other female actor in the building was about to do the same, and Kevin as well, who’s a bit slight with those bendy bones of his, and could have got the frock on. We’d all been brought up on those MGM musicals with sudden dance routines about how nice it would be to be in sudden dance routines, and we all always rather hoped for something like this to happen, and, well—

I suppose I was the one young enough and foolish enough to get the dream out of my mouth first.

I suppose I didn’t exactly say it. I bellowed my availability.

“I’ve memorized the part,” I lied, and chucked a few random lines at them that I recalled from the prompting.

“You’re a child,” said James Clark Brotherton, who’s been called the finest joker actor of his generation, despite, or perhaps because of, his ability to look entirely nat, and who was playing Nick Grey, the unfortunate victim, a role so made for him he’s done it on three continents. He’s rather more British than I am, but is from Chicago, so what does that say? “Anabeth is—”

“A much younger woman than her husband,” I said, “trying too hard, out of her depth even before she learns who he really is. Or at least she will be, just the once, tonight. And possibly for the matinee tomorrow.”

Vita, the director, made a sudden squeal with those throat pouches of hers, and she pointed at me like I’d got the answer in charades, and everyone looked at her like she was mad, but then she rushed over and hugged me. And I tried to hug her back. At a slight distance. And one press release about Shauna urging between grating breaths that the role be recast from within the company and me being her personal choice later (gosh, she is a trooper)—

I was in!

So.

I had a day to learn the part.

I went back to the office, and leaned on the door, and tried to stop myself shaking.

I took a look at the script. To tell you the truth, I was surprisingly undaunted. At the time. It’s not the width of Anabeth Grey that actors find alarming, it’s the quality. She’s on and off and sitting at tables that could have scripts glued to them and spends quite a bit of time actually looking at her palms, for goodness’ sake, and I do have very tiny writing.

It was my big chance. And I was so not going to blow it.

I sat there in the big wicker chair writing notes in the margins of the script, and Vita kept everyone out of the office, and I let Buffo the cat leap up onto my lap and was completely oblivious to anything—

Until I started to wonder if Buffo was putting on weight.

As in, putting on weight in that second. Having got suddenly heavier.

I looked down. And saw that it wasn’t just Buffo sitting there now. But two of her. Exactly the same. Looking at each other with startled cat expressions that were half “Hey that’s another cat, I must defend my territory” and half “Who is that charming stranger?”

And then, suddenly, there were four of them.

I realized that Buffo was touching my bare arms.

I leaped up, and all four of them went flying … but they stayed being four and ran into the corners of the room, alternating between hissing at each other and looking intrigued.

Not that I couldn’t tell which was the original. She was the one who was displaying a full range of startled cat expressions, while the other three were looking more absent, less real, somehow.

I stood there. I knew what this was. And it was absolutely not what I needed right now. Not with curtain up on my big night a mere ten hours away.

But I could fix it. And I had to. As quickly as poss.

I dropped the script and ran out of the office. Out of the theater. Into the smelly alley behind it. And I should mention how brilliant and somehow surprising it always is to walk out onto a New York street, too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and right now, in the first week of October, just right and bright with promise. To live in this city is like you’re living in the roots of the most tremendous magic forest, but made by people, really for people. With breath coming from under the street and music echoing round every corner and the trees in the park gold, and everyone talking to each other very loudly all the time. And you can find sleep if you want to, but the city will always be here ready for you.

None of that was in my head at that instant, though. But I put it here because it really should have been. Because of the magic of what was going to happen next.

I stood in the alley and looked up at the buildings.

I’d never even thought about what sort of place the Old Rep might back onto, what sort of room might share a wall with the theater office. Whenever I call Mum, she has another Daily Mail scare story about what happens in “Jokertown.” She’s not keen on me being here. But I didn’t give a stuff about who or what our neighbors might be. Or I tried not to. I often failed, actually. I still looked twice at jokers I passed in the street, I still found myself moving into different cars on the subway when something that looked, frankly, like a monster out of a fairy tale got on and sat down with its newspaper. And I hated myself for it. Mr. Dutton was an entrepreneur in the joker community. He employed lots of jokers. And he’d been willing to take me when all the other theaters had turned me down. I kept telling myself that the theatrical community has always been a haven for those who are different, for those who needed to hide, be they gay people, transvestites, Gypsies, Jews—

Or … me. I suppose. Sorry. Should have mentioned that. Probably rather obvious now. I think maybe that was the last thing I had to get past, me being proud of—

Sorry. Anyway—

I worked out which was the building in question, and saw that it was a nondescript block of cheap lodgings. Which made sense, because sometimes when I was working late I heard music through the office wall. Old music, rather lovely, very New York: jazz and swing tunes. There was an intercom with five empty name tags, an ancient indication of a Mr. Saunders in flat six, and a big red scrawl in Magic Marker pointing to flat four that said if I wanted a good time I should try Paris. Which I might, on another occasion, have found wry.

I tried every button. None of them answered. Not even Paris.

I tried them all again.

So I did the only sensible thing.

I kicked down the door.

Even with my DMs, it took a few hefty thumps. But honestly, it’s not my fault that building standards in this part of the city are so lax. And I was positively looking forward to getting the Rep’s enormous carpenters to pop by and make this place an actually better door, and pay for the materials, so don’t look at me like that, okay?

I really must get round to doing that.

I realized, as I sprinted up the dingy stairwell, that, judging by the height, I was actually after one of the flats on the third floor. Or the second floor, or the fourth or something, if you’re from this side of the Atlantic. So it was Mr. Saunders or one other.

I got to that landing, not even noticing how out of breath I was. I pounded on the door of the other flat, got no answer, then realized I was facing away from the theater.

So. My problem was definitely being caused by Mr. Saunders. So I knew he had to be home. Progress!

I pounded on his door. And I may have screamed a little.

After a few moments, I heard movement inside. I stopped pounding. “Please!” I yelled. “Please, I need your help! I know you’re an ace, and you’re doing something terrible to me, I mean terribly inconveniencing, and you’re doing it without knowing you’re doing it, and I need your—!”

I realized there was a shadow and a sense of terrible movement behind me.

I turned round and saw—

Ten copies of the door to the apartment opposite, that I’d pounded on with my bare hands. Filling the landing. Lined up like dominoes.

Falling on me.

Something grabbed my arm and heaved.

And I was through the door and into the apartment and the many doors crashed against the door that had been quickly slammed on them.

And I was face-to-face with the most peculiar man.

Although I was relieved, at the time, and a little ashamed to be so relieved, that he was actually quite normal-looking.

Well, better than normal, really.

He had old eyes in a very young face. Dark, curly hair, mussed up, stubble, a jittery look about him, like he wasn’t sleeping too well. A hooded sweatshirt that looked like he lived in it. He had one hand on the door, and the other was still holding mine.

I grabbed it away from him. “Sorry—!”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m stopping the door from multiplying, and my own powers don’t work on me, I mean, try touching yourself and you’ll see—I don’t mean touching yourself—Hey, look over there.” He was pointing into his tiny bathroom. I looked over there, saw nothing, and looked back just as he closed the door onto his tiny bedroom, the room that was next to the theater office—

Just quickly enough to see the enormous piles of identical DVDs that occupied every surface.

He grinned nervously at me, unsure whether I’d caught that or not, his eyes darting back and forth. “Oh, it was nothing. You’re copying my power. I can see how that might inconvenience you, and you can’t stop this because—?”

“I can’t ever stop it! I pick up other aces’ powers like … Wi-Fi! And I can’t control them! But if you are in control of it, and you just think for a moment about how it works…” I put a hand on his face and let the information … sort of flood into me. He looked at me as I did it, as if he were assessing me with those ancient eyes. As if he was somehow understanding me. And somehow, just the tiniest part, asking for something. Without being vulnerable enough to ever ask for anything. The smell of his cologne was like some old military club, all deep seats and brandy and polish, and old wounds smiled at.

I had to find something else to look at before I took my hand away. Because I was suddenly feeling what the Americans call “inappropriate” and we call nice work if you can get it. Very quickly, by my own standards, which previously have … actually there’s not much to talk about there, and it’s all rubbish. I am rather new at this, you know. People say I’m self-assured, and so they don’t get—

Sorry. Anyhow—

Then that was done. Now I could control it. And switch it off if I wanted to. Which I did. No more randomly copying stuff.

But he was still looking at me.

“Mr. Saunders—” I began.

“Croyd Crenson,” he said. Telling me his real name. Just like that.

“Abigail Baker.”

And we didn’t shake hands or anything.

“Lunch,” he said. “I’m buying. To make up for your trouble.”

And before I could tell him that I really needed the time to learn my lines, he was heading out of the door.

And, well, it would have been rude not to follow.

♣

I have never seen anyone eat such an enormous lunch. Seriously, five sandwiches. And those are American sandwiches, so that’s about twenty-five on the UK sandwich scale. And soup. And a stacked salad bowl. And one of those malt things. While I had a mineral water and a chicken Caesar. He didn’t eat like a pig, though, but with an old-fashioned decorum, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin, and making the sheer speed with which he got through that lot seem like the most natural thing in the world.

“My family first noticed it on a shopping expedition to London,” I told him. “We passed this odd-looking man, and suddenly I was flying. Dad had to catch me by the ankle and walk me along like a balloon. It wore off after a day or so, and I fell onto a pile of carefully prepared cushions, just as my parents were about to crack and call the doctor. They hadn’t wanted to, you see. Neither of them had any idea they carried the wild card gene. I had an auntie in Somerset who was supposed to be able to summon field mice, but that was it. Mum cried for days. They talked about taking me out of school, because I was a danger to people. It was only when I got older, and, you know, entered a rebellious phase, hence the tattoos, that I realized I wanted to be near people, to be in a big city, to actually … show who I was to people, get up in front of people. Which still feels a bit … wrong. Sorry. Anyway—” I looked up at those eyes again and realized I’d been going on and on. And that what my day was leading toward had made me tremendously vulnerable. And a bit gushy. “What it comes down to is this: I can’t control it. I’m at the whim of whatever powers I get within twenty feet of. And today of all days—”

“So I can understand wanting to be in a big city, even though there are more aces. But why the hell pick Manhattan, ace central?”

“It has Broadway.”

“You’re into musical theater?”

“I love the old show tunes. You know, it’s funny, people do make assumptions, with the short hair and the tattoos, for a moment there I thought you were asking if I was gay—”

“Obviously not.” His gaze danced over my face again, half a smile. “So you like the old tunes?”

I found I was smiling too. A bit too long. I looked at my watch. “I really can’t take up any more of your time, I’ve got to get back to learning my lines. As for your secret, I mean your … business, well, I can’t condone copying any artist’s work, but since it was just that terrible new version of Thirty Minutes Over Broadway with Milla Jovovich— Hey, listen, perhaps I should get your phone number. Just in case…” I realized I didn’t have an in case handy.

But it didn’t matter. Because he was looking over my shoulder now, and his face had fallen.

I turned to look, and was surprised to see, striding into the diner, all of them rolling their arms like they were pretending to be little trains, all of them in white vests and tight red pants, all of them carrying heavy truncheons that they swung with deft musical precision …

No, it wasn’t another duplication thing, as I had initially thought. It was not actually fifteen copies of Freddie Mercury (as he’d been two decades ago, not the whiskery knight of the musical profession he is now). It was fifteen gang members, all wearing a rubber mask of his face.

“Mr. Crenson!” enunciated their leader, like he was about to ask a stadium if it was ready to rock, “We are the Werewolves, and we are so pleased you have come out of hiding! Because you”—he slid the end of his stick under Croyd’s jaw—“have been selling your DVDs in our territory, without the slightest little cut for us.”

Croyd took another bite out of his sandwich, considering. “I heard this was Demon Prince territory,” he whispered at last.

The Werewolves made a collective sharp intake of breath, all turning to look at their leader, who tapped his stick rather forcefully under Croyd’s jaw once again. “Don’t say that, Mr. Crenson, that is very very bad of you, to bring up a subject of such personal displeasure.” He pushed harder on the stick, forcing it up into Croyd’s throat.

I realized that the staff and customers of the diner had melted away. Either out the doors or under the counter. I hoped someone was calling the police, but I doubted it.

But suddenly, the gang leader took a step back, surprised—

That he was holding, trying to hold, failing to hold—

A dozen sticks, all of which fell to the floor. Taking his dignity with them.

Croyd grabbed the coleslaw and threw it—

And a tsunami of cabbage and mayo threw the entire gang off their feet.

And suddenly he had my hand again and was hauling me toward the door.

♠

We burst out onto the street, and I was certain we’d got away—

Until Croyd came to a skidding halt in the vast pool of mayo that was pouring out of the door, Werewolves skidding and falling over themselves, trying to get to their feet behind us. I spun round at the sound of gun … bits … being … well, whatever they are. Made ready to shoot. Which surprisingly sounded just like it does in the movies.

In the low autumn sunlight, silhouetted figures stepped forward. Their presence had made a crowd start to gather, jokers coming out of local businesses, watching warily. The newcomers wore black and silver, inverted crosses, serious boots, and nice tats, frankly. They were carrying a range of automatic weaponry, and now the noise from the diner had changed too, as the Werewolves had obviously seen them as well, had produced their own guns, and were taking up firing positions.

“We’re the Demon Princes,” growled the hairiest of the men. And now I could see that he not only had the one central head, but two tiny others, one on each shoulder.

“Tell it like it is, Ginger,” said one of the heads, in rather a high-pitched voice.

“Crenson,” said the largest head, “you’ve been selling your DVDs in our territory, without giving us a cut.”

I might have remarked that a man with three heads going by the nickname “Ginger” showed either great sensitivity, a certain cunning, or an enormous lack of imagination, but I did not, because I was busy being petrified. You don’t get much in the way of gunplay in Dorset. All my mum’s worries about Jokertown were coming true.

Croyd looked sternly at the gang. He took a step forward. “I heard,” he said, “that this was Werewolves territory.”

I really wished he would stop doing that.

I looked between the armed gang in front of us and the armed gang behind us, and made a decision. I looked at my watch again. “Well,” I said, “this is all very interesting, but I’m in this play—”

“What play?” asked Ginger.

“Grey Hearts.”

“Oh,” the other small head squeaked, “how fabulous!” I was charmed for a moment that while the central Ginger seemed to be of Polish stock, the heads were respectively Irish and Scots.

“It is, rather,” I said, “and this particular production, at the Bowery Rep, I think you’d really like, because—”

“Right now,” said Croyd, loudly interrupting, “I have the power to multiply things. I’m ready to multiply bullets. If you guys open fire, the guys behind me will open fire too. And I’ll make it so that in the second the two of us die, so will all of you.”

“But—” I said, “I thought you could only do it if you were touching—?”

I was aware of everyone suddenly looking at me.

“Oh, bollocks,” I said.

Croyd looked sighingly at me.

Ginger laughed and raised his gun to aim at Croyd’s head.

Desperately, I did something I’d never done before. Something that it took immediate peril to make me do. Because I found it deeply embarrassing. Frightening, even. I took whatever mental muscle tension I felt about the possibility of picking up an ace’s power—

And I reversed it. I relaxed it. I reached out.

And, from farther away than a power that randomly affected me would be located …

There it was. Coming from that dull-looking shopkeeper over there with the swooshed-back hair. I held it in my head. I understood it. If I let it happen, I still wouldn’t be able to control it. And that frightened me terribly.

But okay … needs must.

“Sorry,” I said to Croyd. I grabbed his hand. And I let it happen.

The pavement suddenly became something like an ice rink. Immediately under our feet.

I grabbed Croyd’s hand and let out one big breath over my shoulder, and—

We were off! Barreling down the street, absolutely out of control. I think the man could make tiny surfaces absolutely frictionless. And no, I hadn’t considered this plan one step farther than our immediate getaway.

We sped over a crosswalk, narrowly missing a cab. It lazily blared at us.

We’d left the diner behind. We’d escaped.

Only now, coming up at us—

The bank building jutted farther out into the street than the diner had. Beyond another street full of speeding cars going left and right, its huge gray wall was flying at us!

“Stop it!” yelled Croyd.

“I can’t!” I screamed.

And then our feet hit sidewalk.

And we tumbled, head over heels.

And suddenly a fruit stall reared up out of nowhere and I was going to die—

Until I landed in an infinity of melons.

And exploded them with a great fruity burst of impact.

We lay there in the goo.

“We got out of range of the power,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” said Croyd, quickly getting up. “I’ll come to see your show tonight, okay? Don’t look for me at the Saunders place, I’ll tell you when I’ve got a new hideout.” And he stuffed a big fold of bills into my hand. “Cab fare. Go learn your lines.” And he was gone.

I slowly stood up. I shook melon from my clothing.

I realized that a joker shop owner, looking like a horrified orca, had run out of the shop and was yelling at me in something that sounded Eastern European. I started to leaf through the truly enormous sum of money Croyd had given me, wondering how much would satisfy him and leave me enough to get quickly back to the theater—

And then I was looking into the trying-to-be stern faces of that twelve-year-old policeman and his fat sighing partner again.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “He must have ended up with more melons than he started with.”

The boy cop took the money out of my hand and actually tutted at me. “Destruction of property and counterfeiting,” he said. “Are you going for some kind of a record?”

♦

“I only want one thing,” I said to the doll-like policewoman in charge of the cells. She paused for a moment at the door of my one.

“You’ve already turned down your phone call.”

“A copy of Grey Hearts. Actor’s edition, if poss. Please?”

She gave me a look and moved on.

“Is that so much to ask?!” I yelled after her.

I’d been in there for nearly three hours. They’d be looking for me back at the Rep. Wondering if I’d done a runner. Maybe even starting to measure Kevin for that frock. I just hoped my mum would never hear of this. Here was I, in Jokertown, among jokers and aces, having been arrested on ace-related charges. I couldn’t help but feel ashamed of how … acey everything was getting. Even though no part of me wanted to be.

Two figures appeared at the door of my cell. The first one, old and grumpy, was looking at me like he was deciding whether I was an irritation or an abomination. Beside him stood his younger, kinder-looking partner. But I wasn’t paying him much attention. Because the first cop had two enormous horns curling round his head. “So,” he said, “how you feeling?”

“Rather sheepish,” I said.

I think by the time they got me to the interview room, I’d managed to explain just how much I hadn’t meant anything by that.

♥

I didn’t want to wait for a lawyer. I thought it was best to tell … well, almost the whole truth, from the top. I felt bad for Croyd, but really I’d only just met him. And he’d said he wasn’t going back to the apartment. And somehow I knew he could get out of any trouble I might send in his direction.

“So,” said the older detective, who’d introduced himself as Storgman, “you got no family over here—”

“Right,” I said, “I’m the only one without a safe, steady job. You could say I’m the black”—I saw his expression start to change—“cat of the family! It’s an expression. We have. In Britain.”

The younger nat cop, who was called Stevens, actually laughed. Which was a relief. But then his expression hardened. “I heard ‘black,’” he said, “and I so wondered where that was going.”

I put a hand over my eyes. If this was good cop/bad cop, I’d managed to piss off the good cop too. “Sorry,” I began. “I’m not in the least bit—”

“You should be quiet now.”

“Yes, I promise I will be, apart from, you know, answering your—”

“Now,” said the older man.

And I was.

He gazed at me a moment. Then continued. “So tell me more about this guy you say ‘zapped the cash into your hand.’”

“The Sleeper,” said Stevens. “That’s what we call him. That’s what cops have called him for a long time.”

So I told them. I mentioned the warring gangs and the enormous meal. The latter seemed to make Storgman perk up. It was like he’d got a sudden idea in his head, and it was a lot more interesting than I was. Stevens looked questioningly at him, but Storgman waved him away. This was obviously something they weren’t going to discuss in front of me. “And do you know where he is now?”

I gave them the address.

They paid no attention to my desperate pleas about having to learn my lines. I ended up back in the cells. With no indication of when this situation might change. Though I was told a public defender was on the way.

I waited another half hour.

And then I got to the end of my tether.

This lot might be a bit puzzled about how I came to encounter those melons at such velocity, but they still saw me as someone who happened to be round powers, maybe aiding and abetting the Sleeper (why did they call him that?) and not as an ace myself.

I would return to face them tomorrow. Well, tomorrow night, after the matinee. And maybe I could fit in a press conference. But return I would. Afterward.

Hesitantly, I did what I’d done earlier that day. I reached out. For only the second time in my life. And tried to feel what powers there were in the police station.

Aggh! Loads!

It felt like they were grabbing for me!

I managed to take a mental step back. Ye gods. I’d never done this deliberately before. I’d always been kind of … taken by this stuff. Now it felt like I was deliberately … well, offering an invitation to an intimacy that seemed rather …

Phew, hell of a day all round, eh? Shall we just get on?

There were two powers that felt useful. I picked one of them … and teased it into coming away with me. Leaving its host none the wiser.

Just as well the owners of neither of these two powers had wandered close to the cells earlier. They’d have given the game away. I’d been aware of the power of the doll-like officer affecting me, but thankfully hers was one of those powers that, even with it running wild in me, I’d need to be touching a person for it to do anything.

I concentrated on the new power until I understood it. I knew it would change me. I listened to hear if that sergeant was coming back, then—

I let it. And suddenly—

I had a different shape! I was a lot smaller. I was furry. And it was dark. I was covered in fabrics. Fabrics that smelt fantastically interesting!

I got my head out into the light. I saw the gaps in the bars.

I leaped for one. Instinctively.

I squeezed my body through it.

I got about halfway. I heaved. I got my back feet down. I hauled my head forward—

And I was out! Trotting along the cell corridor. Bounding along the cell corridor.

Which made me feel suddenly very aware … of these two vast lumps that were bouncing back and forth between my legs. I slowed down. I tried to tiptoe. I couldn’t.

I settled into the cat equivalent of a vaguely constipated saunter. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was what it was like for human men. Because if it was, I really could forgive them so much.

As I was starting to become aware of these … objects, I also suddenly felt that … I really wanted to make use of—

Oh, this really did explain such a lot.

I harrumphed that sensation away, and hoping I didn’t encounter any female cats, and thus find myself in a situation the mere inkling of which would give my mum a seizure, I made my way through the station, moving between people’s feet, getting, obviously, now that I think about it, calls of greeting. I got a huge wave from some guy with enormous hands, who’d been tapping away with surprising dexterity at what to him must have seemed like a toy typewriter. And someone who looked like a whippet in a uniform bared her teeth at me, which I kind of hoped was in the way of friendly badinage, because at that point every single aspect of me agreed that I wanted to run.

I did not, however. I continued my blokish saunter. And hoped that I wouldn’t knock these enormous … things against anything on the way to the door.

I finally got to the street and bounded happily off in the direction of the theater, trying not to be distracted by the sight of the sun reflected in puddles.

I made it about six blocks. So far that I started to worry about what was going to happen when I encountered Buffo. And kind of, well, fantasizing about—

Sorry. Anyway—

All thoughts of potential feline sexual harassment were put out of my head as suddenly I was out of range … and big and human and standing up suddenly and … naked in the street … again.

If this had been Dorset, I could have expected cries of outrage. This being New York, what I got was some offhand stand-up comedy, a handful of compliments, and a lot of laid-back staring. But it could only be minutes before—

There was a shout from over my shoulder. Okay, make that seconds.

A patrol car had swung to a halt on the pavement beside me, and a short young female police officer with curly black hair was leaping out of it. “Have found suspect—!” she was yelling into her radio.

I wanted to yell about how unfair this was.

Instead of which, I threw my hands up in the air and ran. Pursued by the police. And several onlookers who wanted to keep being onlookers. Like something out of Benny Hill.

I swiftly decided to stop worrying about the naked bit and just sprint. But not straight for the theater. That was too obvious. I ran into side streets, up alleys, always expecting to run into one of those high mesh fence things that for some reason people put up in alleys in movies.

The sounds behind me kept up with me. Thankfully, the onlookers kept shouting as they ran. I thought I was being clever, doubling back, ducking behind a pile of rubbish bags and letting them go past, but always, within seconds, the sounds followed me.

Not so surprising, I guess, that I was so noticeable. But then I realized—

Everywhere I went, there were dogs looking at me. Looking at me with hopeful oh-I’ll-get-a-treat-for-this expressions on their faces. And I could feel a power connected with them, something egging them on, asking questions of them.

That bloody copper. Honestly, you couldn’t tell.

Ahead of me, a whole pack of strays suddenly rushed out into the middle of an alley. They growled and lowered their heads at me, all the different mangy breeds.

But I had two advantages. I could nick this power, and I was the child of country folk.

I raised a finger commandingly. As if I were in Mum’s kitchen, and her eight dogs were acting up with a squeaky toy. “Sit!” I bellowed. With all the force of my purloined power behind it.

They did.

I told them they were very good dogs, and had served an entirely new pack by helping me, and if they told their old pack leader I hadn’t been this way, there’d be—

I visualized my mum’s yard, full of lovely muck and rats.

And they just about swooned and let me on my way.

Now, that was a power that I’d love to have on a regular basis.

I turned right and left, and realized that I was standing outside a church of some kind. The sign outside said it was Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. The noises of pursuit had thinned out round the area instead of being right on my, erm, tail, but it wouldn’t be long before they came through here. The most urgent thing I needed was clothes. Such as might be kept in a place like this and given to the poor.

I was considering stealing from the homeless.

Damn right I was, this was my opening night! And okay, so I was now losing track of all the things I had to pay back, but I’d get there.

I saw a side door was open and ran inside.

♣

I failed to find any office or storehouse or anywhere with clothes. So I kept making my way deeper and deeper into the building. The beauty and rather pointedly joker character of the architecture stopped me when I entered the church itself. But I didn’t have time to feel awed or less than welcome. Toward the altar a figure in a purple hooded cassock was sweeping up, humming to himself.

Okay, I was desperate. I was going to have to appeal to a man of the cloth, and hope he’d do this my way instead of asking me to give myself up.

I hid most of me behind a pew and called out, “Excuse me? Reverend?”

He turned and pushed back the hood of his cassock.

I’m not proud of what happened next, okay?

♠

Father Squid was, in the end, very kind about me screaming like that. “You’re obviously in a very vulnerable position,” he said, as he found me a sweater and an enormous pair of jeans.

“Obviously,” I said, still hiding behind the pew.

“It strikes me,” he said, handing me said items, “that you may well feel recompense has to be made. Above and beyond you paying for the things you have to pay for, and returning to the police after you have completed this quest on which you have embarked.”

“I do,” I said, dressing. And, oddly, I did.

“I think the nature of that recompense might have to do with the uncertainty and fear you feel around jokers, around everything that is beyond your previous experience.”

I frowned. I heaved on the belt to get the jeans round my waist, and found I could loop it round twice.

“The annual Christmas pageant at this church could do with some help from those in the theatrical profession,” he continued. “Lights, costumes … and actors. Especially someone who is about to become a cause célèbre, such as yourself.”

“I’ll bring these clothes back,” I said.

He looked at me as seriously as his voice was deep.

“And I’ll help out with your Christmas pageant,” I said.

“Very good,” he said. And he put some money in my hand. “Cab fare back to the theater. Break a leg, as they say.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, thankful that he’d anticipated my next problem. “I do want to make it better,” I said. “I mean … everything.”

“Good.”

“The way I’ve had to lean on everybody, it makes me feel so … shellfish. I mean, selfish!”

I got out of there rather too fast. Apologizing all the way.

I think he might have been amused by that. Either that or horrified beyond description. I couldn’t read his expression well enough to tell.

♦

“I’ve been arrested by mistake,” I told Mr. Dutton, striding into his office at the theater. Actually, bursting in would probably be a better way to put it. I was lucky: he keeps one of his many offices at the Rep, and he happened to be there. He’s not the most unspooky of jokers, in that he wears a black cloak and a death’s-head mask all the time. But I’d gotten used to that. So there was no screaming. This time. (He really shouldn’t step out suddenly backstage like that. Especially not near a trapdoor. Especially not just after I’d been to see that musical.)

“I’m already aware,” he muttered, not looking up from whatever he was signing. “The police have been in touch, and I’ve been told to alert them immediately should you arrive.” He seemed to enjoy my discomfort for a moment. “So much for that. I’ve told everyone who knows to remain silent about your presence. We’ll get one performance out of you, and no matinee tomorrow, but oh, the headlines.”

I thanked him profusely. And wondered whether to question his decision concerning the matinee, but finally decided against and left.

On the way out, I noticed Buffo, now in the singular and looking slightly disappointed at this change in her circumstances. “You don’t know what you missed, sweetheart,” I told her, and with only a few hours left, raced to my dressing room.

♥

Vita yelled at me for precisely one minute, then said she’d heard what had happened, and if I could at least make an attempt at learning the script, she’d appreciate it. Klaus would be ready with idiot boards, and most of my lines were indeed going to be secreted round the set.

I’d just sat down with a cup of tea and the text when there was a knock on the door. And before I could yell at whoever it was to sod off—

In came Croyd. “Hey,” he said. And he already sounded fond of me. In such a calm and certain way. Which made me feel like it was a good thing he was here.

“You shouldn’t be here—”

“Relax. I took the very pretty way in. There are cops watching the doors.”

“So how—?”

“If I can touch a fire escape, I can make more fire escapes. And the, ah, owner here seems to have got the staff locked down. Nobody’s talking. I told you I’d come see your performance.”

“I need to learn my lines—”

“Here,” he said, “let me help.” And he picked up a copy of the play.