The rust-pocked doors slide open at Caspar’s destination. He emerges into guttering fluorescents slatted through an ugly, drop-tile ceiling. It doesn’t look like a hidden holding cell. It looks like a depressing office.

  Through the hall. Check every door, sweep every corner. A directory at a T-intersection catches his attention. Room B5-018, to his right: detention. He takes the turn.

  He finds a weighted metal door with a red-light keycard reader on it. There’s no muscling through this one.

  Caspar takes a fortifying inhale. He steps to one side of the doorframe. He moves the gravity knife from his boot to his hand. Guard these souls, Miss Irene. Protect me. Protect them. Be our salvation from this world fallen into violence and vexation. Reward my faith in you, that I might redouble it.

  I do like the sound of that.

  He raps his knuckles against the door. He waits ten seconds and repeats the gesture. Will it work? A strained feeling like relief at the possibility that it won’t, that there’s nothing beyond this locked door, that—

  The handle clicks and turns. Caspar rockets a boot against it and slams it open with brutal, warlock-enhanced force.

  He pounces into the dimly lit room beyond and onto the musclebound woman who opened the door. Its sudden rebound has broken her nose and shattered her balance. No thinking; no hesitation. She dies under his knife, throat bubbling and crimson.

  He twists from the arterial spray, but takes flecks of it on the crisp white uniform, anyway. The pool of blood spreads across the linoleum. He creeps around the stain and thinks: twelve. Twelve people now.

  Here’s the seedy holding cells he was expecting. Four of them, two-to-a-side and facing one another across a dimly lit concrete floor. Gore-steeped knife in hand, he creeps across the room, eyes trained on the room’s other entrance.

  “Alys?” A voice behind it. Caspar bolts to the side of the door frame and flattens out against it. He raises his knife and waits.

  I really think he ought to be using my claw; much bigger and deadlier. And cooler. But I suppose he doesn’t want to mess those sleeves up overmuch, and there’s virtue in keeping those telltale cavernous claw marks away from scenes of investigation.

  The speaker slowly pushes out the door, his gun barrel raised and tracking the egress. He’s checking his corners. He’ll see Caspar or he’ll see the corpse. Time to close this man’s eyes, my warlock.

  Caspar’s free hand fires forth and shoves the gun barrel skyward as it emerges from the next room. An eardrum-busting crash as his target blows a slug into the ceiling. Caspar plants both feet on the wall by the doorframe and pushes off from it, yanking the casino guard into the cellblock and wrenching his arm as they both careen to the ground.

  A quick check into the room the guy emerged from—the remnants of a card game scattered across a cheap particle board table seated for two. No additional egresses. Caspar rolls onto his back, tucks his legs around the man’s waist, and closes his elbow across the neck in a rear naked choke.

  The man thrashes. The man tries to push himself to his feet. The man spits and wheezes. Caspar holds him until he stops moving, then keeps holding him. Through unconsciousness and down further, past the demimonde of brain death and into the murky dark, where my tendrils poise to catch his soul and draw him into me.

  Somewhere in the walls, the hum of an air conditioner cuts off, and Caspar is caught by the silence beyond silence, like an extra step in an unlit stairwell. He hears his own breathing, pinched and whistling through his nose, and the crinkling of his victim’s suit as he convulses, then goes still forever.

  Caspar loosens his grip. His hold dug little red crescents into his upper arm. He turns over and lays his thirteenth murder on the concrete.

  That’s that.

  Our first lady victim, I note (well, second, but Jordan flew the coop). I wonder whether it will affect the boy’s-club atmosphere of the taphouse.

  Bina clicks her wolfy tongue. “I admit it. Caspar is also cool.”

  Pride punches through the odd twisty feeling I get when my warlock kills for me. “That’s right.”

  “I can see why you want to have sex with him.”

  “Him being good at killing people is not why I want to have sex with him.”

  Bina looks askance at me. “Okay. Weirdo.”

  “It isn't! Jordan kills people all the time. You’re not trying to seduce her.”

  Bina shifts her gaze away from me.

  I lean toward her. “You’re not, right?”

  “Oh, look.” Bina innocently pokes a pseudopod toward the viewing pool. “Caspar’s found our guy.”

  Caspar looks up from his broken victims and surveys the cells. Three are empty. A huddled figure occupies the fourth, curled up on an unadorned mattress. One bony wrist is cuffed to a handrail that runs across the length of the cell.

  The woman has a ring of keys on her belt, laying in the crimson mere of her jellifying blood. Caspar unclips her carabiner and tries her keys at random. On the third guess, he unlocks the cell and swings its steel bars open.

  The huddler is asleep by the even susurrus of his breath. Caspar lays a hand on his shoulder and shakes. The guy grunts and shifts but does not wake. Caspar shakes harder.

  His rescuee makes a noise like whazthfuck and opens unfocused eyes. “What?”

  Caspar’s brows furrow. “Perry?”

  “Yeah, man.” Perry sits up. “What do you want?”

  “I’m here to rescue you.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Perry runs a hand through his shaggy hair. Its strands hang together, sticky with perspiration and dried blood from a score on his forehead. “You’re the guy. Sersh’s guy.”

  “Sersh? Uh, yes. I’m the guy.”

  “Fuck. All right. I’m up.” Perry starts to sit up, then realizes he’s manacled. “Oops. Can’t come out, sorry.” He gives Caspar a grin. He’s missing several teeth, courtesy of the casino roughnecks.

  Caspar finds another key and unlocks the cuffs.

  “Ah, shit.” Perry slouches to his feet. “Fine, man. Fine. Let’s get ‘er done.”

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  A mystified Caspar steps from the cell, Perry shoeless and grimy in his wake.

  “So you’re, like, you’re a warlock, right?” Perry removes a corpse’s shoe and inquisitively presses it to his foot as Caspar gathers the gun from a fallen guard. “You liking that? Liking the bennies?”

  “We have to move.” Caspar grabs Perry’s forearm and half-drags the man out of the cell block.

  “Dude.” Perry picks up speed as they emerge into the office hallway. “This is intense.”

  Caspar tears round the corner to the elevator, making as much noise as he dares, pistol sweeping out from the corners.

  He hits the elevator button. It dings into place and opens on a bored-looking woman in a linen suit. She looks at Caspar and screams.

  “Out.” Caspar trains the gun on her. He doesn’t need to tell the lady twice; she bolts down the hallway, going “oh Father oh Father oh no oh no.”

  The seconds are burning now. I lean forward, pride and anxiety burning a skirmish line through my manifestation’s silly little brain. Bina lays a pseudopod next to my hand on the couch. I take it.

  Caspar pulls Perry into the elevator and mashes the button for the garage with the butt of his pistol. The floor lurches.

  “I wanted to press it,” Perry says.

  Caspar slaps Perry in the face. “Sober up,” he hisses.

  Perry gingerly touches his jaw. “Fuck you, dude. You know what you pulled me out of? And into?”

  “We need a ship and we need a pilot. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, man. I can do that. Can you chill?”

  The elevator opens on a cavernous intake garage, its far wall lit by a crescent of daylight through a freight door. A mousey, coveralled attendant loiters in a small booth, nose in a book of psalms. Probably studying for his promotional petition.

  Caspar knocks on the side of the booth and the attendant looks up right into the rifling of a barrel.

  “Door,” Caspar says.

  No further conversation needed for this fellow. Must have been reading a prayer of prudence. A lever is thrown and the freight door gives a plaintive metal grumble as it opens.

  Caspar keeps the pistol trained on the attendant until they’re halfway through the garage, then turns and bolts the rest of the way, as fast as his blowout barefoot cargo can stumble.

  They ascend a ramp into a yard, past a box truck, its flank decorated by purgative flame and an open Yow! Salsa jar. The driver dives under her saintly bobbleheaded dash as she sees the piece in Caspar’s fist. He clicks the safety on and stuffs it into his waistband. This Perry guy is too damn slow. Caspar hoists him into a piggyback and goes sprinting around the ugly, business-end geometry of the Platinum.

  “Yooo!” Perry breaks into a giggle fit by Caspar’s ear. “You’re strong as shit, man.”

  Piggyback rides. It’s been so long since Caspar was in grade school that I completely forgot about piggyback rides. I wonder how I might talk my way into getting one of those.

  They curve round the loading dock, back to the mirror-plated front facade of the building. Caspar drops Perry back to the ground, in the vain hope that a blood-flecked man with a slowly shifting face and a filthy gap-toothed guy with no shoes might attract less attention sans piggyback.

  It’s a hypothesis with mixed results. Much of the intake crowd is distracted with anticipation or engaging in surreptitious pre-gaming from hidden flasks, and many of the outgoing folks are caught up in their own dramas, wondering where they might squander their winnings or what they might hock to dig themselves free from their debtor’s graves.

  But they’re getting looks. The first hey mister, is that blood from a passerby laces ice through Caspar’s veins, and he abandons his incognito stroll for an out-and-out jog. A doorman is having a whispered conversation on his radio, eyes hidden behind sunglasses but mouth hard-lined.

  Caspar rests his palm against the stock of his handgun.

  They round a corner out of sight from the casino for the rendezvous. Jordan Darius, who successfully threaded the needle of nuisance enough to be kicked out and not detained, clocks their approach and hastily cranks the sun roof up. Caspar cracks a door and hucks the stoned pilot across the back row.

  “This is your car?” Perry wipes his mouth, where a drip of bloody spume has emerged. “This is flash.”

  Caspar slides Perry over and climbs in. “Drive.”

  Jordan rolls into a U-turn to keep them out of sight from the casino. “Where are we going, Perry?”

  “You ain’t gonna floor it or nothing?” Perry sits up.

  “That’s how you get attention.”

  Perry giggles. “You didn’t want attention, and you got a convertible?”

  (I’ve wondered the same thing, but I’ve realized lately how your cute little minds fog up when you see something with four wheels that goes vrooooom.)

  “Shut up, man.” Jordan glares out the rearview. “What’s your address?”

  “Do I shut up or do I give you my address?”

  “Cartwright, can you punch him, please?”

  Caspar grabs Perry’s sweat-stained lapel and turns his face around. “Wake the hell up, sir. You’re on-mission. Ain’t have time for jokes.”

  Perry blows a coppery breath into Caspar’s face. “Fifty eight Misericorde ave.”

  Jordan flicks her turn signal and lurches into the next lane.

  “This world is a joke, man,” Perry adds, settling back into his seat. “Bad fucking dream.”

  Caspar glances out the crinkled plastic of the sunroof’s back window. “That doesn’t give you the right to give up on it.”

  Perry chuckles. “This last trip does. One more for my lady and she’s giving me my ticket outta this consciousness bullshit. You have my sympathy, folks. Drew the wrong sisters.”

  “Not surprised you’d see it that way.” Caspar’s contempt is a very rare thing to witness.

  “That’s the way, man. The way we are, it’s a fuck-up. Your you is a side effect. The endgame mistake a bunch of little bugs made 500 million years ago. Only reason it’s so precious to you is the trap your ancestors wired you into so you’d keep the game going. Spread the shit around. For what?” Perry closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I’m almost out. You left me there, I would have gotten out faster. Take me home and let’s get this over with.”

  He lapses into silence for the rest of the ride. Well, it’s an improvement.

  Misericorde avenue is a line of townhouses, painted in cheerful colors, on a shady and verdant street. A falcon statue’s steel eye seems to track them as they pass it. I wonder briefly if there’s actually a thousand. Perhaps I should make it a project to count them once our task is done. If Chamchek is still around after.

  They jimmy the lock on the woodgrain door of a four-story and climb a set of creaking hardwood stairs. Perry’s apartment isn’t difficult to find. It’s the one with the overdue notices and red slips plastered all over the entrance.

  Inside, the place is as hollowed-out and grimy as everything else in Perry’s life. There are pale marks on the floor where the furniture was, and scrapes along the hardwood where it was dragged away. The icebox is open and depowered. The kitchen sink is a technicolor horror.

  “Welcome to the fortress of dreams.” Perry ambles through the gutted living room. “So what are we doing. I get my ID and my uniform, we pinch an airship? Sound about right?”

  “Yeah. Go on and get your stuff. And take a shower.” Jordan’s lip curls as she takes the place in. “We’ll be in the car. Come on, Caspar.”

  “What a sorry son of a bitch,” Caspar says, as they descend the stairs.

  “Makes you think about the entities we’re working for, huh?” Jordan opens the front door and takes a deep breath of the uncorrupted air. “The things they do with humans.”

  Miss Irene isn’t like that, Caspar wants to say. But he recalls the sightless eyes of his victims and thinks again about the wreckage he used to be after he took a life. He’s lost his indignation at Jordan. He takes a moment to remember Degmar’s name. And I’ve been changing his body, by my admission. How much is still human? The distance between him and Perry isn’t the gulf he imagined.

  No, Caspar. My faithful warlock. You don’t really think that. You can’t. I miss him suddenly, fiercely. I want to banish those doubts. I want to kiss his forehead again until those lines smooth out. I want his warmth back.

  I make up my mind. When he returns, we’re going to have a talk. We’ll sort it out. I’ve been reluctant to discuss this thing we have with each other, but I can’t let it sit like this, to ferment into doubt.

  “Your warlock has a mouth on her,” I mutter.

  “I know.” Bina wags her tail with affection. “She’s so headstrong.”

  There’s no accounting for taste.

  Their last hope emerges onto the brownstone stoop in a wrinkled, navy-blue uniform, its brocaded vest hanging open and billowy off his thin neck. This was clearly an outfit sized for a healthier version of Perry. At least the peaked cap and its shiny black visor do an okay job of obscuring his waxy skin and his faded eyes.

  “Attention passengers,” he says. “Air Perry is preparing to depart. Children, veterans, and warlocks first.”

  Jordan chuckles. “That’ll work. If everyone’s squinting.”

  “I got my uniform, I got my ID and my papers. I got a little pick-me-up.” Perry wipes his nostril and sniffs. “This is the agreement. We’ll get the shit done. Or we’ll die and it won’t matter.”

  He slouches into the convertible.

  Jordan touches Caspar’s sleeve. “This is gonna go so wrong.”

  “Maybe,” Caspar says. “But our eyes are open.”

  “You get that feeling like we’re just running out the clock?” Jordan scratches her neck. “Like we got bits and pieces falling out and getting glued back on, and as soon as the momentum stops we’re gonna crash?”

  “I’m still moving,” Caspar says. “Are you?”

  “Still moving.”

  “You have my back, I’ll have yours.”

  “All right, Cas.”

  “All right, Jordy.”

  The convertible rumbles like an oncoming storm. The tree shadows dapple them as they steer out of Misericorde avenue, and onward to the awaiting calamities.

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