Neville:

I stumbled out the door, my feet numb, my vision blurred. I slumped onto broken cobblestone, strains of jazz seeping into the alley around me as I landed facedown. Behind me, a high-pitched twitter mingled with the bright notes of a clarinet. One of my own boys was laughing at me.

“Boss, you shoulda seen yourself, you was tumblin’ backward like a First-Timer with a mouthful of jive-sweet! Man, I wishes I had a VR of that pretty scene—”

I struggled to my feet, then grabbed the black-haired gutter punk by the throat and shook him until the change in his pocket jingled. The boy didn’t fight back. He didn’t dare. He sputtered and coughed, his lips turned blue.

Finally I dropped him to the ground, watched him gasp and flail.

“Was it pretty, like that?” I asked.

The boy cringed. Two other slender young men slid deeper into the shadows, their faces covered with fresh bruises from their recent mock battle inside the club.

I laughed until my voice echoed. “Good job, boys,” I said. Then I tossed each of them a token that spun through the evening gloom, engraved words catching the dim lamplight: FREE ADMISSION TO THE UNDERGROUND CIRCUS. Dangerous grins spread across their faces as they each pocketed their new favor.

“Was it her?” one of them asked.

I shrugged. Seven ladies downloaded in New Orleans today. I’d already discounted the two that had tumbled through the black market, a process that left their brains scorched and empty. Could be this one, but I didn’t want to say yeah or nay, not yet. Still had three more to track down.

I sucked in a long, dark breath. My boys waited for a sign that it was time to move on.

I nodded. Slow, so they’d pay attention.

“We goes that way.” I pointed toward the other end of the alley.

They all stared like they didn’t believe me.

“But, boss,” the punk on the ground finally coughed out a few words, his voice raspy, his neck still red from my grip. “That guy’s a ’sitter. He’s loaded with light. Nobody says he gonna be carryin’ light or—”

“Or you woulda been too chicken to belly up for the job? Look, you gots a sister, right?”

The kid nodded, then looked away.

“And you wants yur sister to keep that pretty face. Or maybe ya don’t cares no more.”

“I cares.” The boy shoved himself into a sitting position, then scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah.” I punched him in the arm. “We follows the ’sitter.”

The four of us headed down the alley. I rubbed my hand where that puppy had jammed a marker. I had to get this thing out, couldn’t be on somebody’s trackin’ screen. The dark city stretched out before us like a maze, black-shadowed streets, yellow edges of light—all wrapped up with knife-sharp corners. Only one safe path led across the Big Easy once the sun went down. We lived in the belly of the alley, gutter water ran through our veins, and the sewer stench was our perfume.

I is the shadow, the fire that burns, the smoke that blinds.

I thrust another spike in my arm and then held my breath.

F’true, I’ll gets the marker out. Soon as my spike halo fades.