“Solomon!” Connor said. He caught sight of me as I walked in the door, before my own eyes had adjusted to the gloom. The restaurant smelled like heaven, like smoked ham and brown sugar. Shouts from the kitchen echoed off the low ceiling. He came running, and gave me a big, hard hug.

“Hey, Solomon,” said Quang, who owned the restaurant. “You come to take this little troublemaker off my hands?”

That was when I noticed smoke pouring out of the kitchen.

“What did you do, you little monster?” I asked, hoisting Connor up.

He screamed in delight, mock-struggling, as I carried him.

“I just wanted to show him a way to cook the noodles faster! It was taking too long.”

“You practically cooked the whole kitchen,” Quang said, laughing. We sat down at a table, beside a window with green river water rippling right outside.

Quang was an othersider, with the ability to transport any object over any distance. Power like that, most people would go crazy with. Steal money out of cash registers, build an empire on thievery, but Quang just wanted to live a simple life. He had a sea wyvern tattoo on his forearm, and rumor had it that he was telepathically linked to a monster as big as a battleship, dwelling deep in the sea. He did a good, honest business—although, allegedly, when a local tough guy did something terrible to one of his waitresses, he teleported the guy clear to the far side of the Waterlands. Never to be seen again.

“Solomon,” said Evvy, one of the cooks. A big, beautiful butch woman, she shook my hand so hard I had to wince. Which made her laugh.

I handed Connor a paper place mat, and sat him down on my lap. He began to draw, using his finger—focusing a tiny flame, burning black lines onto the white surface, slowly sketching out Maraud’s familiar outline.

“You’ve gotten so good at that,” I said.

“Shhh,” he said, lips tight with concentration. Under the faint scent of smoke, I could smell the laundry soap of Connor’s clothes.

I turned to Quang and Evvy. “You guys know anything about this ‘Destroy All Monsters’ nonsense popping up all over the city?”

A long pause. They looked at each other. Then they burst out laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“Tough subject,” Quang said. “We been arguing about this all week.”

“Not arguing,” she said. “Discussing.”

“Evvy is a sympathizer.”

“Shut up,” she said, and turned to me, alarmed. “I’m not, I swear. I just think Quang is wrong to write them off.”

“Write . . . who off?”

“The nativists. The anti-othersider mob,” Quang said. “The ones behind ‘Abolish All Magic’ and ‘Destroy All Monsters’ and all that sh—” He looked at Connor, chose another word. “Nonsense.”

I asked Evvy, “How could you sympathize with creeps like that?”