Hope turned right into a narrow, uneven doorway, and glanced back at Rafe. “We have to go in here,” she said, nodding with her head. “I’ve been through here before. It’s safe.”

Rafe looked into the doorway. The entire inside of this building was a machine, vast and old. Hope was hunching down and entering a veined hole that looked like a giant’s intestine, hollowed out by time, contents gone away to dust. Rafe stepped forward and watched her worm her way in, and he caught a brief but potent whiff of old dry rot. He stepped back again and bumped into someone, receiving an elbow in the ribs for his trouble. The face of the building bulged out above him. The machine—whatever it was, whatever strange task it had been built to perform—hung over him as if ready to tumble at any moment. Its outside was ridged and bumped with projections weathered smooth over the decades, metal edges rusted, stone creases worn.

“Come on,” Hope said. “It’s not far.” And then she crawled into shadow.

Rafe followed. It was that or remain where he was, lost, so far from his uncle Vance that he would surely never find his way back.

They passed through the machine. It was dark and heavy. Rafe felt the thing pressing down at him, like a huge presence paused with its foot held ready to stomp.

On the other side there was another, narrower street, the faces of buildings so close that Rafe could almost stretch out both arms and touch them. People shoved by to and fro, some of them eyeing him suspiciously, others ignoring him. He could see addiction in their eyes: alcohol; fledge; rhellim. And there were other forms of abuse going on here of which Rafe had no knowledge. One man held a fleshy bag in front of his mouth, breathing in and out quickly as his eyes rolled up in his skull and his face seemed to darken. A woman sat cross-legged in a window above the street, sighing as a swarm of insects drew blood from self-inflicted gashes across her shoulders and neck. He had never imagined any of this. He was a farm boy, just like Hope had said, and the more he saw the more nervous he became.

“Hope,” he said, and the witch turned to look at him. She must have seen the panic in his eyes because she put a hand on his shoulder and smiled. Her tattoos smiled with her, and Rafe felt calmer.

“We’re nearly there,” Hope said. “My place. We can sit and eat and talk. I want to know what happened to you, and I think . . . I think I may have some things to tell you.”

“About what?”

“About why you’re here.”