Ellen stopped, surprised. She’d leaned toward Claire as she did to resist the wind, or their dad when he was shouting. “Thank you,” Ellen said. “Hold on.” She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again Claire thought she saw light inside, like when a priest offered blessing. The light passed, though. Maybe it was only a reflection. But Ellen’s smile, too, seemed like a younger girl’s—the smile Claire’d received as payment when she let her five-year-old sister win at tag. “This way.”

Carriages rolled down Summer past the alley’s mouth. Ellen stopped on a dirty stoop, straightened her blouse, and knocked.

No answer came, nor any sound of footsteps.

Overhead, a crow called.

“Nobody’s home,” Claire said. “We shouldn’t wait around.”

Ellen tried the knob. The door creaked open onto a narrow winding stair. “Come on!” And before Claire could react, Ellen ran inside and up, jumping three steps at a time. Her skirt flared as she disappeared around a corner.

Claire caught up with her on the third-floor landing. Ellen had already knocked on the door of apartment 3A, and stood, hands behind her back, face fixed in an expression Claire also knew: nervous, and trying not to show.

Hard rhythmic taps approached behind the door. A cat cried. Claire wanted to leave, but not so much as she wanted to look strong for Ellen.

You think you know a city, she thought. You’ve lived here all your life, and then you follow your sister down a side street you’d never walk alone, and you remember there are people in this town we don’t know, and things that aren’t people but wear their skin, and maybe we’re about to die because you just knocked on some monster’s door.

The footsteps stopped. A cracked voice said, “Who’s there?”

Hells, Claire thought. I’m as crazy as I think she is.

“Ma’am, I’m Ellen Rafferty. We share a friend. She’s helped us both, and now she needs our help back.”

Chains unchained. Locks unlocked. The door cracked.

The woman within—dark skin and white eyes and a narrow white cane with a rubber tip on the end—wore a housecoat and fray-hemmed trousers, and did not look like a monster at all. “Come in,” she said. “Tell me more.”

*   *   *

A large and scared and ugly crowd gathered to hear the evening news.

Abelard on tiptoe craned his neck to see over the mounded shoulder of a bald, jean-jacketed man who stank of fish and salt. Past him and a sea of surging heads and shoulders and clapboard signs, the bare stage rose before the Crier’s Guild doors. Fisherfolk and dockhands, secretaries, line cooks, stevedores and factory women, Craftsmen and priests and bartenders off-shift had come hungry to hear what truth there was to the rumors of a Goddess’s return.

The sun declined.