She struck him in the neck with her cigarette packet. An alchemical switch snapped within the paper, metal prongs struck him, lightning flashed. He slumped twitching onto the counter. Sideburns rushed forward, but Cat heard a poured-water sound and when she looked up she saw Sideburns struggling against a quicksilver-skinned woman who held him in a sleeper hold, pinching off the blood flow to his brain. Sideburns was smarter, or better trained, than Cat gave him credit: when he couldn’t pull the Suit’s arm down, he thrust his hips into her. When that didn’t work, he tried to claw her face. Fingernails skidded over silver. Thumbs found eye sockets and gouged, but the Suit didn’t notice. Score another point for mind-bonding—some responses you couldn’t train out of human bodies, no matter how damage-resistant they might be, but the Suit knew better than to let its host get scared.

Cat caught Apron by the collar, dragged him up onto the counter, pulled the key from his pocket, and ran to the wall. The door opened, and revealed the stairs.

Behind her, in his last flailing seconds of consciousness, Sideburns made his smartest move. He couldn’t break the Suit’s grip, couldn’t save himself, but he could kick over the kitchen rack. It fell, struck the sink, rained bowls and platters and tongs and boxes onto tile.

From up the stairs she heard a voice. “Stevie?”

Two Suits had followed the first through the rear window. They ran past her now, a blur of silver and steel, rapid footsteps. Upstairs she heard a crossbow twang, a scream. Moonlight called her, the hungry pit at the back of her mind yawning deep as voices issued from it in ecstatic chorus—

Breaching window—

Blast rods at the door—

Go go go—

Kitchen secure—

She has a rod—

A fist the size of a carriage struck the ceiling over Cat’s head. Roof timbers strained, cracks spiderwebbed across plaster, dust fell. She knew the layout of the dealers’ second-floor apartment: large kitchen in back where they packed the product, living room–turned–guard post in front, sitting room in between, locked bedroom door. Targets swarming, five in the kitchen lit red in her mind’s vision, four in the front, two in the middle, and one asleep or tripping in the bedroom. Maura Varg stood in the sitting room, smoking blast rod in her hand, charge expelled. Varg’s skin flushed as systems inside her spun up, gave her strength and speed. She struck the locked door with the palm of her hand so hard its wood split up the center—

Cat swore. The Suit in the kitchen was busy, binding Apron and Sideburns amid the mess of fallen pots and pans.