“I mean, I’ve seen him drunk.”

“That’s not drunk,” she said. “It’s what happens when he’s sobering. He hits whatever’s near. Breaks furniture.”

“He hits you?”

“He hasn’t,” she said. “Yet. We keep away. Lock ourselves in our rooms.”

“You don’t need to say anything you don’t want to.”

“And you don’t need to hear anything you don’t want to,” she said. “You never have before.”

He thought about blindness, and said nothing.

“Thank you for offering us a place to stay,” Claire continued. “Ellen will be grateful.”

He wasn’t sure how to take that, so he left it.

*   *   *

The doom that came to Chez Walsh looked like Cat in leather and denim, with Raz in tow. Raz still wore his whites; Cat had stopped by the temple to change, and left him waiting under the gaze of a goddess who was no longer blind. Cat didn’t go out often these days, but she still kept clothes in her locker.

“Promising,” Raz said when she led him down the Pleasure Quarter alley. Puddles of gray water reflected buzzing rooftop ghostlights and brightly colored billboards bearing images of smiling men, one of whom—a toothpaste ad—had been aftermarket modified with a spray-paint ball gag and the tagger’s circle-trumpet glyph.

“You’ll like this place. I used to come here all the time.” And it felt so good to be back—good and shudderingly transgressive. She’d left this life and these alleys behind, left the joy of fang in vein. But tonight she had fought pirates, saved a hundred people from misery, polished off a protracted operation. Triumph flushed her. She was done running from herself—time to celebrate how far she’d come from the addled addict of a year before.

Raz stepped over a fishnet-stockinged someone enjoying a chemical sleep in the lee of a metal trash bin. The someone had bandages up and down their arm. “Folks don’t clean up after themselves in this part of town?”

“She’s fine,” Cat said.

“The bandages, I mean. Impolite not to close your people up.”

“They’re a fashion statement.” Bass pounded beyond the unmarked ironbound door. THE RATS! screamed a chalk sign on the wall beside the door, sharp-edged balloon letters flanked by lightning bolts. The chalk bore the same circle-trumpet glyph, which Cat bet belonged to a new artist on the block.

“Ravings of madmen?”

Cat shook her head. “That’s the band. They’re great, actually. We’re in luck.”