And he danced with her. It happened unsteady and slow as new spring, but he did dance. His eyes, which he’d held half-closed since entering the bar, opened, and she saw the whites around his ruby-stained brown irises. By the second song he forgot himself and smiled.

She forgot herself and moved toward him.

There was bass and there was guitar and there were drums and a piano only it wasn’t a piano exactly but some strange machine that worked with spinning cylinders of glass crackling Craft, and bodies pressed them close, and she danced with the crowd and they with her and he with them and then they were together, and the crowd held fangs and blood that called for them and the fangs were white and dark blood flushed faces red and there was so much wanting in this room, wanting to vanish, to be drawn under another’s power into a mouth—

She danced with him, and he with her, wound tight as clocks were wound in Iskar, so tight his skin might sing. She touched him. She pulled him toward her. He followed. She kissed him. He kissed her back. Her lip slid between his teeth, and the teeth touched her, and she pressed her lip against them and her skin parted and there was a sharp sharp stab of joy—

that all went wrong at once.

He pulled back.

She stumbled into him. Beauty raged in her vein. There was nothing she could not be, there was no mold into which she could not be poured, the draw had been so strong and rich, and at its withdrawal she clutched for him, seeing too late his sudden horror at herhimself, at what they were—at what they were about to—at what they, at what she, had—

He staggered into the moshing crowd, knocked into a blond-dreadlocked man, who shoulder-checked Raz back, and Raz, eyes wide and wet like marble library lions’ eyes in rain, moshed the blond-dreadlocked man harder than he’d ever been moshed before, sent him tumbling airborne into a pair of shirtless bodybuilders who fell like pool balls run from a single shot, two left side four right far corner six right side thunk thunk thunk, until only blond dreads was left standing, spinning, laughing a wild woo with hands raised in horn-sign as the fallen rose and piled on him in turn.

Raz looked uncomprehending at them, at her, and left.

She ran after him.

He snaked through the crowd. She never could have caught him but for Candy at the door, who blocked him in while she admitted two new customers—so Cat, ignoring Walsh’s waved good-bye, reached the alley before Raz left it.

“Raz!”

He didn’t turn.

“Don’t run from me.”

He stopped. “Then what? Do you want me to stay?”

“Did it look like I was pushing you away?”