“Oh no. Quite real. This is his bridge. He’s a diminutive thing, but all the more nasty and ill-tempered for his size. He has brought an untimely end to more than a few lost house pets and unfortunate local fauna. He seems to have a fondness for cats, though—rides a stray orange tabby when he needs to get about.”

“A troll?” I said. “Seriously?”

“Scoff if you like, but if you’re keen on keeping all of your digits and extremities, you would be well advised to steer clear or pay him an offering.”

“All right.” I suppressed my skepticism again—an exercise I was finding necessary more often than not while working for Jackaby. “Well, trolls . . . eat people, don’t they? Could Hammett be our killer?”

“Interesting thought. I can’t see a full-grown troll leaving a body without at least gnawing the bones a bit first. It’d be as if you or I ate an orange peel and left the fruit in the center. As for Hammett, he’s not exactly a menacing figure, for all his pugnacity. He would be happy to crunch the lot of us between his teeth, but I’ve seen him lose in a fair fight with a particularly robust badger. So . . . doubtful.” He turned his attention back to Hatun, who had tucked the fishing pole under the little bridge and come across to meet us.

She stood a foot shorter than I, with curly gray hair tied back in a sloppy bun, and the wrinkled face of someone who had weathered many years outdoors. She was dressed in bulky layers of shirts, petticoats, and wraps, all tattered and faded into complementary shades of soft pastels and subtle grays. She stood with a proud, erect gait, and an expression of benevolent confidence, looking almost stately in spite of her rags.

“Hatun, I would like you to meet my new associate, Miss Abigail Rook. Miss Rook will be working closely with me on cases for the foreseeable future. Feel free to speak openly before her.”

Hatun looked squarely and a little suspiciously at me, and then shuffled a half step to one side and then the other. She watched my eyes intently during the exercise. “Hmm,” she said. “Well, then. Nice to meet you, missy. I expect you two are looking into that business at the Emerald?”

I glanced to Jackaby, who seemed unperturbed by her behavior or her accurate guess. “Yes, in fact,” he answered.

“How did you know?” I meant it as a proper detective’s question, but I’m afraid it came out as an awed whisper, instead.

“Of course she knew.” Jackaby gestured impatiently back toward city. “There are at least a dozen uniformed men and scores of pedestrians making a noisy scene not three blocks from where we stand. If that mill weren’t in the way, you could probably see them from here.”