A tired, silly fantasy, but she indulged it nonetheless: climbing onto the alicorn’s back and galloping away, stomping into the sky above the salvage yard, heading west, where the Pacific crashed, holding on to its horn as they soared yet higher.

Three Horse Salvage had ceased operations some time ago. The office was a low, whistling shack with boards over the windows and a notice on the door that Kitty didn’t get close enough to read. There were no security guards or dogs. No need for them; the lot was three-quarters empty, swaying with weeds, oil spots marking the dirt where wrecks had sat for years. Fan palms creaked and rattled in the breeze. Dim light shone through their canopies from the lots of adjacent properties.

There were gaps in the fence at the front of the yard. The razor wire had been snipped away in one part and this was where Johan and Xander entered. Ruben pushed through a suitably sized hole a little farther down. The three men converged. Their voices carried.

Xander: “You think she’s still here?”

Johan: “If she is, we’ll find her.”

Kitty had hidden beneath the dented hood of an old Chevy Impala, curled up in the cavity where the engine used to be. Rust holes in the fender allowed a limited view. She saw three cell-phone flashlights bloom in the darkness, then separate as they started to look for her.

Johan still had his ax. He dragged it along the ground behind him.

Kitty remained as still as possible, thinking that any small movement would make the Impala groan on its springs, or cause one of the few remaining parts to dislodge and fall loudly to the ground. She breathed through her hand, clamped over her mouth and nose, with only a couple of tight air holes between her fingers.

“You may be safe for the next ten seconds, Kitty,” Johan called out. He was close, maybe thirty feet away. “Or the next hour. Or a week. But I will find you eventually.”

She imagined a life of looking over her shoulder every other minute, expecting to see that sage Mustang snarling at the end of the street.

“Like I told you before.” His voice was closer. “I don’t give up easily.”

Kitty closed her eyes and saw the ax—Krókr, the fucking thing had a name—swooping downward, not once but twice, separating Sly Boy’s head from the rest of his body. She pushed the memory away but it came back, and back again. “Levi,” she whispered into her hand, because her son’s face made everything brighter. Would she ever get the opportunity to place herself at the edge of his world, in the hope of being drawn deeper? Would she ever hold him, touch his hair, smell his skin? Would he ever know her?