The place was stately, with antique furniture and a lot of polished wood. The walls were covered with oil paintings and in some of the rooms, especially a darkened one, there were painted canvases in frames stacked again the walls. The pictures he passed were beautiful night scenes, stars with a gauzy glow, and pale maidens half asleep or sleepwalking yet carrying out tasks by the seashore. In one, a large canvas on the main wall of a well-lit room that appeared to be used for entertaining, there was an eerie scene of a piece of marble statuary in moonlight—a woman with flowing hair and a writhing snake around her naked waist. Then, like a cutaway, beneath the marble form, under the ground, there was a room with a satin divan. Draped across it, in an almost-awkward position, was an image of an old man, asleep. The attitude of the figure caught his eye.

Four rooms later, alternating dark and bright, he found the house’s resident sitting near a blazing fireplace, its flames the only light in the room. With a long paintbrush, he was persistently dabbing a particular area with light green pigment. This painting, like the others, had a softness to the forms, as if they were beginning to disintegrate at the edges. Owen sat on the raised hearth of the fireplace, watching the old man work. At some point during his surveillance, it struck him that with all these paintings of night, this fellow might have already achieved the 100 Nights of Nothing. He watched the artist get up and, moving slowly, go off to a kitchen somewhere and bring back a cup of tea. While sipping it, he sat quietly and stared at his progress. The classical music that had been playing in another room suddenly quit. Owen left the house, heavy with the idea he had to warn the painter that he was in the sights of the Solar Cross Gang.

As the birds began to sing—meaning sunrise was no more than an hour away—he thought that at any moment, he’d be snatched back to himself. He strode along, wrapped in thought about this supposed gang his imagination had given life to. He wondered why they would settle in Westwend. The stakes were so meager, and considering the potential danger, one would think a gang would have better plans. Crenshaw might be loaded, but the Busy Bee was a bad move, all for a weekday-morning cash drawer. There couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred dollars, most in change and small bills. Something was off. Either that or this was the laziest, dumbest gang that ever existed. Owen heard movement behind him.