Vasiliy was in too much of a rush to be kept waiting here. On top of his backlog, he hadn’t been able to sleep right last night, and wanted to get back to the World Trade Center site that morning to talk to somebody in charge. He found a metal clipboard case stuck between balusters on the third step of the stairs. The company name on the business cards in the clip matched the one on Vasiliy’s work order.

“Hello!” he called again, then gave up. He found the door to the basement stairs, deciding to get started anyway. The basement was dark below—the stuffed window frame he had glimpsed from the outside—and the electricity had long ago been turned off. It was doubtful there was even a bulb in the ceiling fixture. Vasiliy left his handcart behind to prop open the door, and walked down carrying his poker.

The staircase hooked left. He saw loafers first, then khaki-clad legs: the property manager sitting against the side stone wall in a crack-house slump, his head to one side, his eyes open but staring, dazed.

Vasiliy had been in enough abandoned houses in enough rough neighborhoods to know better than to rush right over to the guy. He looked around from the bottom step, eyes slow to adjust to the darkness. The basement was unremarkable except for two lengths of cut copper piping lying on the floor.

To the right of the stairs was the base of the chimney, adjacent to the furnace that vented into it. Vasiliy saw, curled low around the far corner of the chimney mortar, four dirty fingers.

Somebody was crouched there, hiding, waiting for him.

He had turned to go back up the stairs to call the police when he saw the light around the bend in the steps disappear. The door had been closed. By someone else at the top of the stairs.

Vasiliy’s first impulse was to run, and run he did, racing off the stairs and right at the chimney where the owner of the dirty hand crouched. With a cry of attack, he swung his length of rebar at the knuckles, crushing bone against mortar.

The attacker came up at him fast, without regard to pain. Crack has a way of doing that, he thought. It was a girl, no older than her teens, and she was filthy all over, with blood down her chest and around her mouth. All of this he saw in a dim flash as she threw herself at him with weird speed, and even weirder strength, propelling him back, hard, against the far wall despite being half his size. She made an airless raging noise, and when she opened her mouth a freakishly long tongue slithered out. Vasiliy’s boot came up instantly, striking her in the chest and putting her down on the floor.