I’m over the edge, into the freezing night, my lips still burning. I hear a strangled sound as I drop and roll onto the balcony, then start to scale the wall down to the ground.

“Wait! Please!”

I should not look up, but I do, fingers raw and wind at my back. He’s staring down at me from two floors above. He’s going to call the guards; he’s going to demand I give the necklace back; he’s going to have me arrested, and I will have failed Femi and Azelma.

“Who are you?” he asks.

I pause for only a second before I smile at him. “The Black Cat,” I say. Then I let go and drop like a shadow into the night.

Femi and I travel over rooftops in the dark, high above the noise of heaving, sleepless streets, far from the city center, over warrenous rookeries and pitch-black alleys. Femi nearly flies, moving with fearlessness and grace. Every now and again he whistles, each time a different sound, as clear as the bells of Notre-Dame. I think I hear the echo of an answer on the wind, but I can’t be sure it’s not my tumultuous mind playing tricks on me.

“Keep up, little cat!” Femi calls, his voice soft, eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “Don’t think, don’t hesitate, just leap when I leap.”

Every step I take is filled with terror: I never know if my foot will land solidly or if I’ll fall behind. Father taught me how to scale buildings but never how to soar, leaping like a bird from rooftop to rooftop. With every leap, I think of my sister and my stomach turns inside out.

When we pause so I can catch my breath, Femi whispers to me in urgent tones the reason for our mission, words I am to repeat, gestures I am to make. The jumble of things I must remember is terrifying. Panic rises, choking me, but I think of Azelma and bite my lip, forcing myself to concentrate. Then we are off again. And in the darkness, I repeat Femi’s words to myself over and over till I know them by heart. I will do whatever I must to get back to Azelma.

Finally, he stops, and I nearly whimper in relief, overcome by the journey, my ears ringing with the instructions he has given me. In the silvery dawn, I see that we are on the outskirts of an abandoned neighborhood, its buildings ravaged by time. We scramble down the side of a crumbling edifice, push past a half-open gate, dwarfed by the shadow of a ruined church. A pair of heavy doors awaits, our arrival upsetting a murder of crows nesting in the roof. Inside, what hasn’t decayed has long since been scavenged: the benches, altars, and stained-glass windows are dark open wounds along the crumbling walls.

“L’église de l’évêque Myriel,” Femi says, his low voice echoing into the ruin. “They say it’s haunted by the ghost of its founder, a man violently converted from a life of nefarious crime.” He reaches out to me, drawing me into the darkness after him.