The alley was dark, the flanking buildings blocking out what was left of the late afternoon light. Her uneasiness returned. The shadows here made her nervous, and she hurried over the pitted, eroded asphalt toward the opposite end, not running, not wanting to make that concession to fear, but striding quickly, hoping that her anxiety did not show. She pretended as though it was only the normal physical dangers of the city that worried her, that she was afraid of gangs and muggers and derelicts and drug addicts, but that was not the case. She could spin it that way, rationalize it, but her nervousness was based on something less concrete, something ephemeral that she could not even put her finger on, and whether it was stress or hormones or another entirely unrelated cause, all she wanted was to get out of this alley and off the streets and back home.

The girl was waiting for her at the alley’s end.

Laurie was almost to Union, about to step off the rough asphalt onto the sidewalk, when she saw movement in the shadowed darkness to her right, a flash of white that startled her and made her suck in her breath.

It was a girl of about ten or eleven, a thin waiflike child with dirty hair and face and even dirtier clothing: a white party dress covered with smudges and handprints and mud-edged rips. Her physical appearance resembled that of someone who’d been beaten or abused, but there was no sense of victimization about her, no fear or hesitancy or the sort of emotional withdrawal that would be expected after such an attack. Indeed, the child seemed remarkably self-possessed, and she stepped in front of Laurie, looking up at her. “Hello.”

“Hi,” Laurie said, and she wasn’t aware of it until she’d spoken the word, but there was something old-fashioned about the girl, an anachronistic formality evidenced by her “Hello,” by her purposeful walk and self-assured bearing, that under other circumstances would probably be cute and charming but here, in the alley, seemed unnatural and more than a little disconcerting.

There was also something vaguely erotic about the child, something sensual in the way her hair fell over the left side of her face, the way she stood, hips out, bare legs slightly spread beneath her dirty dress.

What kinds of thoughts were these?

Laurie looked into the girl’s face, saw raw beauty beneath the dirt and grime, saw a knowing, adult expression on those child’s features, and she felt a strange and unfamiliar stirring within her, a feeling that was almost… sexual.

Sexual?

What the hell was wrong with her?

The girl smiled up at her slyly. “Do you want to see my underwear?”