“Ladies, gentlemen, and other assorted persons whose quality I am not prepared to judge…” she began. She delivered this line with a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes—and it brought only a smattering of nervous laughter. “We have a problem.”

Several of the Chinese men turned to one another and whispered. Angeline saw them and got an idea. “Huey? Where are you, sweetheart? I don’t see you.”

He raised his hand.

“Good, good. Would you help me out? Come on up and translate for me. I might be talking too fast, and English isn’t my first tongue anyway.”

Houjin did as she asked and came to sit beside her on the bar, urging the Chinese men to come closer so he wouldn’t have to shout.

Thusly reconfigured, Angeline went on, with Houjin’s translation trailing along behind her. “As some of you have heard … we’ve got a hole in the wall, and it’s letting things out. It’s letting things in, too. Neither of them things is any good. Worse yet, the hole didn’t just happen: Somebody made it, on purpose.”

She paused to let Houjin catch up, and took a breath to start again.

It caught in her throat as the door to Maynard’s opened and Yaozu stepped inside, calm as you please. He held a mask in one hand and a lantern in the other. He set both beside the door, and stepped aside to close the door. He did not interrupt or do anything alarming, just folded his arms and turned his attention to Angeline.

The moment froze in place. Rector thought you could’ve heard a feather fall in the silence.

Angeline broke the spell by clearing her throat, looking away from Yaozu, and returning her attention to the rest of the room.

“Up at the north end of the city, at the edge of the park near the hill’s natural peak, the wall’s been broken open. Everything about it looks like dynamite. And we’ve seen the men what done it. Red, where you at?” she asked, scanning the room and seeing him atop the piano.

Rector gestured at his own chest. “Me?”

“Everybody clear a path. I want him to come here and testify.”

Rector could feel himself blushing, and felt dumb for it—which only made him blush harder. He descended the piano and weaved through the crowd, stopping at Angeline’s feet.

“Well? Get up here, why don’t you?”

She extended a hand and pulled him up. He felt highly conspicuous, standing there beside her. Everyone in the room was looking at him now, and he didn’t like it. Many of the people in the room hadn’t set eyes on Rector yet, and a murmur rose up, trickled around the room, and died under Miss Angeline’s glare.