More actors stroll down the street: a peddler with a cart, a cap pulled low over his head, a peasant woman in an apron.

Then it hits me. I can feel them. My pulse ratchets up a notch, so loud in my ears that at first I don’t hear, let alone see, the young couple of tourists who approaches our foursome.

“Can we get a picture with you?” the girl asks. Claudia smiles and turns toward her, arm looped with Piotrek’s. Her scarlet lips glisten in the wan light of a real gas streetlamp, and I blink; with the pink hair and rhinestones raining from her ears, the netting of her veil like myriad tiny windows over the pale skin of her cheeks, she’s dazzling.

I almost persuade the girl to forget the picture, recalling what Luka said about photos and Progeny. But every one of us is masked.

Hiding in plain sight.

“Who are you supposed to be?” the girl says after snapping a selfie with them.

“Run away,” Claudia whispers, before diving into a cartwheel. Piotrek tips his hat toward her just before the girl literally takes off running.

Luka glances at me sidelong.

“How can they keep from attracting attention this way, masked or not?” I hiss. “All a hunter would have to do is look for the freak parade at midnight!”

He shakes his head. “There are pop-up masquerades all over Europe,” he says. “People got tired of expensive clubs, started taking to cemeteries and ruins. See those people headed toward the square?” He points toward a group of costumed partygoers.

I do, and I can’t sense them at all—unlike the actors, who nod in our direction before we’re even within speaking distance. Claudia skips to the peasant man’s side, whispers in his ear. He chuckles, as though she’s told him a joke—and maybe she has. When she turns away, something glints in her hand. She takes Piotrek’s arm and pivots, pulling him around as though they were dancing all the way to the corner.

Two blocks north of the church, the streets are darker, the buildings in various states of repair—one pristinely restored, the plaster of the next one leprously crumbling away. Claudia and Piotrek pause before the beaten-up double door of a more decrepit building—a large residence that seems to extend to the corner, the windows of which are shuttered and painted over with graffiti. With a quick glance around, she fits a key into the lock and lets us in.

She marches swiftly down the hallway ahead of Piotrek, searching the walls. At the corner, she pauses to touch the peeling paint. There, faintly, is the sign that looks like two towers. And then she’s leading us down the hall to the door of an apartment that looks like it ought to be condemned.

“Where are we going?” Luka says finally, his hand tight around my own.