She tipped her head up to savor the warm blue sky, and then lied.

June: Yeah. It’s raining. I hope the weather’s nicer there.

The front door across the street swung open, and a wraith of a man stepped out, shielding his eyes from the sun. It had been three years since June had seen Victor Vale. He didn’t look well. His face was a rock worn with deep hollows. And the way he moved—as if he were a length of cord, strung so tight that any force might snap it.

He hurts people, Sydney had said.

But June had been watching for days, and aside from the way strangers bent out of his path, she hadn’t seen him use his power once.

He didn’t look that strong.

He’s sick. It’s my fault.

Victor started down the block. June stubbed out her cigarette and followed, merging with a small group of pedestrians as it passed. With each intersection, strangers peeled away, but others joined, and all the while June kept Victor in her sights. He moved like a ghost through the city, slipping out of its bright heart and into seedier parts, before arriving in a district known as the Brickworks.

Four warehouses, squat brick buildings like pillars, or compass points, framed the blocks that made up the Brickworks, and between them, a network of bars, betting shops, strip clubs, and darker fare.

You didn’t need a line or a fence to find the place where good neighborhoods gave way to bad ones. June had lived in enough of both to know by feel. The shift from new steel to old stone. Double-glazed windows to spidering glass. The polish worn off, and never repainted.

Curbs glittering with the remains of the last broken bottle.

The Brickworks didn’t even pretend to be respectable.

Few places could exude that much trouble in the middle of the day, and given the sheer number of illicit businesses, June guessed the local police were getting a cut to look the other way. By the time she stepped across the proverbial tracks, she’d shifted into an old biker, all gristle and bone and tattooed sleeves.

It wasn’t the first time Victor’s wanderings had led him—and by extension June—to this corner of the city. He was obviously looking for someone. But the tangle of buildings and the broad daylight made it hard to follow too closely. June fell back, and when Victor’s pale head vanished through a door at the back of a bar, she changed tactics, returned to the street and circled until she found a half-rusted ladder hanging from a structurally unstable fire escape.

June hauled herself up onto the nearest warehouse roof, boots skimming the tar as, somewhere nearby, a door crashed open. She crossed the roof in time to see a man go crashing backward into a stack of empty crates, muttering curses.