As quickly as the cat had succumbed to Lena’s attentions, it leaped up and padded down the steps to the street, glancing over its shoulder at her. It licked its paw with sudden businesslike ferocity, as if to say: Me, make a fool of myself? Lena grinned. The cat stared at her expectantly.

“What is it? You want me to follow?” she whispered.

She stood up and walked down the alley, her legs aching from sitting still for so long, hunched up against the chill. The cat instantly trotted along a little farther and waited for her at the nearby corner. It moved further when she caught up—and disappeared down a set of steps between two houses.

“I don’t really want to go down there,” whispered Lena, peering into the gloom, hesitating at the top of the steps. What if Emris returned to find her gone? She’d promised him she’d wait until dawn. The cat wrapped itself around her legs, then hurried into the darkness, meowing—as if in encouragement. The stairway was narrow, pitch-black, and silent as the dead. The cat meowed a second time—the sound fainter, farther away.

“Come back, puss. It’s too dark,” she whispered.

Another, slightly impatient meow. A deep silence.

“Hey, are you there?”

Nothing.

She edged forward, trailing her fingers along the wall as she eased down the steps. A noise—a creak, or perhaps a whine—sounded from farther along. Lena felt her heart squeeze, her breath go shallow. The stairway reeked of rotten food. What the hell am I doing? I should turn back!

“Where are you?” she breathed. The butterfly fluttered out from behind her ear. In the darkness, she noticed the tiniest flicker of bluish light at its core, wreathed by cloud. Her eyes started to adjust, vague black shapes materializing in the gloom as the butterfly fluttered on: a long ladder or plank leaning against the wall at the bottom of the steps, a pile of rubbish.

A yellow flash in a dart of moonlight—two feline eyes up ahead.

“Stupid animal,” she grumbled. “What are you doing? I thought—”

That noise. A subtle creak. The cat’s eyes vanished.

Lena hurried over to the end of the alley, felt the solid brick wall with her hands. “Where are you?” she murmured—but the damned creature was gone.

She leaned against the wall in despair, but the surface shifted, the creaky moan now identifying itself as the noise of old hinges. Gasping and unbalanced, she fell through to the other side, slamming painfully against the ground.

Dazed, she felt the cat nudging her head. Her cheek was pressed against a cold stone floor.

“Hello, Lena,” said a man’s voice, low and warm. “I see my friend found you.”