Two years prior, when I was just cobbling together my practice, Cherub told me a story from his childhood, when his uncle, a notorious safecracker enjoying a brief interlude between incarcerations, took him to the Eastside for roast beef. The meat was rose pink and sliced thin enough to melt on his tongue. He couldn’t remember where they’d had it, but he’d spent most of his life dreaming of that sandwich, and when I needed a case so badly that I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat, he hired me to find it for him. It was supposed to be a simple task, a peace offering to show he did not resent me for refusing his offer of marriage, but no sandwich matched that of his memory, and so the matter could never rest. When I finally cracked it, Cherub would owe me a fortune, but today he shook his head.

“Not the one you were looking for?” I said.

“Do you really believe this is the finest roast beef the Eastside has to offer?”

“It may have been, three or four hours ago.”

“Try again, Gilda Carr.”

I swung open the door to Judson Memorial Church, the Italianate behemoth that squatted at the foot of the square. Cherub bowed low, scraping his saber on the sidewalk. I chuckled, not because he was being particularly funny, but because he never quit trying to make me laugh.

And that meant more to me than I thought it would.

“Let me know how Gimlet fares,” I said.

“He’ll lose. They always lose.”

“There’s a reason he’s my favorite.”

The door slammed behind me, and I was alone in the church, where a few lonely candles cast faint light on an ungainly mural honoring the martyrs of the Westside. When the painting was finished, the church gave a little party, and an old woman climbed the pulpit to make an unasked-for speech. She raved about the vanished, who she believed had been taken—each and every one of them—by evil angels who swept through the dark like the devil’s own press gang. I drained my drink and left the party, unwilling to listen to anyone who sounded so like my father.

When my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I felt my way along the wall until I found a small wooden door that opened onto a long, steep, poorly lit stairwell.

There are no evil angels in the darkness, I reminded myself. Only madmen think otherwise. I drew in a deep breath, and climbed.

At the top of the stairs, I found a ladder. As I climbed it, cold sweat bathed my palms. In the faint light of a single lantern, the shadows danced. I was nearly at the top when a silhouette moved across the wall. I whipped my head toward it. The shadow was mine.