The street turned to cobblestones, and I had to keep a tight grip to stop the cart from toppling over. A dish of scalloped potatoes clattered off, dousing my shoes in béchamel. The acrid smell of rosemary cut through the frost that wrapped itself around my head. I breathed deep and begged my legs to keep running.

They faltered when I got to Thompson Street. I slipped to one knee, grabbed the room service cart, and dragged myself up. Behind me, the city had been replaced by a black as deep as velvet. A horn sounded behind me—the roar of one of the city buses that had never run on the Westside. The horn sounded again, and my legs went numb. I took the lid off the roast beef, gripped it in my cold, sweating palm, and whipped it through the glass door of Cleo’s Pet Shop, which the One-Eyed Cats had once called home. A fine throw. Hellida would have been proud.

A candle flickered on inside. I sank to the cobblestones, tasted their filth on my lips, and wished I was eating roast beef instead. My body deserted me. The horn sounded again. My heart thudded, impossibly slowly, and I heard my father whispering in my ear.

“Gilda?”

I looked up—leaned my neck back and found I still had a neck, opened my eyes and found I still had eyes. Cherub stood on the sidewalk, looming above me like the Colossus over Rhodes, his face and clothes crisp with dried blood. He reached down a hand, and his palm touched mine, and the cold fell away like a nightgown.

“Room service,” I said and found the strength to stand. I turned around. The street was dark, but not impossibly, and there were no buses for miles.

We hauled the cart into the shop, past a wall of hungry mutts, and at the first taste of meat, Cherub laughed so hard that the saber slipped from under his hand, and he fell backward onto the mattress he kept in the middle of the floor. It was honest, loving laughter, and it warmed me as much as the roast beef soothed him.

“This is it!” he shouted through a mouthful of sauced beef. “This is the sandwich I’ve been dreaming of.”

“And it wasn’t a sandwich at all.” I socked him on the shoulder. The bastard.

“I should have expected it. I should have known that in a city that seeps like a pus boil, Gilda Carr could still work miracles. Oh dear god, is it fine.”

“As good as you remember?”

“No memory tastes this good. Have a mouthful.”

I did, and it was as Aiken promised: a taste of heaven. Cherub put a bit of roast beef on his finger and called softly for Mose. The rat scurried out from under the counter, sniffed the meat, and ate it in one bite.