“Dear god,” he said. “Sweet merciful—”

That was all he could get out before they swallowed him, and then they came for me. I didn’t cower or struggle. Like twisted Juliette Copeland, I welcomed passage into the dark.

When they sucked me into the shadow world, I found Copeland cowering in the corner of his boat, no more brave than the cops of the Fourth Precinct. I offered him my hand with a mute laugh, guided him to the wheel, and started the engine. We sailed on black water away from the rocks, toward the far side of the gate.

So this was what my Copeland had seen that day, two decades prior, when he leapt into the water to save those drowning children. I understood why it had caught his attention. Across the roiling slate river, flanked by jagged rocks, there was a hole in the world, a shimmering portal offering safe passage through a nightmare, no suicide required. Behind us, I saw the light city, where the sun shone bright on a crowded, peaceful river. Ahead, I saw the Westside night and the empty, cursed Hudson. We sailed on.

There were no ghouls on the river, but they crowded the shore. They perched on the rocks and dangled from trees, watching with fiery eyes. We were nearly at the western portal when they turned away from us, as if summoned by a dog whistle, and swept inland up the hills. Something was calling them south.

We sailed through Copeland’s gate, as smooth a passage as could be wished, and on into the Hudson. The shadow world fell away behind us, and down Manhattan’s slender flank, I saw the perfect darkness of the Westside.

“You damned silly woman,” said Copeland, face white and fists clenched tight on the wheel. “You stupid, tiny girl!”

“That’s enough. We’re here.”

“Here. Where is here? Where was there?”

“Between your city and my city, there is a New York of shadows, of smoke, of the dead. Greed tore a hole between them, just wide enough for a clever sailor to pass through.”

“But things like that don’t just happen.”

“They don’t in your New York. They do in mine. I spent a long time trying not to see them. If you can, I suggest you do the same. Just sail south. Jane Street. Pier 51, as fast as this tub will carry us.”

Scowling, he cranked the throttle, and the ship staggered into higher gear. Van Alen’s lighthouse was dark, and his feeble night-fires did nothing to illuminate the black expanse of the Hudson. Down below our feet, I wondered, what terrible shadows were swirling there?

Copeland was silent until we reached midtown and he saw the empty docks of the great ocean liners, their piers shattered, their pilings naked stumps jutting up from the Hudson.

“Cunard. White Star. NDL. CGT. I came this way just last week. They were thriving. It’s just impossible.”