I took a few steps into the tunnel. The light of my torch quivered. The shadows wrapped around me like a blanket, and I felt my chest growing cold.

“Gilda?” called Cherub. I did not make a sound. Behind me, he landed softly. His torch chased off the shadows. His hand found mine, and I did not push it away. He was trembling, and I could tell by his breathing that he was trying hard to keep his teeth from chattering. “She’s dead. Everyone knows it. It was in the Sentinel. Thorne told you himself—he burned her body.”

“Cops lie.”

“How could she have gotten away from that fight?”

“She knew how to move in the dark.”

“You saw what happened in that intersection. You and I were the only ones who got out.”

“We would have felt it. This city would have heard the echoes if she died.”

“You’re mad, you know that? Utterly mad.”

“Come on. Walk. There’s nothing to be afraid of . . . or at least, nothing we can do anything about.”

We walked north along the IRT—the third rail shining through tunnels cut but never used. We passed Fourteenth Street, Eighteenth, Twenty-Third. The only noise was an occasional rumbling, sometimes from a faraway train, sometimes from my stomach.

“Do you think they’ll really tear down the fence?” said Cherub, somewhere around Thirtieth Street.

“Not anytime soon.”

“Imagine, if they opened up the Westside. Trains running in these tunnels. Unarmed children in Washington Square. It might not be so bad.”

“Stop. Close your eyes.”

“But the dark . . .”

“Just try it.” He closed his eyes, and I closed mine. “Don’t you feel the cold sweeping over you? The shadows tugging at the sleeves of your jacket? Your fingertips growing numb? Open your eyes, damn it. As long as the shadows are hungry, the Westside will be no place for ordinary people.”

“But without the Copelands running back and forth between the two cities, the Westside will heal.”

“Maybe. If it does, it will take some time before things are balanced out, and finding balance can be painful.”

“You’re not the type who thinks things get better, are you?”

“Some situations are simply insane.”

We kept walking, feeling our way through the darkness, our feet occasionally brushing the dead third rail. It was strange, being so close to him in the dark. It was the first time in two years that I’d felt at ease walking next to him and saying nothing at all.

Thirty-Fourth Street was barren and pristine. Our torches found only one blemish: on the black iron column that separated the local track from the express, we saw a smeared bloody handprint.

“She came this way,” said Cherub, amazed and almost giddy. “She ran north. She got out. She’s alive!”

“It looks that way.”

“The IRT hits the stem at Times Square.”

“It does.”

“There’s a fence in the tunnel.”

“There is.”