“Then either she got through, or she’s somewhere up ahead.”

“Wait here.”

“What do you want her for?”

“I want to know if she killed my father. I want to hear her justify it, to try to lie her way out of it, to crack and admit that she cut his throat and severed his head, same as she did to that poor stupid guard I saw her killing the night of the massacre, killed him because it meant she could make a little more money every year. I want to let the pain wash over me, to really feel that he is gone, and then I want to start to forget.”

“And what will you do with that?” he said, pointing at the pistol I clutched in my hand.

“I don’t know.”

“Would you kill her?”

“Twice now I’ve killed someone who was trying to do the same to me. I don’t feel good about that, but I think I can justify it to myself. To avenge my father, to kill for the sake of justice . . . those are ideals much higher than any I’ve ever claimed for myself. I don’t know if I can do it. I’m going to find out.”

“If you’re not back in five minutes . . .”

“You’ll keep waiting.”

“Okay.”

Torch in one hand, gun in the other, I proceeded north. Far ahead, I saw the pinprick of light at the Times Square station, where the healthy city was sealed off from the Westside. Every minute, a train thundered past on the other side of the wall, loud enough to shake the bones in my chest. Every time, I froze, certain the train was coming my way. It never did.

Between trains, I heard people. They laughed, clear and pure, a laughter I hadn’t heard in a long time. From the joy in their voices, they might have been another species from myself. They certainly lived in another city.

The fence was cast iron, three inches thick but slightly open at the top, just enough to let in a bit of light from the stem and show the Westside what we were missing. But at the bottom, it went all the way to the ground.

That’s where I found Barbarossa.

There was blood on her chest, and her fingers were rubbed down to the bone from trying to claw her way through the iron. I could tell, from the way the rats gnawed at her ankles, that she’d been dead for days. On her lips was something that could have been a smile.

I took a short, shuddering breath, then threw the pistol back onto the tracks. It clanked, steel against steel, a meaningless sound.

“Where now, Gilda?” asked Cherub. “How shall we waste the rest of our night?”