Just before the light went out, the shadows charged, swallowing the sidewalk, the horse cart, the street itself. I pulled another match, but my shaking hands dropped the pack. I did not see it hit the ground. A bottomless black obscured the pavement. It rose, and my feet were gone. I fell to my knees, reaching into the dark for anything that might be a match. My arms and legs began to go numb.

I screamed for help, for light, for a friend. Carla Stone herself couldn’t have screamed louder. I screamed until my voice broke, and the mounting darkness rose toward my heart. I screamed until I saw the fire.

Torchlight flooded around the corner, beating the shadows back and warming me right down to the tips of my fingers. It was a gang of children, and they were singing a comforting song.

“Benjy’s Bloody Stump” is an endless chantey that has amused Westside toughs since before Clubber Carr ever cracked a skull. It was just getting to the good part, when Benjy’s stump is severed anew. I ran out of the alley and found three dozen boys armed with spiked table legs, rusted knives, knuckledusters, heavy chains, and jagged lumps of twisted iron. The vanguard waved a torch, asking safe passage from the lords of the block, who waved them on from the roof of the disused pharmacy on the corner. They began to march away. In the flickering torchlight, I saw their standard—a stuffed cat mounted on an oar. The One-Eyed Cats were on the warpath.

“Cherub Stevens,” I shouted, almost sobbing with relief. “Show yourself!”

“Gilda Carr!” cried Cherub from the middle of his pack of boy soldiers. He stepped out of the throng, saber drawn, beating back the dark with his smile. Beside him, bobbing and weaving, was Roach, who carried the stuffed feline with undisguised pride. “What are you doing out at night?”

“I’m going to kill Rotgut Barbarossa.”

The boys greeted this with howling laughter, but Cherub pulled me aside, dropping the fearless grin of the gang leader in favor of a look of honest concern. It was the same way he looked at Roach when the boy faltered, and normally I would have bristled at it, but tonight it felt like a balm.

“You’re joking, ain’t you?” he said.

“Probably.”

“I don’t like you being out in the night.”

“Join the chorus. Half the city seems to feel that way. Truly, I’m fine. I just got a bit turned around.”

“Please, then, let me walk you home.”