I left my hiding spot, darted behind the scenery at the back of the stage, and crept to the other side. If I could intercept Van Alen, I could warn him. I could stop the war. I could save Cherub, Roach, and hundreds of other lost boys. I might have made it too, but the flies were dark, and the stage was old, and the boards creaked beneath my feet. In an ordinary warehouse, where men talked and laughed while they worked, they would not have heard me, but Van Alen’s men were silent, and the creaking board echoed all the way to the back of the theater. It was followed by an agonizing silence, broken by the terrifying whisper of Mrs. Greene.

“Is someone there?” she said.

Heavy footsteps came my way. There was no use hiding, no use fighting. I might have run, but those great beasts came around both sides of the scenery, trapping me against the brick wall at the back of the theater.

“Hello,” I said, and one of the men belted me across the face, knocking me to the ground and opening a wound on my cheek that spilled blood into my mouth.

“You bastards,” I said, and they did not respond. Their hands were calloused, but their grip was light as they lifted me off the ground.

“Really, gentlemen,” I said, “there’s no need. Mrs. Greene and I are old friends. She values me more than any Tiffany lamp. Set me down before I shatter.”

The man holding my right arm, the man who had found the Tiffany lamp, gave a strangled moan. His head lolled toward me, and his mouth fell open into a smile, and I saw scarred gums where his teeth should be and a tongue cut out at the root.

I pulled as hard as I could, fighting to escape his sallow skin, sunken cheeks, and friendly smile, but his grip was like a vise. Mrs. Greene stepped onto the stage. She snapped her fingers, and the men set me down at the top of the great dark hole, the source of the Eastside breeze. I did my best to meet Mrs. Greene’s eye.

“Who are you spying for?” she said. “Barbie? The police?”

I fished out my card case and presented a card with as much ceremony as I could muster.

“And what in the name of God,” she said, “are tiny mysteries?”

“You deal in vegetables, not war. I am the same. All of this”—I swept my hand, taking in everything from the gash in the stage to the workers’ horrible, mutilated mouths—“all of this is strictly outside my field of interest. I would not report you to Barbarossa, the police, or the New York Sentinel. But it is essential that I speak to your boss.”

“Essential to you, perhaps, but certainly not to me.”