The other prostitutes glared at Katya. Likely they didn’t appreciate the thought of more competition. As if.

“More bad news,” Aggie said. “Mala saw a haunt earlier.”

“Not another one,” Katya said.

“She was goin’ down an alley after a job and saw this--well, shadow, I guess--fly up into the sky. She heard a scream and went ahead. Found an old lady kneeling over some bodies. Mala said their skulls were smoking.”

“Shit.”

The haunts had been terrorizing Lavorgna for months, and no one even had a guess at what they were.

“Just be careful out there,” Aggie said.

Katya sucked in a hit and shivered as the nicotine fired her bloodstream. The menthol tasted terrible, but it was worth it. She blew out the smoke and stared up into the storm-tossed night. Here and there between the clouds scudded two of the three moons, one pale and white, one greenish and misshapen.

“Hey, look what crawled in,” Aggie said.

A long black limo squealed up to the corner, sloughing water. A dirty spray splashed Katya’s legs.

“Watch it!” Aggie called, approaching the vehicle. “Look where you’re goin’. Can’t you see it’s rainin’ out here?”

Sudden fear for Aggie made Katya call out, but the redhead ignored her. Four homunculi stood on the limo’s running boards, two on each side, chains linked to spiked collars around their necks. The creatures’ gangly black frames glistened in the rain. Like guard dogs, Katya thought. Except that they looked like blackened human corpses, only their eyes undamaged.

The limo’s chrome grill shone like silver teeth, and its bulbous headlights stabbed into the darkness like swords. A Boss’s car, or one of his lieutenant’s.

As Aggie sashayed toward the limo like she was the Empress of Qar, Kat felt a swell of admiration for her. She should’ve been a thief like me, not a whore.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?” Aggie asked whoever was in the limo. “Sprayin’ water all over my girls? We ain’t made of sugar but that don’t mean we like gettin’ gutter water hosed all over us.”

The back window rolled down. Darkness gaped.

Aggie ducked her head into the interior, and Katya half expected black hands to grab her and haul her inside, for the auto to roar off and vanish into the night, Aggie’s screams on the air. Instead Aggie laughed and fingered her wet clothes.

“Naw, it’s slower than a Returner’s come,” she said, and continued talking to the occupant of the limo’s cabin in low tones. Her pimp?

Sudden movement down the street. Katya snapped her head to see the low, curving lines of Sedic’s auto, prowling like a tiger in the shadows. One of his goons drove, and she thought she saw Sedic himself in the passenger seat, a terrifying waste of a man whose addiction to alchemical substances had turned his veins yellow and caused most of his hair to fall out. A chill swept her. She looked back to the limo.

This is my chance. She moved toward the vehicle.

“I think I’d like an introduction,” she said.

Aggie looked surprised. “Alright, then. Jack, Katya Ivreski. Katya, meet Death’s Head Jack.”

“Come in if you want to talk,” said a dry, crackly voice from the car. “I always have time for pretty young women in need. But I’m kind of in a hurry and don’t have time to sit here and chat all night.”

With a rueful smile, Aggie opened the limo door for Katya. The darkness inside looked very dark.

Katya hesitated as her eyes fell on the homunculi. Suck it up, Kat.

She cringed at the proximity of the creatures, which leered down at her from either side (Aggie patted her on the back and said “Good luck”) and ducked into the interior of the limousine. It smelled of incense smoke and chemicals and was so dark she couldn’t see. A hand guided her, and she fell back into plush leather. It was more comfortable than anything she’d ever known. She hoped she didn’t ruin it with her wet clothes.

The car doors slammed shut, locking her in darkness. Tires squealed, and the limo shot off.

Someone lit a match, and light flared across the face of the only other occupant of the cab, the man who must be Death’s Head Jack.

Katya opened her mouth and screamed.

When the thing sitting across from her didn’t lunge for her and tear out her throat, Kat forced herself to stop screaming. Courage, girl.

It wasn’t easy. The thing was quite literally named. Death-black eyes glittered out of a decayed, withered face. The head had to belong to a corpse—yet when he spoke the flesh bunched and moved, surprisingly mobile.

At her fear and fascination, Jack laughed.

She tucked her legs under her and crawled as far away from him as she could get. She understood what the smoke was for now—to hide the stench of rot. And the chemicals must issue from Jack himself.

“Are you a Returner?” she asked.

Amused, he shook his head. He put his cigarette to his lips, and as he did she saw—her eyes adjusting to the dimness—that his hand was normal. That is, he had the hands of a living man, while his head was undeniably that of a dead one. And that just couldn’t be, not if he was a Returner. Returners were all corpse—in fact, they were usually composed of pieces of several. Besides, Returners were normally just mindless slaves. Reanimating the dead was a tricky process and mostly the brain was too far gone by the time it was brought back to life. It was said that only the mysterious and reclusive Dr. Reynalt could perform the procedure successfully.

“No,” Jack said, his withered lips curling around his cigarette. “I’m not a Returner, not precisely. But let’s leave that for now. I know my story. I don’t know yours. Do you want to join our little family—start working for me?”

Katya stared at his rotting head. She knew Jack could, if he wanted, slit her throat and throw her corpse from the car, and even if it landed at the feet of the most honest cop in Upper Lavorgna no one would lay a hand on him. Bosses’ men, especially the high ones, could get away with anything.

“We’ll see,” Katya said.

Smoke curled up from his cigarette. “You are pretty, I’ll give you that—wet and bedraggled and all.”

“I don’t need to be pretty.”

“No?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “Listen, Jack. It’s been a rough night. It’s just, that’s not why I’m here. I didn’t want to meet with you to become, you know, a working girl.”

“Why then?”

She made herself sit up straight. “I want to meet with Boss Ravic.”

His eyebrows, what he had of them, shot up. “Oh?”

“Yep.”

“Well, as it happens, I was just on the way to the Factory to pay him a visit.”