“You dreamed it?” I said. “That doesn’t make any sense.” I could have gone on. I’d stopped dreaming in the Outscape almost immediately, because there was nothing to dream of, in the city forever on the wrong side of the border between dreams and reality. Not to mention what Robin claimed should have been impossible on its face. And yet…well, this creature killing Chesnes and stymieing the most powerful players of the city was impossible enough. “What is it that you dreamed, exactly? Beat by beat and bit by bit.”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember that much. It was a dream—you never remember that much."

“...but?”

“There were brick walls. I could put my hands out to either side of me-” She demonstrated- “and touch them. An alleyway, maybe, between two buildings? And the monster filled the whole space, dragging itself along on the walls more than the ground. It was facing me and so I could see all its teeth.” She shuddered. “You don’t understand how many of them there were. I don’t even understand how they all fit in one space. It started to crawl towards me and then I—I woke up. I made myself wake up because it was so horrible.”

I crossed over to my desk and pulled out a pack of powdered coffee. Absolutely godawful stuff, a slurry that tasted like woodchips and pencil shavings. But it was still too early for any of this, and the gritty caffeinated mixture (with a healthy injection of whiskey from the bottle in the top drawer) made it a little more bearable. “Chesnes was killed by the Delta,” I said, once I’d choked it down. “Wide open space, no bricks. Maybe it’s not a memory, not exactly. Maybe your subconscious is just dredging something else from its own half-remembered dream.”

Maybe I should have closed the door all the way. Usher took that moment to poke his head in, and he’d clearly heard, if not everything, enough to find his way to the correct conclusions. “Dreams?” He cocked his head to the side. “They should not be such strange things in this city, and yet they are, hmm? At least when it is one of you experiencing them.”

“You don’t know what might cause it?”

He walked up to Robin. With a flick of his hand a flashlight appeared in his fingers, and he shone it into first her right eye, then her left, ignoring the way she flinched away at the light. “I know what I’ve been told—that psychoalterative substances like Dragon or Jabberwock, designed for nightmares, may still be enough for humans. She shows no signs of it I can see.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m still here,” Robin protested. “And—I mean, this is good, right? I don’t want to have to take those psych—psycho—the nightmare powders. If I’m already dreaming of the monster, then we should just wait and see if I dream of it again.”

“Not if we can’t trust those dreams,” I said. “And we can’t trust a damn thing not knowing what it is. Maybe this is some fancy jumped-up nightmare which has figured out a foothold in the Outscape itself, how to terrorize these streets at night.” I sighed. With both of them standing around my office isn’t leave much room to pace, but I tried anyway. “It’s not a godsend at all. Just another complication.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“It is information we didn’t have before, hmm?” Usher said. “And I could look much deeper into its root causes from my office. Not harmfully to anyone,” he added, catching the way Robin and I both looked at him, “although I would need you there.”

Robin took a step back. “I don’t like doctors.”

“Good that I am not a doctor, hmm?”

“That doesn’t help. I don’t like you.”

“Get your jacket, Robin,” I told her, and the coffee had left just enough edge to my voice that she complied. “Behave, Usher,” I said once she’d left. “The case is important, but her safety is what I’m concerned with. Too many people have been trying to take it away and you’re not adding yourself to that number. Find out what this beast is but do it nicely.”

He put the case down and looked me up and down. “I helped you grow up, Starling,” he said. “Not always well. I think you’re starting to do the same.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Robin re-emerged, in the green jacket that to my eyes so resembled an overfed lizard, and I held out my hand for her. “We can’t take the Loop—not if we want to stay out of sight.”

“Then I can show you the route I took here,” he said. “Quicker, too. Trust the city, hmm?”

I didn’t. I never had—it’d never done anything to earn that trust. But I let Usher lead nonetheless. Instead of the customary four right turns from the office that took me to the Loop, he made a winding series of turns that took us between the walls of a barbershop and a seedy grocer, along the seemingly never-ending rows of iron fence gates with nothing behind them, beneath thick and rusted gutters that nearly blocked out the sky. The cobblestones beneath our feet were uneven, and I guessed they couldn’t be much younger than the city itself.

Even in my many years, I’d never been this way. I couldn’t see the city twisting in on itself—but the routes we’d taken should have spit us out on a main street by now, shouldn’t still have been leading us deeper into the Outscape’s barren heart. “The only way out is through,” he said. “Just three minutes more. And you haven’t seen anyone else, have you?”

“There are footprints on the ground.”

“Maybe they’re his,” Robin said. “Right?”

But he’d stopped too, and was frowning. “It’s always a different route. That’s what the changing city means. So who could have been here, hmm?”

I patted Bella in my pocket. No need to draw her just yet, not when we didn’t know what we were up against. Maybe it was just another nightmare who’d figured out how to navigate the city’s labyrinth. Maybe not. “Stay in front, Usher,” I said. “Let us know what we’re dealing with.”

He didn’t see it first, though. He didn’t know enough to see it first. And how many have been doomed by the same thing? We were only a minute further along at our reduced pace before Robin tugged at my sleeve. “Starling,” she whispered. “These walls. This place. It’s…I mean, it’s…”

Tight brick walls, reaching to a point high above our heads. I put my arms out to either side and I could run my fingers along the grooves between the bricks. The walls and the ground were too scuffed to make out anything that might have been claw marks—so scuffed, in fact, that I could believe any of their myriad cracks and pockmarks were caused by long, barbed talons. “It’s the same place from your dream? You’re sure?”

“I’ve never been here but it’s familiar.”

“Oh, hell.” I raised my voice. “Usher! Get back here!”

He didn’t answer for a second, and when he did, his voice had that curious half-excitement that never boded well for whatever he was looking at. “Hexel,” he said. “I think you should see this, hmm?”

I already knew what it would be. Along the scratches—and I knew they were scratches now—in the road ran a trickle of blood.