My thoughts swirled around like leaves around a storm drain. I staggered along, trying to disentangle something useful from the slurry. Where could I go? Where should I go? Where was the closest place I could make it before my legs folded underneath me and I collapsed on the cold hard cement? It wasn’t even the worst outcome: even the curb was a better bed than what Jabberwock had provided, and if I slept on a random street corner, they’d never know where to look for me. But my legs kept moving of their own accord, muscles burning.

I stood outside the morgue. It was almost comforting to return here like this. When I was younger, when I was mixed up in the drug-running business, I’d trudged back here a hundred times tired and grimy and with someone angry behind me. Usher had never asked questions, never raised his voice, never done anything but let me sleep the worst of it off before heading back into the fray. The door was so close, and yet…

They knew. They knew they could find me here, and all the old rules of neutrality were crushed underfoot. Drakon might have respected them; he wouldn’t burn the city’s vital arteries, the morgue or the archives or the docks. Jabberwock would scorch the earth down to its damn bones to get what they wanted. I laid my hand on the door handle, feeling the cool metal beneath my fingers, the little scratches and indents that made up the familiar texture. I traced my thumb along an extended divot…and pulled it away.

I couldn’t. I didn’t dare.

The city gave me a wide berth as I wandered. I couldn’t keep it up for much longer. It wasn’t just that I was exhausted, but that every minute I spent out in the faltering sun was another minute for Jabberwock to track me down. It wouldn’t be hard. I was no brilliant detective, but even I could ask people if they’d seen the madwoman in the sickly green hospital scrubs pass by, and which way she’d gone.

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I was close enough that I decided I might stop by my office. At least I could grab my spare jacket before finding somewhere safer, at least I could find a weapon if they tried to jump me while I was wandering. They’d taken Bella and I’d never gotten her back, the bastards.

There was a man standing outside my door. I blinked. If they were here already—

It was Carrion Conjager. He saw me at the end of the street and took a cautious step closer, appropriately cautious for how hellish I looked. “What—happened?” he asked. “Where have you been? It’s been days-”

“What are you doing here?”

“Things are getting worse, and you…vanished. The Fishhook district had another attack. Trouble follows you around like a magnet, Starling, so when you vanished I knew it was cause you’d fallen into the damn trouble.” He shook his head tiredly—he didn’t look great either, with blood vessels standing out in his eyes and along his forehead—before asking the question I really hoped he wouldn’t. “Where’s Robin?”

I hesitated, which was enough. “I…don’t…”

“You don’t?”

“She’s not—no one knows. I think.”

I sagged against the wall. Conjager almost reached out to help me, then hesitated. “Well…we won’t find her now,” he said. “Not like this. I can tell you she hasn’t been back here, at least. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

He gave a terse smile. “You think the cops don’t end up on the wrong side of these wars, too? We need somewhere to hide out and lay low like the rest of them when things get rough…and it’s maybe the one thing that hasn’t been corrupted away. Dirty officers will give up their own comrades before selling out the safe house, cause they know they might need it one day.”

I don’t remember the walk there. Maybe that’s for the best, so I can’t sell them out. It was a terrible cramped little apartment on the first floor with plaster peeling off the walls and a faucet that was audibly creaking even when we entered. The sun was beginning to set, but the window blinds were so tightly drawn that it didn’t matter, the whole place cast in a grimy yellow glow.

It was nowhere at all. A pit stop on the way to everything that needed to be done or that was chasing us down. But it was somewhere to rest…and that, at least, I could be grateful for.