Sister Mary has been highly concerned since the disappearance of 15-year-old Brianna Mills. Mills lived at the Our Lady of Hope orphanage, where the nun works. Mills disappeared after she left school at the nearby Lady of Hope High School the night of March 19. Sister Mary suspects Mills was kidnapped.

  Sister Mary also believes there may be a connection between the disappearances of Mills and that of Maria Murray, a 16-year-old girl from the nearby Cranfield township. Murray disappeared the night of February 9 after an alleged dispute with her foster-care parents.

  “My own theory,” said Sister Mary, “is there may be a market for these girls in the Inner City area. I have some indication of it.”

  Local police investigators haven’t ruled out a connection, although federal police investigators have officially told the media they don’t believe there is any case for child prostitution.

  “The police have their ways of going about things. So does our congregation,” said Sister Mary. She has organized hundreds of members from her own church and other Roman Catholic churches across the city to search for Mills. Each day the nun leads a prayer group at Our Lady of Hope, asking ‘God to lead her [Mills] home again.’”

  The article ended with a Crime Tips number for anyone with information on the disappearance of Brianna Mills, who, I was almost certain, was Isabella from the House of Diamond. The poorly feigned smile tagged the photo as a class portrait. Brianna Mills with two great tiles for front teeth, the same teeth that had been smudged with lipstick at my debut party. But the girl in the photo had hairspray-teased bangs and dangle earrings. The damn orphan children all wore the same braided and bunned hair, and no jewellery apart from their identical cameo rings. The orphan children only resembled each other. They didn’t look like high school students or teenagers or real people from the city at all.

  “You’re not sick, are you?” the Night Watchman called out again. “Maybe you’re not well enough yet? We could wait.” He was being as patient as a man who hasn’t seen a woman in who knows how long could be. I peeked around the corner to see him raking his curled fingers through his beard—a feeble and touching attempt at pre-date grooming—and I left the news clipping alone.

  In the medicine cabinet was a bar of shaving soap and a brush with a heavy ceramic handle, a hand-held mirror, and scissors too small and impossible for his big gnarled hands. I noticed the fading bruises on my shoulders and the blood on my T-shirt and decided not to spend any time in front of the mirror.

  The Watchman bumped into me, twice, as he followed me to the large, trough-like sink. He leaned his head far into the basin with enthusiasm. The faucet coughed up greyish water. I splashed as much of it over him as I could with my tiny cupped hands, but instead of washing him clean, the water beaded on top of his oily hair. Whiskers stuck to my fingers in clumps as I cut them away. The floor was quickly covered in locks of his hair. “A Glory won’t cut me,” he said as I took up the razor. I thought he was giving me an order, but as he tightened his lips nervously, I saw he only meant to reassure himself.

  “I won’t cut you,” I said, dragging the straight blade across his face. His skin moved with the razor, then dropped back into its slack place again. After a few strokes he relaxed and I could get at the underside of his chin, his throat, and the nape of his neck. Tiny sighs leaked from my lips as I uncovered clean, bare skin. Beneath the layer of wiry hair was pink flesh, much younger than I would have guessed. I held up the hand mirror and, after a stunned pause, he chuckled loudly at his reflection. I’d uncovered his lost years, at least a decade’s worth. I never would have expected the dimple on his chin.

  The garage sink clogged with his hair. I unbuttoned the left clasp of his coveralls and the left side of his mouth curled in a crooked grin. I removed his shirt and started on his woolly chest. When enough hair was cleared away, I pulled my T-shirt over my head and pressed my breasts to newly shaved skin. His moans came out garbled as if his throat, too, were a clogged drain. There was a flower-shaped birthmark on his shoulder.

  My final task was his hands. Fortunately for him, I’d learned a thing or two watching Eartha give manicures. I sat on his lap and got to work scrubbing the dirt that outlined his thick nails. I thought of First, scrubbing the Wifey Wing floor, a chore that she always took pride in. “Sparklin’ clean,” I said, just as First would. With a fair bit of coaxing, I had his fingers loose and nimble enough to undo the stiff metal button on my jeans. This man, whose hands hadn’t touched a woman in eons, said to me, “I want to make you purr.” And my very best purr rose up to meet him.

  Those hands didn’t stop when he was finished with me. “I’m going to get this Ford running again.” He clicked on a light that hung over the hood of the car he intended to fix. I bet before I came along, he couldn’t even have turned that light switch, much less wielded his array of screwdrivers and wrenches. “You ever drive before, Little?” he asked me.

  “Sort of,” I said blankly. With a bit more thought I almost recalled stealing a car, not getting any further than a couple of blocks away before I lost my nerve and rolled into a ditch. I wondered if I had made that up.

  The Night Watchman reached up and, under the right tire well, his arm disappeared into the Ford’s mint-green body. Occasionally he craned his head to look at the job he was doing. Mostly, he just whistled a tune and waited as if his hand were a beagle he’d sent down a foxhole. Inside the body of the car there was grinding and clinking and, I imagined, some wonderful struggle between his hand and whatever the brakes looked like. When he was finished, he claimed a tire from the row along the wall and gave the car back its missing leg.

  “And then there’s the brake pedal,” he said, brushing some grease across his brow before opening the driver’s side door. I’d have to clean him all over again. I hopped into the passenger seat and watched him ease himself under the steering wheel. A small woman, like me, could have fit under there. He had to contort his back, his feet dangling outside the car, the top half of him curled under the steering wheel. Still shirtless, sweat broke on his skin like groundwater rising up through dry land.

  “Let’s go for dinner. I haven’t eaten a meal in a restaurant for—” he said, leaving the sentence unfinished. “This place will be okay without me for a while.” He stood proud in front of his newly repaired automobile. I hadn’t mapped very much. I hadn’t saved Sub Rosa or found an Advent Alley. And I had only angered Jellyfish when I tried to talk to her. I accepted Night Watchman’s offer anyway. I wasn’t going back out there alone. I’d have better luck driving around with him than in blind wandering. For all I knew, the blackout was over already. At the very least, I’d be bringing the Glories a fresh live one with money. The Watchman was far better than a live one. He was a kind and decent Dark dweller. He was something none of us thought existed. I discovered new life. My eureka (as I’d begun to think of him) combed pomade through his hair and put on the cleanest shirt he could find. “Is this okay? It’s the best I got around here.”

  “It’s very handsome,” I told him and he smiled like he believed me.

  He sat me in the driver’s seat, talked me through turning the key in the ignition, introduced me to the brake pedal. “Nowadays, it’s perfectly normal for a woman to drive a car,” he informed me. “What’s more, someone’s got to open that garage door, and I bet you already had enough of those stone bugs, so I’ll do it.” The engine roared then spit, then its comeback roared even louder. I shifted into first gear, eased up the safety brake, and waited for him to open the garage door. On the seat beside me was his tin box of money and a pair of old shoes. He gave me a brave smile before pushing the door up and letting the stone bugs in. Just like he told me, I let go of the brake and eased my foot on the gas. I thought I knew what I was doing, but I lurched forward, almost hitting him as I pulled out. I stopped outside the garage with a screech. The Watchman hurled himself into the car with a dozen bugs on his tail, and the two of us swatted at them with the old shoes until we were out of breath and the interior was covered in bug splats. They surrounded the car, dimming the headlights completely. The Watchman instructed me to press hard on the gas and the brakes at the same time. “We’ll smoke them out!” The Ford wheezed. Smoke began to seep out from under the hood. The car rattled hard and I wished that he was in the driver’s seat. He seemed perfectly calm as he flipped on the heat to prevent the engine from overheating. “Heat from the engine’s got to go somewhere.” He tapped the heat gauge—the needle turned from the red line to the blue. We hot-boxed the car until I was woozy and covered in sweat, but at last the stone bugs had fled.

  “You done well,” he said, calm as could be. “How’d you like to drive us into town?” I kept driving only because I didn’t want to reject his offer. I ground the gears and stalled when I turned, taking the corner so wide the back tires skidded against the curb. The headlights did the best they could to pierce the darkness, though there was not much to see. To my disappointment, the Dark, even when lit by car headlights, was unlike any city streets. There were no yellow dotted lines on the road, the street signs were mangled and useless. I should have given Arsen more credit for driving through the Dark to find me.

  I was somewhat reassured by the idea that I had just done this trip, and all I needed to do was retrace my route. Phantom hand rose up on the dashboard, pointing like a compass. I felt a bit uneasy that it seemed to remember the way while I was lost. But I needed any help I could get.

  “Gosh, the garage really is out in the middle of nowhere,” said the Watchman. His calmness was ebbing. He thrummed his fingers anxiously against the dashboard. There was no music, no singing divas like in Arsen’s car, only silence and the moneybox between us. I kept waiting for him to complain about the circles I was sure we were driving in. He switched on the radio and flipped from static to more static to find a station. We don’t get radio on Sub Rosa. I didn’t bother telling him that. I would have rather listened to static than nothing. He tuned into some warped melody and ran the dial over it again and again trying to find clear song. He ended up whistling along to distortion.

  Jellyfish must have been close, close enough to watch our weaving and backtracking. I thought I spotted her lunar glow in my peripheral vision, a blink of light in the driver’s side mirror, then the sound of something being dragged, metal scraping concrete. Disregarding the disordered street, I headed straight for the sound, driving the wide car over curb corners. The Watchman latched onto the handle above the passenger side door. “The ‘oh shit’ handle,” I blurted out, suddenly remembering the name of that handle. “That’s what it’s called.”

  “Spoken like a truck driver, missy.” He forced out a faint chuckle, followed by a barking scream. “Whoa!”

  A construction zone sign sat in the centre of the street. Mud clouded the orange and black checkers, but clearly tacked in the centre was a single white glove—the index finger signalled left. I recognized my glove, still as white as the day First bought it for me. “Now that’s odd,” said the Watchman, scratching his absent whiskers at the pointing white hand.

  “Someone wants to show me the way,” I told him. And I turned the car in the direction Jellyfish’s finger pointed.

  XX

  Phantom hand squeezed my shoulder as soon as we were on the right road. Its ghostly fingers had gotten stronger during the journey, its independent will made firm. It massaged my neck, which only made me involuntarily stiffen at first, but when I gave in I gave in entirely, surprised at how much tension I’d been holding.

  Phantom hand had established itself as a friend, not just a party trick; after all, it had come with me to the Dark, it fought the stone bugs by my side, and now it was giving me a much-needed massage. It understood, too, that I couldn’t return to Sub Rosa rigid as a live one. I leaned back into its invisible fingers. Some tight spot popped near the base of my skull and I peeked over at the Watchman, hoping he didn’t hear. How embarrassing.

  “Are we going to the land of lost girls?” he asked.

  “Where?”

  “The place where the Glories, like yourself, have all gone. Is that where you’re taking me?”

  “That’s right. I’m taking you to Sub Rosa, and you’re going to love it.”

  “I always wanted to meet one. One of the ones that I read about, that is.”

  “The newspaper …” I said, feeling uneasy. Phantom hand went to work on my neck again.

  “You saw one of my clippings, did you? I kept all the news I came across in case I ever met one.”

  “Met one what?” My hands gripped the wheel. I was nervous that we were going to crash.

  “One of you lost children turned Glory. I guess I have something of a school-boy crush on you girls.” He touched my side so gently, not sure where to put his hand. When he retracted it, it clanged clumsily against the metal lock box. “I wish I had something about you. I’m sure you were in all the papers. I bet they even talked about you on the television.”

  No one is searching for me, I thought matter-of-factly. Why hadn’t I been in the newspaper? I ought to have been. I didn’t even know exactly how long I’d been away from the city. Hell, I didn’t even know how long I’d spent in the Watchman’s garage. But certainly it was long enough for someone to notice? I tried harder to consider who might possibly be looking, and again I came up blank.

  My body nagged me. Clenching jaw, sour belly. I tasted salt before I realized I was crying. I hadn’t cried since First threatened me in Arsen’s apartment. I turned my head toward the driver’s side window for a moment so the Night Watchman wouldn’t see. He turned his face away, too, as if sensing my sudden need for privacy. I pictured the sad lamp lady. Her coarse, grey roller-set curls, her cracked lips poorly painted cerise pink—she took shape the longer I gazed into the Dark. And although I hadn’t been able to see her clearly before, this time I knew the polyester knit of her white trousers, the depressed weave of her slippers. She was my grandmother. The connection made me swerve the car. Maybe my grandmother was looking for me? She must have liked me, right?

  I had long lists of strange things that I trusted more than memory: I trusted phantom hand and my cursed ring; I trusted the enormous arms of Della O’Kande, my First; I trusted that the sun would rise at the very same time each day on Sub Rosa. But memory—untrustworthy. Maybe I was just jealous of the girl in the newspaper, and I was making the whole thing up. I mean, how dare a mere orphan have a brigade of nuns searching for her when I had nothing? It wasn’t fair. Or maybe it was the Night Watchman’s influence; I wanted to be the lost girl in his fantasies.

  But I’d seen my grandmother before I saw the newspaper. The memory, or whatever it was, came to me out in the Dark. With Jellyfish. “Use your birth name,” she had commanded so urgently. It sounded like gibberish.

  I did know for certain that the Glories wouldn’t think the Night Watchman was much of a find if he started going on about newspapers and city folk, and lost girls. This information was dangerous. It was forbidden; First had warned me again and again. This was the type of information that might make a Glory … it might make a Glory want to leave Sub Rosa.

  Outside the passenger-side window, the Night Watchman gasped at the bit of light: the crescent moon, the strip of stars that had shaken off the blanket of city smog to shine especially over Sub Rosa. I hoped the blackout was over and that we were about to drive up to an enchanting Sub Rosa night. But we found the streetlamps and shop lights out. The blackout was still on. I must have left the night before, maybe two nights, and spent at least a day passed out in the Watchman’s bed. Forty-eight hours was a long time to be gone without returning with a solution. The Watchman rolled down his window to drape his arm in the warm, sweet air. His enthusiasm for the Sub Rosa climate was contagious, and I grinned along with him as we drove the last length. “You can’t say anything about the lost girls,” I told him, a touch of Glory persuasion with my words. “It’s bad manners on Sub Rosa. Understand?” He nodded without hesitation. I bet he would have agreed to just about anything in that moment. The metal lockbox of money rattled in his eager hands. I pushed down on the gas, getting us there a little faster.

  I cut the headlights as we passed the Dowager’s Mansion. There were no other cars on this side of the street to manoeuvre around, and I managed to park perfectly in front of the Mayflower. The Watchman got out of the car and ran to open my door for me. “You sure this place is open?” he asked, peering in at the candlelight.

  “It never closes,” I told him.

  So much for our dramatic entrance. The Mayflower had turned into a crash pad. I assumed the place would be empty until I saw First’s feet jutting out from a booth. The needlepoint and magazines and hair-braiding had all been abandoned for sleep. One Glory to each booth, twisted into uncomfortable positions, sleeping like the dead. The Watchman took up a candle to look them over. “This one has pink hair, look at that,” he called to me. “This girl here is as big as my mattress.” He waved the candle over the Diamond Dowager, then blew it out, retreating away from her. “Best not to disturb them,” he whispered.

  I did disturb them. And they would have wanted to be disturbed. It was a sad day when a Glory sleeps through the sound of a live one’s voice. He may not have been much, but I hadn’t brought this freshly shaven beast-turned-man all the way from the Dark to be received by the sleeping. I rapped my knuckles on the kitchen door. Shirley emerged with wild strands of hair loose from her bun. “Customers,” I snapped.

  “I just fed you a few hours ago,” she complained, then saw it was me. When she saw the Watchman’s happy grin she tied the gingham apron around her waist in a hurry.

  First sat up sleepily in her booth, her arms stretching out for a hug. “Baby girl,” she yawned. “I’ve been dreaming about you. Horrible dreams. But you’re really here now, right?” She was warm with sleep as she hugged me.

  “How long was I gone?” I whispered.