Her fingertips stroked across the puckered scar on his shoulder and slid down to the other larger scar on his side. Franny stiffened. “Though I rather wish I knew what exactly it was that you did over there. The details are all rather vague, apart from people giving you credit. Well, you did tell me back in August that the world was ending…and then it didn’t end and I gather you had something to do with that.” She gave him a suggestive smile. “So I suppose I really ought to thank you properly for that.” Her hand went to his now-flaccid cock.

  “Oh.” It was a mournful, disappointed sound and her gaze—questioning, concerned, and a bit guilty—met his strained stare.

  “Sorry,” Franny whispered.

  He shifted to his side of the bed and pulled the covers up over his shoulders. Abigail snapped off the light and they lay in silence back-to-back.

  * * *

  —

  The babies were impaled on a park fence. Blood and feces painted the metal uprights like a grotesque version of a barber pole’s swirls, only in red and brown. Franny knew he should grieve, but instead he felt only horror and dread. And then all the little round heads lifted, and they screamed at him, their tongues writhing snakes and worms, blood dripping from the tips of pointed teeth.

  Murderer!

  The faces morphed into a single giant face filling the sky. Agent Jamal Norwood, one side of his head caved in, right eye dangling from its socket, and blood matting his dark hair, stared down at him. “You killed me.”

  Jamal’s face shifted as if tentacles writhed beneath the skin and now it was an old woman crushing him beneath her accusing gaze as her body twisted and deformed and she screamed—

  “You destroyed me.”

  The wizened body of an old man rested in his arms. Pleading eyes gazed up at him. Franny threw him into a black void as the man cried—

  “You abandoned me.”

  “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”

  Whispering voices that increased in volume until the cacophony yanked him from sleep.

  Franny shot bolt-upright in bed, shuddering with fear, a scream raw in his throat. Abby sat up, snapped on the lamp, and wearily clawed her hair out of her face. Her hand was cool on his shoulder.

  “Another nightmare?” she asked, and while she tried to sound sympathetic, there was an edge to the words.

  Franny glanced across her at the clock on the dresser. The green luminescent numbers told the tale—3:40 a.m.

  “My rehearsals start tomorrow morning,” she added.

  “I’m sorry. I know you need your rest.” He tried to smile but feared it was more of a grimace. “I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep. You rest; I’m going to head back to my own place.”

  He slid out of the bed, gave her a kiss, and, gathering up his clothes, went to dress in the bathroom where the light wouldn’t disturb her. By the time he emerged, she was asleep, her gentle exhalations a soft whisper in the room.

  * * *

  —

  Jokertown at a little past four in the morning was still a busy place. There were a few frat boys being chivvied out of Freakers so the staff could spend a few hours mopping spilled booze, food, and sweat off the tables where gawking tourists watched joker strippers perform before they opened again at 10 a.m.

  A garbage truck was rolling down the street. The loud beeps, the growl of hydraulics as the cans were hoisted, tipped, and emptied, the shriek of metal on metal as the detritus was gulped into the body of the truck, formed the baseline of the urban symphony. The noises added to his pounding hangover headache, and the sweet, sickening smell of rotting garbage had his stomach roiling.

  Mr. Nieto was setting up his taco and burrito truck, getting ready for the morning rush of people coming off the swing shift: sanitation workers, healthcare workers, and, of course, cops. He gave a wave and Franny darted across the street to buy a coffee.

  “No offense, ese, but you look like shit. Rough night?”

  “I’ve had better. Hoping a cup of your coffee will help.”

  Money and coffee were exchanged. Nieto caught the sleeve of his overcoat. “Here, take a burrito—chorizo, eggs, and potatoes. Fix you right up.”

  The foil-wrapped burrito was warm in his hand, but the kindness was the real warmth when he felt so frozen inside. To Franny’s utter embarrassment he found his eyes filling with tears. He turned his head away, hoping the older man hadn’t noticed, muttered a thank-you, and walked away.

  His hands were shaking as he tried to juggle both burrito and coffee in one hand and pull out his keys with the other. It was not a successful attempt and he spilled coffee onto his trousers. Muttering curses, he finally got the door to his studio apartment open.

  It seemed a sad place, devoid of personality beyond the fact that a bachelor lived there. Flat-screen TV, a gaming console, recliner with a TV tray next to it, a pile of free weights stacked in the corner, a small dinette table with two chairs, and a bed. The only evidence of his personality was a bookcase filled with some of his law school texts, a few novels, and the games and music he’d purchased rather than downloaded to his Xbox and phone. Once the top of the case held photographs of the father he had never known. Those were gone now. All that was left was one picture of him and his mother on a family holiday in Maine, and his graduation photos—one from law school, the other from the police academy.

  He finished the dregs of the coffee and ate the burrito, but his head was still pounding, and he felt like his eyes were too large for their sockets. He eyed the liquor bottles on the counter by the small fridge. Figured a little hair-of-the-dog wouldn’t hurt. He then changed clothes and headed into work early. It was better than sitting alone in the apartment.

  * * *

  —

  Franny’s current partner, Mitch Moore, threw him a withering look when he arrived for their shift and found Franny already at his desk and working on reports. “Fuck you very much. Way to make me look bad,” he grumbled as he slid into his chair.

  “Nah, you manage that all on your own,” Franny said. Mitch was currently a brilliant shade of green that matched his coffee mug. It was department policy that each pairing had to have one nat and one wild card—either joker or ace—so Franny had ended up with Mitch this time.

  Moore was a deuce who might as well be a nat, since his power was so negligible. He could just change every part of him, as well as his clothes, to a different color—pink, blue, chartreuse. He couldn’t even make it interesting by going plaid. Still, he was technically a wild card, so One Police Plaza was happy. Right now Franny’s contemplation of how Mitch’s blue eyes clashed horribly with the green skin and clothing was cut short when Officer Benjamin “Beastie” Bester came by and clapped Franny on the shoulder. Beastie looked like what would happen if some of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things decided to get frisky with an NBA star. He was seven feet tall, with fur, horns, fangs, and claws, but despite the ferocious appearance, he was the precinct’s gentle giant.

  “Hey, Franny, putting together a card came for Thursday night. Want in? We’d love to have ya.” Admiration hung off every word.

  Franny blinked up at the burly joker. Beastie had always been friendly, but then Franny had freed the kidnapped jokers from Baba Yaga’s fight club, and the Highwayman had given the interview that named Franny as the other man, along with himself, who had literally saved the world, and Beastie’s friendship had morphed into a deeply disturbing (at least to Franny) case of hero worship.

  The whole saving-the-world thing might be a bit hard to get one’s head around, but what was very real to the cops of the Jokertown precinct (dubbed by people outside the neighborhood as Fort Freak) were the missing citizens who were part of their daily lives. The people they’d sworn to preserve and protect. For the joker cops in particular, these were their schoolteachers, the shop owners from whom they bought a sandwich or a pack of cigarettes, their friends and neighbors, and, most crucially, a beloved priest. Many of whom had died in Baba Yaga’s casino of horrors.

  Overnight Franny had gone from being the entitled son of a former police captain, and a dude playing the nat savior to the benighted denizens of Jokertown, to everyone’s hero. Well, make that some people’s hero, he added as he glanced nervously around looking for Detective Tabby Driscoll. Tabby was an ace, and he had been loud in his complaints that it wasn’t fucking fair that Franny, who had all the fucking privilege in the world, also got all the glory.

  Still, Franny had discovered that fawning and hero worship were actually far more devastating than the constant hazing he’d been enduring.

  “So, what do you say?” Beastie asked, looking anxious in the face of Franny’s continued silence.

  “Um…”

  “Hey, Bester, maybe you could pull your puckered lips off Black’s entitled nat ass and get me that file I wanted,” Tabby sneered.

  If Beastie’s face hadn’t been covered with fur, he would have been scarlet. Franny felt blood wash into his own cheeks, but he couldn’t tell whether it was from embarrassment or fury. Beastie beat a hasty retreat. Mitch was trying to become one with his chair and in fact had turned the same dull gray as the fabric.

  “Even by your low standards, that was a really shitty thing to do to Beastie. What the fuck is your problem?” Franny growled.

  Driscoll leaned down, large, freckled hands gripping the arms of Franny’s chair. He got so close Franny could smell what Tabby had eaten for breakfast on his breath. “My problem is that you’re a walking poster child for fucking nat privilege. You make detective early, you go fucking rogue to goddamn Trashcanistan, and instead of getting fired, you’re now the big fucking hero who saved…” He straightened and made air quotes around the final three words. “The fucking world.” His expression indicated he didn’t believe a word of it.

  And he shouldn’t. Everything about me is a lie.

  Mercifully, Franny was saved from both responding and his spiraling self-recriminations when Mitch, who had taken a call, hung up the phone and said, “We gotta bounce.”

  * * *

  —

  Officer Miranda Michaelson, nicknamed Rikki, stood contemplating the woman’s body floating in the bloodstained water of the bathtub. Someone—most likely the missing husband, her mind provided—had torn down the shower rod and jammed it through her body, cracking the porcelain of the tub. Rikki’s partner, Bugeye Bronkowski, was unrolling the crime scene tape while techs snapped photos and took samples. It was crowded in the narrow bathroom, and it got worse when Detectives Black and Moore arrived.

  Rikki watched Franny’s blue eyes widen at seeing her, and quickly slide away. Shortly after he’d returned from that horror in Kazakhstan, they had experienced an intense, life-and-death situation, and it seemed like they were forming…something. Then that actress had flown through like an errant comet, swept Franny into her orbit, and he had totally ghosted Rikki. To be fair, it wasn’t like they had actually defined their relationship, but it hurt nonetheless, and Franny certainly seemed embarrassed and guilty as hell as he kept looking anywhere but at her.

  He also looked like hell. Normally he was a tall, handsome man with blue-black hair, deep-blue eyes, and a somewhat crooked smile, but today his skin was pasty white, and dark shadows hung beneath his eyes. She watched as he seemed to force himself to look at the woman’s body. Rikki’s eyes narrowed as his hands began to tremble, and she saw that the muscle in that square jaw was bunching as he clenched his teeth.

  “So, what we got?” Mitch asked. Then held a hand to his forehead like a psychic reading an aura. “No, wait…let me guess. Not an intruder. Husband or boyfriend?”

  “Husband; one Monty Tobin,” Rikki answered. “Neighbors reported hearing them fighting last night. Apparently not an uncommon occurrence.”

  “So who found the body?” Mitch asked.

  “College kid taking his dog out for a walk saw the front door was partially open. Stuck his head in and called. Nobody answered. He said it just felt weird, so he came inside,” Bugeye answered.

  “Bet he regrets that decision,” Mitch grunted.

  “He’s pretty shook up,” Rikki said. “Oh, and the kid says the husband is an ace, too. Basic strong guy. Worked at a local gym.”

  Rikki sneaked a look at Franny. It wasn’t like him to be so silent, but he seemed lost in his own thoughts. Or memories? she wondered.

  The ME, on his knees at the side of the tub, looked up and said, “Well, that would explain how he put a shower rod through not only the soft tissue, but her pelvic bone as well. Okay to take her now?” Mitch nodded. The doc stood up, gripped the shower rod in gloved hands, and grunted with effort as he pulled it out of the body with a grating shriek of metal on bone.

  Franny let out a faint sound that was almost a whimper, spun on his heel, and left the bathroom.

  “He okay?” Rikki asked Mitch softly. The detective just gave a helpless shrug.

  Rikki started to slip past the crowd in pursuit, only to hear Bugeye call after her, “Jesus, what is it with you dames and pretty boys? He dumped you hard and you’re still mooning after him?”

  Rikki flipped him off, left the bathroom, and went in search of Franny. She found him searching the couple’s bedroom. From the rumpled sheets and blanket, he emerged with an iPad. It wasn’t password-protected, because when he picked it up the screen sprang to life to reveal a tilted image. Franny turned up the volume on the iPad and they heard a toddler’s wails.

  “It’s a nanny cam,” he said tensely. “Kid must have grabbed the teddy bear that’s hiding the camera.”

  For an instant the words didn’t register, because she smelled alcohol on his breath and it was eight thirty in the morning. The next thing that registered was the desperate intensity in his voice and the frantic look in his eyes, as if this was his own child in danger.

  “Let’s see if we can find a photo. I’ll get out an Amber Alert—”

  “Wait,” Franny said. He tilted the iPad to a new angle. “This looks like the material on the top of a roof.” His eyes drifted toward the ceiling. “Maybe the husband didn’t run that far.”

  “Hang on,” Rikki began. “We may be dealing with a—”

  He bolted out of the room.

  “Shit!” Using her virus-enhanced speed, she shot after him and in two strides had caught and passed him. She placed a hand on his chest, holding him in place.

  “This could be a hostage situation. We need to wait.”

  “Let’s at least suss out the situation,” Franny said, his tone pleading.

  That did make some degree of sense. Rikki nodded and called in the request for a negotiator, then they left the apartment to find the stairs.

  * * *

  —

  Dirty snow lumped in sad heaps against the parapets, and vapors from the vent pipes dotting the roof swayed and danced like a witch’s gray locks. The wind off the river was icy cold, and they could now hear a child’s hiccuping cries without the benefit of the iPad. The desperate, frightened, and mournful sound had Franny’s chest clenching so hard his breath had gone short.

  Franny and Rikki moved as silently and quickly as they could to take cover behind the looming bulk of the building’s air-conditioning unit.

  The whimpers resolved into a toddler’s lisping cries of: “Mommy, Mommy.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” came a bass growl. “Mommy ain’t coming.”

  But more cops were. Franny could see the red and blue splashing against the wall of the apartment across the street.

  The father had also spotted them, and an explosive “fuck” burst out. Franny heard a child scream in pain, then the crunch of footsteps on the gravel and tar-paper roofing.

  “We can’t wait for the negotiator,” he said. Straightening, he walked out from around the unit, hands held up.

  The man was short and skinny, and the bloodstained T-shirt clung to his narrow chest. He was gripping a little boy by his upper arm. The kid was maybe two, wearing only a diaper and a T-shirt, shivering, lips and toes blue with cold. He was clutching the teddy bear. As Franny watched, bruises bloomed across the tender skin and the child screamed again.

  The children impaled on the fence posts, mouths stretched wide, screams filling my ears…

  They were dead because of him. Because he had broken the wards that Baba Yaga had constructed to hold back the madness and death. He had helped to usher in the coming of a dark god.

  For an instant Franny froze, then shook it off. He couldn’t let it happen again. There could be no more dead children. “Hey, hey, easy,” he said, his eyes flicking to the large kitchen knife the man held in his other hand. “Nobody has to get hurt here. I’m sure you had your reasons. Good reasons. Let’s just talk about it.”

  “You aren’t takin’ my kid!”

  “No, no, of course not.” He edged closer. “Look, it’s really cold up here. Your son…What’s his name?”

  “Ron.”

  “Short for Ronald?”

  “Fuck off, pig, I know what you’re doing.” He jerked his head toward the screaming child. “Long as I got him, you aren’t gonna shoot me.”

  “Nobody’s getting shot. But if you want insurance, I’m a better bet.” Franny pressed his hand against his chest even as he moved closer. “Your little boy is cold. Why don’t you let my partner take him, and I’ll stay with you? What do you say?”