“She takes things in stride for someone who appears to have quite a few holes in her education,” commented Dominic.

  “Sally was introduced to the cryptid world when she made a bargain with the crossroads which they couldn’t refuse but also couldn’t fulfill without going against an earlier bargain they had been holding to for over a century,” said Thomas. “They hurled her into the prison dimension where they had placed me, leaving her surrounded by individuals we would class as cryptids here on Earth, but who she saw first as aliens, and later as people. I think that sink-or-swim approach to what it means to be a person is making it slightly easier for her to adjust.”

  “That, or she’s going to have a screaming breakdown just as soon as we get back to Michigan,” I said.

  The fire escape was bare metal and probably violated half a dozen safety codes, most of them having to do with tetanus. I clomped down it after Ryan, Sally, and Istas, with Thomas and Dominic close behind me. Our feet echoed enough that it was difficult to believe no one could hear us inside the building, but no windows opened, and we made it to the ground without interruption. The alley smelled of slowly liquifying trash, stale beer, and old urine: the classic perfume of the city streets. Istas and Ryan were waiting next to a dumpster, and when I gave them a curious look, Ryan shrugged.

  “The smell helps to cover our tracks.”

  “Not mine,” said Istas. “Waheela leave no scent behind. Tracking our kind is a more difficult proposition than following a single human, or a tanuki. Although . . .” She looked at me and blinked slowly, a predator’s assessing expression on her face. “Verity smells odd. Not quite of humankind, but close enough that I have always assumed it was within the normal deviance for your species. You smell much the same, but more strongly. Was your mother bred to something other than a human man, or was she something other than a human woman?”

  “I’m really not sure how to answer that,” I said, as the others reached us and saved me from the need to try. Dominic motioned for the rest of us to follow him, and led the way out of the alley to the other side of the block, where things were basically exactly the same. Oh, the businesses were different, but it was the same mixture of storefronts and street activity. We paused at the mouth of the alley to look around, making sure we weren’t being followed, and I moved to the front of the group, away from the smell of trash. Which probably explained why Ryan and Istas were hanging back. As therianthropes, they had far more sensitive senses of smell than a bunch of humans, and the smell of trash was something they were accustomed to. It wasn’t going to distract them the way it did me.

  “Hey,” I said, glancing at Dominic. “I thought alleys were rare in New York, outside of the movies. How . . . ?”

  “The city as a whole, yes. The Meatpacking District, not as much. They used to dispose of animal corpses here, and it was easier if they could do it where no one was going to see.”

  “Charming,” I said.

  “This way.” There was a subway stop halfway down the block. Dominic pointed at it and started walking, leaving the rest of us to follow. The subway is really the best way to get around New York. They built one of the most comprehensive public transit systems on the planet, and for all that New Yorkers seem to enjoy complaining about it more than they enjoy anything else, the wise ones understand that it’s a gift beyond price. It gives them the freedom of an incredibly dense metro area, and even with the delays that seem to be innate to the system, it’s still faster than taking a car.

  The L train ran in a virtually straight line between where we were and where we were going, and both taking it and avoiding to keep ourselves from being followed would have been equally reasonable choices. So I wasn’t overly surprised when Dominic led us down the stairs into the subway station.

  I was a bit more confused when he slipped a twenty to the transit cop on duty and waved for the rest of us to follow him through a door marked DO NOT ENTER.

  The hallway on the other side was the same industrial concrete as everything else in the New York subway but with exposed piping along the ceiling, bare bulbs lighting the area, and no smell of urine. No matter how much they clean the underground stations, pee runs downward, and what the humans don’t manage to mark as their own, the rats will claim quickly enough. I blinked at him, raising an eyebrow, and waited for someone else to ask.

  “Are we supposed to be back here?” asked Sally.

  “No,” said Istas. “If we were meant to be in this area, Dominic would not have given money to the policeman. That is called a ‘bribe,’ and sometimes they are used to gain access to places you are not meant to be.”

  Sally eyed her. “Okay, lady.”

  “I tell you only because you did not seem to know, and if you did know, you were asking the question for no reason, and might need to be bitten. I am making generous assumptions.”

  “No one’s getting bitten,” said Ryan hastily. “Istas, honey, sometimes humans have to ask really obvious questions out loud, or they feel like they don’t understand what’s going on and get fussy. We don’t want our allies to be fussy when they’re supposed to be helping us find the kids, remember?”

  “I suppose,” said Istas.

  “These are the maintenance access corridors,” said Dominic. “They parallel the subway line, and none of the cameras here work.”

  “You know that why?” Sally asked.

  “Sometimes the local station workers want to smoke, and there’s no smoking allowed in the station, so they come back here to do it,” he said, starting to walk. As will normally happen when someone begins to walk away while still speaking, the rest of us followed him automatically. “So they disabled the cameras to keep from getting into trouble with the authorities. The door’s usually locked unless there’s an officer on duty, so they don’t really have issues with crime in the corridors.”

  “How very . . . You know what? No.” I shrugged. “It’s a very human solution to the problem. A-plus, transit workers, thanks for the convenient underground passage.”

  “It’s about a mile’s walk to where we’re going, and we’ll get there almost as fast as we would have on the train,” said Dominic.

  He would have been right, too, if we hadn’t run into a group of civic electricians when we were a little over halfway there. The corridor was dotted with junctions, other corridors connecting briefly before heading off to other parts of the subway system, and they came around one of those corners, toolboxes in hand and tool belts low on their hips, off to do their jobs. There were five of them. They stopped when they saw us, eyes going wide. Several of their mouths dropped open. I’ve seen more attractive sights, but since I wasn’t sure whether they were about to call for help or not, I wasn’t going to say anything. I settled for trying to look inoffensive.

  I didn’t imagine I did a very good job of it. Two heavily tattooed people, a woman in full goth Lolita gear, two men in tactical clothes, and Sally did not, on the whole, a deeply reassuring picture make. Or an inoffensive one. One of the men stepped forward, face drawing into an expression of posturing aggression, while another grabbed for his radio.

  “Hey!” said the first, jabbing a finger toward Dominic. “You can’t be down here!”

  “Please, just don’t tell anyone and let us pass.” Dominic held his hands up in a gesture that was probably meant to be soothing. “We just want to get to Union Square. If you let us go, we’ll go, and no one has to get hurt.”

  “Who said anything about anyone getting h— Hey, why is that lady taking her clothes off?”

  I glanced back. Istas was in the process of undoing the many small buttons on her dress, peeling it down her torso to reveal a lacy black bra with little pink ribbons on it. She was an attractive woman. It was still somehow the least titillating striptease I had ever seen, maybe because I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen when she was done.

  “Please,” Dominic repeated. “You don’t want to know what happens when she finishes getting naked.”

  “I like these shoes,” said Istas. “I don’t want to destroy them. Ryan, can you help me with the zipper?”

  “These men didn’t do anything wrong, sweetie,” said Ryan, even as he moved behind her to begin easing her zipper down. “They really don’t deserve this.”

  “Deserve what?” asked another of the men. The one who’d reached for his radio was standing silent and open-mouthed, apparently too stunned by what he was seeing to finish calling the authorities.

  Thomas sighed heavily, rolling up his left sleeve and extending his arm like he was preparing to give blood. “I would rather not have spent the energy this close to what may be a rather nasty fight,” he said. “But it seems better than allowing our fair lady waheela to have her way with you.”

  He pressed the first two fingers of his right hand to the image of a stylized poppy, murmuring something under his breath at the same time. For a moment, the air seemed to grow heavy with the scent of some unidentified flower—then the scent passed, and the men in front of us hit the ground, one by one, falling where they stood.

  Behind me, Istas said, somewhat peevishly, “Oh. Sorcery. Ryan, help me zip back up?”

  “We need to move,” said Dominic, stepping forward and snagging the radio from the fallen electrician’s hand. “These men were on an assignment for something, and someone’s going to notice when they don’t get it done or report back to their supervisors. Not much farther now.”

  “Have you never been caught before?” asked Thomas.

  “No,” he said. “There’s miles of corridor down here, when you account for the whole system, and only so many electricians to go around. Normally, if I move fast and keep my head down, no one questions my presence.”

  I absolutely believed that Dominic used this passage on a regular basis without trouble, just as I believed that having me along had made the wild coincidence of running into someone all but inevitable. We needed to get me out of here, or more people would come along. That was just the way things worked.

  Istas had re-secured her clothing to her satisfaction, and we started moving again. Sally glanced back at her as we walked, but didn’t ask. After a few minutes of walking in silence, Istas took pity.

  “When I change from human shape to my great-form, my clothing does not change with me. If I do not take the time to disrobe, I will destroy whatever I am wearing.”

  “So why wear anything but sweatpants and tank tops? You could just ‘grr Hulk smash’ your way through life, without worrying about buttons.”

  Istas made a small, horrified sound before replying, “Fashion is the greatest invention the humans have ever managed to pursue to perfection. It clearly demarcates the line between person and beast, it knows neither gender nor species, it is art and function and glory. Sweatpants? I would sooner return to the high tundra to feast on the bones of my ancestors than demean myself so.”

  Sally lifted her eyebrows. “That’s . . . uh. That’s a pretty hard line.”

  “Yes, well.” Istas sniffed. “Properly fitted lingerie is worth the conviction.”

  “Istas really likes clothes,” said Ryan. “She moved here from Canada so she could wear more of them, even.”

  “Simplistic but accurate,” Istas agreed.

  I kept walking, pushing away the urge to say something and make the situation even more awkward than it already was. Sally would have to learn that when you’re dealing with nonhumans who can pass in human society, you can’t assume they think the way a human in a similar situation would think. Even the ones who’ve all but completely assimilated—and no waheela who hadn’t virtually assimilated into humanity would even have considered wearing those shoes.

  The corridor ahead of us, which had seemed limitless up until this point, finally had a visible ending: a door, virtually identical to the one we’d come in through, marked OFFICIAL USE ONLY. Dominic picked up the pace slightly, and the rest of us matched him, as eager to get out of this subterranean warren as we were to get to the main part of our mission. We had to locate five hostile people we didn’t know, most of whom none of us had ever seen before, in an area as large as Manhattan’s East Village, with three people out of time, one human semi-local, and two therianthropes whose exact contributions to the goal—except for being absolutely terrifying—were as yet unclear.

  So nothing too major.

  Dominic motioned for the rest of us to wait as he reached the door and cautiously eased it open, peering out into the subway station on the other side. Apparently content with whatever it was he saw, he gestured for us to follow again as he pushed it all the way open and stepped out, into the station.

  There was one transit officer standing a few feet away who gave us a curious look until Dominic walked over and slipped him a twenty-dollar bill. Istas was close behind, somehow managing to look as if she were looming over the officer even though she was considerably shorter than he was.

  “You should refrain from staring,” she said. “It’s quite rude, and I do not appreciate it.”

  “Excuse my wife, she’s just pissed about missing out on tickets for her favorite designer at Fashion Week,” said Ryan pleasantly, taking Istas by the shoulders and steering her toward the stairs. If there’d been any question about whether they were married, it was answered by the way she allowed herself to be led away. A waheela doesn’t do anything they don’t want to do. It’s sort of like trying to argue with a rhinoceros, only more likely to kill you.

  “Sorry about that,” said Dominic. “Thank you for your service.” He took off after Ryan and Istas, and the rest of us followed, not saying anything until we reached street level.

  Once we were there, Istas turned to Ryan and said, “He was staring at my chest. You should have permitted him to answer my challenge.”

  “Eating the police attracts attention, and we don’t want to attract attention,” said Ryan, voice almost mild.

  “Where to now?” asked Sally.

  Dominic looked around, stepping to the side so as not to block the exit, and said, “Now we find someplace where Ryan can shift down to something more useful.”

  “I find him perfectly useful in this form,” said Istas. “His thumbs are very desirable when I want him to rub my feet, and we are incapable of mating in our more basic forms. But I will agree that human noses make for poor trackers.”

  “If he can pick up the scent of the missing kids, he’ll be more than useful,” I said, looking around. The street was unfamiliar—no real surprise there—and completely familiar at the same time. You’ve seen one city street, you’ve essentially seen them all.

  That’s applicable across dimensions, too. Once people reach the point of building large communities with civic infrastructure, certain elements become consistent. Which is not to say that Tokyo and Chicago are the same place, just that the base landscape remains similar enough to make them functionally the same environment. It’s like forests. They come in flavors, and I’ll never mistake another biome for my beloved Galway, but they’re all forests, in the end.

  “Alice?”

  Thomas’s voice snapped me out of my brief rumination. I glanced at him, lifting an eyebrow. He looked at me gravely.

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “Cities, mostly. They’re all pretty much the same. If you can navigate one, you can navigate them all. Come on, if we don’t know where we’re going, we may as well walk until we find a place where Ryan can change.” I started down the street, trying not to look as restless as I felt. For all that everything was familiar, it also had a certain rawness to it that left me anxious to be moving toward a goal.

  “Yes,” said Thomas, with near-surprising acceptance. “We may as well.”

  We ambled down the block, me temporarily in the lead, the others following behind. Only Dominic looked nervous about how exposed we were—I supposed there wasn’t much concern about the rest of us actually being recognized before we could reach our goal.

  We didn’t find a safe place for Ryan to change on that block. We made our way to the next. Sally pulled up next to me and asked, in a low voice, “Is this really it? No plan? We don’t have some grand strategy that’s going to help us find the people we’re looking for and make it all come out okay?”

  “Dominic’s planning to use Ryan as a sniffer dog, if that helps,” I offered.

  “Not really. That’s not a plan.”

  “I thought I would wait and see what Alice decided to do,” said Thomas. I looked at him, blinking. He smiled as he shrugged, a remarkable gentleness in his eyes. “We could do with a bit of that luck of yours.”

  Healy family luck: sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but it’s never, ever boring. Or, as it might be better called, Brown family luck, because I definitely got it from my mother. If you give me two doors to open, I’ll always choose the one that leads to certain doom: two paths across a room, I’ll pick the one with the hidden pit trap. Every single time. And then I’ll survive them both, through some ridiculous combination of coincidence and one-in-a-million shots. Whatever it is, it’s genetic, I know that much: both my kids have the same weird coincidence field. It extends to the grandkids, too. Where it stops, I don’t know, but whatever something extra Mom brought to the family tree, it’s gotten me in—and out of—trouble more times than I can count.

  “It’s not a switch I can flip, you know.”

  “I know. But when we most need you to be in the right place, you tend to wind up there.” His eyes crinkled at the corners as his smile grew. “It would never have taken you so long to find me if there hadn’t been someone yanking you in the wrong direction every chance he got. So go, follow your feet, and let the random coincidences that have kept you alive this long lead you.”

  “Okay,” I said, rolling my shoulders in a shrug. It wasn’t like anyone had a better idea. We still had no real intel or plan—and I was a little annoyed about that. Shouldn’t Dominic have at least asked the shapeshifter who wouldn’t be useful until he stopped looking like a human being to transform before we left the hidden passage in the subway? Amateurs. But picking a fight wasn’t going to do us any good right now. So we walked.