She couldn’t go down.

  That left up.

  It wasn’t much of a climb at all, really: the penthouse was already on the top floor, so she just had to climb the one story. The roof was sloping and tiled, very pretty really, and a nightmare to scramble up, but Ruby moved low and slow, testing each tile before trusting it with her grip. At the top, there was a flat area surrounded by a low wall, enclosing a big skylight and a few chimneys and a lot of soot and dirt. She’d curl up against the little wall, lie low, wait for the thugs to assume she’d somehow escaped, and then in a couple of hours, she actually would escape.

  There was a small structure in one corner, like a tiny fishing shack with a door in it: roof access for maintenance, likely not even reachable from the penthouse, but it was a worry. There were three men looking for her, after all: easy enough for one or two to cover the ground, and one to check the roof, just in case. She looked around, chewed her lip, and then rummaged in her bag and made some hasty preparations.

  She’d just finished when the door eased open and the button-man slipped out. She tried to crouch against the low wall where the roof turned to sloping tile, thinking, I am a shadow, but the treacherous moon picked that moment to come out of the clouds and shine down on her and her blonde hair. The killer strolled around the skylight, pointing his pistol at her almost casually.

  “A cat burglar who’s a dame,” he said. “You’re a regular Robert Delaney, ain’t you? Roberta Delaney! Ha.” He didn’t even laugh – he just said “Ha.”

  Ruby rose to her feet. She was an inch or so taller than the man. “The difference between Delaney and me is, Scotland Yard caught Delaney, and no one has ever caught me.”

  “Until tonight. I caught you. My friend downstairs wants I should bring you in alive. Seems like only a few people knew about his little hidey-hole – I sure didn’t – and he wants to know who’s been talking… and who hired you.”

  He wasn’t going to shoot her immediately, then. That was good. He was moving too slowly, though. She needed him to rush. “Sorry, must go,” she said, and started to clamber up onto the sloping tiles.

  “Hold it!” he yelled, and, as she’d hoped, sprinted toward her.

  Which meant sprinting right into the trip-line she’d strung up from the corner of the skylight to one of the chimneys. Like the infamous British cat burglar Robert Delaney, Ruby carried black silk rope, and the button-man hit a taut length of it at speed. He fell on his face, the pistol flying from his grip. That was the most dangerous part of the whole situation: the gun might have gone off, and her luck was bad enough tonight that she didn’t like her odds of avoiding a stray bullet. Fortunately, the pistol just clattered on the roof, and Ruby was on it like a shot. She didn’t carry guns herself – they were just asking for trouble – but she knew how to use one.

  She wasn’t going to, though, or at least, not the way the pistol was intended. She hadn’t killed anyone yet in the course of her work, and she didn’t want to start tonight. She was a burglar, not a robber. She preferred to do her stealing when nobody else was around, to minimize opportunities for violence or capture.

  The button-man got to his hands and knees, but she didn’t let him get any farther. Ruby reversed the gun in her hand and brought the butt down hard on the back of the killer’s head. He crumpled, and she winced. Hitting people over the head didn’t work the way writers pretended it did in the crime stories in Black Mask. Getting knocked out wasn’t the same as going to sleep, and you didn’t always wake up in two hours with just a little headache. Bash somebody in the back of the head, and you could kill them by accident, or mess them up for life. But she had to prioritize her own life, didn’t she? He’d chosen his business, and this was a pretty foreseeable sort of consequence.

  Ruby didn’t have time for moral qualms. She took another length of cord and hog-tied the button-man, in case he was feigning. The moon had gone back behind a cloud, so she couldn’t see if there was blood coming from his ears, but she checked his pulse at the throat, and it was strong and steady. Good enough.

  She crawled on her belly to the edge of the roof and looked down. The goon and the lawyer were down there, gesticulating, walking back and forth. The lawyer pointed and waved his arms and then went back into the building, doubtless to come up and check on his pet killer. The goon stood out front, crossed his arms, and turned his head back and forth, back and forth, like he was watching an invisible tennis match.

  Ruby clambered down to the lawyer’s balcony, climbed over the railing to the ledge, found her shadowed drainpipe – on the far side of the building from the goon’s guard post – and shimmied the seventy feet or so down to the ground. She snagged the sack she’d hidden in the shrubs and pulled out the dress she’d stashed, a little la garçonne number with a darling fringed hem.

  Once she’d pulled the dress over her head, the pants came off, and she shoved them in the sack. She put on a cloche hat and slipped on a pair of shoes with a clunky Cuban heel. A beaded handbag would hold her climbing shoes and all her treasures, though she had to wedge the bone flute in there a bit to make it fit. She wasn’t wearing makeup, which didn’t quite match the sort of girl she was pretending to be, but it was dark, and the wind probably made her cheeks look rosy anyway.

  Now transformed into what she quite often actually was – a fashionable young woman out on the town – Ruby went the long way around the block to avoid passing by the goon. She had one ear cocked for the sound of pursuit, but she didn’t expect any, and she wasn’t disappointed. Two streets over, she reached a more lively part of the neighborhood, and caught a Checker cab to her hotel.

  She relaxed into the back seat of the cab and let the driver’s chatter stream past her. In the morning, she’d take the train to Arkham, deliver the Ruby of R’lyeh, and collect her pay. She’d be in and out before Carl Sanford could even get a hint that she was back in his territory. The hard part of the job is over, she thought.

  Chapter Four

  Comets

  Abel woke with a groan, a pounding head, and a mouth dry as sand. That was the only way he woke, these days, and he supposed he was lucky to wake at all.

  He’d taken a beating weeks ago, ordered by the new prophet of his god, the one calling himself “Cain”. To think, Abel had once thought the creatures he called comets were a miracle, the greatest demonstration of his god’s power, but now he knew they were monsters.

  The assault had left Abel with a couple of cracked ribs and deep bruises, but he’d stopped seeing blood in his urine a while ago, and most of his injuries were mended, apart from a little stiffness in his right leg… and, of course, the trouble with his left hand. No, the beating was no longer the main source of his troubles. These days, he was in pain from the drink, which, ironically, he’d turned to in the first place in order to dull his pain. His theory that being drunk made it harder for the comets to sense his location was mostly rationalization, he feared. Still, he’d best go in search of the next bottle…

  Wait. Where was he? He squinted around the unfamiliar room. At this point, any room was unfamiliar. He’d run out of money even for dockside flophouses last week, and he couldn’t get more cash easily, since Cain had emptied his bank accounts. Abel had expected to wake up in an alley, a day closer to some ignoble death, but there was a roof over his head, and a pillow under it, smelling of lavender. Was this heaven? If so, he’d take it, though he didn’t know how he’d slipped in, given his brief tenure as the earthly emissary of an evil god.

  Abel sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and blinked at the strangeness. It was daytime, sunlight slanting in a window, but whether it was morning or afternoon he couldn’t say without knowing which way the room was facing. He was in a lady’s bedroom, judging by the vanity table against the wall, and by all the hats. He could see himself in the vanity mirror, a gaunt, hollow-eyed wretch, and he rubbed his cheek, which had gone from rough stubble to the beginnings of a beard. He hadn’t looked at himself in a while, and if he hadn’t felt so defeated and hollowed out, the sight would have filled him with horror. Healthy, prosperous Cain was wearing Abel’s real face, and Abel looked like the monster.

  “Hello?” he called, tentatively. He couldn’t think of a good reason he’d be in a place like this, and only a few bad ones.

  A woman appeared in the doorway. She was a few years younger than him, late twenties, and pretty, wearing a simple shift dress, her long auburn hair pulled back from her face. She was holding a steaming mug. Probably morning, then, though not early.

  “You’re awake,” she said. “Do you want coffee?”

  “I’d be grateful.” His voice was a croak, and he cleared his throat. “Water first, maybe?”

  “I put a pitcher by the bed. I had a feeling you’d need it this morning. There’s a tin of aspirin too. Take a couple. I don’t have much in the way of clothes in your size, but the people who lived here before left some things behind, including a couple of old shirts.” She nodded toward folded clothes on a chair by the vanity. “The washroom is through that door. Come out to the kitchen when you’re put together a little more.” She departed.

  Brave woman, to let a strange man sleep in her room, Abel thought, and then laughed like a rusty gate hinge. He supposed he didn’t present much of a threat. He’d been strong, once, from his years on the fishing boat, but months of easy living had softened him, and weeks of recovery from his injuries, and the generous application of bootleg liquor, had ruined him further. He was only a danger to himself these days. He went through the clothes she’d left, several shirts and two pairs of pants and even a hat. He changed, glad to be out of the rags, the secondhand clothes fitting well enough on his slighter-than-usual frame. Then he poured a glass of water with a shaking hand, took two of the aspirin from the tin, went to the washroom to do the necessary and splash water on his face, and then made his hesitant way to the door.

  The woman’s apartment was small but comfortable. The bedroom led onto a living room, and a long counter separated that from the kitchen. His benefactor was standing by the stove, and a steaming cup of coffee waited for him on the tiled counter, next to a piece of dry toast, which he thought he could just about stomach. He slid onto a stool on his side of the counter and picked up the mug, inhaling the steam. “I am grateful to you.”

  She crossed her arms and looked at him, expression serious, voice mild. “You can repay me with information.”

  Abel took a sip, then shrugged. “I can’t imagine what I know that would do you any good, but I’m pleased to help if I can.”

  “Last night, you mentioned the Silver Twilight Lodge.”

  He jolted and looked around, as if expecting hooded cultists to appear from the shadows… and maybe that was exactly what he expected. “I, I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am – miss?”

  “Diana,” she said, without further clarification, but Abel saw no sign that a man lived here, and there was no ring on her finger.

  He couldn’t help but smile, thinking of his mother’s stories of gods and heroes again. “Like the huntress. I’m Abel Davenport.”

  “Like the unlucky brother.” She sighed. “You don’t remember anything you said last night?”

  “I… don’t, but, whatever it was, you must have misunderstood me.” He didn’t want to jeopardize this good fortune; new clothes, a roof, and hot coffee were pleasures he hadn’t experienced in a while, and he was loath to give them up. But he didn’t know what to make of this strange woman and her stranger questions. Was she an agent of Cain? No, that was paranoia talking. Cain wouldn’t bother with subterfuge. He didn’t respect Abel enough for that. But then, who was she, and what danger did she represent? “What kind of lodge, did you say?”

  “Don’t do that.” Her voice was sharp. “I helped you, so the least you can do is help me. You said there’s something in the Silver Twilight Lodge. Something dangerous, I gather, and you know people who want it, or you want it yourself. I need to know what you’re talking about.”

  He saw there was no use in trying to play ignorant, but that wasn’t the only option available to him. Abel shook his head. “You’d never believe me. And even if you did, you don’t want to get mixed up in all this. It’s far too dangerous for–”

  She drew herself taller. “I am a Seeker in the Order of the Silver Twilight. I am already mixed up in this. I am aware there’s danger. I’ve… I may have… contributed to that danger, though I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. I didn’t understand what the Lodge was. Now I do, and I’m horrified by it. I want to stop them.”

  “You’re a Seeker?” Maybe he should have run. “That’s… more advanced than an Initiate, but…” His mind whirled with possibilities, and too many questions to ask. She was part of the Lodge, but she opposed it? Someone in her position could be a real help to him. Hope in a hopeless world. But why–

  “What rank are you?” she said.

  He frowned. “Me? No, I’m not… I’m not a member of the Lodge. Never was.” He smiled, and it made his face hurt, because he hadn’t done so in a long time. “I was part of what you might call a… rival organization… though not anymore. My brothers expelled me for insufficient zeal. But if you’re a Seeker… then that means you have access to parts of the Lodge that are closed off to the rank-and-file… not everything, nowhere near, but you do have access to the people who can get into those places.” He’d researched the Lodge extensively, though probably not as extensively as Cain had since their falling out.

  “I suppose I do,” she said. “What good would that kind of access do for you?”

  “I… it’s a long story, miss. Diana.”

  “It’s Sunday. My shop is closed anyway. I have plenty of time for a long story.”

  Abel took a sip of coffee, and a bite of toast, and tried to order his disordered mind. Should he tell her? What harm could it do? Even if she was lying, and she handed him over the Lodge, that might be something he could turn to his advantage. This was the first glimmer of a way forward he’d seen in weeks. He cleared his throat.

  “My fishing boat was caught in a storm, and wrecked, and I washed up on a rocky island…”

  •••

  After Abel woke up on the beach in his hometown, he had gone into town and sold the golden chain. The pawnbroker had wanted to cheat him, Abel was sure, but something about his eyes and his smile made the man turn halfway honest, and Abel walked out with more money than he’d ever seen in his life.

  He’d convinced the man to throw in a knife from his glass case with the deal, too, but it wasn’t a fisherman’s working knife; it was a fancy thing, with a sharkskin handle and a pearl at the base of the hilt, its moon-colored blade razor sharp on both sides.

  He went to a clothing shop and showed them the color of his money before they could throw him out, thinking him a vagrant. Once he was outfitted in better style, he got a shave and a haircut, so he looked presentable when he headed over to the jewelry store. His pockets were filled with pearls – where they’d come from, and how they’d stayed put in his pockets during his long swim, was a mystery, but he was comfortable with mysteries now. He was anointed by a god, and the god would provide. The jeweler drove a harder bargain than the pawnbroker, but the pearls were good quality, and between those and the necklace, Abel made enough to live on for months.

  His next stop was the bank. He’d had an account there for years, though there’d been precious little money it these past few years, drained by his misfortunes. The banker, Mr Eustermann, pumped Abel’s hand for half a minute and congratulated him on the obvious uptick in his good fortunes. “If there’s anything we can do for you,” he said.

  Abel replied, “You foreclosed on my mother’s house.”

  The banker nodded his head, eyes sorrowful. “A terrible necessity indeed–”

  “It’s still standing empty, isn’t it? The foreclosure auction didn’t have any takers because it’s in rough shape.”

  “Another regrettable truth,” the banker said.

  “I can’t afford to buy the house back outright, not yet, but I’d like you to rent it to me, and in a few months, I’ll be able to pay in full.”

  Eustermann shifted and pulled at his collar. Abel’s direct stare was clearly making him uncomfortable. “Rent you the house? We are not in the business of property management here, Mr Davenport…”

  Abel put an arm over the man’s shoulder and moved in close. “I’m sure we can make an arrangement, Mr Eustermann. Perhaps something unofficial…”

  Eustermann was greedy, and Abel was relentless, so they struck a deal. Abel hired a car to give him a ride out to the home where he’d grown up, a saltbox house nestled on an unhospitable stretch of shoreline on an unlovely curve of the bay. For the next part of the work, he needed solitude, and easy access to sea water. Going back home for both made the whole situation sweeter.

  Abel didn’t bother to clear out the cobwebs in the house. He found an old tin bucket in the shed and walked down to the water, scooping it full, and walked it back inside, to the big tub on the ground floor. He went back and forth until the shadows grew long, until the tub was full of salt water, deep enough to immerse himself in. He took his clothes off, folded them neatly, and then lowered himself into the water. It was frigid, but he didn’t mind: the cold invigorated him, and lit up his mind. The amulet still hung on its bootlace around his neck and pressed against his breastbone. He lay back in the water, let it close over his face… and then allowed himself to breathe. The water wouldn’t hurt him now. The amulet would make sure of that.

  Abel opened his eyes, and he did not see the water-stained ceiling he’d looked at so many times throughout his childhood. Instead he saw a cavern, lit by glowing clusters of star-shaped fungi, and figures in robes moving with inhuman gaits. One of the figures brandished a knife, a crude thing with a blade made from a sharpened oyster shell. When it moved, Abel saw the amulet sway on a golden chain around the creature’s throat: the last high priest, before Abel discovered the temple and took up the role.