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Verity let go of the kid and ran for the door. Whatever was out there making that smell was bad news.
    Pain ripped through the link, knocking her off her feet like a physical blow. Black and red spots danced and exploded behind her eyelids as her face found the floor. Dimly, she heard Andre screaming again. A dark shape stepped over her and she twisted, trying to close off the link with Ruby enough to see properly. She grabbed at a leg. Her fingers closed on denim. A sharp kick forced her to let go and then a boot descended onto her head, putting out the lights.
     
    ***
     
    Verity came awake as the police arrived, reaching through the tattoo link for Ruby. Her rat was okay, bruised and upset, but burrowed against Verity’s side with no serious harm done to her. Verity pulled Ruby into her arms and curled around her, breathing in the rat’s warm pineapple and sawdust smell.
    “There’s no boy registered as living here and only one bed, no clothes or nothing,” the officer, a plainclothes detective who had taken his sweet ass time arriving, told Verity as she finished giving her account. When she’d awoken, only the corpse of the woman was left, and a broken, bloody lamp the only sign of the first man. No sign of the boy, except one.
    “That’s my sweatshirt with his damn blood on it,” Verity said, pointing at her light gray Vassar hoodie where it lay on the floor just inside the door. It was smeared with dark brown streaks as the blood soaked in and dried. The cops hadn’t bothered to bag it yet. “Someone came here, grabbed the boy. Someone using very bad magic.”
    “Very bad magic,” the detective repeated, pretending to write it down. She looked into his corn-fed, annoyed face and wondered if he was even literate.
    Her next thought was if she looked that bored at her job. She shoved that one away.
    “Thank you, Detective ,” the police detective said, emphasizing her title as though he wished he could use a different word. “We’ll let you know if we need any follow-up. Don’t leave town.” He winked at the last, probably thinking he was funny.
    Verity pushed Ruby up onto her shoulder, wincing as the rat’s soft body rubbed against her bruised cheek. She waved off the hovering paramedic and bent down; grabbing her sweatshirt off the floor with a look that dared the detective to tell her it was evidence.
    He didn’t. He’d already turned and walked over to the body. Not even wearing booties to cover his ugly cop shoes.
    Verity stomped into her apartment, slamming the door behind her. She tossed the bloody sweatshirt onto the kitchen counter and dropped Ruby into her crib by the couch.
    Her hair was matted on the side with blood, but the cut itself was tiny. She stared into the mirror, seeing the boy’s big dark eyes looking back instead of her own red ones. She could report the magic violation but didn’t think it would get anything going faster. Magic that rotten smelling and filthy was definitely the black kind. She’d encountered something like it only once, when she’d gone on a raid to stop a necromancer a few years back. Just thinking about that night made her shiver and sweat.
    “I did everything I could,” she told her reflection. It wasn’t her fault that Ruby’s pain, probably from being kicked, had taken her out. It was a side-effect of the tattoo link. She’d misread the situation, thinking all the players were present and down. Not her fault. Not her kind of job. S .E. P .
    Somewhere out there in the sprawling mess of her city was a kid who smelled like summer and comfort, taken by a man wielding the most foul magic Verity and Ruby had ever witnessed.
    A boy who had asked for her help.
    She walked out of the narrow bathroom and her sweatshirt caught her eye as a terrible idea poked her between the eyes, stabbing like a migraine and sticking like old gum until it was all she could think about.
    Cordwainer San Simone was called Cord by his friends, but Verity definitely wasn’t