Slowly, I got into a crouch, and then even more slowly, I poked just my eyeballs over the edge of the wood thing.

There was another box.

It was just sitting there, all alone, out in the open, without even anyone to guard it. And I guess that made a sort of sense. Why worry about people in little boxes? People in little boxes didn't go anywhere.

Well, not usually.

But whether it had to do with mother's blood, or with being Pythia or what, I'd never had any problem opening the things. It had mostly gotten me into trouble before, when I'd let out stuff I wasn't supposed to. Like when I'd ended up rooming for a while with three old women, ancient demigoddesses the Senate had imprisoned and I'd accidentally released.

That had been fun.

I'd spent more than a few moments in those weeks cursing whatever Fate thought it was a laugh to constantly mess with me.

I was sort of okay with it now.

Now I just had to let out Rosier.

Which would have been a lot easier if another man hadn't just come in from the hall.

He was big and brown-haired and bearded, and dressed like a war mage. I'd just stood up when he banged the door open and I spun around and stared at him. For a moment, we just stayed like that, me with my back to the counter, my box hidden behind my leg, and him with his coat half off, water rolling off the waxed leather to puddle at his feet.

And then he blinked and finished taking off his coat.

"If this is Cavendish's idea of a birthday surprise, I approve," he told me, hanging the coat on a rack. And revealing a Victorian-era version of Pritkin's war mage getup of potion belts and holsters, guns and knives. But he didn't draw any of them, or even look particularly concerned.

Maybe he didn't find a blond naked chick all that intimidating.

His eyes went over me, and a slight smile broke out behind his beard. "It'll be hard to top this come November," he told me. "If I do the same for him, the poor gel'll freeze!"

I didn't say anything.

"What do you have behind your back, little one?" he asked, finally noticing my awkward stance.

I shook my head and still didn't speak.

"Oh, come now. You can show me." He came toward me, face cracking into a full-on grin. "You can show me anything you like."

So I did.

And then the room was empty again, and the box didn't even feel heavier.

I clutched it.

I really liked this box.

His coat was still dripping onto the floor where he'd left it. I went over and put it on. It was huge on me, even bigger than the last one, and it didn't have any weapons in it. But I still felt better.

I'd been a naked chick with a box.

Now I was a clothed chick with a box.

That's what you call progress.

I grabbed the second box off the counter and fled.

Back through the door into the hall, back through the gallery of monsters, who still tweaked and flinched a little as I passed, but no longer tried to leap out of their wanted posters to claw at me. Back through the door, which wasn't locked, because who locks the front door of a police station? Even a supernatural one? And then back into the narrow alleyway, which had turned into a narrow, brick-lined, water-filled canal, because it was bucketing down outside.

I stopped abruptly.

I might just as well have run straight into hell.

Rain pelted me in stinging silver lines that burst on my skin, hissing and fizzing like miniature comets. Lightning flashed like fireworks overhead, illuminating the street and making all the shadows grow and writhe. I stared around, seeing van Gogh's Starry Night come to life if you added a few Goya monsters in the corners, and I suddenly wondered if either of them had known an incubus.

And then thunder hit, practically on top of me, crashing like a nuclear blast inside my skull, until it was all I could do not to start screaming again.

I slammed back inside, put my back to the door, and then just stayed there, shuddering and shaking and breathing hard.

And realizing just how much of a mess I was in.

I couldn't go out. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't shift, might never be able to shift again, the way I felt, which meant they were going to find me. They were going to find me any minute and lock me up, because the trap might not work, but they'd find something that did. I knew war mages well enough to know that, and I didn't have that kind of time; I didn't have any- I didn't have any.

Boots hit a wooden floor, coins jingled in a pocket, and the smell of a cigar, sweet and pungent, teased the air. And then a cry from inside the room I'd just left: "They're gone!"

And I was slamming back into the rain-drenched hell outside, leaping off the wooden landing, and scurrying under the stairs, just before three guys burst out of the door behind me, the rattling of boards over my head as they descended almost worse than the thunder.

But in a way, that was good. Because I was so preoccupied with the drum, drum, drumming in my head that I forgot to react. I don't think I so much as flinched when brilliant lights illuminated the outside of the building a second later, or when an alarm began blaring inside, muffled but still distinct this close, or when more thundering feet tore out of the door, calling instructions to each other.

Or when a man stopped, right over the top of my head.

And just stayed there.

I felt my heartbeat, which had already been pretty fast, edge into the danger zone. All he had to do was look down. The area under the stairs was dark, but light from above striped it like Gertie's damned wallpaper.

I could see the soles of his boots through the slats of wood, scuffed and worn but still solid. Like the bulk of him, heavy enough to make the boards groan when he shifted weight from foot to foot, although that could have been because of all the hardware he was wearing. Hardware I didn't have, because I didn't have anything, not anything, just a soaking-wet coat and a shivering body and a couple of- My breathing, which had picked up speed to match my heart-attack-in-progress, suddenly caught in my throat.

And then slowly, so freaking slowly, my hand felt around the water-slick bricks beneath me. And pulled my box out from under my left leg, where it had somehow ended up. And began to raise it, trying to keep it out of the light, so that the shiny surface didn't reflect anything.

Like the flash that suddenly flared across my vision, like a small red sun.

It dropped, rattling against the boards overhead. And then fell through a crack between two of them. And splashed in the mud in front of me.

Because the guy had stopped to light a cigar and had just dropped his lighter.

I looked up, in heart-clenching panic, and met a pair of narrowed blue eyes looking down. For all of a second, before the man's face flushed and his mouth started to open. And I jammed a corner of the box against the underside of his shoe.

And then sat back against the building with my eyes closed, and just concentrated on breathing for a minute.

I could feel the mud squelching beneath me, and the rain coursing down the spaces between the bricks onto my back. But the coat was waterproof, and I wasn't standing in a lashing torrent, so my brain seemed to be able to handle it. Like the box in my hands, which was smooth and shiny and slick, but also solid and unchanging. Reassuring.

Like Rosier's presence would be right now, strange as that sounded.

He'd lived through this era; he'd know what to do.

Assuming I could find him.

I looked around, my heart back in my throat, where it should just stay and save me some effort, I thought viciously. And then I felt it, the other box, hidden under a fold of the coat, where I'd dropped it and then sat on it. I hugged it to my chest in dizzying relief.

And a second later, I was hugging the guy who popped out of it and onto the street beside me, which would have been great, which would have been awesome.

Except he wasn't Rosier.

Chapter Twenty.

For a second, I looked at him and he looked at me, a small wiry guy with a patchy reddish beard and abundant acne. And then he took off, scrambling out from under the stairs and into the blaze of light in the alley, which seemed to confuse him. He stopped, dropped into a crouch, and looked around wildly, this way and that. And then abruptly took off again, running toward the street.

Only to stop after a few strides, because that way was blocked. War mages had clustered in the opening to the bigger road, leather-coated bulks of solidity that were fortunately facing the street, not us, at the moment. But that could change any second, as the guy seemed to realize. He swung back around, only to find himself facing the building that constituted the other end of the alley, with bricked-up windows and no convenient fire escape.

Well, that's why I'm still sitting here, I thought, as he joined me again.

"Wot's all this?" he asked, gesturing around.

"War mages looking for me."

"Why? Wot you do?"

"Nothing."

"Wot a coincidence," he told me. "I 'ave also been maliciously persecuted and unfairly detained."

"How about that."

He looked at the box I'd just let him out of, which I was currently shaking. And turning upside down. And beating on the bottom of, like a stubborn ketchup bottle, only nothing else came out.

"Wot's that?"

"Nothing."

"Naw, now that's not right, is it?" he asked. "That's not nuffing. That's one of them traps the Circle uses on people. I oughter know!"

"Yes. Yes, it is," I said, frowning at it. And then beating on it some more, not that it seemed to help.

"Wot's in there, then?"

"Nothing," I said, looking up at him in frustration.

"You like that word, don't ya?" He tilted his head to the side. "But if there's nuffing in it, why are you bothering wi' it?"

"Because there's supposed to be something in it! Or someone."

"Like who?"

"Like a demon."

"A demon?" The man looked me over again, assessing. "Wot you doin' with one o' them?"

"Nothing right now!" I glared at the mages at the end of the street. "They switched boxes on me. He isn't in here!"

"Well, o' course he in't," Red told me. "They never put no demons in those."

I blinked. "What?"

"Naw, why would they? When they c'n just ring up the old demon council, tell 'em to come pick up their wayward boy?"

"The . . . council?"

He nodded. "The Corps patrols humans, which demons ain't. They got a treaty with the council. Says if one o' their kind gets out o' line, the Corps calls 'em up, and they come for 'em. Unless the demon makes 'em mad in the meantime, and he 'dies trying ter escape,' wot has been know ter-"

He broke off when my nails sank into his wrist. "Where would they keep him?"

"Wot?"

"The demon! Where would they keep him until the council comes for him?"

"In maximum security, most like. They don't like demons."

"And where is that?"

The guy looked upward. "Top floor, but you'll never get in."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I'm going to have that coat, ain't I?" he asked, and I suddenly realized he was holding something out at me.

It was a knife. A small pocket variety, which he seemed to have pulled out of nowhere. "How did you get a knife in there?" I asked, looking from him to the box.

"The Circle don't know everyfing, does it? Now hand it over."

"What?"

"The coat!"