Link's gaze bored into the spot between his shoulder blades the whole way to the end of the block.

The back-alleys of Kensington were a maze of coach houses, fences, dead ends and narrow doorways. Kids who knew their secrets played ball-hockey nearly undisturbed by cars, junkies turned them into reeking p.i.s.soirs, homeless people dossed down in the lees of their low, crazy-angled buildings, teenagers came and necked around corners.

But Alan knew their secrets. He'd seen the aerial maps, and he'd clambered their length and breadth and height with Kurt, checking sight lines for his network, sticking virtual pushpins into the map on his screen where he thought he could get some real benefit out of an access point.

So once he reached Kensington Avenue, he slipped behind a Guyanese patty stand and stepped through a wooden gate and began to make his way to the back of Kurt's place. Cautiously.

From behind, the riot of colors and the ramshackle signs and subculture of Kensington was revealed as a superfice, a skin stretched over slightly daggy brick two-stories with tiny yards and tumbledown garages. From behind, he could be walking the back ways of any anonymous housing development, a no-personality greyzone of nothing and no one.

The sun went behind a cloud and the whole scene turned into something monochromatic, a black-and-white clip from an old home movie.

Carefully, he proceeded. Carefully, slipping from doorway to doorway, slipping up the alleyway to the next, to the corner that led to the alley that led to Kurt's. Carefully, listening, watching.

And he managed to sneak up on Krishna and Davey, and he knew that for once, he'd be in the position to throw the rocks.

Krishna sat with his back against the cinderblock wall near Kurt's back door, knees and hands splayed, head down in a posture of supplication. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, which he nervously shifted from corner to corner, like a soggy toothpick. Behind him, standing atop the dented and scabrous garbage cans, Dumont.

He rested his head on his folded arms, which he rested on the sill, and he stood on tiptoe to see in the window.

"I'm hungry," Krishna said. "I want to go get some food. Can I go and get food and come back?"

"Quiet," Dewayne said. "Not another f.u.c.king word, you sack of s.h.i.t." He said it quietly in a neutral tone that was belied by his words. He settled his head back on his folded forearms like a babe settling its head in a bosom and looked back through the window. "Ah," he said, like he had taken a drink.

Krishna climbed slowly to his feet and stood off a pace or two, staring at Drew. He reached into the pocket of his old bomber jacket and found a lighter and flicked it nervously a couple times.

"Don't you light that cigarette," Davey said. "Don't you dare."

"How long are we going to be here?" Krishna's whine was utterly devoid of his customary swagger.

"What kind of person is he?" Davey said. "What kind of person is he? He is in love with my brother, looks at him with cow-eyes when he sees him, hangs on his words like a love-struck girl." He laughed nastily. "Like *your* love-struck girl, like she looks at him.

"I wonder if he's had her yet. Do you think he has?"

"I don't care," Krishna said petulantly, and levered himself to his feet. He began to pace and Alan hastily backed himself into the doorway he'd been hiding in. "She's mine, no matter who she's f.u.c.king. I *own*

her."

"Look at that," Darrel said. "Look at him talking to them, his little army, like a general giving them a pep talk. He got that from my brother, I'm sure. Everywhere he goes, he leaves a trail of manipulators who run other people's lives."

Alan's stomach clenched in on itself, and his b.u.t.t and thighs ached suddenly, like he'd been running hard. He thought about his proteges with their shops and their young employees, learning the trade from them as they'd learned it from him. How long had Don been watching him?

"When are we going to do it?" Krishna spat out his cigarette and shook another out of his pack and stuck it in his mouth.

"Don't light it," Drew said. "We're going to do it when I say it's time to do it. You have to watch first -- watching is the most important part. It's how you find out what needs doing and to whom. It's how you find out where you can do the most damage."

"I know what needs doing," Krishna said. "We can just go in there and trash the place and f.u.c.k him up. That'd suit me just fine. Send the right message, too."

Danny hopped down off the trash can abruptly and Krishna froze in his paces at the dry rasp of hard blackened skin on the pavement. Davey walked toward him in a bowlegged, splay-hipped gait that was more a scuttle than a walk, the motion of some inhuman creature not accustomed to two legs.

"Have you ever watched your kind, ever? Do you understand them, even a little? Just because you managed to get a little power over one of my people, you think you understand it all. You don't. That one in there is bone-loyal to my brother. If you vandalized his little shop, he'd just go to my brother for protection and end up more loyal and more. Please stop thinking you know anything, it'll make it much easier for us to get along."

Krishna stiffened. "I know things," he said.

"Your pathetic little birdie girl is *nothing*," Davey said. He stumped over to Krishna, stood almost on his toes, looking up at him. Krishna took an involuntary step backward. "A little one-off, a changeling without clan or magic of any kind."

Krishna stuck his balled fists into the pockets of his s.p.a.ce-age future-sarcastic jacket. "I know something about *you*," he said. "About *your* kind."

"Oh, yes?" Davey's tone was low, dangerous.

"I know how to recognize you, even when you're pa.s.sing for normal. I know how to spot you in a crowd, in a second." He smiled. "You've been watching my kind all your life, but I've been watching your kind for all of *mine*. I've seen you on the subway and running corner stores, teaching in cla.s.srooms and driving to work."

Davey smiled then, showing blackened stumps. "Yes, you can, you certainly can." He reached out one small, delicate hand and stroked the inside of Krishna's wrist. "You're very clever that way, you are."

Krishna closed his eyes and breathed heavily through his nose, as though in pain or ecstasy. "That's a good skill to have."

They stood there for a moment while Davey slowly trailed his fingertips over Krishna's wrist. Then, abruptly, he grabbed Krishna's thumb and wrenched it far back. Krishna dropped abruptly to his knees, squeaking in pain.

"You can spot my kind, but you know nothing about us. You *are* nothing, do you understand me?" Krishna nodded slowly. Alan felt a sympathetic ache in his thumb and a sympathetic grin on his face at the sight of Krishna knelt down and made to acquiesce. "You understand me?" Krishna nodded again.

Davey released him and he climbed slowly to his feet. Davey took his wrist again, gently. "Let's get you something to eat," he said.

Before Alan knew it, they were nearly upon him, walking back down the alley straight toward his hiding place. Blood roared in his ears and he pressed his back up against the doorway. They were only a step or two away, and after a couple of indiscreetly loud panting gasps, he clamped his lips shut and held his breath.

There was no way they could miss him. He pressed his back harder against the door, and it abruptly swung open and a cold hand wrapped itself around his bicep and pulled his through into a darkened, oil- and must-smelling garage.

He tripped over his own heel and started to go over, but a pair of hands caught him and settled him gently to the floor.

"Quiet," came a hoa.r.s.e whisper in a voice he could not place.

And then he knew who his rescuer was. He stood up silently and gave Billy a long hug. He was as skinny as death.

Trey's phone number was still current in the video store's database, so she called him.

"Hey, Trey," she said. "It's Lara."

"Lara, heeeeeeyyyy," he said, in a tone that left no doubt that he was picturing her panties. "Sorry, your bro ain't here."

"Want to take me out to dinner tonight?"

The silence on the other end of the line made her want to laugh, but she bit her lip and rolled her eyes and amused the girl browsing the chop-socky epics and visibly eavesdropping.

"Trey?"

"Lara, uh, yes, I'd love to, sure. Is this like a group thing or..."

"No, Trey, I thought I'd keep this between the two of us. I'll be at the store until six -- meet me here?"