Somewhere close by, a man was trading shouts with Leo’s guys—he in Cantonese, they in English. We heard a loud slap, a cry, a muffled threat. Noor and I both stiffened.
“In the back!” Leo’s man shouted.
“It has to do with you,” I continued, my lips almost touching her ear.
Now she was trembling. The edges of the dark shivered around us, too.
“Tell me,” she breathed.
Leo’s men rounded the corner into the hallway. And we were out of time.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The men started along the hall toward us, dragging some poor market worker behind them. The beams of their flashlights played over the walls, refracting off the glass of the crab tanks. I dared not raise my head for fear it might leave the confines of Noor’s dark. I tensed, mentally preparing for a very unbalanced fight.
Then, halfway down the hall, they stopped.
“Nothing in here but fish tanks,” one of the men grunted.
“Who was with her?” said a second man.
“A boy, some boy, I don’t know—”
There was another slap, and the man they were holding groaned in pain.
“Let him go, Bowers. He don’t know nothing.”
The market worker was pushed away roughly. He stumbled to the floor, then picked himself up and ran.
“We wasted too much time here,” said the first man. “The girl’s probably long gone by now. Along with the creeps who took her.”
“Think they could have found the entrance to Fung Wah’s loop?” asked a third.
“Could be,” said the first man. “I’ll take Melnitz and Jacobs to check it out. Bowers, do a full sweep here.”
I counted their voices: Now there were four, maybe five of them. The one called Bowers walked right past us, his gun holster hanging at our eye level. I looked up without shifting my head. He was heavyset and wore a dark suit.
“Leo’s gonna murder us if we don’t find her,” Bowers muttered.
“We’re bringing back that dead wight,” said the second man. “That ain’t nothing.”
I tensed in surprise, my ears pricking. Dead wight?
“He was dead when we found him,” said Bowers.
“Leo don’t gotta know that,” the first man said, laughing.
“What I wouldn’t give to have killed him myself,” Bowers said. He reached the dead end to our right and turned back in our direction again. His flashlight spilled over us, then shone into the tank beside my head.
“You can go kick his corpse if it’ll make you feel better,” the third man said.
“Nah. I wouldn’t mind givin’ that girl a kick, though,” Bowers growled. “And more than that.” He started back toward the others. “You see the way she was helping the wight?”
The first man said, “She’s just a feral. She don’t know any better yet.”
“Just a feral—exactly!” said the second man. “I still don’t understand why we’re wasting so much time on her. Just to add one more peculiar to our clan?”
“Because Leo don’t forgive and forget,” said the first man.
I felt Noor squirm beside me, then take a deep, steadying breath.
“Get me in a room alone with her,” growled Bowers. “I’ll show you how special she is.”
He came even with our hiding place, then turned a slow circle, shining his light across the walls and the floor. My eyes came to rest on his holster. His flashlight panned across the tank to our left, then came to rest directly on us. The beam stopped inches from our noses, unable to penetrate Noor’s dark.
I held my breath, praying that all of us, even our hair, was hidden. Bowers’s expression soured, as if he were trying to make sense of something.
“Bowers!” someone shouted from down the hall.
He turned but kept his flashlight trained on us.
“Meet us outside when you’re done here. After Fung’s we’ll do a three-block perimeter.”
“Pick out a couple fat crabs!” said the first man. “We’ll bring back dinner. Maybe that’ll put Leo in a better mood.”
The flashlight beam swung back to the tank. “I don’t see how people can eat these things,” Bowers grumbled to himself. “Spiders of the sea.”
The others left. We were alone with the flunky. He was five feet away, grimacing at the crab tank. He peeled off his jacket and started to roll up his shirtsleeves. All we had to do now was wait, and in a few minutes . . .
Noor’s hand clenched my arm. She was trembling.
At first, I thought she was melting down from stress, but then she drew three tiny breaths in quick succession and I realized: She was trying not to sneeze.
Please, I mouthed silently, though I knew she couldn’t see me. Don’t.
The man reached gingerly into the tank closest to him. His meaty hand felt around for a crab while he made gentle gagging sounds.
Noor went rigid. I could hear her teeth grind as she tried to hold in the sneeze.
The man yelped, then yanked his hand out of the tank. He swore and waved his hand wildly in the air while a fat blue crab held fast to one finger.
And then Noor stood up.
“Hey,” she said. “Asshole.”
The man spun toward us. Before he could get a word out, Noor sneezed.
It was a percussive blast: All the light she’d swallowed flew out, splattering the opposite wall and the floor and the man’s face in radiant green spray, enveloping him in a ball of glowing light. It wasn’t bright enough to hurt him—and not nearly enough to burn—just enough to shock him into brief inaction as his mouth formed a perfect, egg-shaped O of astonishment.
The small, dark void that had enveloped us disappeared in an instant. The man shouted, and for a moment we were frozen, as if under a spell: me crouched on the floor; Noor standing beside me, her hand over her nose and mouth; the man with one hand held up, a wriggling crab still dangling from it. And then I scrambled to my feet, and the spell was broken. The man moved to block our way, and with his free hand he reached for his gun.
I tackled him before he could use it. He fell back and I toppled down on him. We grappled for the pistol. I caught an elbow in the forehead, and a sharp pain ricocheted through me. Noor came from behind and thwacked him on the arm with a metal pole she’d found. The man hardly flinched. He got both hands against my chest and shoved me aside.