“Almost certainly,” I said.

“Right, lads!” said the enforcer, glancing back over his shoulder to address the rest of the street. “Pick up your feet, we are out of here. This is Dead Boy and John bloody Taylor, and we are not being paid nearly enough to take on the likes of them. Everybody round to Greasy Joan’s café, where we will wait out whatever appalling things are about to happen.”

“You’ve heard of us,” said Dead Boy, sounding just a little disappointed.

“Too bloody right, squire. I signed on for security work and a little light brutality. Nothing was ever said about having to face living legends and death on two legs.

Behind him, the rest of the enforcers were rapidly melting away and disappearing into the distance at something only a little less than a dead run. I looked thoughtfully at the man standing before us, and his left eye developed a distinct twitch.

“You seem to have a lot of influence over your fellow thugs,” I said. “Who are you, exactly?”

“Union representative, squire. I look out for my boys, make sure they’ve all got health insurance, and I’d really like to run away after them, if that’s all right with you.”

I’d barely finished nodding before he’d turned and hurried away. There’s a lot to be said for a good, or more properly bad, reputation. One young enforcer was still standing in the middle of the street, looking a bit bewildered. He yelled after his union rep, who didn’t even look back.

“Hell with this shit,” snarled the young punk, sounding actually outraged. “We’re supposed to be hard men! Spreading fear with a glance and crushing all opposition! We don’t turn and run when a couple of serious faces turn up!”

“He’s young,” said a voice from the shadows of a very dark alley. “Doesn’t know anything. Please don’t kill him. His mother would give me hell.”

The young enforcer went for the gun on his hip, but Dead Boy was already moving. Being dead, his body wasn’t limited to normal human reaction times. He darted forward impossibly quickly, closing the distance between himself and the young enforcer in a moment. The punk actually got off two shots, and Dead Boy dodged both of them. He crashed into the young enforcer, ripped the gun out of his hand, and head-butted him in the face. He then examined the gun while the young man crumpled to the floor, before finally throwing it aside.

“I take it there won’t be any more opposition?” I said, to the general surroundings.

“Not from us,” said the voice from the shadows. “You do whatever you feel like doing, sir.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We will.”

I gathered up Dead Boy, and we continued down the street. There wasn’t a single soul to be seen anywhere, but I had no doubt we were still being surreptitiously observed. I raised my gift, opening up the inner eye in my mind, my private eye, to locate exactly where Julien Advent was hiding himself in all this hostile territory. I kept my Sight narrowed down to just the task at hand. I really didn’t want to See the kind of dark forces that moved unseen in a place like Rotten Row. I was also concerned that I’d recently been using my gift too much. My Enemies were always looking, to send their horror troops after me. I found Julien almost immediately, observing a firm called Dingley Dell from a place of concealment in a tenement building only a little further down the street. I shut down my gift, checked that all my mental barriers and safeguards were securely in place, and told Dead Boy what I’d learned.

“You are seriously spooky sometimes, you know that, John?” he said. “The way you know things. Still, I wouldn’t worry too much about these Enemies of yours. They probably won’t be able to locate you at all, what with Lilith and her pals on the rampage, jamming the mental aether.”

We walked on a while in silence. “Jamming the mental aether?” I said finally. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Dead Boy. “But you have to admit, it sounded really good there for a moment. Now then, Dingley Dell… Sounds almost unbearably twee. Probably makes lace doilies, or something…”

We came to a halt before the right building and studied the small cards tacked to the doorframe, beside the row of buzzers. The cards looked decidedly temporary, as though they had a tendency to change on a regular basis. The current occupiers of the three-storey building were Alf’s Button Emporium, Matchstick Girls, Miss Snavely’s Fashion House, Shrike Shoes, the Stuffed Fish Company, and Dingley Dell.

“Top floor,” Dead Boy said disgustedly. “Why do they always have to be on the top floor? And how are we supposed to get all the way up there, past all the other businesses, without anyone noticing us?”

“Firstly, it’s only three floors we’re talking about,” I said. “Undoubtedly because this entire shit heap would have collapsed if anyone had added a fourth floor. And secondly, while I doubt very much that a dump like this has a fire escape, you can bet good money that there’s a concealed exit round the back so company executives can make a swift departure unobserved if their creditors turn up unexpectedly. So, round the back.”

We made our way down a narrow side alley almost choked with garbage and general filth, and a couple of sleeping forms who didn’t even stir when we stepped over them. I found the back door without having to raise my gift again because it was exactly where I would have put it. (Having had occasion to dodge a few creditors myself, in my time.) Dead Boy checked the door out for magical alarms and booby-traps, which didn’t take long. He only had to look at them, and they malfunctioned.

“My being dead and alive at the same time confuses them,” he said happily.

“It’s always confused me,” I agreed.

Dead Boy went to smash the door in, but I restrained him. There could still be purely mechanical alarms in place that we hadn’t spotted, and I didn’t want to risk attracting attention and perhaps blowing Julien Advent’s stakeout. So I raised my gift for a moment, located the right spot on the door, directly above the lock, and hit it once with the heel of my hand. The lock disengaged, and the door swung open. Dead Boy averted his gaze so he wouldn’t have to see me looking smug, and we entered the tenement, quietly closing the door behind us.

There was hardly any light, and the place stank of poverty and misery and blocked drains. Every expense had been spared in the construction of this building, and everything about it screamed fire trap. We moved quietly down the gloomy corridor, alert for any sign that we’d been noticed, but the whole building seemed silent as a tomb. The stairway was so narrow we had to go up in single file, so I let Dead Boy go first, on the grounds that he could take a lot more damage than I. There were any number of magical alarms and booby-traps, but they all blew up in silent puffs of fluorescent smoke, rather than try to deal with Dead Boy’s presence. On the second-floor landing a monstrous face formed itself abruptly out of the cracks in the plaster wall, looked at us, mouthed the words Oh bugger, and disappeared again.

The next stairway was wide enough for us to walk side by side. I was starting to relax when a wooden step sank just a little too far under Dead Boy’s weight, followed by a slight but definite click, and I threw myself flat. A metal shaft shot out of a concealed hole in the wall, passed right over me, and speared Dead Boy through the left arm. He looked down at the spike transfixing his arm, sighed heavily, and carefully pulled his arm free. I got to my feet again, and we studied the metal spike.

“Why did this work when the others didn’t?” said Dead Boy.

“Purely mechanical,” I said. “Least there’s no harm done.”

“No harm? This is my good coat! Look at these two holes in the sleeve. Going to cost a small fortune to put those right. I’ve got this little fellow in Greek Street who does all my repairs (you’d be surprised how many outfits I go through), but they’re never the same afterwards. He calls it invisible mending, but I can always see it…”