Her fear appearing to ease, Jinx went to the stove, put what was left of the eggs and bacon on a plate, and warily took the seat next to Tillie.

"Robby get to school okay?" Tillie asked.

Jinx nodded. "But he didn't want to go. He says some of the other kids are picking on him."

"Why would anyone want to pick on Robby?" Tillie asked. "He's a good kid."

"Clothes," Jinx told her. "He says the other kids tell him he looks like he's homeless."

"Assholes," the woman on the sofa said bitterly. The baby had fallen asleep in her arms, and now she laid him gently on the sofa, got up, and poured the last of the coffee into a tin mug. "Why can't they just leave him alone?"

"Who's Robby?" Jeff asked.

Nobody spoke, and everyone in the room except Jagger, Jeff, and the sleeping baby glanced at Tillie.

"Just a kid," she said. "He's about eight. Been living here for a while now."

"He lives here?" Jeff echoed. "A little boy?"

Tillie rolled her eyes. "What kind of dummy are you? Why shouldn't a little boy live here?"

"Do his parents live here, too?"

Jinx and the mother of the baby exchanged a quick glance. "I don't think you ought to tell him. If they get out-"

"They aren't getting out," Tillie said. "Did you ever hear of any of them getting out?"

"No, but-"

"No buts," Tillie cut in, and looked directly at Jeff. "They told you, didn't they? About the game?"

Jagger finished eating and pushed his plate aside. Jeff felt him tense, and again placed a restraining hand on the big man's arm. "They told us if we get out, we'll be free. They said all we had to do was get to the surface-"

"Doesn't matter what they said," Tillie interrupted. "They're going to kill you. That's why you're down here."

Jeff felt his stomach clench. "But why?" he demanded. "Why would anyone want to kill us? Who are they?"

Tillie's eyes bored into Jeff. "How would I know? Nobody sees them. Nobody even hears them. But we all know about them. And once they've made up their minds, that's it."

"But if we get out, they'll leave us alone?"

Tillie shrugged. "That's what they say. But I never heard of anybody getting out once the hunt's started." Her eyes flicked from Jeff to Jagger. " ‘Course, I don't ever remember them hunting two at a time, either. Maybe if you stick together, you can do it."

Jagger abruptly leaned forward, his fingers closing on Tillie's wrist. "But what if we don't go anywhere?" he asked, his voice low and menacing. "What if we just stay here?"

If Tillie was frightened at all, she showed no sign of it. "I told you before-this is my place, and I decide who lives here. I got rules, and everybody has to live by them. Robby has to go to school, and Lorena here has to take care of her baby, and everybody has to look out for everybody else. We're not too far down yet, and I figure Robby and Lorena and Jinx still have a pretty good chance of moving back to the surface someday. That's why I don't let anybody in here that's going to mess things up-I want my kids to go up, not down." Her eyes fixed balefully on Jagger. "People like you don't go up," she said. "They only go down." Her eyes shifted back to Jeff. "That's the thing about the tunnels. When people first come in, they think it's only going to be for a little while- maybe a few hours, maybe just for the night. That's how I got here. I got tired of getting run out of Grand Central for sleeping on the benches-back before they took all the benches out. I'd been watching people go down the tracks, so one night I tried it myself. First good night's sleep I'd had in months. So I started going back. I had a little nest for a while, up in the pipes. And I'd go out every day. But then they started running us out of the station. So I started looking around, and after a while I found this." Her eyes roamed over the dank concrete of the windowless walls, and suddenly she grinned. "I figured the rent was right, and it was deep enough in so the cops wouldn't bother me." She jerked a thumb at Fritz, who seemed to have dozed off. "And once I found this one, it got a whole lot better. When Fritz isn't drinking, there's not much he can't do. He's the one who figured out how to tap into the electricity, and the cable, and even the water pipes. One of these days, I'll bet he even figures out how to bust us into the sewer."

"If his liver doesn't bust first," Jinx muttered.

Tillie glared at the girl, who fell silent. She turned back to Jeff. "Everybody thinks there's nothing but bums down here," she said. "And I'm not going to try to tell you there aren't a lot of those. But there's all kinds of other people, too. Like Jinx here, who had to get away from her stepfather." She tilted her head toward Lorena, who was once again nursing her baby. "She was pregnant, and her husband beat on her. And Robby's folks just left him."

"Left him?" Jeff echoed, now finished eating.

Tillie nodded. "They got on a bus, and told him to wait at the station. But they never came back. Jinx found him on a bench, just waiting, and brought him back here."

"Why didn't she take him to-well, to a shelter or something?"

"You ever been to one of those places? All they'd have done is put Robby into the system, and God only knows what would have happened to him. At least here he knows he's got a family that loves him. Up there…" She shook her head. "What am I even talking for? Everyone thinks it's so great up there, and I guess if you got money, maybe it is. But if you don't…" Her voice trailed off. "Things aren't so bad down here, at least not right here. Soon as the baby gets old enough, Lorena'll be getting a job, and I figure in a couple of years she'll be back on the surface. And one of these days Jinx is going to go back to school-"

"High school sucks," Jinx said.

"Being stupid sucks worse," Tillie informed her. She turned her attention back to Jeff and Jagger. "I don't know what you two did or didn't do. All I know is what's on that piece of paper. So I don't mind givin‘ you some breakfast, but that's it-I don't want you messin' with my family, and you sure ain't gonna be here when the hunters find you."

"So what are we supposed to do?" Jagger demanded.

Tillie stood up and began clearing away the empty plates. "That's not my problem. That's your problem."

"Maybe it is your problem," Jagger growled. "Maybe I'm gonna make it your problem."

Tillie shook her head. "Blacky?" she called out.

Instantly, the door opened and a man even larger than Jagger stepped inside. Behind him were two other men, neither much smaller than Blacky himself.

All of them carried knives, and they looked as though they knew exactly how to use them.

"These two were just leaving," Tillie said, nodding toward Jeff and Jagger. "Want to walk them to the corner?"

Blacky grinned. "No problem. No problem at all."

Almost before Jeff and Jagger knew what had happened, the two men were behind them, and Jeff felt the tip of a knife against the back of his neck. Raising his hands and getting to his feet, he started toward the door. But then he stopped, and even though Blacky once more jabbed the knife against his neck, he turned back to face Tillie. "What about our stuff?" he asked. "The flashlights and Jagger's spike?"

Tillie mulled it over. "Fair's fair, I guess-you had it when you came in, you can take it with you." After sending Jinx to retrieve their things from the other room, she turned back to Jeff. She seemed to think something over, then appeared to have come to some kind of decision. "One thing you might want to keep in mind-in the tunnels, the deeper you go, the crazier people get. So if you have a choice, go up. But don't plan on gettin‘ out. Once the hunters are after you, nobody ever gets out."

Jinx reappeared and wordlessly handed Jeff the flashlights and the rusty railroad spike. A moment later they left the room, the door swung closed behind them, and the brightness was gone.