I didn't really expect the girl to follow me. When she floated up into the cranny next to me, I said nothing. I kept looking out across the park. I wondered if Harper lived in one of those houses.

"Do I know you?" the girl asked.

"I doubt it," I replied.

She was small, but older than I had first thought. Her expressions were hard and suspicious. I noticed the hilt of a knife jutting up from her belt. Her fingertips remained close to the knife as she watched me.

I turned my attention up into the dark sky. Above us, the stars still shone like jewels. Their luminescent colors shimmered and twisted with the distortions of the winds. The night was still deep and beautiful, but I couldn't seem to lose myself in it.

I watched a bat swoop through the air and snap up a firefly.

"Why did you help me?" the girl asked.

I didn't answer.

It was none of her business. She wasn't really the one I had wanted to save from the nets. My kindness had nothing to do with this girl, here now. It had just been a drug-addled attempt to comfort my own past. No one had come to my rescue when I had been trapped by the Inquisition. No one had been there for Sariel. So, years too late, I had come, as if I could somehow redeem either of us by saving this girl. I felt disgusted by my own sentimentality.

I scratched one of my black nails hard against the tip of a stone angel's wing. It left a white scrape, but nothing more.

"Are you a member of Good Commons?" the girl asked. The fissures of red fire in her eyes pulsed wider.

At the mention of Good Commons, I knew my escape into the sweetness of ophorium and the depths of the night had been futile. I couldn't out-distance the world that surrounded me. At every turn it seemed to close in over me. Still, I refused to abandon my night of thoughtless beauty. I pointedly gazed up at the North Star. Its blue brilliance burned into my eyes.

"Look at it." I pointed into the sky. "All it has to do is shine. Simply hang there in the sky and shine."

"Is this some kind of game?" the girl demanded.

"No."

"Are you drunk?" she asked suddenly.

"I wish I were," I said.

"You aren't with Good Commons?" she asked again.

I gave up. This girl just wasn't going to go away. I had made the great error of being kind to her, and because of that, she doubtless felt that there had to be some connection between us.

"I helped you because I thought it might have been a good thing to do for another Prodigal. I had no other reason beyond that," I said.

I frowned at one of the cathedral angels. Its face and shoulders were thick and distorted from the months of accumulated pigeon shit.

The girl studied me intently for a moment, then let her fingers fall back from the hilt of her knife. She looked out over the park. Inquisitors still searched the trees and undergrowth. She smiled, watching them.

"Do you know why I came here?" the girl asked.

"You came to do harm," I replied.

The girl's eyes narrowed. "What makes you think that?"

"You're carrying one knife in your belt and another in your boot." I took a small sniff of the air between us. There was a strong scent like that of scorched limes: sweet, bitter, and burning. "You're sweating vengeance. But what gives you away the most are your eyes. They've split. Red fires are shining through the cracks."

She looked surprised. She instinctively lifted her hand to her dirty face, then stopped. There was nothing she could do about it now. Slowly, she turned back to watch the movements in the park.

I looked back up into the sky. The ophorium ran thin through my bloodstream now. Flight and concentration had burned it to little more than vapor. I felt strangely cold, and everything around me seemed slightly ugly.

The shifting breeze caught the reek of rotting fish and sewage from the edge of the river. The moon seemed to have yellowed and cracked like a rotten tooth. Even the North Star took on the tawdry shine of costume jewelry.

"They murdered my friends," the girl said quietly. "One after another. Lily, Rose, Peter—"

"Peter Roffcale?" I asked softly. I knew it had to be him.

"Yes. Did you know him?" she asked.

"Just in passing," I replied.

"They strung him up and gutted him." The red fissures in the girl's eyes spread, swallowing her dark irises. Blood-red tears welled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. "They gutted him like a fish. Like an animal. They did the same thing to the others, to Lily, to Rose..." She wiped her tears, smearing bloody slashes across the back of her hand. "I tried to stop them tonight, but I got there too late. They murdered Tom. He was just a boy." More bloody tears dribbled down her cheeks, and she scrubbed at them angrily.

"I'm sorry," I said. The girl hardly heard me.

"They'll pay. I'm going to make them pay. I don't care if I have to go to hell to do it. I'm going to kill them all." She stood up and glared down at the Inquisition men in the park. Slowly, her gaze moved on to the houses on the south side of the park. I remembered that I had first seen her floating just outside the window of one of those houses.

"Does one of them live there?" I studied the elegant building.

"No." Her expression softened momentarily. "The man who lives in that house has never done anything wrong to anyone. His only crime was to marry a coward."

Fury began to burn through the tones of her voice. "A weak, lying bitch who should never have been born. She should've been wiped off the face of the earth."

I felt the change in the air as the girl spoke. The smell of burning lime intensified to the sickening scent of acid. The familiarity of it made the wounds across my back shudder with remembered agony. The same sharp scent had come just before the attack against Sariel's conjuring.

"If you want to do a good deed tonight, you'll make sure that the Inquisitors get him out of that house."

The girl didn't spare me a glance. She whipped out her knife and spat on the blade. The steel blade turned instantly black and flames sprang up. She hurled the knife out into the sky. It streaked through the air and slashed through a window on the second story. An instant later, yellow flames exploded up, shattering the glass and tearing through the shingles of the roof. Black and violet clouds of smoke curled up into the air.

I glanced at the girl, but she had already kicked off the cathedral and swooped up into the night sky. The Inquisition men rushed to the fire. I watched. They pulled men and women out of the house, most of them servants. The timbers of the roof began to collapse, and a huge geyser of fire leapt up into the open air. I floated up on the hot currents.

Even through the thick smoke and waves of heat, I recognized the last man to be dragged from the burning house. For a moment, I lingered on the searing currents. Below me the searchlights uselessly raked the thick walls of smoke. Down in the midst of the confusion and shouting, Edward Talbott stood in his nightshirt, watching the flames consume his home.

I knew nothing about Joan Talbott except that her Prodigal friends were dying. Now her husband's house was in flames. Violent devastation seemed to encircle the woman, sweeping away those nearest her while she remained a mystery at the center of it all.

The smell of fire and smoke permeated my clothes. It hung in my hair, mouth, and nostrils and lay against my skin like a sheen of perfume. I wiped my face and kept walking. I wanted to think, clearly and calmly. Too much was happening, too quickly.