An alley runs through it

  He didn’t reach for his gun, though he could have. He could have batted her gun aunched her lights out, kicked her across the room, anything. He was close enough, fast enough, definitely strong enough, but he didn’t. Instead, he raised his hands like he was under arrest and looked her in the eye.

  “Celeste…” he whispered. She hadn’t heard her real name spoken since she dropped in, and the sound of it cut through her anger, her fear, and even her fresh boiling guilt. It brought her out of the world where Michael was a crazed drug addict who killed Cooper because a voi his head told him to, and back to the domain of the Spirit.

  She saw him smiling in the Allclub, grey eyes fshing, remembered him takio that garden for their first meeting wheched the job to her, the one hidden in a mazed cube of brick walled buildings, that reached up to a single square ht spring light, where they served drinks crafted from memories of soda fountaiinct for half a tury.

  “We want to do this thing in a way that’s less destructive. Less cutthroat. I think you help with that.”

  She remembered his encement, his uanding. And she remembered the other her, the ohat had listehe one who had hoped, the one who had believed.

  She let her gun hand drop to her thigh and sobbed. He ed his big arms around her a her cry for a bit, then moved her pistol bato her holster.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He squeezed her ohen pulled away. To her surprise, she stayed on her feet. He spped the light switches on the wall and the house went dark. Thank god. The st thing she wao see was a refle of the gore-stained curtains in some piece of gss. Michael pulled open the door and she followed him out into the powder blue twilight.

  All the lots on the block had been built in the shape of piano keys. The long backyard stretched ahead of them beh the deep shade of wide live oaks. Shadows bloomed iagnant light, spread at her feet, and pooled uhe dense foliage ging to the tall -link backed wooden fence lining the yard. e light fshed above, oips of the darkeree-branch arms framing an oblong sb of sky. She felt the world was winking out, and every time she blinked sweat off her eyes, it seemed a miracle that light retur all.

  Their legs whooshed through the tall grass and her brain pyed sirens in her ears, but they never got any louder. She khey were just as much phantoms as the feeling that Cooper was still walking, relutly, behind them. She found her voice as Michael creaked open the link door to the alley.

  “Won’t he tell people, like you said?”

  “Doesn’t matter. No one will believe him and the ces of it ing up on a ter job are slim.” He shut the gate softly.

  “I’m doh this job,” he said to her, quietly. “Something smells bad about it.” His voice was bitter.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How could a guy like that get his hands on anything worth hiring all this muscle?”

  Celeste, now free of the haze of Cooper’s enta, listeo Michael with her Spirit, and agreed. Robbery iherworld was essentially unheard of. Of course, there were always the schemes and scams, the lying and manipution, the bliss and sim peddlers, but actual thievery was usually reserved for the espionage and corporate- wars of the greater powers. The average Spirit never entered it, and Cooper was nothing if not average.

  Most of their jobs, and most of the jobs taken in the Hardworlds in general, involved finding some member of the upper echelon who had tried to advance his station with brute force or deception. The lower-level thieves usually got dealt with by the Princes before they ever had a ce to even think about running to a Hardworld. This job was odd, and the more she thought about it, the st one had been odd as well, in the same way, like she had now seen two parts of the same beast, just before it sah the waves.

  Normally, the Hardworlds were a haven for her, free from the politid maations of the Otherworld, but here, now, it felt like the Other was right outside the alley.

  It was little more than two tire tracks of pressed gravel grit, with a strip of grass running down the ter, framed by low link fences enclosing painfully suburban backyards, cradling BBQ grills, above-ground pools, leaning sheds, old dog houses, trampled trampolines, rown swis.

  It sank in the dim twilight and was pletely silent besides their footsteps, like the neighborhood had fled indoors from the guhe opening at the far end was a dim orb e-hued suburbia, and when she gnced back over her shoulder, she saw essentially the same thing. A true liminal space. It all seemed to float in the endless void of the Otherworld, whiow felt full of unseen spiracy.

  Michael led her through a gap in the fend into ay lot where the ghost of a foundation spoke out in irregur shapes of crete through grass and brush. They made the long walk across the wn while Celeste waited for muo swoop into the street oher side, but it was quiet evening all the way across.

  A small dark ies sedan waited at the curb, coated in a yer of dirt. The doors came open with a crag reluce, and the inside was almost as dusty as the outside. It smelled of stale air and old cigarette ash. Michael held the key down for almost five seds before the eurned over. He cracked the windout it in gear with a groan from the transmission, and they were off down the road, the smell of blood and dust rushing out into the cool air.

  There are pces in this world that feel separate from everything. Could it be that they lead to something oher side of nothing? ime, an autopsy, and a glimpse at the chaos from the point of view of the uninitiated. episode, Chariot.