I return my gaze to the fire-scorched building ahead of me when I see the pair of yellow eyes gleaming back at me from a darkened window.

  Misty had been watching the rain but now she's watching me. “Oh hello Gavin,” she purrs. I thought she’d be at work already. She's told me it's alright to y low at her apartment before, but I'm surprised she's home still, after the shift change. “There’s an itch I just can’t scratch. I was hoping I’d see you, maybe you’d help me?”

  I have an itch as well. And I just understood what that itch meant. I put my finger to my mouth. I slip inside the darkened room.

  I walk past Misty without a word. The apartment is unlit, the front door open to a brick wall. “Don’t you want to y down?” Misty whispers as she hops down from the back of her armchair. “Your shift’s over.”

  The darkened room is ashy bck and smells like smoke. I’m dripping wet as I pull off my coat. A fat bck beetle falls from one of my sleeves to the scorched carpet, gleaming in the light of the Night Shift. It scuttles towards Misty’s leather armchair. But the pce is sparse and neat, or it was until I tracked the rain in. I stomp on the beetle. Nowhere to hide. I pick my shoe up. My presence is already making her well ordered apartment chaotic. Wet footprints, a trenchcoat on the floor. Past the big comfy chair I'm shedding clothes. At first, Misty follows close, quiet and unsure what I’m doing and why I haven’t offered a joke already. I’m pulling off my gumshoes as I go. As I unbutton my white shirt, a wasp buzzes out.

  "Oh, really? What’re they doing out in this rain?” Misty murmurs rhetorically as she leaps to catch it, knocking it out of the air with one swipe. When I reach the bathroom and pull off my pants in the dark, undo the tie and remove my shirt. I bst the hot water, steam fills the room and I step into the cw footed tub and make sure there aren't any remnants. The ants and grasshoppers clinging to my spine fill the drain. I try to clean myself as best I can with the little dishrag and soap. Beelzebub enjoys leaving things behind. Bugging folks, so to speak.

  “I think I got them all,” Misty says. I rex for a moment. I can't hear her tread as I hear her voice approach the tub. “What’s Beelz doing out in the rain.”

  “They were with their kulia, who has an umbrel. Have you met her?” I turn off the water. My ribs ache from running and coughing.

  “Seen her a few shifts back. No need to speak to her, there’ll be a new one in a few shifts.”

  “I worked for Beelzebub for more than a few shifts,” I say dryly, reaching for the towel and drying my bones a little. I grab my undershirt. “Thanks for the shower, anyway. I’d hate to have to watch my words all day.”

  “Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t get into so many scrapes.” I twitch the curtain away. Misty sits on her haunches, silhouetted by the Night Shift lights, staring at me with her gleaming copper eyes.

  “May I pick you up?”

  “Of course,” She says. I scoop the massive bck cat up from the tiled floor where she sits and hold her close to my chest. I feel her rumble like a subway station. I walk towards Misty’s big comfortable chair, holding her close. Raindrops distort the dim blue gleam. The shouts of violence still drift up from the Roundabout Market. I sit, but I’m still quiet.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not certain I should tell you.” “What?” Misty looks shocked. She uncurls to look at my face. “Gavin what’s going on?” In the dim light, her eyes gleam with tapetum lucidum.

  “Where were you at the end of Day Shift?”

  “Napping. Like you should be. Why do you ask?”

  “I was wondering if anyone could corroborate that.”

  “Of course not. Why. Do. You. Ask?”

  “You’re on my list of suspects.”

  “Gavin!”

  “It’s not a very detailed list right now.”

  “If I were at the scene of a crime, would I tell you?

  “Of course not.”

  “That’s right. I’d pretend I didn’t know anything about it and see what insights you’d gathered.”

  I stay silent. I hate it when she seems to read my mind, and I hate that I trust her.

  “Good. Honestly I wasn’t there, I just want you to know that’s what I’d say either way.

  “Yeah.”

  “So…”

  “Murder,” I growl. Misty licks her paw, not dignifying my extremely dramatic statement with a response. I shift in the chair. “Fragmentation I guess. Decapitation. Kidnapping?” Misty tilts her head but keeps cleaning her paw. “It looks like murder I mean. Optically. Found a woman’s body. No spirit inside. Her form didn’t have a head, and no shadow. No AKH. She’s still out there.”

  Misty pauses like she’s thinking deeply, then returns to her business cleaning her paw. “Well, what’s it to you?”

  “I was the first on the crime scene.”

  “So? Beelzebub thinks you’re a suspect? Trying to clear your name? Good luck with that.”

  "I don’t know how they could think that. Alley was torn up like an origami shop in a hurricane. But the thought that I’d decapitated her clearly crossed Beelz’ mind, the way they had their kulia threaten me with an umbrel."

  Misty sighs. “Oh my, how frightening. Listen.” She puts her paws on my shirt. “You meet a lot of people, Gavin. She didn’t know where she was, and now she’s fragmented. Happens every damned shift in this town.”

  “I want to know who she was.”

  “Did you check her papers?”

  I shook my head. “Tried, no luck.”

  “Ah, fresh off the boat. Ask Maat in immigration, she’ll–”

  I shake my head. “She had clothes. Nice stuff. Polyester even. Fancy.”

  “Poly… what’s that supposed to be?”

  “It’s a pstic. They weave it into extra tight clothes for dancing and running."

  Now Misty looks confused. “Pstic clothes? Ugh. I thought I hated Topsiders before, no wonder this century has been shit. Pstic clothes indeed. Who do they think they’re kidding. Worse than the Egyptians I swear.”

  “Anyone who has pstic down here is rich as as Hades, and whoever decapitated her just left it ying around.”

  “Is it valuable enough that you’d pause an assassination to go picking?”

  “Misty, that stuff is so valuable that I swear I wanted to cim pickers rights on it against the Law.”

  “That would have gone well,” she observes. Outside, the pickers have formed their stalls into a barrier, and are trying to keep the Law and the kulias from continuing this ham-handed raid. Pickers and gangsters loading stalls into the gondos while the Jackals weave through the rainy cobbles nipping at heels and dodging kicks. A pgue of insects billows through, but the heavy smoke and the rain impedes Beelzebub’s progress.

  “Couldn’t have hurt.”

  “It certainly would have hurt, and I’m gd you didn’t do something stupid for scraps.”

  “It wasn’t scraps, it was valuable information on a missing persons case. What if someone tries to hire a clue from me?

  “Just because she has pstic clothes, doesn’t mean someone would’ve paid to get her back.”

  “But she didn’t call them. I was On the Line for most of the Dayshift and I didn’t hear anything, not even a coded call for help.” I drum my fingers on the arm of the chair. “Maybe she was on the run. Witness testified that she might be a psychologist.”

  “Testified?”

  “Said.”

  “Please try to be honest. If she’s really a psychologist, then she certainly has people who will put her back together when the department finds her partner.”

  “That’s true.” I look up at the towers above the Roundabout Market. “You should have seen it. Some true fuckery was going on in that alley.”

  “What did you see?”

  I stare at her. The hungry way she’s looking at me. Waiting for the beans to spill. I feel certain she wasn’t there, or she’d know.

  “Someone cracked the stone itself.”

  Misty narrows her eyes, like she’s squinting to see if i’m lying. “What do you mean?”

  “The whole alley was fragmented. Like the second someone took off her head, it put a bullet through the world and the alley cracked like a broken window.

  Misty licks her paw with her pink tongue. She’d already cleaned that paw thoroughly. “So you’re going to take her case?”

  “I’m going to knock on a few doors.”

  “Got a pn?”

  “If I find her spirit, bring it back to the thought-form.”

  “That simple? Just walk into the Precinct with a shadow in a jar?”

  “I mean, she’s not leaving town and I didn’t get paid for an expansive side project.”

  “Hm.” She stands and stretches. “Suppose I paid you? Suppose I took an interest in this case, and requested you make a special investigation?”

  “That’d be–” I pause and sigh. “How would you be paying me? Lowering the debt?”

  “Not at all,” she says huffily as the stretch continues. “Material compensation. Liquidity, Gavin. Useful to use, useful to trade. My new kulia will be by ter with a briefcase.”

  “Your new kulia? I liked your st one.”

  “She got a job working as a refabricator. Good metalwork if you can take the heat. This one’s from the agency.”

  “Trustworthy?”

  “Seems kind enough, worth giving a Hand a hand.”

  “Regarding my timeframe, success conditions?”

  “We’ll talk further payment when you retrieve her spirit. I’ve got to get to work. You can nap here, if you want.”

  “Why the sudden interest?” I wonder.

  “To be completely honest Gavin,” She hops from my p and curls towards the window, turning to appraise me. “You’ve been having some trouble since you started working the Day Shift. I don’t think it suits you, but I just want to see you do well. It seems like a simple enough case."

  I lean forward. “That big a deal?” Misty’s deflections are usually more insulting.

  She stares at me with her copper nterns. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She looks out into the rain. “Leave the window open for me.”

  I nod. She slips out, and I watch her go. She leaps between porches and below overhangs, trying her hardest to stay dry. Not certain why she rushed off like that, since she’s self employed. After a minute, I go to my trenchcoat and pull my box of gaspers from the inside pocket. Like everything else down here, my smokes are the ghosts of something destroyed. They just show up, just like we do, at the changing of the shifts. Most people end up doing work sorting in some way, finding the worthwhile stuff that shows up and making sure it gets to the people who deserve it. Or who can offer you the biggest favor.

  The little wooden box is small and simple. My friend Will the Gepetto worked the plywood into an homage of a pack of cigarettes, the stylized words “COFFIN NAILS” spshed in big capital letters on it. The cigarettes are all different. Short squat smokes rolled in factories, hand rolled doobies with a bit of tobacco, menthols, licorice smelling cloves. The only thing that’s the same is that unless whoever smoked it was a drunk idiot, none of them have filters. The little pstic things are still up there, soaking into the ground. Someday, couple thousand years from now, I imagine it’s just going to rain tons of pstic on Our Fair City. Slowly at first, but then we’ll be drowning in it. I wonder what the living would think if they knew they were polluting their inevitable future as well. Only a few smokes remain. I choose a bck clove from the box, put it in my mouth and reach into my pocket for the match.

  I feel the pair of discs ctter next to the matchbox. I pull them out and hold up, both hands making the OK symbol as I hold them to my eyes. One disc is a penny. The cssic picture of Lincoln, marked with the year 1909 on the front with “ONE CENT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA '' in block letters inscribed on the back, fnked with sheafs of wheat like a urel crown. The other disc, a bnk piece of copper. I turn it over and see the sheafs of wheat, though this time I notice the letters VDB beneath. I gnce back at the penny. They both have VDB inscribed clearly underneath the curved wheat.

  The two discs are the same size, the same weight, and the same color. I put them on the windowsill, reach into my pocket and retrieve the match. I sit and light my smoke, watching as the puddles from the rain slowly stretch across the now quiet roundabout market.