“Now, if we may,” she said.
Someone was gripping Sophia roughly by her shoulders, trying to shake her awake.
What was happening? Was she still dreaming? She tried to bat her attacker away, but her limbs were cramped with cold. With effort she opened her eyes, and saw a woman, bare-skinned, frowning with impatience.
Dima.
Sophia gathered what strength she had, and shoved her—and was shocked when the jinniyeh stumbled backward, wincing and holding her side. Sophia tried to sit up, to escape, but the sheets were tangled around her—
The jinniyeh pushed Sophia back down on the bed, anger and annoyance on her face—
There was the sound of a key turning in a lock, the squeak of a doorknob—
—and the world swayed around Julia Winston as she walked straight into her own nightmare.
“Get away from her!”
On the bed, Sophia watched as her mother, dressed in an extravagant mourning cloak and hat, launched herself at the naked jinniyeh and grabbed her around the throat. Two men stood frozen in the doorway, one dressed in a policeman’s uniform; their faces were a comedy of shock.
I’m still dreaming after all, Sophia thought.
She extricated herself from the sheets and slid out of the bed. She tried to stand, but stumbled over her upended trunk and fell to the floor—just as the jinniyeh broke from her mother’s grip and knocked the woman down. The mourning hat rolled onto the carpet, jet beads spilling from its band.
The effort seemed to have cost the jinniyeh: she bent over, grimacing. Sophia’s mother lay beyond her, one liver-spotted hand pressed to her bruised and sagging cheek. Her hair, loosed from its tightly scraped knot, rose in a thin cotton cloud about her head—and Sophia realized that she couldn’t be asleep after all. Never, not even in her dreams, had she imagined that her mother could look so frail, so old.
She reached out with both hands, grabbed the jinniyeh’s ankle, and yanked with all her might. The jinniyeh fell atop the trunk, cursing.
Julia struggled to her feet. “Do something!” she shouted at the men still gawping in the doorway, then turned to help her daughter—
Only to stare into the narrowed yellow eyes of a full-grown tiger that stood where the naked woman had been.
She froze in terror. The tiger panted its hot breath into her face, then bared its fangs and roared to rattle the windows.
Shouts; screams. Julia fell and scrambled backward, hampered by her cloak. A lamp smashed; a nightstand tipped onto the floor. Where was Sophia? She would not lose another child, she would not—
Something flashed silver on the carpet beside her. A lady’s pistol, small and pearl-handled.
Julia grabbed it up with shaking hands, aimed into the tiger’s mouth, and fired.
The noise was shocking, deafening. The tiger looked startled—and then disappeared.
Julia dropped the gun. Sophia lay on the floor beyond, a look of confusion upon her face, a bloom of red spreading across her stomach.
* * *
Toby sped up Greene Street, toward the Waverly Steam Laundry.
As promised, he’d delivered the message to Maryam Faddoul, who’d turned out to be a lady with brown eyes and a kind smile, holding a coffee-pot. She’d taken the message from him with a look of surprise, but then read it and nodded, as though she’d been waiting for it all along.
He reached the laundry and swerved into the long, narrow alley that led to the delivery entrance. One of the girls must’ve seen him coming because his mother was at the back door almost before he’d dismounted, concern on her face. “Toby? What’s wrong?”
He looked past her at the girls in the shop, then drew her farther into the alley, away from the door. “Ma,” he said, “I have to ask you something. It’s about my nightmare.”
Her concern turned to wary confusion. “Your nightmare? Toby, this isn’t—”
“Ma, just listen. I’m in a huge room, with sunlight and brass chandeliers and mirrors everywhere. There’s an old man standing in front of me. He’s got this horrible grin, and he’s holding my wrists, and I can’t move. I can’t even breathe.”
The color had drained from his mother’s face.
“I’ve had that dream my entire life,” he said. “But it’s your memory, isn’t it? It happened to you.”
She put a hand to her mouth, stifling a sob. Tears ran down her steam-reddened cheeks. “Oh, Toby, I’m so sorry—my sweet boy—”
“It’s okay, Ma. It’s not your fault.” He swallowed, his own throat thick with tears. “But I need to know the rest of it, too. All of it. Because I found Missus Chava.”
At once she glanced him up and down, newly alarmed, as though checking him for injury.
“And Mister Ahmad, too. He’s in trouble. I don’t know what it’s all about, but there’s a lady who disappears, and another who’s sick—and something nearly killed him, I had to carry him up to his roof—”
“You did what? Toby—”
“But they won’t tell me anything,” he went on, determined to get it all out before she could stop him. “Like who they are, or . . . or what they are, I guess. They’re trying to keep me out of it, and they know you’d be furious if they didn’t. But they need help, and I have no idea what to do.” He took her hands. “So, please. I’m begging you. Tell me.”
She’d been staring at him in shock, but now her expression hardened. “Toby,” she said, “they’re right. Listen to them. To me. Go home, boychik. They’re dangerous people, all of them.”
“Ma, didn’t you hear me? It’s all a mess, and something awful’s going to—”
“Something awful did happen,” she snapped, pulling her hands from his. “I watched your Missus Chava nearly kill a man.”
He stared at her—and the puzzle piece slid into place. “My father,” he said. “In the alley.”
She nodded tightly. “Ahmad was there, too. He pulled her off Irving, but he was barely strong enough. He had to
