And humans. The humans were everywhere. They walked the streets and passed through the doorways; they drove the carriages, they rode the trains, they piloted the ships. They were behind every window in every building. They swarmed out of stairwells in the street, like ants from a mound. Thousands upon thousands of them, more than she’d known existed. They’d covered the land and the oceans; they’d stretched themselves into the heavens and burrowed inside the earth. They’d conquered every last element and direction.
All at once she was overwhelmed with a loneliness that bordered upon desperation. The very landscape seemed to reject her as alien, bizarre. Here, it would be easy to believe that there was no such thing as jinn at all. Was this how the iron-bound jinni felt, too?
Please, she thought, let him be here, and alive.
In the W.C., Toby waited.
One minute. Two minutes. Let the man eat his supper. With any luck, the clerk would be distracted enough not to notice Toby’s failure to return through the lobby. The telegram he’d given the man was just a dummy, a blank—and for that, he could land in enough trouble to lose his job. But he needed to see this woman who knew something that Chava Levy was not supposed to know.
He left the W.C. and found the staircase, its steps deep and carpeted. He paused at each turning, listening, but encountered no one on his way to the eighth floor. He’d chosen the right hour, before the evening rush.
Room 812. Heart pounding, he fetched another envelope from his bag and knocked on the door.
Sophia stood by the open window, shivering.
The jinniyeh had been gone for at least five minutes. Of course Dima would want to explore; Sophia only wished she’d thought to dry herself more thoroughly first, and change into something warmer. Another minute, and another—and Sophia grew colder, and more worried. Would Dima remember which building was theirs? Perhaps she was lost out there, in the growing dark. Had she ever navigated a city before? No, of course she hadn’t. Sophia hadn’t prepared her at all. She’d merely opened the window and told her to fly. Sophia was shaking terribly now, the weeks of travel and sea-sickness had drained her—but this was her own fault; she’d made a mess of things and she couldn’t leave the window in case Dima should be looking for her—
A knock came at the door. Was it her? Had she gotten in through the wrong window, and was now standing naked in the hall? Numbly she wrapped her dressing-gown more tightly about herself, stumbled to the door, and forced her fingers to turn the knob.
“Western Union, miss,” Toby said to the damp-haired woman in the dressing-gown. “Are you”—a glance at the envelope and its invented name—“Anna Smithfield?”
He expected her to tell him, No, young man, you have the wrong room; to scold him for interrupting her bath instead of just leaving the envelope at the desk. Instead she only clutched the doorknob with a white-knuckled hand. She was shaking, badly. Her lips were tinged with blue.
“Miss, are you—”
Her eyes rolled upward, and her knees buckled.
He lunged, and caught her: a fumbling catch, the heel of one hand bumping the swell of her breast. He jolted with embarrassment and adjusted his grip, hoisted and half carried her inside, to a settee by the bathroom. She curled there, shaking.
“I’ll call for a doctor,” he said, and reached for the ’phone.
“No!” It was barely audible above her chattering teeth, but her eyes pleaded with him. “Blanket. Please. And—hot-water bottle. In my trunk.”
He fetched the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her, tucking it against the settee cushions. Then, blood climbing in his cheeks, he searched through her trunk, past the slips and underthings—and, to his surprise, a pearl-handled pistol—until at last he found the hot-water bottle. He filled it in the bathroom, and gave it to her to tuck beneath the blanket. She was small and delicate-looking, though the skin around her eyes was finely wrinkled, as though she’d spent a good amount of time squinting in the sun. He eyed the ’phone again, wondering if he should put a call in to the house doctor, despite her objections.
“I don’t need a doctor,” she said, following his gaze. She seemed to be warming; her lips, at least, were a healthier pink. “It’s a kind of anemia. I’ve had it since I was young. It . . . gets the better of me, sometimes. When I don’t expect it.”
“I could go to the chemist’s, if there’s anything—”
“No. Thank you. Honestly, I’ll be fine. Once I’ve rested.” A pause. “You were looking for . . . who?”
Oh. The telegram. He’d dropped it somewhere, in the confusion. He looked around, noting the billowing curtains—the window was open, no wonder she was cold . . . There it was, on the floor. He picked it up—and froze at a familiar sensation.
There was a train engine approaching behind him.
All his instincts shouted it, though he knew it was impossible: he was in a hotel room on Washington Square, not out riding Death Avenue. But it was the same gust of air pushing at his back, pressing upon his ears. It was barreling down upon him; something was coming—
The pressure lessened, the breeze died away, and with a bone-deep certainty Toby knew that there was someone else behind him in the room. Hovering. Waiting.
The woman’s eyes had gone wide. She was staring beyond him, at the window. She’d left it open . . . deliberately.
Don’t turn around, he told
