Mine is definitely not a day job. The day is for sleeping. A long golden time of sunny safety hits about noon and peters out at about five in the winter, somewhere around eight in the summer. I like to be home, curled up in bed with Saul’s arms around me.

I do not like wrestling with a Trader in a filthy storm sewer reeking of the death of small animals. I don’t like being thrown and hitting concrete so hard bones break, and I hate it when they try to drown me.

So many people have tried to drown me. And I live in the desert, for Chrissake.

This close to the river there’s always seepage in the bottom of the tunnels, and the Trader—a long thin grasshopper who had once been a man, filed teeth champing and yellow-green saliva spewing as he screamed—shoved me down further, sludge squirting up and fouling my coat even more.

I clocked him on the side of the head with a knifehilt-braced fist, got a mouthful of usable air, and almost wished I hadn’t breathed. The smell was that bad.

Candlelight splashed the crusted, weeping walls. The Trader had set up an altar down here, bits of rotting flesh and blood-stiffened fur festooning the low concrete shelf. Cats and dogs had gone missing in this area for a while, but the Trader hadn’t bumped above the radar until small children started disappearing.

I had more than a sneaking suspicion where some of those children could be found. Or parts of them, anyway.

The Trader yelped, losing his grip on me in the slime and scudge. The knife spun around my fingers, silver loaded along the flat of the blade hissing blue sparks like the charms in my hair, and I slashed with every ounce of strength my bent-back left arm could come up with.