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likes of us, else you’re fish food tonight, sharps.”
    â€œOw,” Jarvey said, rubbing his cheek. Then he realized he had dropped the Midion Grimoire. “Where’s my book?”
    â€œGot it here, cully,” another boy said. “Here, reach out. Where are you? Here it is, take it. Can’t none of us read, no gates.”
    The sharp corner of the book poked into Jarvey’s chest, and he took it from the boy, feeling its weight almost with gratitude.
    â€œCome on,” the girl said. “Mill Press will have runners out.”
    They shoved him, led him, and grumbled at his slowness as they made their way through a maze of alleys and byways, under bridges beside a river that reeked of stagnant mud and dead fish, through open windows and into basements crowded with stacks of crates and what seemed to be rusted machinery. “Where are we going?” Jarvey asked three or four times, but he never got an answer. It was like some of his bad dreams, nightmares of endless running, to something or from something, in which he could make no progress.
    However, this night’s running found an end at last. From ahead of him, Jarvey heard a complicated rapping, answered by another series of taps, and then a dim opening appeared, a door. The kids behind him thrust him forward, down a steep incline, to the doorway, then through, hurriedly, and the shadowy figure of the girl held aside a hanging blanket and urgently beckoned to him. Jarvey ducked under it.
    One dripping candle provided a faint light, but to his weary eyes it blazed bright enough to dazzle him. His head ached, and he felt every bruise he had collected. Jarvey had the impression of being in an immense room, something almost the size of a cathedral, but someone—the kids around him, Jarvey supposed—had walled off a portion of it. Splintered wooden crates, stacked more than head-high, made a hollow square about twelve feet on a side. A ragged gray curtain covered the only entrance. More pieces of gray cloth, roughly stitched together, made up a kind of drooping, sagging ceiling overhead.
    Jarvey saw four boys and one girl, all of them staring at him silently. The youngest of them looked about eight years old. He squeaked, “Who’ve we brought home, then, Betsy?”
    â€œA rum ’un,” the girl said with a grin. She was close to Jarvey’s age, but incredibly dirty. Her hair might have been red, but it was hard to tell in the candlelight. She, or someone, had hacked it short. Bangs hung on her forehead, but the rest of her hair spiked away in all directions. Her eyes were green, her nose tilted up at the tip, and her mouth wide. Like the others, she wore a shirt and pants too big for her, the pants belted at the waist with a rope, and she was barefoot.
    The youngest boy had been waiting in the tent-like enclosure, but the other three had been the ones shoving Jarvey along. One looked as if he might be Pakistani or Indian, with black hair and eyes. The second was a year or two younger than Jarvey, and he had blond hair that fell into a cap of curls. The last was a tall, lanky kid who was probably thirteen or fourteen. He had shaved his head down to stubble, and he was missing two front teeth.
    â€œLookin’s free, cully,” Betsy said. “Strange clothes you have there.”
    â€œWhere are we?” Jarvey asked.
    â€œCall it the Den,” Betsy said. “Where we live, when we’re not runnin’ from the tippers or the pressers. Only you got to pay rent, see? Got any brass on you?”
    Jarvey furrowed his brow. “Brass? Money, you mean?”
    â€œAmerican, is that?” the Indian-looking boy said. “Sounds posh, dunnit?”
    Jarvey fumbled in his jeans pockets. No money. Nothing. “I don’t have any, uh, brass,” he said. “Look, if I could get to the police—”
    The youngest kid, the one who had let them in, had flung himself on the floor. Now