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sir.”
    Rossbank shook his head and dropped his cigar in a brass spittoon.
    “I’ll sort it out. I need some air.”
    He walked to the doors and slid one back.
    “What’s all this, then?” he demanded, but he suddenly choked in pain, staggered backward a step or two, and fell, blood spraying across the floor.
    We stood frozen as two dark shapes filled the doorway, paused for an instant to scan the room, then an arm snapped and a blade flew through the air. Tyndall staggered back, eyes bulging, blood bubbling from his throat and mouth. He turned as he fell, for a moment the light of a gaslight sparkled from the diamond stickpin in his cravat, and then he collapsed twitching to the floor.
    “NO!” Gordon shouted, his voice rising almost to a scream.
    Blood pounded in my ears, and my perception became jerky, strobelike: shouts, curses, scrambling bodies, overturned furniture, and one of the dark shapes raising his hand and pointing at me.
    “‘Ere ’e is. Git ’im!”
    The other’s hand, holding a steel blade rose, and snapped toward me.

FIVE
    September 23, 1888, London, England

    The dagger wasn’t meant for me. I heard Bonseller cry out in pain and fear, and that shocked me into action. I staggered away from the door, my feet clumsy, balance screwed up. Nothing around me made sense, because my heart rate had gone through the roof and a lot of frontal brain functions were shutting down, but I remembered enough to start tactical breathing. Inhale for a five count, hold it for a five count, exhale for a five count, wait for a five count, start again.
    Someone grabbed me by the right arm, one of the men from the door. He wore some sort of black coverall and a black cap. His mouth twisted open in a grimace showing me yellow and black jack-o’-lantern teeth, and his breath came as a physical shock almost as potent as the thrown knife. A blade flashed toward my face, and I tried to twist away, but his grip was strong. The knife stopped millimeters from my throat.
    “Come wi’ us or you’re a dead ’un,” he growled.
    I nodded mutely.
    Exhale for five, hold for five . . .
    Three serving-platter-sized metallic spiders scrabbled past my feet, making whirring, clicking noises.
    What the hell?
    The other man in black yanked down the big drapes from the window, pulling the curtain rod and mounts away from the ceiling in a small shower of plaster dust. Light exploded in through the large window, and I saw a smoky rectangle of the London skyline. He kicked at the window, and glass shattered.
    “Where’s the bleedin’ coin?” the man holding me shouted as he pulled me toward the window.
    “I . . . I don’t—” I stammered.
    “Here!” someone yelled. I recognized Meredith’s voice. His plump hand appeared from behind the overturned writing desk, holding a melted slug of clear plastic.
    Inhale for five, hold for five. Vision came into sharper focus, legs grew steadier. Around the periphery of my vision the old blackness crept, the blackness I thought gone forever.
    Where was Gordon and his revolver? Tyndall’s pistol was in his coat pocket on the floor. No time to get it. The man at the window had his back to me as he used his fist to knock out the remaining broken shards of glass. The thug holding me shoved me toward the window and let go to reach out to grab the coin.
    Action without thought. Two long steps to launch myself into the air, catch the man at the window with both of my feet squarely in his back. Kick hard to transfer momentum to him, come down in a crouch as he plunged screaming out the window. Anticipation, experience, memory—indistinguishable.
    With neither thought nor emotion I rose and turned to the other thug and I knew my face was as empty as the abyss. Did I know it then or know it later? There was no then or later. He hesitated, his knife held wrong for a throw.
    “Halt in the name of the crown! Hands up!”
    Gordon!
    Face white, pistol raised and shaking, Gordon stood at the double