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decided that she wasn't going to give in to that madness. If she murdered this foolish little man, then her own life would be destroyed.
    "I'm going to walk up the street and you're going to go the other way, back to the bridge. Do you understand?"
    The troll nodded quickly. "Yes," he whispered.
    "If I see you again, you're dead."
    Maya stepped back out onto the sidewalk and headed toward the church, then she remembered her father. Had the troll followed her all the way to Thorn's apartment? How much did they know?
    She hurried back to the alleyway and heard the troll's voice. Clutching a cell phone, he babbled to his master. As she stepped out of the shadows, he gasped and dropped the phone onto the cobblestones. Maya grabbed his hair, pulled him up straight, and inserted the point of the stiletto into his left ear.
    This was the instant when the blade could pause. Maya was aware of the choice she was making and the dark passageway that opened before her. Don't do this, she thought. You still have a chance. But pride and anger pulled her forward.
    "Listen to me," she said. "This is the last thing you will ever know. A Harlequin killed you."
    He struggled with her, trying to break away, but she drove the knife down the ear canal and into his brain.
    ***
    MAYA LET GO of the taxi driver and he collapsed in front of her. Blood filled his mouth and trickled from his nose. His eyes were open and he looked surprised, as if someone had just told him unpleasant news.
    She wiped off the stiletto and concealed the weapon beneath her sweater. Staying in the shadows, she dragged the dead man to the end of the alleyway and covered him with garbage bags taken from a dumpster. In the morning, someone would find the body and call the police.
    Don't run, Maya told herself. Don't show that you're scared. She tried to look calm as she walked back across the river. When she reached
Konviktská Street
    , she climbed a fire escape to the roof of the lingerie shop and jumped over the five-foot gap to Thorn's building. No skylight or fire door. She'd have to find another way in.
    Maya jumped back to the next roof and went down the block of buildings until she discovered a rooftop clothesline stretched between two metal poles. She cut the clothesline with her knife, returned to her father's building, and lashed the cord around a vent pipe. It was dark except for the glow of a single streetlight and a new moon that looked like a thin yellow line slashed in the sky.
    She tested the cord and made sure that it would hold. Carefully, she went over the low wall on the edge of the roof and lowered herself hand over hand to the second-floor window. Peering through the glass, she saw that the apartment was filled with grayish-white smoke. Maya pushed back from the building and kicked in the glass. Smoke poured out of the hole and was absorbed by the night. She kicked again and again, knocking out the sharp edges of glass still held by the window frame.
    Too much smoke, she thought. Careful or you'll be trapped. She pushed back as far as possible, then swung through the hole. Smoke drifted up to the ceiling and flowed out of the shattered window; there were a few feet of clear space above the floor. Maya got down on her hands and knees. She crawled across the living room and found the Russian lying dead beside the glass coffee table. Gunshot. Chest wound. A pool of blood surrounded his upper body.
    "Father!" She stood up, staggered around the half wall, and found a pile of books and cushions burning in the middle of the dining-room table. Near the kitchen, she stumbled over another body: a big man with a knife in his throat.
    Had they captured her father? Was he a prisoner? She stepped over the big man and walked down a hallway to the next room. A bed and two lampshades were burning. Bloody handprints were smeared on the white walls.
    A man lay on his side near the bed. His face was turned away from her, but she recognized her father's clothes and long hair.