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at her back. But in the month she and Cecily spent walking the streets of East London under the guise of prostitutes, she knew what it would have been if poverty had caught her and torn at her with its claws.
    They dressed the part—old, tattered clothes, heavy rouge on the cheeks. They had to use glamours for the rest, for the true mark of the prostitute was want. Missing teeth. Jaundiced skin. Bodies tight from malnourishment and bent from disease. Women who walked and walked all night long because there was nowhere to sleep, nowhere to sit. They sold themselves for pennies to buy gin because the gin kept them warm, took away the pain for an hour, numbed them to the terrible, brutal reality of their lives. If these women could get the money to have a place to sleep for the night, that didn’t mean a bed. It could mean a spot on a floor, or even just a bit of wall to sit against, with a rope run around the room to keep the sleepers from falling over. By the crack of dawn, they’d be tossed out on the street again.
    Walking among them, Tessa felt dirty. She felt the remains of her supper in her belly. She knew that her bed in the Institute was warm and contained someone who loved her and would protect her. These women had bruises and cuts. They fought over corners and bits of cracked mirror and scraps of cloth.
    And there were children as well. They sat in the fetid streets, no matter their age. Their skin was so dirty as to never be clean. She wondered how many of them had ever had a hot meal in their lives, served on a plate. Had they ever known a home?
    Over it all, the smell. The smell was what really ground itself into Tessa’s soul. The tang of urine, the night soil, the vomit.
    “I’m getting tired of this,” said Cecily.
    “I think everyone here is tired,” Tessa replied.
    Cecily sighed sadly.
    “One carriage ride away and the streets are quiet and spotless. It’s a different world in the West End.”
    A drunken man approached them and made an overture. Since they had to play the part, Cecily and Tessa smiled and led him to an alley, where they inserted him into an empty oyster barrel and left him.
    “A month of this and no sign,” Tessa said as they walked away from the flailing, upturned legs of the man. “Either we’re keeping it away, or . . .”
    “Or this simply isn’t working.”
    “Magnus Bane would be useful at a time like this.”
    “Magnus Bane is enjoying New York,” Cecily replied. “You’re a warlock.”
    “I don’t have Magnus’s experience. Anyway, it’s nearly dawn. Another hour and we can go home.”
    Will and Gabriel had taken to posting themselves in the Ten Bells pub, which seemed to be the central place for news of the killer. Indeed, many locals said they had seen him there with the victims before the murders. Sometimes Jem would come by with news from the Silent City. It wasn’t unusual for Cecily and Tessa to return exhausted to the pub at the crack of dawn, and find Gabriel gone and Will asleep, wrapped up in Brother Zachariah’s parchment robes, head on the table.
    Jem would be reading a book, or quietly looking out the window. He could see, in his own fashion, despite his closed eyes. He was glamoured, so that his appearance would not shock the tavern’s denizens. Tessa could always feel Cecily tense when she first saw Jem: black runes scored his cheeks, and there was a single white streak in his dark hair.
    Sometimes, after Cecily and Gabriel left, Tessa would sit with her hand in Jem’s and Will sleeping against her shoulder, listening to the rain on the windows. It never did last for long, though, since she did not like leaving the children alone so much, though Bridget was an excellent nurse.
    It was hard on both families. The children would wake to find four exhausted parents who drew endless runes for wakefulness and yet still could barely keep up with Anna, running about in her uncle’s waistcoat, or James, waving his spoon and trying to find the