Sketch had said we.

  I chewed on it, rolling it around in my mind. It felt good, it felt right, like a piece of myself that had been missing found its way back. I wanted to carry the feeling a little longer before I traded it in for chemical lemon-choked air. Besides, Mom would be at work, and I didn't want to sit in the quiet, hostage to my thoughts. When I got to the door, I kept going.

  Canton was doing its usual afternoon impression of itself: cars nosing for spots, a gull yelling like it owned the marina, a bar hosing last night off the sidewalk, bleach and stale beer kissing in the gutter. The Domino Sugar sign sat dull red across the water--not romantic like in movies, just there. I cut along O’Donnell and let the harbor wind tease at the curls under my hood. My cursed left lace stayed tied, even as an amputee, which felt like a calculated insult.

  A couple arguing quietly outside a rowhouse dropped their voices as I passed. A delivery guy thumped cases of soda inside a corner store. Somewhere, a dog barked.

  Was there nothing there?

  Or…

  I thought about how cats pounce on invisible mice and shadows and shivered. Maybe they saw the things I did.

  That was a scary thought.

  I pushed it away and focused on the normal sounds skittering over my skin, and it was…fine. Good, even. But under it, there was a new layer, like the city was printed on tracing paper and someone had offset it a fraction of an inch.

  Sounds hung a heartbeat longer than they should.

  The space under a parked truck looked deeper than it should, like a mouth. I blinked, and it was just shadow again.

  It wasn’t the city. It was me. My head had shifted, and now the seams were showing.

  I tested myself, because that’s what you do when you’re not ready to sit still. Alley: trash cans, broken pallet, cat tail flicking. No extra. Rooftop: AC units, a tangle of cable, a pigeon giving me side-eye.

  Fine. The little hitch in my breath smoothed out a notch every time normal won.

  I passed a stoop where someone had lined up terracotta pots and tucked a plastic flamingo between them like it was guarding the rosemary.

  An old guy swept his steps in slow, even strokes, and when he glanced up, our eyes caught. He nodded like we shared a secret. Maybe we did. Maybe it was just Baltimore.

  At the edge of Patterson Park, I stopped and watched the pagoda blink through bare branches. Kids shrieked like sirens around the playground; a dad chased a toddler who refused to wear a coat. A grill coughed a single brave puff of smoke even though the sky was thinking about rain again.

  The hill tugged at my legs, and for a second, I wanted to sprint to the top just to see if I could without getting winded. I didn’t. I touched the railing, felt the chill of metal through my glove, and let the urge pass.

  Okay. Enough. I could only orbit home so long before gravity won. Sketch believed me. We had a plan, if you could call “tell me when you see one so I can draw it” a plan. I wasn’t alone in this, and that made the stitches holding my day together feel a little thicker.

  I turned back toward our block, toward normal and a conversation I didn’t want but wasn’t going to dodge.

  The city didn’t look different.

  Breathing easier in the cold air, I turned—and froze at a sound that didn’t belong. It wasn’t sirens, or a car door, not the scream of a gull.

  It was a wet, rattling hiss, like someone shaking a rain stick filled with knives.

  Down the alley between a liquor store and a rowhouse: movement. A thing stood half in shadow, sleek and low to the ground, shoulders rolling like a cat about to pounce. Around its neck, a ring of frills snapped up in a sudden, colorful halo—petals of poison orange, and electric blue, and sickly yellow, trembling as it hissed. Its skin was the kind of dark that ate light; its eyes were lacquer-black beads.

  Every line of it said hostile.

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  Two kids were facing it. My age, maybe a year older. Swords in their hands.

  Not movie swords. Not shiny. One blade was a dull, matte black; the other a deep green, like old bottle glass. Both looked…wrong for metal. No gleam, just a dense, fibrous look, like polished wood layered with resin. The edges weren’t mirror-smooth; they looked hungry.

  The boy had shaggy hair and a face that would’ve been cute if he hadn’t been gritting his teeth. Hoodie sleeves shoved to his elbows, one forearm already raked with four neat claw marks, the other dotted with round bites like a dog had tested him. The girl was all lines—long, straight black hair that fell to her hips and didn’t seem to snag on anything, dark clothes that fit like they were made to move in. She held herself the way a dancer does when the music hasn’t started yet. Immaculate. Not a smear on her.

  The thing lunged. The frill flashed wider, snapping like a flag. The boy stepped in, brought the black blade up in a rough parry that knocked the creature’s head sideways. It screamed—a metallic, rattly keen—and raked at him. The claws caught his forearm. He hissed, bit it back, and shoved.

  The girl didn’t meet force with force. She slid. A breath to the left, then a drop of her shoulder. The swipe that should’ve opened her from ribs to hip cut air instead. She answered with a quick, precise cut to a tendon at the back of its foreleg—so clean I almost missed it—then she was gone again, out of reach, hair a dark ribbon in the alley wind.

  The smell hit me late. Hot pennies and aquarium stink, with a peppery edge that made my eyes water.

  The creature pivoted, frill pulsing with that awful rain-stick sound, and went for the girl. She rolled her wrist, and the green blade angled up, nicking the joint under its jaw as she sidestepped. The boy took the opening, drove forward with his shoulder and weight, and hacked down at its spine. The black blade bit—no clang, just a meaty crack.

  It whipped its tail. The boy ate the hit, stumbled, and caught himself on the dumpster with a hollow bang. The girl flowed under the tail and cut again, this time low, both tendons at the back. The thing’s rear end dropped like someone had cut its strings.

  For a heartbeat, the alley held its breath. The frill trembled, color pulsing, mouth opening on too many teeth. The boy recovered and moved—stepped in and drove the black blade into the base of its skull. A shudder ran through it, the color bled out of the frill like someone had pulled the plug, and it went slack.

  Silence rushed back. Drips. A far-off horn. The boy’s rough breathing. He looked down at his arm like he was only now remembering it was gashed. The girl was already scanning the alley mouth and roofs, calm as if she’d just finished a set at barre.

  They hadn’t seen me.

  I didn’t wait for that to change.

  I backed up, heel finding the edge of the curb, then turned and ran. Not a sprint, not a panic—just the kind of run where your body has already decided, and your brain catches up later. My heart climbed into my throat. Every doorway felt like an eye. Every puddle, like a mouth. I kept going until our block came into view, until coffee and consequences felt like the safest things in the world.

  My hand was inches from the doorknob, the cold brass a promise of safety.

  And I froze.

  They saw it.

  The thought hit me like a physical blow. Those kids, with their weird, matte swords—they weren’t running.

  They were fighting.

  They saw the hissing, frilled thing, and instead of screaming, they drew weapons.

  There were others. People like me.

  And what had I done?

  Run.

  Like a coward. Run from the only proof I had that I wasn’t losing my mind.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I let my hand drop to my side. The promise of home curdled into the shame of a missed chance.

  I had to go back.

  Retracing my steps was harder than it should have been. The sky had bruised from grey to a deep indigo, and the streetlights were flickering on, casting long, distorted shadows that turned every alley into a potential hiding place.

  My memory of the route was smeared with adrenaline. Was it this corner, with the overflowing recycling bin? Or the next one, where the liquor store sign hummed a low, electric note?

  I walked faster, my hoodie pulled tight. The city was settling into its night rhythm—the smell of someone’s dinner, the bass thump from a passing car, the distant wail of a siren. Normalcy felt like a lie.

  Then I saw it. The dumpster. The particular slant of the roofline against the darkening sky. This was the place.

  It was an empty alley.

  No kids, no monster, not even a pool of blood.

  The quiet was wrong.

  The air should have tasted like hot pennies and pepper. There should have been…something. A sign that a battle between teenagers and a nightmare had happened here an hour ago.

  There was nothing.

  Just brick and asphalt and the damp chill of evening.

  I pulled out my phone, the screen flaring to life before I switched on the flashlight. The beam cut a clean, white cone through the gloom. I crouched, sweeping the light over the spot where the thing had fallen.

  It was clean.

  Cleaner than any alley in Baltimore had a right to be. The usual city film of grit and grime stopped at an invisible line, and inside that space, the asphalt was dark with dampness but scrubbed bare. Faintly, I saw bristle marks in the remaining dirt at the edges, faint parallel scratches.

  Like my mother had scrubbed it.

  I leaned closer, my nose inches from the ground. A smell, so faint I almost missed it, hiding under the usual alley funk. Lemon cleaner, sharp and familiar, backed by the sterile bite of bleach.

  Troubled and confused, I stood up and toggled my flashlight off. Who fights a monster and then scrubs the pavement? Who brings swords and a bottle of Clorox?

  I walked back toward home, slower this time, the questions a heavy knot in my stomach. The sky was fully dark now, the moon a pale sliver behind the clouds. My feet found their way back to my block, to the familiar silhouette of our triplex.

  Just as I reached the bottom step of our porch, my phone buzzed in my pocket, the screen lighting up my face in the dark.

  The name glowed on the screen.

  Mom.

  Shit.