"Might have been better. Grace likes a steady boat, and you’re running like a mad thing, trying to overturn it."

"Like I overturned the demolition of your building in Harlem?" It hadn’t been Grace’s building at all; it had been one of Eliseo Daisani’s properties. But beneath it lay one of the major hubs for Grace’s complex under-city existence. Daisani had deliberately moved against her, in retaliation for Grace exposing his subway speakeasy to the world. "How did he even know that building’s subbasement was one of your centers, anyway?"

Grace’s voice sharpened. "He’s Eliseo Daisani. What doesn’t he know, if he wants to? I didn’t think anyone used it," she said more lightly, though it sounded as if doing so cost her. "That chess set down there with the selkies and the djinn, well, I recognized that, didn’t I? But the place was sealed off tight as a tomb, not even any dust to come filtering down. If I’d known the Old Races still used it, I’d never have shown it to the city, good press or no." She brought her focus back to Margrit, a crinkle appearing between her eyebrows. "But aye, even that, like overturning the demolition of that building. It would have wreaked hell with our network, but vengeance would’ve been a done deal and all of us let alone after that. Now?" She opened her hands, a fluid gesture that reminded Margrit of Janx’s grace. "Now we’re still riding the troughs and peaks of the storm you’re stirring up."

"Not stirring," Margrit said, suddenly light-headed with clarity. "Stirred. I think we’re moving toward reaping the whirlwind now." Her laugh turned to a shudder, and she leaned forward, elbows on her knees and fingers laced behind her neck. "I mean, I’ve got a funeral to go to in a couple hours, for someone who’s dead pretty much because I agreed to help Alban clear his name. A few tens of thousands of selkies declared themselves because I made an offhand comment about strength in numbers. My housemate’s angry and scared out of his mind because he got a glimpse of Alban’s real form. I’m past stirring. I’m standing in the storm."

"Back off." A note of pleading tinged Grace’s voice. Margrit lifted her gaze to find her expression grim with hope. "Back off, love. Let them fall back into the patterns they know. They’re too old to change their habits without someone forcing them along. I like stability. It’s all that keeps my kids safe."

"They asked for my help." Margrit’s voice dropped. "Alban. The selkies. What was I supposed to do, say no? The selkies have come out, and that changes the Old Races even if I never talk to another one of them in my life. I don’t think they’re going to quietly slink back into the ocean."

"Then do what you can to keep the ripples from affecting my kids. My world must look like madness to you." Grace turned her attention toward the park, refusing to meet Margrit’s eyes. "All of us skulking around underground, on the run from coppers half the time, not for anything we’ve done, but for the idea of what we are. Living where we do, how we do, on the edges of society, it makes folk nervous. But my kids take care of each other. There’s no drugs, there’s no fights. You remember Miriah." Grace looked at Margrit, who smiled with happy recollection.

"She made the best chili I’ve ever had, the night Alban and I were down there. How is she?"

"She’s going to college in the fall." Grace sounded justifiably pleased. "She’d lost a brother to a gang fight and was on the road to leading a pack of her own when she came to me. She’s still a leader, but now it’s in setting an example for other kids to follow, teaching them to cook, to take care of themselves. Maybe it’s the wrong place to change the world from, starting at the bottom, but Grace’s got nowhere else to go."

"You’re not part of their world, though," Margrit said softly. "The Old Races. There’s the building, and Alban’s staying with you during the day, but he could find a new place to live. There’s nothing else, is there?"

"Janx knows I’m down there, and he tolerates me and mine because we don’t steal his business. We’re not so far removed from their world as it seems. Will you do what you can?"

"I don’t know what I can do, but yeah. I’ll try. I don’t want you to lose what you’ve got down there."

Grace nodded and rose to her feet. Margrit followed suit, hesitating before saying, "Grace?"

"Yeah, love?"

"Why do you do it?"

"Looking for a new answer, love?" She went silent a moment, then shrugged easily. "Past sins, that’s all. Making up for past sins." She took herself away with long, lithe strides. Margrit watched her disappear into dappled sunlight wondering what those sins might be. She didn’t know enough about Grace to even imagine them but she was curious. Maybe someday Grace would tell her.

And maybe if pigs had wings they’d be pigeons. No one conversant with the Old Races on any level seemed especially prone to sharing their life details. Margrit struck off in the opposite direction, as if she was telling herself not to pry by doing so.

She arrived at Trinity Church even earlier than she’d promised Joyce Lomax. The afternoon whisked by in a blur of activity and high emotion, Margrit fielding phone calls when Russell’s exhausted family looked as though they could take no more. It felt good to be useful to ordinary people, doing mundane things like giving directions to the memorial service or handling last-minute catering questions. Margrit only stepped back from being an all-purpose gofer as bells sounded the half hour and mourners began to arrive.

She knew many of them by name, more still by sight. People she didn’t expect, though should have, were in attendance. Governor Stanton nodded gravely to her when he caught her eye after expressing his condolences to Mrs. Lomax. It seemed impossible that it had barely been a week since he’d escorted Margrit around the reception for Kaimana Kaaiai. The mayor and his wife were there, as well as judges and lawyers Margrit had worked with or under. A sizable portion of the city’s legal and political elite were present, and Margrit wondered cynically how many of them were there simply to be seen, or if it mattered.

Light faded as the service began, the gold of sunset bringing life to stained-glass windows. Margrit watched the colors change as family, friends and colleagues stepped up to speak briefly about Russell Lomax. Then it was her turn, and she climbed the steps to face the podium and a hall full of faces.

Later she would be confident that her voice was steady and her words well-chosen, but blood rushed through her ears as she spoke, deafening her to her own speech. She focused instead on the people present, trusting a career’s worth of training to not allow a wobble of surprise in her voice when she picked her mother’s face out of the crowd. Like Cole and Cameron, Rebecca Knight was there for Margrit’s sake; even at his death, she was unlikely to forgive Russell for his transgressions thirty years earlier. A shock of gratitude ran through Margrit, stirring up too much other emotion, and despite herself, her voice shook. It took a moment to gain control again, and in that instant she saw a scattering of others whose presence she’d never have predicted at the service.

Eliseo Daisani sat far enough toward the back as to go relatively unnoticed. His expression was solemn, the lack of animation somehow serving to cloak him. A sense of certainty arose in her that she wasn’t meant to see him, but the slightest tilt of his head told her he knew he’d been spotted. Then, with unerring confidence, she looked toward a corner of the church and found Janx’s fiery hair a bright point in the darkness. Humor tightened her lungs, but not her own; it felt as though Daisani had been caught out, and transferred the reaction to her. Her skin itched, as if her blood were trying to work its way free.

Margrit tore her eyes from Janx and drew a deep breath, steadying herself to continue speaking.