It was from Jonte that I got the most important piece of news.

It would take a stronger man than a pimp not to give up everything he knows when a hellbreed-strong fist flexes and a testicle pops like a grape. At heart, the men who make their living like that are cowards. It’s why they engage in the mindfucks instead of getting real jobs. What they don’t realize is that the mindfucks eat them alive too.

Now’s not a time for philosophy, I told myself as the boneless body of the big man slumped to the tiled floor. Jonte had a nice place, for all that I’d busted up a good deal of it. He’d also had some half-decent help. I was bleeding down one side of my face, and there was a fresh bloody hole in the left thigh of my pants, closing rapidly.

Now is the time for showing these fucks what happens when you mess with my city. Had enough, I have so had enough of this. The scar on my wrist pricked wetly, a thick welter of heat spilling up my arm. Fresh cold wind poured in through the busted French door, glass broken in sharp slivers in the tide of sticky blood that washed across the tiles.

I let out a long soft breath as Jonte gurgled his last, pieces falling into place. Taken separately, the pimps hadn’t known much. But putting all the pieces together gave me a picture. Just like a jigsaw, even if you don’t have all the pieces you can make a guess if you have enough of them.

And now I knew, too, where the redheaded Sorrow had her little bolthole. It was a stroke of genius, one I admired coldly while I considered how to break in and kill her.

The pseudo-adobe house groaned under the lash of wind. I’d taken four men with assault rifles, three with handguns, and another two that apparently had little use other than as hangers-on. They were only human, all of them, and I’d found Jonte gibbering with fear in his kitchen, crouched under the counter and trying to load a.38 revolver—whether for himself or me I wouldn’t want to guess. And now that the shooting and moaning was over I heard something else.

I tilted my head. Scratching sounds.

Mice in the walls, Kiss? The voice, strangely enough, was Perry’s; his jolly happy tone when he’d just discovered something to make me flinch. Little mice fingers scratching at the plaster. Mmmh.

Glass crunched under my feet. The sound was coming from downstairs, in the basement. Jonte was quite a successful pimp, probably because of his connection to a few of the larger drug dealers in town. He actually had a suburban house, in depressed real estate less than five minutes on the old highway from the strip downtown where his girls paraded. All the comforts of home but close enough to keep a tight leash on his moneymakers. Yes, ol’ Jonte was quite the operator.

“Was” is the operative word. Now he’s pimping in Hell. The thought brought another one of those frozen smiles to the surface of my face.

The house was utterly silent except for the scratching and the faint whimpers. If I’d been wearing my cuff, I probably wouldn’t have heard it.

I had both guns out. Jonte’s taste in furnishings was Mission-style, with a few tribal touches; it was nice for a fatass pimp, I supposed. The kitchen gave onto the living room, I stepped past the body of one of Jonte’s thugs, the one dressed all in night camo. Where do they find these people? Then again, reputable mercs don’t like to work for pimps; they prefer a little higher on the food chain where the money’s better.

I turned into the entry hall, lifting both guns. There was a door at the end, probably going down to the basement and locked with a shiny brand-new padlock. Behind it was whatever was making those stealthy sounds.

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick, by famous Hanover City; the poem rang inside my head with dark glee. Vermin, ’twas a pity.

The hammers on both guns clicked back. Focus, Jill. What the fuck is that?

I caught a muffled sob, and the sound of movement again. More than one.

What lovely little surprise do we have waiting for Kismet in here?

I approached the door, cautiously, quietly. More muffled sobs. What the fuck?

I holstered my right-hand gun, closed my fingers around the padlock. Drew on the scar for a quick hard yank, and metal squealed, snapping. I twisted, tossed the padlock, and drew my gun again.

It pays to be careful.

I backed up. “Come out,” I called, ready for submachine gun fire, zombies, scurf, or anything else that might pop out to surprise a hunter who had just had a very bad day.

Anything except what confronted me. More sobs from behind the door, which was thick heavy old wood. Women’s sobs. But I kept the guns level. There was simply no telling, and I was here without backup. I hope Saul’s having some luck in the barrio.

The door creaked. They were fiddling with it from the inside.

“Goddammit!” I yelled. “Come out right fucking now or I will come in there shooting!”

More soft sounds of distress, and the heavy iron doorknob twisted violently. A slice of darkness widened as the door slid open, and my fingers tightened on the triggers.

A naked human woman emerged, blinking. She carried a long splinter of wood that looked utterly useless as a weapon, and for one of the longest and most exotic moments of my life (and that’s saying something) we faced each other over the expanse of tiled floor, under the gently tinkling chandelier Jonte must have paid a fortune for.

She had wide dark eyes and close-cropped dark hair, and she couldn’t have been more than eighteen. She also recovered first, as another girl—this one just as naked, and quite obviously just as young or younger—stepped blinking out into the light.

“Are you one of them?” the first one demanded. “If you are, goddammit, I’ll kill you.”

Brave of her, considering how I must have looked. And considering that I was armed, I was smoking with violence, I was spattered with blood, and I was ready to kill whoever I had to.

What the fuck is this? I stared. “What the fuck?” I couldn’t come up with anything better. Then I recovered, slightly. “I just killed Jonte. What the hell were you doing in the basement?”

Her shoulders went back and her chin lifted a little. I heard more soft sounds behind her. More women? Naked women? “What, you think we wanted to be locked up down there in the dark?” She lifted the splinter of wood, and I remembered I was holding both guns on her.

I lowered them, slowly. A horrible idea began forming under the surface of my conscious mind. “Are any of you pregnant?”

“What?” She stared at me. It was another exotic moment. “Are you fucking high? We’ve been down there for weeks!”

I decided this would be a good time to holster my guns, did so. “I just killed the pimp who owns this house,” I said. “Let’s call 911 and find you ladies some clothes.”

The suspicion she eyed me with would have been insulting if I hadn’t suspected that I’d stumbled across the reason why Jonte had been left alive by the redheaded Sorrow. Three days to the invocation of the Nameless, and a clutch of young girls held here in a pimp’s house, fed and trammeled like prized rabbits.

Oh, God. And what she said next convinced me I was maybe right. She stared at me like I was her own personal nightmare.

“You’re her,” she whispered. “You’re the one who bought us.”

“I don’t buy people. Nor do I sell them.” My voice was a little sharper than usual, and the chandelier overhead tinkled restlessly. I must have been wearing my mad face, because the girl gasped and dropped the splinter; it clattered on the tiled floor.

It was a good thing I had the cuff off, because otherwise I might not have heard it. But I had been functioning with preternatural senses most of the night. Sensitivity is a wonderful thing, once you get used to it.