We left the apartment. No weapons. Too dangerous, Jean had said, in case we were stopped and searched. No sign of Ernie on the second-floor landing, either, and it was quiet behind the white curtain. I wanted to poke my head in and ask after the boy—tell him to stay home today—but when I drew near, Jean grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

“He would have already left by now,” she murmured.

Temperatures had risen with the sun. It was muggy outside, so humid that a haze filled the air, as hard to breathe as soup. I sucked as much into my lungs as I could, and it still was not enough. No one else seemed to have trouble. The street was already active; folks getting their day started before the heat became unbearable. I saw no zombies. Instead, boys clutching books raced down the street, some kicking balls to each other—nearly hitting an elderly Chinese man practicing qigong on the sidewalk alongside a European woman of a similar silvered age. A duet of violins played from an open window, music nearly lost beneath the chatter of Mandarin and German—voices buzzing around a shed where a slender Chinese man boiled nothing but water in giant cauldrons, ladling it into tin kettles and thermoses held by women and children. Money changed hands, and laughter sparked the air.

Buildings grew from each other like the trunks of bound trees—an organic growth, spurred by human pressure—bits and pieces added on, brick and scrap-yard patches that jutted into the sidewalk, replete with grass and delicate vines growing from tin roofs. Cook fires burned in the street. I saw a gaunt, brown-haired woman vomiting against a wall, the young fellow with her staring at her puke as though he was more sorry about the wasted food than her illness. Ahead of us, an older Chinese man pulling a cart stopped to ring a bell, and then stooped with a groan to pick up a wooden bucket that was shaped like a pumpkin—one of many that had been left at the side of the road. He emptied its contents into an enclosed stone container built into his cart. A terrible stench burned my nostrils. I made a small sound. Jean raised her brow. “Mr. Li handles the honey pot waste. He resells it to farmers for fertilizer.”

She waved at him and he smiled—though he gave me a disconcertingly sharp once-over. And then leveled that same piercing look at Jean. If she noticed—and I thought she must have—she showed nothing. Simply continued walking at a brisk pace that made my leg muscles burn. Few greeted her. Caution, perhaps, or disdain; or simply because they did not give a damn. But not, I thought, because she was unknown.

We split up at the checkpoint. A bored young Japanese soldier waved through Jews with little more than a glance at the passes, though I half-expected him to pull me aside. Instead, I watched him slap a baton against the shoulders of a Chinese man—and order a strip search, right there on the bridge in front of everyone.

The man did not fight or protest. He stood very still as his clothes were torn away and thrown into the river. When a baton prodded the crease of his buttocks, he did not flinch. Nor did he make one sound when that same baton smashed against his lower back, driving him to his knees.

The soldiers laughed, though one of them looked away, his smile forced. The checkpoint guard said a sharp word to the Chinese man, planting a boot on his back to hold him down when he tried to rise. I did not need to speak Japanese or Mandarin to know what he was ordering, and was unsurprised when the man on the ground began crawling across the bridge. I held my breath, hoping he would make it without a bullet in his ass. I finally understood, in that moment, the predicament my grandmother was in. She probably saw this, and worse, every day. Unable to lift a hand. Just as I was unable—unwilling—to step in. I had a job to do here. Like my grandmother had said, there was a bigger picture.

He made it, though. I was waved through several minutes later. Jean had gone ahead of me, and I saw her deep in the crowds of rickshaw pullers and hawkers. The naked Chinese man stood nearby, carefully not looking at her. Just as carefully not seeming to touch her as she passed near him to approach me. But I saw their hands brush, and he turned instantly to walk in the opposite direction; quickly, one hand pressed against the small of his back, but utterly shameless about his nudity.

“I assume he’ll be able to buy new clothes?” I asked her quietly. “You gave him something to trade.”

“Well, that would be a waste,” she said. “I paid him for something else.”

Chapter 8

Jean hailed a pedicab, and ordered the driver, in rough Mandarin, to take us to the former French Concession—a destination I learned about only after she translated. I had been there before, in the twenty-first century—quite unexpectedly, under terrible circumstances.

The appearance of the neighborhood was as I remembered, though I had to remind myself that I was from the future—and that it was mere luck and preservation that had left the French Concession, in my time, mostly intact after sixty years. Very little seemed different. There were still those quiet streets lined with old trees, and those glimpses of rooftops and windows visible over the glass-embedded tops of high walls. The air tasted cooler, cleaner. Not so many people out and about, and there were fine cars parked at the side of the road. Japanese soldiers patrolled in pairs, eyeing us suspiciously as we passed. But no one told us to stop.

We were let out at a leafy cobblestone intersection in front of a simple black gate that looked the same as every other that we had passed. But Jean stood for a long moment, staring at it as though the iron might burn her. “Are you certain you insist?”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” I said. “You have a reason.”

“I’m no longer certain it’s a sufficient one.” Jean shot me a piercing look. “I do good here, whether you believe that or not. I help people. I may have to leave after this, and I don’t…I don’t know where I’ll go. I don’t belong anywhere.”

I dared to graze her arm with the tips of my fingers. “If there’s another way to remove those children from her control—”

“Even this might not be enough. The fact that she knows our bloodline exists…” Jean stopped, and studied the gate again, thoughtfully. “Ernie, Winifried…all of them. It sounds as though they lived long, full lives, regardless of what happened to them in this time and place. They died old. You and I both know that’s a gift, even if it was cut short before their time.”

It was a gift, yes, but a bitter one. I said nothing, though. Simply waited for Jean to make up her mind. I was not going to push this final step down her throat. Even if I had almost everything else.

I did not wait long. She raised her gloved fist and knocked hard on the dull iron gate. It opened so quickly, hardly before her hand was away, that I wondered whether we had been watched from the other side.

I hoped not. It was Ernie who faced us. Even Jean seemed startled to see him. He was dressed in new clothes—a starched, white short-sleeve shirt and black slacks. A uniform, maybe. It looked too large on his frame, the tattoo on his skin oversized for such bony wrists. A little tin pin was attached to his shirt above his heart. His expression was grave, which made him look like the old man he would become, instead of a little kid.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, giving me a piercing look as though I was somehow to blame. Which I was.

“I seem to have developed a nagging concern for your well-being,” Jean replied. “You and the others. I’ve come to break your contracts.”

“You can’t. You’ll only make it worse.”

Jean laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Come on. Maybe you’ll thank me for this one day.”

Ernie backed away from the gate, one hand tapping spasmodically against his skinny thigh. Looking at us with desperate despair, as though his ragged heart was breaking in his eyes. He resembled a wild animal more than a child, or some kid raised by wolves and then tossed into human clothes—out of place, lost, and very alone.