The loa mounts the horse: his mind, your body.

A line of the most brilliant people in the world, waiting to cheat death, over and over… And every year, a line of fresh students, clawing past each other to be initiated. What fools! Victims of the world’s most exclusive faculty club. And I’d been queuing up right along with them, placing my head on the chopping block with a big hopeful smile… But I didn’t make the cut, did I? And that’s when Humpty had said, Tell him the joke. Maybe he’ll thank you. Yes-thank you for not taking my body, my life. (But maybe, just for a second, did I feel a crazy pang: what was so wrong with my body anyway?)

I had to get back to Miles and Sarah.

But then I saw him. Across the street, walking toward me with his head forward. The road was perfectly empty, silent except for that figure cutting a quick path in my direction. I tried to scream, but my throat locked up. I was blowing air. I felt it streaming from my lungs, but no sound came out-just a weak hiss.

I took off running, away from the man.

At the far end of the street, I saw another figure step out of the shadows and come toward me, at the same fast clip. I cut down a side street that ran between two rows of brownstones, beautiful old homes. I hit a patch of black ice and slid wildly, knocking into some trash cans that broke my fall but slammed my arm and shoulder, stinging like hell. Pure adrenaline was driving me now. Somehow I jumped up and kept running. I risked a look behind me and saw the two men converge and move toward me, side by side. Not running so much as loping toward me with long strides. I was thirty feet from the end of the block. Once I got there it was a major intersection with at least three ways to run. If I could just make it far enough ahead of them, I could lose them. I willed myself to run faster. Twenty feet. Fifteen. And then my heart stopped as another two figures appeared at the end of the street. They blocked the exit. Silently, they started moving toward me.

I did the only thing I could. Without thinking, running on pure instinct, I broke left into an alley and tore down it faster than I’ve ever gone in my life.

It was claustrophobic; lightless except for a thin strip of starry night above me.

Then I saw what was waiting for me at the end of the alley, and I realized they hadn’t been chasing me. They’d been herding me.

Three figures stood at the far end of the alley, blocking the path, not moving, waiting.

Between us was an open manhole. A small wisp of water vapor curled from the black circle. They were closing in behind me. I tried to stop but I was running at a speed that sent me slipping and sputtering on patches of ice. And then some sort of primitive math took over-four behind me plus three ahead equals fuck it, take the hole. So I stopped trying to brake and let my hands shield my head and I jumped through the hole, feeling it slam my shoulder on the way down, feeling the empty air, a pale blue disc pulling away until all my senses were pulled to the wet slamming under my feet. I hit the ground and felt the shock run through me.

I picked myself up. There was a burning in my leg, but I could walk. At first, all I heard was the trickling of water. I shook from adrenaline and cold. I was standing in a small gentle stream. I watched water an inch deep move in a current over my shoes. Every twenty feet or so, grating slits above me let in faint street light.

In that dim glow, I saw the figure, ten yards away, cloaked and hooded, staring at me.

He was tall. There was a slow heaving in his shoulders, a calm low breathing.

He took a step toward me, then paused.

I couldn’t see his face. He said nothing, made no noise.

He took another step forward.

I willed my legs to move. They wouldn’t.

I want to see his face, a crazy voice inside me offered.

Another step. Deliberate. Methodical.

Move, I hissed to myself.

Nothing. Glue legs. Useless, wet, and dead.

The steps came faster then, the stride long and precise. Each step smacking into the thin stream under our feet.

Move. Move!

Now he was charging me.

Without stopping he reached a hand into his cloak, and it came out a moment later with a metallic ping. When his hand returned to his side, there was a long blade pointing down from it.

I moved.

My legs popped out of their paralysis. I took a few steps backward and then turned and ran like hell.

Every step splashed. The water, the stone, the slits of light, it felt like a tomb, and I wondered if I was a ghost who hadn’t gotten the memo yet. My side was screaming-one of those “stitches” you get in high school gym from switching between walking and running. A voice, low and seductive, whispered in my head: You could just stop. It won’t hurt. Now or later. Come on, it’s easy.

I didn’t stop. I pushed through the stitch and it went away. But the hooded man was closer. I don’t know if my legs were giving out or if he was warming up, but I heard his splashing steps faster and nearer. His blade must’ve scratched the wall-I heard a ching! Was he raising it? Was that the sound of the blade up over his head? As I ran, what kept coming into my head was an image of Sarah, standing in that shaft of light at the top of her stairs, her eyes brilliant and hazel brown, almost gold, just after she’d been crying. I wanted to see her again. That’s all I knew. I had to get out of this tunnel. In a straight chase, he would catch me.

The brain is an amazing thing. It wants to live. You know that garbage about how we use only ten percent? Well, I think that other ninety is roped off for moments like this. I heard everything, saw everything. I ran past a gutter and saw the water running into it, and just above, too minor to be noticed by a ten percent brain, I saw the small painting of two eyes on the bricks over the drain. That drain led somewhere. And somewhere was better than here, because I was about to die.

I stopped on a dime and threw myself backward, my hurt leg screaming, aiming low for his ankles. It was a direct hit and he went forward over me, his cloak whipping across my face. It smelled musty. I dove toward the drain, kept my head down, and grabbed the inside and pulled myself through.

I fell into a crawl space, deep in water. There was a ladder, and I took it up. I pulled off a panel and threw it hard down into the shaft, onto the head of the figure who was pulling himself through the gutter below. Light poured out through the opening behind the panel, and I dove into it.

My hand came down on a wall to steady myself, and I felt a searing pain. It was a hot water pipe. I was back in the steam tunnels. I took off down the hall.

Would it have been too much to ask that the panel-not heavy but not light either-might have stunned the person when I slammed it down the shaft onto his head? Knocked him out cold? But it hadn’t. As if in slow motion, I saw his long pointed hood come through the panel into the tunnel. Then his spindly arms unfolded like spider legs and bootstrapped his long body through. The knees unfolded into the hall and he was at full height.

In the light, I could finally see him. A pointed hood and scarlet robes. His face hidden behind a crude mask carved out of wood. Pointed bark teeth, like some hungry demon. Rough triangular cheeks. The wood painted stark white, with streaks of orange and purple around the eyes and mouth, like an eighty-year-old whore out for one last john.

The Puppet Man, I thought.

Then ping, and the blade was back at his side, pointing down.

He started the relentless walk toward my execution.

I wanted daylight. I cut right and left, found ladders and took them up, and when I couldn’t find a single damn open door I finally saw a panel like the one Humpty had shown me. I pried it off and dove into a smaller tunnel that seemed to slope up. I took it until it leveled out and just kept going, and my heart sank, just absolutely broke, when I saw the dead end ahead.