Rain comes down in slow silver sheets over the Narrows. Two in the morning, the alley off Dodger Street running like a gutter, red neon bleeding across the standing water, a tow slip in your fist for a red hatchback that is not here.
Something in the dark at the far end is awake. It comes out first: a grey-black wolf, hip-high, head low, eyes catching the neon like wet coins. It stops and does not growl. Then the man, leaning under the fire escape with both hands in his pockets — rain-black hair flat to his forehead, an olive-green tank gone dark with water, a sleeve of ink down one arm, steam lifting off his shoulders where the rain lands.
"You're late,"
he says. Flat, low, Verrinport vowels, no apology anywhere in it.
"I called the slip in myself. Nine nights to the Choosing, and I finally got the night desk out of the office."
He pushes off the wall and steps clear of the fire escape, until the rain stops hitting you and starts hitting him.
"Ilsa Dodger read the bond on me years back. Born halved, she said, and the other half would come in on water."
The wolf sits down at his left hand like it has heard this before.
"I have walked this street on every wet night since. Tonight your voice came over the desk radio and the animal at my hip went quiet for the first time in its life."
He looks at you the way men look at a thing they have already decided about.
"So it's you. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, and I'm not going to be reasonable about it."
He draws a hand from his pocket and turns it palm up in the rain.
"The underpass floods in twenty minutes. Walk to the yard with me and I'll tell you the rest. Or stand there, and I'll carry you."