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and
practically ran for her car. The tires squealed as she sped
away.
    Bingo . He’d just go inside, snag a
sandwich and be on his way. Of course he’d pay them back once he
found a way to get his hands on some cash...
    Just as Oz decided it was justifiable to
burgle a pastrami on rye, his legs went rogue and decided to stop
obeying his brain. They weren’t glued to the spot. It was as if
they didn’t exist at all. He could see them, but couldn’t feel
them. His brain sent a message to step backward and they
miraculously obeyed.
    “Not fair,” he grumbled. How could the Powers
That Be taunt him with this ability then throw contrary rules at
him?
    Next door was an antique shop. Oz turned and
crept toward it, paying careful attention to how easily the steps
came. He walked without incident until he was close enough to kiss
the shop’s front door. His legs phantasmed into nothingness
again.
    He stopped at every storefront on the block,
but all to no avail. Death wasn’t allowed in.
    * * *
    The kid could handle himself for a few hours.
Bard needed to think.
    He knew he shouldn’t read too much into the
fact that it’d taken Oz a few tries to get the coins. It’d happened
before.
    Once.
    Something didn’t feel right. Bard didn’t
believe in coincidences and this was becoming all too familiar.
    The only shaded bench in the park closest to
Oz’s apartment was free. As long as his presence repelled anything
living, it would remain that way. Bard laid down the length of the
bench and plugged his mouth with a cigarette butt from the
sidewalk. Nasty fucking habit but it calmed him. Gave him something
to do with his hands. He hadn’t even started smoking until after...
well. A pair of squirrels squabbled in the tree above him, knocking
leaves and twigs from their path.
    The scars along his arms tingled. He lit the
cigarette with a match and the nicotine quieted them.
    Bard closed his eyes and saw her face. He’d
never known her name, but always thought she looked like an Emily
or Maggie. A soft name to match her soft, china doll features. Some
days, when he thought about her, her eyes were blue. Other days,
brown. They’d been closed as she lay beneath the water, so he
didn’t know for sure. It used to be that he’d go days without
thinking about her, but after having seen The Department and
watching Oz in a way that felt like looking in a warped mirror, her
face refused to leave his mind.
    And of course with memories of
Emily-or-Maggie came thoughts of the shadows that took her. The
shadows that’d laughed as they carried her off because Bard was too
busy fulfilling his selfish second-chance desires. Too busy to do
his job.
    Bard had been used to having life dick him
over. When he was recruited and thought he’d gotten his second
chance, he treated it as something he was owed. And for that,
Emily-or-Maggie was lost and he was forever a fuck up.
    Oz looked like a fuck up, too.
    One hour and three cigarettes later, his
nerves still burned. Bard was getting too old for this shit.
     

 
    Chapter
Six
     
    At the end of a narrow street where it became
more of an alley, a shop with heavy black drapes over the windows
stood out against its abandoned neighbors. The flower box had been
eaten away by time and termites, but by some stroke of luck it
still hung, almost stubbornly, filled with what looked like parsley
bunches growing from the soil.
    Oz looked to the sign above the door. The
Waning Crescent .
    The door swung open, banging against the
crumbling brick wall. A ragged backpack was thrown into the street,
followed by a boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen. A
tall, lanky old man filled the doorway, shouting at the boy.
    “Go thieve someone else’s shop for a change,
ya little hooligan!”
    “Screw you, Grandpa. I didn’t take anything,”
the boy said.
    The man kicked some dirt in the kid’s general
direction and pulled the door shut with enough power to weld it to
the frame before twisting the sign in