why. Another flash lit up the curving kidney-shaped bookshelf. The missionary was moving along, shelf by shelf, taking pictures of Arthur’s book collection one chunk at a time. Hovering close enough to capture every spine, every title and author’s name.
Four pictures. A replacement flash bar poked from the open doctor’s bag, next to Arthur’s body. When he needed to reload, he’d turn around. Turning around meant seeing her. How many flashes did those old things have? Seven? Six? Five? She’d seen Polaroids before—a hipster friend with a passion for photography had sworn by them, collecting and repairing every model he could scrounge up—but she never had a reason to care.
Assume the worst, she told herself, assume five. Time slowed to a crawl as the missionary lined up his next photograph. She gripped the lamp with one hand and squeezed the strap of her backpack with the other, and her racing pulse became a roaring drumbeat in her ears. Now or never.
She burst from the doorway with what she hoped would be a ferocious war cry. It came out more like a strangled mouse squeak, but it still did the job, surprising him, spinning him around as the camera went pop. She was a silhouette in the camera’s eye, sprinting for the front door, teeth gritted and leaning into the run. He went for his gun and she threw the lamp as hard as she could. It hit his shoulder and glanced away, but she heard him grunt, the impact throwing his aim off. She yanked the door wide.
There was another pop, lower and throatier. She felt a fist slam her in the back and wondered how he’d gotten that close that fast. She was in the hallway now, running, and she didn’t waste her breath on another scream. It was one thirty in the morning; by the time she got anyone’s attention, she’d already be dead, and whoever poked their heads out would be next in line. Better to run, better to go it alone.
The elevator banks, trimmed in gilded brass, taunted her. She fired right past them and hit the stairwell door with her shoulder. White cinder block, white railings, smooth stone steps plunging down. She took them two at a time, flying by ivory lights set into the walls under wire cages. She was out of breath by the second floor, lungs burning, air turning to lit gasoline in her throat. She just pushed harder, all the way to the bottom.
There should have been a night doorman on duty. There was always a doorman on duty. She skidded to a dead stop on smooth Italian marble, staring at an empty lobby and a vacant desk.
Just as well, she thought. What was I going to tell him, ‘Call the police, and by the way, I didn’t kill Arthur, please believe me’?
The elevator was coming down. Amber-lit numbers shifted from four, to three, to two.
Seelie gave herself just that long to catch whatever breath she could. Then she was off and running, through the glass revolving doors and out into the Manhattan night. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. It came down icy-cold, kissing her upturned cheeks, matting her rough bangs and speckling her tongue. She would have welcomed a deluge if it meant more water to drink.
She waited for a delivery truck to roll by, then darted across the span of Fifth Avenue. Central Park closed at one in the morning, but the park cops mostly rousted people who tried to sleep on the benches. Seelie knew better than that. There were places you could go, off the beaten path, if you were small and quiet like her.
She scrambled down a muddy slope, almost losing her footing, and knelt in the knotty shadow of a row of bushes. She froze that way for a while. Head bowed, body shaking, muscles on fire, just waiting for the fear and the exhaustion to pass her by.
She kept her ears perked. No footsteps dogged her, no cops or killers.
Seelie remembered something. That throaty popping sound at Arthur’s front door and her feeling of being punched in the back. She unslung her backpack and turned it around.
The tortoiseshell canvas sported a round, ragged hole about the size of her index finger. She unzipped the back pocket. Then she fished out her copy of Das Kapital, now with a crumpled brass slug buried in the heart of its blood-red cover.
Karl Marx had taken a bullet for the proletariat. She zipped back up, shouldered