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This is it. This is really it. She looked at the vase in her hand, a cheap-seeming pottery imitation of bandstone that had always reminded her of a deformed snake. It shattered against the wood floor of the front room, scarring the finish. They can punish me for it later, she thought grimly. Or give me a medal. She put her keys in the pink bag and tied the drawstring in as many knots as she could, then put it in the leather bag. Burglars didn’t lock doors behind them. Walking out the door, leaving it ajar and unlocked, was the hardest thing she had ever made herself do.

The hall was an unholy mess, with trails of socks and papers leading to the stairs, piles of trash set outside doors, and ashes ground into the newly-replaced carpet. Darica was glad to run down the stairs and through the courtyard, away from the smell of the impromptu middens, but she stopped short at the sight of the smashed front window of the building. How long had that been broken? And why didn’t I ever think it might be?

Something clicked behind her, in a way that made her heart speed up. She turned to see a woman, tall, dark-haired and grimy, pointing a gun at her from across the courtyard fountain. The stranger wore a shrap vest and a heavy gray coat over a shirt that had once been striped black-and-white, and an odd red-and-yellow choker. Darica found her hands in the air and gave thanks she wasn’t prone to the worst sort of fear reflexes.

The woman squinted at her, frowning. “Yarentama,” she said.