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Part 1

A light scrim of mist drew across the full moon. Most of the streetlights were out, and driving down the back street felt like being at the bottom of the ocean — inky dark, dank, details obscured by drifting fogbanks.

D'Agosta spotted a lone figure lounging under a working streetlamp and let off the gas pedal, tapping the brake lights in code as the unmarked cruiser slowed.

It was a shitty job, but the mayor had been making a lot of noise about "cracking down" on prostitution since the latest killings. D'Agosta didn't for one second think the crackdown would make any difference. Sure, the streets would be empty for a while — at least, until the heat was off — but the streetwalkers were just taking their business indoors. Only the brave and the desperate were out tonight.

He had volunteered for street-sweeping partly because he knew damn well plenty of his fellow officers would take the opportunity to beat the shit out of these guys. D'Agosta felt a little more sympathy for them. They were only doing what they could to survive. A lot of them didn't have much choice.

He nudged the cruiser up to the curb and rolled down the passenger side window.

The young man remained leaning against the lamppost, arms crossed. With what he was wearing, he surely suffered from the cold: skintight denims dark with rain and a black jacket with breakaway arms half-unzipped to bare the creamy knot of bone and muscle at the shoulder, crudely cut off at the midriff, lining and leather dangling like gristle.

"C'mere, kid," D'Agosta called, not unkindly.

The prostitute hesitated a moment. Sizing him up, no doubt. Mentally computing how expensive his clothes and Infiniti G35 appeared, whether or not he'd be worth the effort. He moved closer, walking with a precise, almost mincing gait.

"Hey, daddy," he said in a whistling, nasal voice as he leaned down and peered in the window. "Whatcha need? For fifty I can go below 14th street."

He didn't seem like the average street kid, half starved and drug addled: more like a thoroughbred animal gone feral. His face was narrow and high cheekboned, eyebrows arched over pale, glistening eyes. At least, that was what D'Agosta could vaguely make out behind the thick fall of bangs that reached almost to his bony chin and obscured almost everything but a nose that was long and sharply pointed but not the least bit comical.

D'Agosta flashed his badge. "Don't you know you're not supposed to be out here?"

The young man straightened up, pressing very close to the side of the car, so that all D'Agosta could see was an expanse of abs that could have been carved from marble. He was very pale, his skin velvety textured, dusted with fine, colorless hair and clinging moisture that refracted the diffuse light.

D'Agosta fought back a momentary stab of envy. He'd never have a belly that flat again. "Look, I don't want to drag you down to the station. Too much goddamn paperwork, savvy? I just need you to stay indoors tonight. Least, until my shift ends and you're not my problem any more."

"Yain't gonna arrest me? For real?"

"Yeah, for real. You got somewhere to go?"

"Nah," he said, adding a syrinx-trill of laughter. "I c'n come home with you."

"No, you can't." He reached over and opened the door. "Hop in the car. I'll take you to a shelter."

The prostitute stepped back and waved his offer away with a hyperarticulated hand flexure. "I gotta make a living."

"You stay out here, you're gonna be dead. I'm not busting your skinny ass for fun, you know. Someone's out here killing guys. How'd you not hear? The whole city's in a freaking panic." The ones who aren't glad that someone's taking out the scum, he added silently.

"Panic? As in, the Great God Pan?" He chirped, "O Pan! O Pan! thou art not dead: ghost-like, O Pan! thou glimmerest still, a spectral face with sad dumb stare."

"Wh-what?"

"On rainy nights thy breath blows chill in the street-walker's dripping hair. Buchanan." He slid with gracefully into the seat and asked in a completely different voice, low, soft and warm, a cat's sleepy purr, "Well, Vincent, what really brings you out in the dark and the cold?"

He looked closer at the prostitute. The man was not as young as his lithe body and smooth-skinned, angular face first made him appear. Strip bleaching was once again undergoing a brief surge of trendy popularity, but the cobwebby curtain of hair this joyboy pushed out of his face was bone white to the roots, as were the thick lashes fringing his smoky blue eyes.

"Pendergast!"

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