It was already much too late--everyone back home was certainly worrying about her. The glowing edge of sunset had already disappeared, leaving the world much darker than she preferred.

Hastening into the smoke-thickened dust, she turned toward home. She tried to ignore the bright motes flaring on the edges of her vision as she shouldered through the crowd. Must be ash on the wind, she thought. She shook her head, but the feeling remained: something was different. Her eyes wouldn't clear, and the shadows--the shadows were no longer empty.

At first it was disappointed, reborn into a world which had forgotten it. Men and women did not fall asleep fearing its silence; no futile charms fluttered over windows to beg its mercy; no parents frightened their children with its name. And then it laughed, for it saw that while it lay trapped, powerless, its name had faded from the earth.

It did not need their fear to be of it, not anymore. Now, it was untouchable. It would take all of their fears, one by one, though they denied it. This city was full of misery, too; it had a new flavor now, a jaded undertone, a practiced apathy. Hungry, it crept through the back door of a dream.

And as the sleeper screamed, it laughed.

His heart was pounding. He woke from his nightmare suddenly, without pause. He was in his own bed--but in his dream, he had been just here too, while it came for him. Now he couldn't move. His instincts begged to run, flee, out, out, out! But his body was frozen. Only his eyes moved, back and forth frantically in the dim light, pleading to an empty room.

Just blocks away, a woman spun about, suddenly, in her own home.

"Who's there?" she called. There was a deep, dull throbbing in her ears--she could barely hear it over the low hum of her refrigerator, her computer, her ceiling fan. She turned back to balancing her checkbook, fixed her mind on the figures. But the noise was growing. She wavered for a second, then frowned. Don't be an idiot, she scolded herself. Ringing ears, so what? She was a grown woman.

But still the noise grew--it was louder than her own heartbeat now. She bent forward, eyes tightly shut. It was pressing her, filling the room. Soon there would be no space left for her. In her gut, she knew, and cold spread out over her.

A cab swerved past her apartment on its nightly rounds. The man at the wheel had driven his taxi through city streets for fifteen years now, and he had seen his share of disasters. This cathedral fire was a shame, but he'd decided that the riots when he was a boy had been worse. Traffic had already let up, now that the rubbernecks had cleared out.

For some reason, tonight, he couldn't stop thinking about that one time years ago when he'd picked up a passenger more interested in taking fares than paying them. He'd only been roughed up a little, and his insurance had been good for it. But now his mind kept turning it over and over, picking steadily away. He glanced up at his rearview mirror without thinking, and to his relief it was empty. He'd known it was empty, but... he'd just wanted to check.

The back of his neck still crawled. He flicked his eyes up to the mirror again: nothing. He looked back to the road. Then flick, the mirror--still nothing. Flick, nothing. Flick, nothing. He couldn't stop. Flick, nothing. Something was back there, waiting. He couldn't see it. Flick, nothing. Which time would he see it staring back at him, terrible eyes and a hungry mouth? The seventh time he looked? The eighth? The twenty-eighth? Flick, nothing. Flick, nothing.

It hunted, and it was glad.

Only five days since she'd watched a firestorm destroy the cathedral, and Calina knew she'd gone mad. All she wanted was to curl up in her bed and never come out, except she couldn't stand it there either. Her brother, Ben, would put his arm around her, and look her in the eye, while Gran peered up at her from a crossword. She couldn't look him in the eye. Not even honest, earnest Ben. All she saw was fire.

It had started the day of the inferno. She thought at first that her eyes had just been shocked by the glare, then she'd been sure her seizures had damaged her sight. Doctor Ricks hadn't been much help. He had hmmed and ahhed, but all he had said was, "We'll want to keep an eye on that." He drew a blood sample. It wasn't long before Calina was sure that her blood would yield no secrets. Madness lived elsewhere.

Keep an eye on that, he had said, and she had almost collapsed, laughing, on the spot. She couldn't keep an eye on anything now, for fear. If she looked at anyone, all she could see was the tiny bright flare blooming in their chest. When she looked in their eyes, she saw past them to the flame. Even her Ben, it seemed, had secrets, there behind his eyes. That was the night she had gotten home late, smelling of smoke. He had met her at the door and she had looked him full in the face. She had not done that since. It was just her own crazy she was seeing, she knew. But still, she dreaded it.

A friend of hers had liked biology once. This was the year after the storage shed burned, and she had not had many friends. Living, he'd told her, to whet her interest, was a little like being on fire.

"All the energy you've got, Cally," he'd teased her, "is from millions of little cells burning fuel for you. Matter to energy. No need to be a firebug, just a naval-gazer." She had laughed then. Now she thought she might cry.

Living is being on fire. She saw it burn.

She had tried going around without her glasses, but it was no good; only those damn sparks stayed clear. She had tried shutting her eyes, for a whole day, but she could see the bright tufts floating against the backs of her eyelids. The day before that had been the last she had tried to go to work. Staffing the cash register was torture. Look them straight on, smile, yes, ma'am, no, sir. All the while she could see a spark fluttering inside them, faint, healthy, twisted in rage, or smothered with despair. What's worse, she wondered, when you glance at a stranger on the subway and know heis slipping, seeing someone falling to bits, or belonging in the loony bin for thinking that you can?

She hurried along the street, head down, disappearing into her sweatshirt. A sudden movement startled her or she never would have looked up--she had learned so quickly not to look up. But there he was, straight down the alley she was passing.

Snatches of an argument drifted to her.

"I don't--time for this. Last--leaving." Then a sharp, "Nickolai!" But she wasn't listening. She was staring, frozen, at the stranger. She saw no ember in him: she saw a furnace, and she couldn't look away.

He turned...