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Rags said nothing. She felt like she was standing on wobbly ground that was going to tilt under her. She turned to Tom, but his face was a mask, and he avoided her eyes.
Bones whuffed softly. He walked over to Rags and leaned against her. Rags knelt, wrapped her arms around his neck, and tried to lose herself in his fur.
“We have to stop killing each other,” she said. “Or death is going to win.”
The words seemed to hang in the air, and Rags heard them like an echo, as if it was someone else who spoke. Even to her own ears those words didn’t sound like they came from her. Not from the little teenager who knelt in the dust surrounded by killers and madmen.
Rags closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, and in that moment she wasn’t sure if the words were meant for Ledger or for the people he wanted to kill.
Then she heard Joe Ledger sigh. And curse softly.
She looked up to see him lower his knife. Behind her, Rags heard Tom sigh too.
“Okay,” said Ledger, and the frustration was there in his voice, woven into a fabric of anger and regret. “Okay. But there are conditions.”
“Anything!” blurted Mama Rat, but Ledger growled at her.
“Shut up and listen. I don’t want to hear any of you talk until I ask a question. You stand there and shut the hell up.”
No one said a word.
“Like I said, there are conditions,” repeated Ledger. He pointed to the ground. “First, drop the hardware. All of it. Poles, knives, anything you have. Do it now.”
There were about three full seconds of hesitation as the men looked at one another and at Mama Rat and then into the eyes of Captain Ledger and Tom Imura. Baskerville stood and moved into a flanking position; and immediately Bones pulled away from Rags and did the same on the far side of the group. It was still eight to four, but the defeat was clear in the eyes of everyone there.
Mama Rat began pulling weapons from her pockets. Knives, a hatchet, a surgeon’s scalpel. They clattered to the ground.
Then the others began doing the same. The catch-poles with their loops fell first, then knives and wrenches and other things. Rags saw a pair of nunchakus and a small pistol. She guessed it was out of ammunition or the man would have pulled it.
Baskerville padded over to the pile of weapons, hoisted a leg, and peed on it.
Everyone watched.
Joe Ledger was the only person who smiled.
“Tom—?” he said, and waited as the sad-faced swordsman moved among the men and patted them down, doing it exactly the way cops did on TV. Very quick, very thorough. “Be mighty sad if he finds something one of you idiots was trying to hide,” observed Ledger.
One of the men cleared his throat, held up a hand, palm outward, and with two fingers of the other hand slipped a push-dagger from a concealed pocket. Tom got up in his face and took it from him. Their eyes locked and held until the skull-rider couldn’t do it anymore and dropped his gaze.
For a moment Rags thought Tom was going to do something. His whole body trembled with potential, but instead he shook his head and finished patting down the men. When he was done he walked over to Mama Rat, who immediately laced her fingers together and placed them on the top of her head. She closed her eyes while Tom patted her down, but snapped them open again when the young man removed something from her jeans pocket.
“Hey!” she said, making a grab for it. “That’s not a—”
Tom slapped her hand away and backed up. He showed the item to Ledger, but Rags could see it too. It was a silver locket with a broken chain. Tom opened it and stared at the picture, then held it out.
Rags saw the picture inside. It was a girl of about seven. Very pretty, with a pair of braided brown pigtails.
“That’s mine,” insisted Mama Rat. “Please—”
“Who’s she?” asked Rags. “Is that your daughter?”
Mama Rat could not meet her eyes. She turned her head and looked at the nothingness down the empty street.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Did . . . did the dead people get her?”
