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They scare me. And because I don't know what would truly happen if they manage to get their hands on me, I run.

My shoulder still throbs where I hit the alley wall, a hot, ugly ache under the thin fabric of my shirt. I went down hard in the dark, skinning my palm open and tearing my shoulder badly enough that blood soaked through my sleeve by the time I made it home.

Ma nearly lost her mind. Sola came back the next day with the band.

"For when your heart starts doing that thing again," she said, like she was angry at me for scaring her. Like she wasn't terrified too.

Now, I run faster and faster, the memory stuck in my mind, until I finally see our house.

That's when I hear them.

At first it's only the sound of those familiar boots hitting stone, close enough now that I know I didn't imagine them this time.

My whole body jerks. I bolt the last stretch and slam through our front door just as the rest of the street catches up. Voices rise outside as doors start slamming, people shouting to get inside. Feet pound across the lane, and somewhere farther down a woman screams so sharply that my chest tightens hard enough to make it hurt.

Ma goes still. One second she's muttering under her breath and gripping the broom like she's about to march back outside and drag Sola home by the ear herself, and the next she's frozen in the doorway, all the color draining out of her face as she stares into the street like she's seeing something I can't yet.

"Ma?"

She doesn't answer. She steps out onto the threshold instead, lifting herself just enough to look over the low fence.

The noise swells with her movement. Men shout over one another. Doors slam. Boots hammer past our fence. The horn still blares over all of it until my head feels too full, too hot, my pulse tripping so hard in my throat that I can taste it.

Please come home. Please come home. Please come home.

Then I hear her say Sola's name, only once, under her breath, and something in the way she says it makes my stomach twist.

I edge closer before I can stop myself, my shoes sliding against the floorboards, and that's when I see them through the narrow gap beside her shoulder.

They aren't guards. But I already knew that deep down, didn't I?

They're moving through the lane with the same terrible patience they always do, never seeming to hurry, dark coats cutting through the crowd while everybody else stumbles out of their way. One of them shoves old Mister Vale back when he tries to slam his door too fast, and another turns just enough for the light to catch on something metallic under his coat.

My breath catches. They've never come this close. Not in plain sight. Not to the house.

Over the past two years, rooms have been left turned over, drawers left hanging open, things gone missing that Ma always blamed on thieves or bad locks or Sola being careless, but I know better. I know what it feels like when something keeps circling back. And deep down, I think I know what they're looking for.

Ma moves before I can think. Her arm shoots out, catching me across the chest and shoving me back so hard I stumble against the wall by the kitchen table just as she swears under her breath and reaches for the door.

"Stay there," she snaps, finally looking at me, and there's something in her face I've never seen before, something tight and frightened enough to make me obey without another word.

She tries to shove the door closed, but a hand slams against it from the other side before she can. The whole frame shudders beneath the impact.

"Open up," a man calls, his voice carrying straight through the house like he already belongs inside it. "We're looking for something."

Ma squares her shoulders so fast she almost looks angry instead of scared. She yanks the door open just enough to fill the space with her body, broom still clutched in one hand like that could do anything against men like them.

"Look somewhere else," she bites out. "You've got no business here."

One of the men laughs softly.

I can't see all of him from where I'm standing, only the line of his shoulder and the black leather of his glove where he braces one hand against the doorframe, but that's enough to make my skin prickle. Another man stands a little behind him, his coat hanging open just enough for me to see the gun at his hip, and the sight of it turns everything inside me watery and wrong. My hands start to shake.

A gun.

A real gun.

"You have something that doesn't belong to you," the first man says, almost polite, which somehow makes it worse.