“Took the long way so you could see Levi,” Dahlia said, walking backwards around a corner, beckoning them.

“Levi?” Will repeated.

“The Charneltown Gate,” Pit sighed, “It’s this big art installation.”

It was, fundamentally, the corpse of a blue whale. It rose above the street atop a tunnel formed by two long thickets of daisy-chained human legs that bent and undulated to simulate a swimming motion the creature itself had been too dead to make for going on twenty years. Its body was butterflyed out, unlit lanterns hanging from strips of gut or muscle that dangled from its girth at various heights. In place of a tongue, a thick cord of aircraft cable issued from its mouth, terminating in a man-sized noose some fifteen feet above the pavement. Etched into a sheet of glass in the center of the noose was only “CHARNELTOWN”.

“Hell,” Will whistled. A group of tourists asked a nearby busker to take a photo of them at the foot of the thing.

“Never seen it in person,” Pit said, “It’s... A lot.”

“It’s a Tossil original,” Dahlia beamed at the swaying amalgam, “They’re all a lot.” Dahlia herself preferred Tossil’s abstract work later in his career, but Leviathan had a sense of scope that, in her estimation, remained unmatched to this day. The fact that he was arrested for the piece only increased her admiration. They passed through the Gate.

Charneltown was a widened alleyway that snaked through three city blocks, packed with merchants and the orchestrators they served. The heady maroon smell of blood and incense congealed into a thin haze that weighed on the senses like a fire blanket and clung to clothes like a fire. This was the sensory element that really stuck with most visitors: the way the Charneltown bazaar filled one’s nose was both a defining feature and serviceable summary of the experience. Dahlia breathed it in, grinning. She led the three of them through the maze of tables and tents, shouldering past people carrying limb-shaped packages wrapped in butcher paper, running practiced fingers over a milk crate full of beating hearts. Servitors moved past carrying bolts of skin, corpsemongers shouted out their daily specials, an Asian man in a plastic apron demonstrated defleshing sigils to a group of high school students. Somewhere, a Devo album was being played at half again its intended speed. The little urban chasm was surrounded on all sides by rows of converted lofts that Dahlia always supposed, given the market noise and splatter risk, must be hellish to live in. An unfinished servitor, endlessly nodding in perfect rhythm on an overhead balcony, seemed to confirm her suspicions. Pit caught one of Dahlia’s arms as she stopped to check a table covered in neat bricks of viscera tied up with twine. At the center, a sign read, “SCRAPPLE 22:99/LB”.

“Where is this place, that we’re going to?” Dahlia looked up at her.

“Just down the block.”

Pit nodded, a little green.

“If you’re gonna yartz,” Dahlia laughed, “Most of these guys sell dramamine. Tourists, y’know.”

“No,” Pit said, straightening up, “I’m just a little overstimulated, I think. It’s weird - being here. It’s all weird.” She stared at the symbol on her palm. Dahlia watched her close her hand, shake it out, put it at her side, and raise it up again to bite her fingernails. Will stood at behind her at length, arms crossed and stance wide, trying to decide whether to watch Pit or the crowd.

“You wanna see something?” Dahlia took Pit by the wrist with two hands. With the other pair of hands, she removed her sunglasses to get a better look at Pit’s fingertips. Her nails were a jagged mess, her cuticles and sometimes even the tips of her fingers marked with brown spots where she had bit herself until she bled. When Pit realized she was being examined, she pulled back.

“Um. Nervous habit. I should stop, I know,” Pit said, clasping her hands behind her back. Dahlia laughed and reached for her again.

“It’s okay, I bite mine too,” Dahlia said, holding up a perfect manicure for her to see. Pit blinked at it. “Both hands, please?” Pit tentatively obliged. Dahlia turned her palms up, holding each of Pit’s hands like a lotus blossom. Dahlia continued, “I bite mine, but I’m an orchestrator. So.” The tickling sensation that signalled the movement of animus started faint and diffuse in her torso sharpened as it flowed down her arms into Pit’s hands, like a river delta flowing into the ocean. Pit breathed in sharply, watching her nails grow out again like a time-lapse video. Dahlia had to let them get fairly long on certain fingers to correct the results of a particularly determined nailbiting, but it was a matter of seconds. The tiny scabs next to her nails faded and vanished, along with a small scar on her left thumb. They weren’t perfect, but they looked like they could be.

“Thank you,” Pit said, fanning out her fingers, rubbing at the spot where the scar used to be. Dahlia smiled, a little more genuinely than she meant to, and handed Pit an emory board.

Will looked on.

As Dahlia pointed out local landmarks, corpsemongers she knew, the tents where she had bought pieces for Ghost, Pit began to relax. It was the first time Dahlia had seen her not vibrating with tension. Pit even managed a baffled laugh when they stumbled upon Frank & Stein’s. A waiter pointed to her shirt and wolf-whistled, both thumbs up.

They picked their way to the far end of Charneltown, where the crowds grew thinner and self-assured looking men and women with altered musculature leaned in the doorframes of otherwise innocuous stores. Dahlia had been here a dozen times before, picking up a midnight special Glory had gotten her, or just picking through the stock as it was being loaded in before dawn, but never in the daylight.  

As they turned onto the side street that contained Dixie’s basement flat, something in the air shifted. Something was wrong. The usual assortment of stoop folk, usually seated and smoking, were watching them with a dangerous unease. Or, not all of them. Will. A woman with a shaved head, another Casterite if her regalia was any indication, made the sign of the cross at him.

“Amen,” Will said, returning the gesture with his left hand. There was a silence as he moved in front of Dahlia and Pit, adopting a fighting stance in the same way some people might adjust their hair. Dahlia could feel Pit behind her, going taut and brittle with nervousness. It was a contagious feeling. Dahlia had been here a hundred times and never before caught the attention of the locals - it rattled her.

“What’s thy will, soldier-boy?” The Casterite intoned. She didn’t so much as glance at the two women behind him. Her accent was a frothy mix of gutter Prophet and something else. Dahlia decided it must be Jamaican, a theory supported by a patch on the woman’s jacket that said “KING-OF-KINGSTON”. Some kind of bent machete was sheathed at her waist, and she turned her hip to better display it. Dahlia breathed in sharply, bumping into Pit as she took a step back.

“Meeting, us, a spirit of divination,” Will replied, eerily still.

“Peaceably?” She looked him up and down.

“Prince of Peace.”

“Holy, holy, holy,” The woman said, seeming satisfied. She leaned back against the wall, nodded to the others. The tension vanished like fog in the sun, and Will gestured for Dahlia to lead on.

“What the hell was that?” Dahlia snapped, sidestepping Will. She folded her arms to hide the fact that her hands were shaking, unsure when that had started and when it would stop.

“Luke eleven-twenty-one.”

“Am I having, like, a stroke?”

“Young for that, thee.”

“Oh, fuck you,” She grunted back, over her shoulder. Will looked to Pit, confused.

“She got scared, Will,” Pit elbowed him, “Come on, she’ll leave us behind.”

Dixie’s apartment was an English basement space with street access in the back of the building, a common byproduct of Charneltown’s intractable snarl of zoning laws, or so Dahlia had been told. Landlords wanting to consolidate their holdings in the still-profitable areas lobbied for habitation permits and the city, desperate for fees, acquiesced in a dozen different ways. The stairs were crowned by a neon sign, currently off, that lauded Dixie’s abilities in “scrying, animus realignment, divinations, and fortune telling”. The little passage down was full of strategic nooks for tea lights, Dahlia knew from previous visits, though they were unlit this early. She kicked herself for not making this trip in the evening, for theatricality’s sake, lying to herself that she could’ve stood to wait one more day.

Dixie’s door bore a hand-painted afghan pattern in purple and red, punctuated with little nonsense sigils and stylized dandelions. The door knocker took the shape of a bronze noose, which Dahlia ignored, rapping on the door with all four fists at once. Pit went to bite her nails, but stopped herself.

“You know you don’t have to knock,” A tinkling little voice from behind the door crooned. Dahlia rolled her eyes, removed her hat, and opened the door.