The sound of the knife hitting the linoleum was louder than the argument that preceded it.
Mara was standing near the table, listening to Luis describe the civic shelter’s remaining insulin, when the kitchen swing door clicked open. Ellis Nouri did not shout. He stepped into the lobby with an eight-inch boning knife held low along his thigh, the wooden handle darkened by years of mutton fat and wash water.
His eyes were not on Mara. They were locked onto the back of Silas Venn’s neck.
“Ellis!” Mara cried, lunging forward.
Ellis sprang.
He covered the ten feet of open floor in two violent strides, his left hand reaching to seize Venn’s collar, the blade coming up in a short, rising arc meant for the junction where the neck met the shoulder.
Venn turned his head at the shout, his spectacles catching the dim light from the hearth, his hands coming up in a late, instinctive warding motion.
The brass frame around the lobby did not hum. The pale blue lines of the storm-glass circuit beneath the baseboards did not flare. The wards of Candlewake—the ancient, delicate municipal protections that had repelled three dozen crawling horrors from the misty pines—did nothing. They had no mechanism for the hatred between two men who shared the same air.
