Dying was nearly pleasant. It hurt in a distant way, as if the memory of pain had stolen over him on an evening long after the war had ended. A dream or a nightmare, the events of which unfolded with the ludicrous logic of sleep.

Look down, his failing brain said, and see yourself in the middle of that road. See yourself watching the shadows of two dancers in the house on the left as they flash shadows again and again between the blackout curtains of their parlor, moving without music. You're bleeding to death, and it's sensible to look at something beautiful when dying, you know.

It was very sensible, indeed. Much more sensible than lying in a rain puddle and trying to keep your guts spilling out from where they belonged — and he wasn't doing a good job of that, was he? He caught glimpses of the couple as they turned about to some inaudible tune, white-haired and clinging to one another as they spun round and round. God, it would have been wonderful to have been that old and that in love someday.

But he had no "someday" now. No days left at all.

"Lovely, aren't they?" a woman said. An American. Her dark voice might have been at home in a cabaret, singing sorrowful love songs.

Christ, death had made him banal. Halston turned his head to the woman, gasping with pain. How could something as simple as moving his neck do the same to the old trench knife in his belly? He dragged his gaze up the shadowy figure of a woman, seeking her illuminated face. Such a pity and a pleasure to see a face like that, towards the end. Pity that he should never see it again, pleasure that it would be the last thing he saw.

She had eyes only for the dancing couple. "I'd like to grow that old with someone, wouldn't you?" she said.

Absurd. Here he was dying, and this girl, this woman, was speaking to him as if they were both waiting for the next dance at some dreadfully boring party. He said yes. Tried to say yes, yes, he would like to grow that old with someone. The words refused to come. His mouth trembled and blood bubbled out of it. Everything trembled, even the buildings and the slice of dark sky between them. It wouldn't be much longer for him. Please, God, let it not be much longer.

She knelt down to him right there in the road. Her stockings would be ruined by the puddles, if she had any on — rationing had meant cutting back on so much. Even Mother had resorted to painting on cream stockings, despite being able to afford silk on the black market that people above a certain class pretended they didn't frequent. Had to set an example, Mother did. But this girl was American, and might not care about King and Country. It wasn't her war.

Stockings. Did the dying always dwell on such preposterous thoughts? No, no, never mind that. He wanted to tell the girl not to bother, that it was fine, perfectly fine, not to tend him. Don't weep over a lost cause. Don't dirty yourself in the gutter. Don't try to save me, it shall make leaving all that much more of a fuss.

Weeping didn't seem to be on her mind, for she leant down and pressed a cool finger to his lips. No glove on her hand. She must have taken it off; even with the shortages, women kept themselves presentable when out and about. Another absurdity, thinking about her gloves.

"Hush," she said, "I'll make your wish come true."

What wish? To grow old? His chest jumped with a laugh, and the knife stabbed him again like fire.

Her mouth burnt him far worse. He bucked back from her fire, but there was nowhere to go, not with the road under him. He pushed uselessly against her arms.

She reached down and tore the knife from his guts. He screamed into her. Hands clutched his face as she breathed into him, filling him with the sun itself. The flames fed their heat on his body until the light of an inferno consumed his pain. Bells seemed to ring above him, through him, a high, celestial, silver sound unlike anything he had ever heard. The song of a holy choir.

He could have listened to that forever had she not broken the kiss. His mouth chased hers, but she gave a shake of her head and he obeyed. He stayed still, watching as she plucked a handkerchief out of her bag to wipe her lips free of his blood. The blood that was no longer flowing freely from the ribbons of his stomach. His hands roved over what had been raw ruins moments ago, finding smooth flesh tacky with gore.

"What have you done?" he said.

The woman — no, girl, she looked about his age — brought the handkerchief down to dab his lips like his mother had done when he'd eaten sweets as a boy. "A favor for a favor."

"How can I repay you?" He almost choked on the words. She had saved him in a way that nothing could explain, except for miracles. This girl, this creature, she had to be heaven-sent. "How can I ever ...?"

Her smile slipped into him like another knife, one that pierced his heart through. "Promise me you'll live, and grow a head of white hair. The color seems as if it'll suit you."

"I ... I don't understand." He pushed himself onto his elbows without a hint of pain anywhere. "Why me? Why have I been chosen?"

Tucking the handkerchief back into her shoulder bag, she tilted her head quizzically at him. "Because I was walking by," she said.

A voice announced, "How I doubt that."

Halston looked to the source, but the girl didn't. Few people would have done when they had an Enfield pointed flush against the back of their head. "For Christ's sake, get that away from her, Archie," he said. "She hasn't hurt me."

Archie Crowther-Cohen, his uncle and one of his greatest friends, did not lower the gun. Color splotched his boyish face, standing out starkly against flesh that currently resembled whey. "No, she hasn't hurt you," he said, not looking away from the girl, "or so it seems."

"She helped me."

Archie's gaze darted towards Halston. "At what cost?" he almost yelled.

Curtains twitched in the windows of the terraced houses up and down both sides of the road. A few of them stayed all the way up as people gawped at what was happening.

"They're watching," the girl said. "They can see what you're d —"

He jammed the revolver against her skull so hard that she rocked forward with the force of it. "Shut up!" he hissed through his teeth.

"Fucking hell," Halston said, scrambling to his feet. But the Enfield twitched his way, and he didn't make another quick move. "Archie — Uncle Archie, please. She saved me. You saw that."

"That's precisely why she needs to be taken in." Archie glanced over the girl to the houses behind Halston, where the dancers had been turning. "We should hurry; some meddler or another must've phoned the police by now."

Those words left Halston unmoved. If he could just get Archie to lower his gun, then he might have a chance ... The girl caught his eye, shaking her head. If his intentions had been obvious to her, then Archie couldn't have missed them, either. It wasn't as if he could do much against a revolver, at any rate; he had been useless against a knife.

The knife, where had the knife gone? He could make use of that if only he could find it. Looking down would have only alerted Archie to what he was searching for, so he kept his head up, moving only his gaze.

He hadn't been nearly as clever as he'd hoped to be, for Archie said, "This is bigger than you can imagine. Get in my way and you'll leave me no choice."

Of that, Halston had no doubt. His uncle had never spoken to him that way before, as if the two of them were enemies. It chilled him more than the spring rain had done earlier, when it had been falling in sheets. "All right, Archie," he said. "All right."

As they moved to the pavement, Archie instructed Halston to confiscate the girl's bag.

"I don't have anything in there you need to worry about," she said.

"I'll be the judge of that," Archie told her, then nudged her ahead of him with his gun. He didn't let her get far; he grabbed one of her arms with his free hand so he could walk side-by-side with her, pointing the revolver flush against her rib cage. They looked like mismatched lovers.

Bile rose in Halston's throat. His parents couldn't have believed funny old Archie capable of such violence even if they'd seen it themselves. Halston hardly believed it. His uncle hadn't looked dangerous even when he'd been an Army man. He'd been funny, charming, and a bit outlandish. These days, with his pencil mustache and bad tie, he looked like a smartly dressed spiv selling things that'd fallen from the back of a lorry. Tonight, he seemed more a gangster than anything else.

Besting him would've been impossible. Halston had only left Sandhurst and joined the Army a little before war had been declared with Germany. Uncle Archie had been in the Army half his life until a car accident in that same summer had left him with a limp. That accident had also rendered Halston all but blind in one eye, and his hopes of a military career had been dashed. Fighting proved difficult, not to mention dangerous, when he could only see half the world. Hence the knife that had been stuck in him.

Attacking his uncle was also out of the question. The girl had saved Halston, but family was family. Besides, Archie wasn't unreasonable. He wouldn't be doing this on a whim.

Or could he be? It might not be impossible. Hadn't Halston's first instinct been to stand against his uncle rather than help him?

He tried to shake off the traitorous questions. Bringing himself to the girl's other side, he apologized as he took her bag. An embarrassing moment passed before he worked out how to open it — a difficulty made worse because he couldn't stop walking to do it. If it hadn't been for the curious residents lifting their curtains, he wouldn't have seen the trench knife, still wet with his blood, sitting amongst her belongings. At least he now knew where that had gone off to.

"Well?" Archie said. "There's something, isn't there?"

"Yes," Halston said. The girl stiffened beside him. "A dangerous assemblage of weapons unlike any I've seen in my life." He pulled out several of them as he spoke. "Lipstick, rouge, face powder ..." He dropped them back in. "If Hitler has taken to nighttime strolls through Buckinghamshire, he'll turn tail at the sight of these. They aren't his colors."

"Quiet. This is no time for your cheek."

The three of them quickly passed the houses with raised curtains, plunging themselves into the darkness of the unlit street. Halston glanced back. No one had come outside, and most people had stopped peeking. Whether they'd done so from fear of whatever they'd witnessed or of blackout penalties would have been impossible to say. It might've very well been both.

They soon reached the place where Archie had parked his Vauxhall. The front doors were still open from when the two of them had given chase to Carpenter, and the keys had remained in the ignition.

"Drive," Archie told him. "Our new friend and I must get acquainted."

Halston closed the passenger door before going over to the driver's side. While Archie forced her into the back of the saloon car, Halston took the knife out of her bag, then stuck it under his seat. He could retrieve it later, when Archie had regained his sanity. Or if. In the rear-view mirror, Halston caught a glimpse of the girl as she settled into place behind him. Though her face showed no terror, it was as white as a winding sheet.

They left the small village without incident, and good riddance to it. The place had proved to be bad luck through and through.

* * *

They stopped outside an estate several miles away, one guarded by men in dark military uniforms that Halston had never seen in his life. Archie showed them identification, and explained with a nod to the girl that he was "bringing in a volunteer." This required an examination of Halston's driver's license, but the men ignored the girl. They also ignored the gun that Archie was pointing at her, as if this manner of thing was a frequent sight. When the guards seemed sufficiently satisfied that Halston's license was real, they allowed him past the gates. The rolling land on the other side contained an enormous country house of two stories, several wings, with many unattached buildings, all barely sketched out under the moonlight.

"What is this place?" he said.

"My headquarters," Archie replied. "The ones I've been given charge of."

Only one person could've put Archie in charge of anything. "The old hussar needs you to work outside the Toyshop?" The nicknames probably wouldn't give anything away to the girl, so they were safe to use.

"He has many plans, all of them very important." Archie nodded at the door. "Be a good lad and let me out. The sooner the boys upstairs have a look at her, the better. And bring her bag."

Halston's fingers itched to grab the knife from under his seat. But he didn't, because if he couldn't trust family, then he couldn't trust anyone. He grabbed her bag, got out, then opened the door for Archie and the girl, unable to meet her disappointed gaze for very long.

The inside of the building wasn't what he'd expected. Two guards sat behind a desk in the ground floor's entry hall, both of whom seemed to know Archie by sight. The bigger of the two looked from Archie to the girl, then from the girl to Halston. "A new one," Archie explained, his hand tightening around the girl's upper arm. "The boy's my nephew."

"Is he now?" the guard said, shrewdly inspecting Halston. He got up from his chair, swinging a ring of keys on one finger.

"That's him," the other guard said. "Don't you remember the article that Archie brought in? The 'English Leonardo,' they called him. An artist and an inventor before he'd even left that academy of his. Didn't have a photo, that article, but look at the resemblance."

A new light, a good natured one, entered the big guard's eyes. "You're right — that's him."

"Yes, it certainly is," Archie said, with a note of impatience. "Now if it's not too much trouble, I really would like to get this one upstairs." He gave the girl a shake for emphasis.

"Oh, sorry, Archie." The guard led them to down a short corridor to a single lift, one that required a key to be opened. He stayed outside the lift after the doors opened, bidding the men goodbye; the girl he adamantly avoided looking at.

The three of them traveled up to the first story. They entered what might have once been a rather luxurious sitting room. It now resembled an office, aside from several alarming differences. Its large windows had been painted black and set with narrow steel bars, a sinister combination that set Halston on edge. The paint wasn't unusual, not with the wartime blackouts, but there was no reason for the bars this far from the ground. Ordinarily, at least. There were more bars of a different sort ahead and to the left, enough of them to make three rooms filled with half a dozen people. No, not rooms. Holding cells. Halston's gaze roved over the workers of this office. Saw their holstered guns, the handcuffs on their belts. Holding cells and jailers manning them. Or police detectives; these fellows had that look about them.

As Halston, his uncle, and the girl passed by the cells, he got a better look at their inmates. One of them seemed to be passing time by making clouds out of thin air shoot little bolts of lightning at his sleeping cellmate. Another in the last cell had skin mottled with shiny patches like fish scales.

"What are they?" he said, in wonder.

"Monsters." Archie looked grim. "Just the same as she is."

The girl kept her head high, and said nothing in her defense.

* * *

She sat on the other side of the glass as if waiting for a bus. Not to say that a girl like her would have waited for buses. Clothes as fine as hers meant a life being driven about by chauffeurs, not busmen. The most common difficulty girls of her sort had involved not knowing which gown to wear for a dinner party. Despite knowing that wasn't exactly the case with her — few reputable women walked the streets alone at night, especially now during the war — Halston had trouble shaking the image. When she had touched his lips with her bare finger, her skin had felt as soft as that of any pampered lady.

Physically, she offered even less of a threat. Of no great height and of no great size was she. One of his hands could've spanned halfway round her waist, if not more, and he only a little taller than most men were.

"I don't believe you," he said. "She can't be a monster. It's ridiculous. She saved me."

"Do think logically," Archie said. He had ceased his interrogation of the girl, and rejoined the room where Halston had been waiting. She had refused to answer his questions, citing her country of origin as an excuse. "Any ordinary girl sitting in an interrogation room would be weeping, not calm. And how, I wonder, has an American civilian come overseas in wartime?"

Halston could raise no argument to those points. Yet something in him stirred uneasily. "Are you going to tell me what this is about? This place?"

"Not yet, but you'll have to be brought on after what you've seen. I would've brought you on, eventually, of course."

His uncle patted at his jacket and waistcoat for cigarettes, when he found none, Halston offered him one from his own pack. The two men smoked without talking for a time.

Halston said, "Does that offer of yours require the usual expectations of silence and secrecy?"

Archie gave him an irritated look; he never liked unnecessary questions. "What we're doing here will change the world," he said. "A girl who can save people from mortal injuries ... that could turn the tide of the war. Imagine how many lives could be torn from the jaws of death."

The problem was that Halston could see it, and that any objections she might have would become mere annoyances. When it came down to it, was he really the sort to run roughshod over one in the name of the many?

Archie was as attuned to Halston's train of thought as ever. "If you were to breathe a word of it to anyone, not even I could save you from what would happen afterwards."

The choice had been made for Halston."I understand," he said, but that reply was a mere formality.

That was the last he would see of the girl who had saved him until the summer. After that, he traded in his duties in MD1 for a position in an unnamed department that he could tell no one about, except for those who had already known of its existence.