Five black bikes pulled up to the back of the police lab. The growl of the engines bounced off the walls of the alley, the rumble cut through with something older and nastier that made the hairs on the back of Jonah’s neck stand on end.

It was the sound of something that Jonah’s blood had known to fear for generations.

When those bikes needed a tune-up, Jonah would bet they had to find a garage on the crossroads.

Levi Crow took his sunglasses off and hooked one hand into his jacket pocket. He’d had a haircut since their last meeting, his dark hair cropped close at the temples and the back of his skull. His mouth quirked up at the corner briefly as he looked at Jonah. Then he turned his head to the right.

“Now maybe my memory is going,” he drawled as he pointed at Jonah, his finger weighted with a heavy silver ring. “I don’t recall asking for the smart-ass.”

Shiloh sat back in the saddle, long legs braced against the ground, and his hands hung loose over the handlebars of the bike. His blond hair was messy from the wind.

“I guess they’re a matched set,” he said.

That made his sister, on Levi’s left side, laugh. It was a short, unkind sound.

“That’s gotta sting, bro,” Witch said. She swung one long leg off the bike and stood up. Short-cut silver-painted nails tapped against the belt on her jeans as she put her hand on her hip. Her eyes glittered meanly as she looked Jonah up and down. Once she had the full effect, she dismissed him with a snort. “When you lower your standards and still strike out.”

A slow, confident smirk tugged on the corner of Shiloh’s mouth.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I haven’t taken my shot yet.”

The back of Jonah’s neck felt hot with embarrassment. He ignored it as he looked at Levi.

“This isn’t Luke’s world,” he said. “He doesn’t know the rules. Or the penalties.”

Witch opened her mouth to say something. Before she could get it out, Levi held up his hand to hush her.

“And you think you do?” Levi asked. “Why, just because you’re from Babylon? In the real world, kid, you’ll find out how little that matters… to the people who matter.”

Jonah absently checked the Band-Aid on his thumb was still glued down.

“Yeah, fingers crossed,” he said. “Any day now.”

Levi narrowed his eyes. The decision of how this conversation was going to go hung by the thread of the dark man’s mood. He finally decided to laugh, kicked the stand on his bike down, and dismounted.

He wore an old gray T-shirt under his jacket—a bar logo faded out to obscurity screen printed on the front—with the neck stretched down low enough the crow inked on his chest was barely obscured.

“Fair point,” Levi said. “Maybe we should have both moved further than Jerusalem if we wanted to escape Babylon.”

Jonah acknowledged that with a shrug. It was harder than it sounded, though. The gravitational pull of his home town was something he could feel in his bones. Alive or dead, he’d have to go back eventually. Everyone would. Why make more of a trip for himself?