The Y bustled louder than usual that morning. The breakfast table overflowed with chatter about job postings, skirt patterns, and the latest gossip in Life Magazine. Aurora scribbled notes on a napkin, Ruth leaning over to correct her spelling like a stern aunt. Margaret teased them both, laughing loud enough to draw a scolding look from Mrs. Greene.
For a moment, Luxe let herself breathe. The sound of Aurora laughing with other girls — not whispers, not fear, but real laughter — made something unclench in her chest.
Then she remembered the cigarette ember glowing in the fog the night before. And her hand tightened around her spoon until the handle bent.
The library's basement smelled of paper and chalk dust. A half-circle of small chairs sat before a lectern, the kind that made Luxe think of sermons. But instead of scripture, Ruby held a stack of thin, brightly illustrated books.
"Stories," she said, eyes glinting. "More dangerous than bullets, if you use them right."
Aurora's smile spread like dawn.
Ten children shuffled in with their mothers — mostly Chinese, Italian, and Irish families who lived nearby. Ruby gave Aurora the first book, The Little House, its pages worn soft.
"Go on," Ruby murmured.
Aurora's hands trembled at first, but when she began, her voice steadied:
"Once there was a little house, way out in the country…"
The children leaned forward. Their mothers softened, listening too. Luxe leaned against the wall near the door, arms crossed, every muscle alert, but her gaze never left her sister.
Aurora's voice lifted with each page, her expression alive in a way Luxe hadn't seen since before the river. When she finished, the children clapped. One little girl tugged her sleeve and whispered, "More."
Aurora's cheeks flushed. "Next week," she promised.
Ruby caught Luxe's eye as the families filed out. "See? Stories build roofs too."
"Roofs burn," Luxe said.
"Not if enough people shelter under them," Ruby replied.
That afternoon, they stopped at Grace Chen's shop. The bell chimed, bright as always. Grace took one look at their weary faces and shoved a bowl of dumplings across the counter.
"You eat first. Then talk."
They obeyed.
When Luxe finally told her about the inspector's second visit, Grace snorted. "Paper men. Always needing stamps to feel tall." She leaned close, lowering her voice. "The officer will not stop with paper. Wolves prefer teeth."
Aurora's hand faltered on her chopsticks. "So what do we do?"
Grace's gaze sharpened. "You build a circle wider than your arms. Roof, neighbors, witnesses, yes. But also hands. Girls alone are easy to move. Girls with a crowd? Harder."
She pressed another paper bag into Aurora's arms: sesame cakes wrapped in wax paper. "Bribe your circle with food. Food is faster than poems."
Aurora laughed, the sound easing the tension in the shop. Luxe managed a smile too, but her stomach stayed tight.
Grace wasn't wrong. The wolves would keep circling.
That night, the writing circle met as usual in the common room. Aurora read a new poem — softer, about children's laughter echoing in the library. The girls clapped warmly, passing her the sesame cakes like communion.
But Luxe noticed someone new among them. A girl she hadn't seen before — plain dress, brown hair cut blunt, hands folded too neatly in her lap. She listened with interest, but didn't write.
When Aurora sat down, the girl leaned close, smiling politely. "Beautiful words. You've got a gift."
Aurora flushed, murmuring thanks. Luxe's eyes narrowed.
After the circle broke, Luxe followed her sister upstairs. "Who was that?"
Aurora blinked. "She said her name was Helen. New arrival. From Oakland, maybe?"
"Maybe," Luxe muttered. But something in the girl's composure — the way her eyes darted too quick, cataloguing faces — gnawed at her.
Curfew fell. Lights dimmed. Luxe sat by the window again.
The street below was empty at first. Then the car rolled up, slow as a predator's breath. Daniels leaned against the hood, hat tilted, smoke curling lazy.
This time, he wasn't alone.
Helen — the new girl from the circle — slipped out the Y's side door and walked straight to him. She didn't linger. She didn't smile. She simply passed him a folded note, then returned inside without hesitation.
Luxe's blood iced over.
Daniels lit another cigarette, unfolded the paper, and chuckled low. He looked up at the window — directly at Luxe's silhouette. His grin widened, teeth glinting in the lamplight.
Luxe yanked the curtain shut, heart pounding.
Behind her, Aurora stirred, murmuring fragments of her poem about roofs and laughter. She clutched her notebook tighter, unaware that one of their own walls had already been breached.
Luxe sat back against the bedframe, fists clenched so hard her nails bit skin.
"You want spies," she whispered to the dark. "Then so be it. But we'll still build higher."
Her vow burned hotter than the ember in Daniels's cigarette.
Luxe didn't sleep so much as lie still and memorize the shape of the dark.
When dawn seeped gray through the curtains, Aurora sat up first, hair a tangle, notebook already in her lap like a habit her hands kept even before her mind woke. She rubbed her eyes and smiled, soft and surprised to still be here.
"Today's good," she whispered, as if promising the morning something. "Library again this afternoon? Ruby said the children's corner needs new labels."
"We'll go," Luxe said. Her voice was steady. Only her hands betrayed the night—nails dented crescents in her palms.
Aurora scribbled a line, then paused. "You look… sharpened."
"Steam and starch," Luxe said, tying her cardigan. "And a list in my head."
She didn't say Helen out loud. Names had a way of growing teeth when you spoke them.
The dining hall smelled like porridge and polish. Margaret waved them over, Ruth saving two seats with an elbow that brooked no argument. A handful of new girls clustered along the far table, faces Luxe cataloged without staring.
Helen sat near the milk urn, neat as a pin, hands folded, almost too still. When Aurora entered, Helen looked up and smiled—warm enough to be a reasonable human smile, brief enough to be professional.
Luxe watched the angle of it; the corners didn't scrunch her eyes. Not a smile you gave a friend. A smile you practiced.
"Morning," Helen said. "Sleep well?"
"Like rocks," Aurora said brightly, which was her new favorite lie.
Luxe set her tray down and let her tone go light, idle, the way she'd heard secretaries in lobbies chat when they were weighing strangers. "We're thinking of trying the glove factory," she said to no one in particular. "Dawn shift. They say the foreman's a soft touch." She slid a glance at Margaret, who raised a brow at soft touch and smirked. "That, or the canning line down by the docks."
Ruth sniffed. "The docks are damp. Your teeth will mold."
Aurora giggled. Helen's face didn't change. She spooned oatmeal neatly and said, "Factories run hot. Watch your hands," as if offering sisterly advice.
Luxe tucked the moment away, crisp as a card in a catalog: presented bait, received nothing but a neutral platitude. Spies weren't fools. You didn't feed your handler on crumbs alone; you fed him when crumbs turned to patterns.
Helen reached for the sugar and, in that small reach, her sleeve rode up. A thin white line bisected the inside of her wrist—too straight for a child's scrape, too clean for a kitchen burn. Luxe had seen marks like that at the compound: a measured cut to prove devotion or obedience. She felt the memory's cold fingers try the latch of her chest.
"Careful," Luxe said quietly, without looking at the scar. "Sugar attracts ants."
Helen smiled again, the same cut-glass curve. "Then the ants will have their breakfast."
Margaret snorted. "Poets, both of you. Pass the jam."
The library's morning quiet was a room a person could actually breathe inside. Luxe set a box of ragged labels on the children's shelf while Aurora crouched with two small boys, sounding out "tr"—train, tree, try. Each time the consonants clicked into a word, Aurora clapped as if someone had finished a marathon.
Ruby arrived with a stack of returns, shrugged her coat off, and regarded Luxe with that librarian look that folded worry into curiosity so no one could take offense. "You're carrying a new shadow," she murmured.
Luxe straightened a crooked sign—PICTURE BOOKS—until the letters looked like soldiers standing inspection. "There's a girl at the Y," she said, voice low. "New. Eyes like scales. Last night she handed a note to a man who smokes like he likes the smell of ash."
Ruby's mouth thinned. Her hands, always graceful, set the books down very carefully. "Hard news."
"Worse in the dark," Luxe said. "Less bad in a room full of paper."
Ruby's gaze flicked to Aurora, whose hat had slipped sideways, revealing a stray curl. The two boys laughed when Aurora let the curl spring and pretended it made a boing noise. "We keep James and Tommy reading for fifteen minutes more," Ruby said, "and the world stays kinder for an hour after." She turned back to Luxe. "What do you need?"
"Proof. Quiet proof," Luxe said. "Proof that won't set the house on fire."
Ruby nodded once. "There's a notice I can 'forget' to leave on the Y board," she said after a beat, already translating need into mechanism. "A fabricated factory placement. Wrong hour, wrong foreman, wrong door. If it reaches the wrong ears, certain men will be waiting at the wrong place. No one gets hurt. But we'll learn which way the water flows."
Luxe breathed out, relief braided with dread. "Trap the leak with empty buckets."
"Exactly," Ruby murmured. "And if I am wrong, and she's just a tidy girl with poor taste in friends, then I'll owe you both a chocolate bar."
"You already owe Grace a scarf," Luxe said before the quick laugh could catch in her throat and tear. "She remembers debts."
"I know. She writes them on the back of my grocery receipts in ink dark enough to shame me." Ruby's eyes crinkled briefly. Then the steel returned. "I'll draft something. The kind of interesting boring only wolves find irresistible."
They stopped at Grace's after, for sesame cakes and the kind of conversation that pretended not to be strategy.
Grace dumped a bag of green beans into a crate, gave Luxe a look like a tailor measuring a seam, and said, "You brought your face that says 'I found a nail and I need a hammer.'"
"We might have a nail," Luxe admitted. "Ruby's making the hammer."
Grace nodded once, pleased, as if the girls had finally remembered a lesson she'd taught them weeks ago and was prepared to take full credit for. "Good. Don't hit nails with your forehead," she said, handing Aurora a bundle of string. "Tie these neat. Men hate neat women—makes their mess look worse. It is a weapon."
Aurora dutifully tied a perfect bow, smiled like she'd just solved a puzzle, and tucked another sesame cake into her pocket for Margaret. Luxe tucked the words men hate neat women next to witnesses and roofs. She was building a small theology of survival; Grace, Ruby, and Mrs. Greene contributed psalms.
At the door, Grace tapped the salve tin Luxe carried. "Hands. If they crack, you drop what you need to hold."
"We won't," Luxe said.
"Good." Grace's mouth softened. "Tell the librarian she can keep my scarf until winter. But she owes me two dumplings of gossip each time you visit."
"We'll try," Aurora said, giggling. "Ruby gossips like a cat: only when the sun is warm."
Grace made a pleased, ambiguous sound that might have been a laugh.
The Y's bulletin board was a city census for the hopeful: Help Wanted—Clerk. Laundry Girls Needed. Church Social, Pie Drive. Luxe spotted Ruby's bait instantly. The cardstock was a shade of cream the library favored; the type neat enough to look official, careless enough to look human.
Factory Placement—Day Labor (Temp). Report 4:30 A.M., Pier 23 loading door C. Ask for "Buddy."
No such pier entrance. No such foreman. No such hour for anything but rats.
Aurora lingered at the board, eyes shining at other postings that were real: Childcare (afternoons), Singer wanted for weekend trio. Margaret squealed over the trio; Ruth declared the childcare "a racket" and then asked for the address anyway.
Helen joined the cluster with perfect timing. Her gaze slid over everything, paused on Ruby's bait long enough to read it without looking like she wanted it. Helen's mouth did not move. Her eyes did. Luxe felt the decision happen behind them, tiny, efficient.
"Four-thirty," Helen said, tsking gently. "Cruel time for girls."
"Cruel pays better," someone joked; there was nervous laughter.
"Maybe for a week," Aurora said, full of borrowed courage. "Then we'll pick something kinder."
"Maybe," Helen murmured. "We do what we must."
Luxe stepped away, heart steadying. She didn't need Helen to steal the card. She just needed Helen to remember the numbers.