The raid came on a Friday.
The Y girls had just finished supper — beans and bread stretched thin but salted with laughter — when tires screeched outside. Doors slammed, heavy boots thudded on the stoop.
Mrs. Greene was halfway to the front hall when the knock came. Not polite. Not velvet. A battering ram of fists.
"Police inspection!" a voice barked. "Open up!"
The dining hall froze. Aurora's fork clattered onto her plate. Luxe rose from her chair in one clean motion, already moving toward the hall.
Mrs. Greene opened the door, her face a fortress. Daniels stood there with half a dozen officers, paperwork fluttering in his hand like a death sentence.
"By order of the city," Daniels drawled, "this establishment is under investigation for moral corruption, harboring vagrants, and the dissemination of subversive material."
Mrs. Greene's lips thinned. "You mean poems."
Daniels smiled thinly. "I mean poison." He gestured, and the officers surged inside.
Chairs scraped, voices rose in panic. Luxe grabbed Aurora's hand, pulled her behind her, and squared her shoulders.
"You can't just storm in here," she said.
Daniels glanced at her with oily amusement. "Oh, but I can. This is public safety, sweetheart."
Aurora's hand shook in Luxe's. Luxe squeezed hard enough to still it.
The noise carried fast. By the time Daniels' men reached the stairs, neighbors were spilling into the hall. Grace Chen first, apron still dusted with flour. Ruby Hart next, brandishing her library stamp like a gavel. Pastor Mulligan with his Bible tucked under his arm, dockworkers behind him with fists like hammers. Mothers with children on their hips filled the gaps.
"You don't have jurisdiction here," Ruby snapped. "This is private lodging."
Daniels waved the paper. "I have a city order."
"Signed by whom?" Ruby shot back.
He ignored her. His men pushed forward.
Pastor Mulligan's voice boomed like Sunday bells: "Every hand here is witness. If you drag a girl out, you drag us all."
The foyer swelled, bodies shoulder to shoulder. Daniels hesitated.
Two officers shoved past anyway, storming upstairs. Luxe's chest burned as she heard drawers opening, notebooks rustling. Aurora tried to dart forward — "My poems!" — but Luxe caught her.
"They'll find them," Aurora whispered, pale.
"Let them," Luxe murmured back. "Every word you wrote is light. They can't read without burning their own eyes."
Moments later, the officers reappeared with an armful of papers. Daniels snatched them, flipping through pages with a sneer.
"'A lamp for every window,'" he read aloud mockingly. "'We walk together.' Dangerous rhetoric. Subversion disguised as sentiment." He crumpled one page in his fist.
Aurora gasped. Luxe surged forward. Ruby caught her arm before she struck. "Not here," Ruby hissed. "Witnesses, not fists."
Grace stepped forward, her voice sharp enough to cut steel. "Those are words, not weapons."
Daniels sneered. "Words are sharper than knives. That's why we cut them down."
Ruby's voice rose. "And you'll be remembered doing it. Fifty neighbors here tonight. A hundred by morning. Witnesses don't forget."
The dockworkers growled agreement. Mothers shifted children higher on their hips, eyes blazing.
Daniels' smile faltered. He looked at the mass of bodies filling the hall, pressed shoulder to shoulder, silent but unyielding. For the first time, he looked less like law and more like a man outnumbered.
Then a voice came from the doorway.
"Gentlemen."
Beaumont.
He stood just outside, hat brim low, cigar ember glowing. Not stepping in. Not needing to. His presence filled the hall like smoke.
"No need to frighten the ladies," he said smoothly. "This was merely a misunderstanding. Officer Daniels is overzealous, that's all."
Daniels stiffened, eyes flicking to his patron. "But—"
"Enough," Beaumont said gently, steel beneath velvet. "Withdraw. For tonight."
The officers hesitated, then retreated, papers still in hand. Daniels shot Luxe a glare sharp enough to cut. Beaumont met Luxe's eyes, tipped his hat, and smiled.
Then they were gone, engines growling into the fog.
The foyer erupted in voices — anger, fear, relief. Aurora clutched her remaining notebook to her chest, trembling. Luxe stood rigid, staring at the door as if it might open again.
Mrs. Greene banged her cane on the floor. "Silence!" The hall stilled.
"They'll be back," she said flatly. "With warrants next time. With fire, maybe."
Ruby nodded grimly. "Then we widen the circle. More neighbors. More witnesses. If they raid, they raid a city."
Aurora's voice was small but fierce. "Then I'll write faster. More poems. More broadsides. They can't raid everywhere."
Grace laid a hand on her shoulder. "We'll see your words on every loaf, every sack, every wall. Let them choke on paper."
That night, Luxe sat at the window, muscles taut. Aurora slept fitfully, whispering fragments of poems.
Across the street, Daniels' patrol car idled briefly, then rolled away. The street emptied. But Luxe could still feel Beaumont's smile lingering like smoke in her lungs.
He had called them lamps, invited himself into their war, then pulled Daniels back — not mercy, but strategy. Wolves enjoyed watching prey scramble before the pounce.
Luxe clenched her fists. "Not prey," she whispered into the dark. "Never prey."
She turned to watch Aurora sleep, her notebook clutched like a weapon.
"If he comes again," Luxe vowed softly, "he won't find a lamp. He'll find fire."
The Y did not sleep that night.
After the officers left and Beaumont's smile dissolved into the fog, the girls sat clustered in the dining hall, shoulders pressed close. Some cried. Some whispered nervously, voices tripping over the same questions: Will they come back? Will they arrest us? Will they take the house?
Mrs. Greene brewed pot after pot of weak tea, passing mugs into trembling hands as if ritual could anchor them. Grace Chen moved from table to table, murmuring reassurances in Cantonese and English alike, smoothing hair back from sweaty foreheads.
Ruby Hart wrote names — every witness who had stood in that foyer, every neighbor who had shouted, every girl who had resisted. "We'll publish it," she said quietly. "A letter to the editor. If they try to erase tonight, the city will already know."
Aurora sat with her notebook hugged tight against her chest, eyes wide. The pages Daniels had stolen were gone, but the poems still burned in her memory. Luxe knelt beside her, brushing hair from her face.
"They touched my words," Aurora whispered, voice shaking.
"They can't steal what's inside you," Luxe said firmly. "Paper burns. Fire doesn't."
Aurora blinked, then nodded. Slowly, she pulled her pencil free. Her hand shook as she wrote, but the words formed steady:
They took the pages from my hand,
but not the ink beneath my skin.
They tried to silence what I sang,
but silence cracks — and I'll begin.
She looked up, trembling but defiant. Luxe kissed her temple. "That's my sister."
Not everyone felt brave. Ruth cornered Mrs. Greene in the hall, her voice sharp with fear. "They'll shut us down. Don't you see? They'll call us whores, or Reds, or worse. We should stop the circle. Stop the poems. Lie low."
Mrs. Greene's reply was flat, final. "We don't stop living because wolves prowl. We lock the door tighter."
But Ruth's words lingered in the air. A few of the younger girls nodded, their faith shaken. Luxe noticed, filed it away. Fear made cracks; cracks made leaks. If Beaumont couldn't tear the roof down, he would try to make it collapse from within.
When most of the house finally drifted upstairs, Luxe lingered in the foyer. The blank leather notebook Beaumont had left on the stoop weeks ago still sat in the ash can where Mrs. Greene had tossed it. The officers hadn't touched it.
Luxe lifted it, thumbing through its empty pages. Clean. Waiting. She hated it.
Still, she carried it upstairs. Aurora stirred when Luxe set it on the desk. "Why bring that?" she asked drowsily.
"Because it's bait," Luxe said. "And bait tells you what the hunter wants most."
She opened to the first page and scrawled in blunt, block letters:
WE ARE NOT YOURS.
She slammed the book shut. Let him take it, if he wanted. Let him see what he would never own.
Luxe sat at the window again, the leather notebook on the desk beside her, Aurora asleep with her pencil still in hand.
The street below was quiet. No officers. No cigar ember. No Beaumont. But the silence was not comforting. It was a silence that promised return.
Somewhere, wolves were licking their teeth, patient.
Luxe pressed her palm to the glass. "Next time," she whispered, "we'll be ready."