Something was different from last time. I wasn’t sure if I would have known just going by the naked eye. But I knew almost right away by the lengths of the silk I was drawing around him. His arms were bigger, and the weight of them was making his body hunch forward a fraction.

I tried to scream, to call out a warning, but I couldn’t breathe to do it. I would have used my bugs to draw words, but the pair were moving too fast to read anything I threw their way. I drove the knife at the hand that held me instead.

Bitch ordered Bentley to pounce, Mannequin raised his arm, and the deafening boom of a gun firing filled the alley.

The shot was powerful enough that Bentley was knocked off course. Mannequin simultaneously leaped and retracted the chain that still stretched to the rooftop, swinging across the alley and escaping collision by mere fractions of an inch.

Bentley and Bitch sprawled on the ground.