The church basement smelled of ink, sweat, and bread.
Aurora sat at the long table, her notebook open, cheeks flushed. Around her, the circle read aloud — not just girls from the Y now, but dockworkers' wives, grocers, even a schoolteacher with chalk still smudging her cuffs. Ruby presided at the head, her smile sharp as a blade.
When Aurora finished her latest piece — The Roof Holds When Hands Hold Too — the room erupted in applause.
"Read it at the union next week," a man urged. "They'll eat it up."
Aurora blushed scarlet. Luxe, leaning against the wall, crossed her arms but allowed herself the smallest smile. For a moment, the world felt almost safe.
By week's end, Aurora's poem had been clipped into three newspapers. A union hall in Oakland read it aloud during a meeting. A church in Chinatown translated it into Mandarin.
Grace Chen marched into the Y with a grin as wide as the market street. "Your little lamp's burning half the city now," she told Aurora. "Beaumont can't snuff a thousand wicks."
Aurora beamed, dizzy with the thought. Luxe watched her sister's joy and felt both pride and dread coil tighter. The brighter the lamp, the more moths — and wolves — would come.
And yet, Beaumont was silent.
No lilies. No notebooks. No gifts at all.
The fog at night was empty save for Daniels' occasional patrol. Luxe kept vigil every evening, expecting another knock, another salute. But Beaumont himself did not appear.
Aurora thought maybe they had won. "He's moved on," she whispered, daring hope.
Luxe shook her head. "Wolves don't move on. They circle."
The first strike came quiet.
It was Margaret who noticed it: her poem, clipped from the paper, had been smeared with ink until the words bled unreadable. Dozens of copies littered the alley behind the Y, tossed like trash.
Then the bakery that hung Aurora's poem in its window found its glass shattered one morning. A brick lay inside, wrapped in butcher paper that read: Silence is golden.
By the week's end, the union hall that had applauded Aurora's words was raided for "subversive literature."
Aurora trembled as she read the reports. Luxe's jaw clenched so tight it ached.
"It's him," Aurora whispered.
"Of course it's him," Luxe said. "He's not clapping anymore."
It happened on a Tuesday.
One of the younger Y girls, Alice, didn't return from her shift at the laundromat. By dusk, panic spread through the halls. Mrs. Greene called every employer, every boardinghouse. Nothing.
At midnight, Alice staggered up the stoop, dress torn, lip split, eyes wide and vacant. She said nothing, only handed Mrs. Greene a folded note.
This is mercy, it read in Beaumont's hand. Next time, it won't be.
Aurora wept as she tended Alice's bruises. Luxe stood watch at the window, fists shaking. Mercy was only a test. Wolves toyed with prey before the kill.
Ruby convened the coalition the next night. The room was thick with fury. Dockworkers slammed fists on the table. Mothers cried. Pastor Mulligan prayed aloud, then broke into a curse so sharp it made Aurora flinch.
"We can't wait for him to knock again," Ruby said. "He's already inside the walls."
Grace leaned forward, eyes burning. "Then we take the fight to him. Smoke him out."
Pastor Mulligan shook his head. "Violence invites blood. He wants that."
Ruby's gaze fell on Luxe. "And you? You've seen his eyes closer than anyone. What do you say?"
Luxe felt every stare in the room. She thought of Alice's silence, Aurora's trembling hand, Beaumont's calm smile.
"I say," Luxe said slowly, "we fight. But not with fists. With fire he can't stamp out. Neighbors. Poems. Witnesses. He can bruise one girl. He can't bruise a thousand."
Aurora's hand found hers under the table, squeezing tight. Ruby nodded, fierce approval in her eyes.
That night, Aurora wrote until dawn.
He broke her lip but not her breath.
He thinks his mercy stronger.
But lips can heal, and breath returns.
Our song will echo longer.
She read it aloud at breakfast. The Y girls applauded through tears. Even Alice, silent until then, gave the faintest nod.
Luxe kissed Aurora's temple, whispering, "That's how we fight."
The night was thick when Luxe saw him again. Not Beaumont himself this time, but Daniels. He leaned against the lamppost, cigarette glowing, eyes on the Y's windows.
When Luxe pulled the curtain, he raised two fingers in mock salute. Then he mouthed a single word.
Soon.
The cigarette dropped, the ember snuffed. He vanished into the fog.
Luxe pressed her forehead to the glass, fury and fear burning together. The wolf was done circling. He was ready to strike.
She sat awake until dawn, Aurora sleeping beside her with the notebook still clutched in hand.
Beaumont had made his move: sabotage, abduction, threats. The velvet was gone. Only iron remained.
Luxe whispered into the morning light: "He thinks we're prey. He's wrong. We're the fire."
Aurora stirred, murmuring in her sleep, "Lamp… roof… fire."
"Yes," Luxe whispered. "But fire spreads."
And this time, she would be the one to light the match.
Morning found Alice at the kitchen table, a tea towel folded neatly in her lap like she was afraid any movement might rip the day. Mrs. Greene kept the kettle going; steam rose and fell like breathing. The girls orbited gently—Margaret with a bad joke she abandoned halfway through, Ruth with a salve tin she opened and closed without using, Aurora with a poem she didn't push across the table, only held.
Luxe stood sentinel by the doorway. When Alice finally lifted her eyes, it wasn't to anyone's face; it was to the bulletin board where Ruby's bait had once hung. The thumbtack hole was still there, a tiny wound in cork.
"Do you want… quiet?" Aurora asked.
Alice's voice cracked, a match struck too softly. "Not quiet. Just… not alone."
Aurora nodded. "Then we'll read together, when you want. And we'll walk you to work when you're ready. Two and two."
"Neighbors," Luxe said, because the word had become as necessary as bread.
Alice's fingers eased on the towel. "Okay."
Mrs. Greene slid a cup within reach. "Drink." Her voice allowed no argument. Care, at the Y, always came with orders; it was how it kept standing.
At the library, Ruby was waiting with a storm in her tidy bun.
"He escalates by smearing and smashing," she said without prelude. "So we escalate by multiplying."
"Broadsides," Luxe answered, already there.
Ruby's mouth tipped. "Yes. Cheap, quick, everywhere. Not just the poem—short lines anyone can carry in their pocket. You two go to Bell & Sons on Sutter. Mr. Bell printed strike notices during the war and pretended they were church bulletins."
Aurora swallowed. "Won't that put him at risk?"
"He lives at risk," Ruby said, and softened. "We'll pay him fair. And we'll pay him in names—a list of mothers who will buy their hymn sheets there forever."
Grace appeared in the doorway, apron still powdered with flour. "And I'll put the broadsides in every bread sack. Let him tear up bread to get at the words."
Aurora's eyes brightened. Luxe felt the plan slot into place. More than roof, more than witness. Flood.
Bell & Sons smelled like ink and warm metal—the scent of words turning into weight. Mr. Bell himself was a narrow man with a generous moustache and a habit of listening with his whole face.
"You want fast and many," he said after they'd explained. "Also legible, also cheap, also possibly illegal in the wrong mood."
"We'll take all four," Luxe said.
He laughed, coughed, then lowered his voice. "Words can blister. I've seen it. But they can also scar over something that needs closing." He tapped the form tray. "Set your lines."
Aurora's hands shook as she slid the little lead letters into place, backwards and tiny: A L A M P F O R E V E R Y W I N D O W. Luxe set the second plate: W E W A L K T O G E T H E R. Mr. Bell set a third while pretending not to: B E W I T N E S S.
"Two hundred of each today," he said. "More tomorrow. Don't post them high," he added as he pulled the lever and the press bit. "Post them low. Men rip what they see first. Kids point to what's at their eye."
Aurora blinked. "Low."
"Beneath the wolf's pride," Luxe murmured, filing the trick away beside ribbon knots and crooked shades.
They worked the afternoon like a choreography they'd rehearsed for years and only just remembered. Grace tucked broadsides into sacks. Pastor Mulligan tacked one to the church door and slipped others to old women who hid them under shawls like relics. Mr. Lin the grocer laid a neat stack beside the scale with a sign—TAKE TWO—and then pretended not to notice when men took three.
Aurora and Luxe went block to block with paste under their fingernails. They learned the city's pulse by where paste dried slow and where it flashed to crust. Aurora read to a cluster of kids who couldn't read yet; they recited back what they liked best, mangling the lines into new music. Luxe posted at knee height on stoops and hydrants, at eye level for children and women sitting on steps, low enough that a man in a hurry might not stoop to notice.
Twice they saw hands rip a broadside down—a kid with a dare burning his ears; a man with anger looking for a handle. Twice, other hands pasted a fresh sheet over the torn place before the glue cooled.
Everywhere they went, Aurora's name grew weight. Not fame—weight. The kind you could tie a roof to.
Near dusk on Kearny, they turned a corner into a small storm. Two men in work coats—too clean for actual work—were slapping SILENCE IS GOLDEN stickers over anything with a poem on it. A third laughed and peeled Aurora's line from a lamppost like it was orange rind.
"Hey," the laughing one said when he saw them. His grin died on the second syllable. "Oh. It's the lamp."
Luxe moved first, not forward but sideways, placing herself so anyone watching from windows would have two silhouettes to choose from. "That's city property," she said mildly. "You'll have to pay for the paper."
He sneered. "Or we don't."
Grace's voice cut in from behind; she had arrived without making sound, the way market women did when knives were busy. "You will," she said crisply. "In coin now or in teeth later."
The man laughed, a sound that misread the day. He reached as if to grab Aurora's wrist. Luxe's hand was already there, palm up, not striking—blocking—and in the same breath her other hand lifted Grace's tiny folding blade just enough to suggest. The suggestion was eloquent.
Windows creaked open. Pastor Mulligan's cough was suddenly very loud on the next corner. Mr. Lin stepped from a doorway with a broom that looked like a staff. A mother across the street said, to nobody in particular, "My, the fog carries sound," and then began to sing a hymn line in a voice built to carry.
The men did the arithmetic and got the right answer: not today. Stickers dropped. Boots retreated.
Aurora's breath shuddered out. Luxe did not lower the blade until the men turned the corner and lost the right to see her hands.
Grace tucked the blade back into Luxe's palm, a communion with steel. "See? Neighbors first, then knives."
Luxe nodded. "Both feel good."
Grace almost smiled. "Yes."
Curfew found the Y standing a little taller. Mrs. Greene posted a fresh list at the desk—WALK SCHEDULES – ESCORT PAIRS – EMERGENCY NUMBERS—and underlined Pastor Mulligan three times because his phone always picked up.
Luxe tied and untied the ribbon on the stair rail—Signal 2—until her fingers forgot how not to tie it fast. Aurora chalked a tiny mark near the stoop, then brushed it out, then made it again. Practice was prayer tonight.
In their room, Aurora fell asleep mid-sentence with a smear of drying paste on her knuckle. Luxe sat at the window with a stack of the last broadsides, pasting one to the inside of the glass like a charm: BE WITNESS.
The street inhaled fog and exhaled silence.
Then a match flared at the corner—small, almost pretty.
A man crouched at the base of a lamppost, building a timid fire from torn broadsides and trash. Not Daniels; this one moved like payroll rather than pride. The flame licked up, curious. It kissed the lamppost's paint and left a black grin.
Luxe didn't shout. Shouting points the way. She crooked the shade—Signal 1—and counted to five. Feet hit the Y's front steps at six—two mothers, a dockworker, and the clerk from Mr. Lin's who held a bucket like a gospel. The bucket hissed. The little fire died unimpressively, as if embarrassed to have been witnessed.
The man looked up and saw a crowd that had not existed a breath earlier. He ran.
No one chased. They had learned: wolves wanted running feet to follow; witnesses wanted stillness to multiply.
Mrs. Greene arrived with a second bucket because she believed in redundancy. "Nice try," she told the lamppost, like a teacher docking points for sloppy penmanship. "Two out of ten."
Luxe felt the thrum under her skin ease a fraction. The signals worked. The neighbors worked. The roof breathed.
Past midnight, the house slept like soldiers—lightly, with one part of the body always listening. Luxe stayed half-awake in the chair, watching the window's rectangle fade and swell with fog.
Somewhere between one and two, the quiet turned a corner. Not noise—intention. She couldn't have said what changed, only that it had.
She cracked the shade a finger-width. A shape stood at the far corner, hat brim low, cigar not lit. He did not shift weight. He didn't need to. Beaumont made stillness look like power.
He didn't salute. He didn't applaud. He didn't even smoke. He let the empty lamplight make his face a rumor and the rumor do more work than sight.
Luxe closed the shade. She didn't tie the ribbon—not yet—because a signal is a promise and you must keep your promises sparingly or they go thin. She sat, breath quiet, hand on the little blade she might never use and would always be ready to suggest.
Behind her, Aurora murmured, "We walk together." It sounded like she'd dreamed the broadside and woke with the taste of glue in her mouth.
"Yes," Luxe whispered. "We do."
She waited until the corner lost its shape. Only then did she sleep, in slices.
By morning, the city wore paper like a second skin. Some of the broadsides had been ripped; more had been pasted. Children pointed at A L A M P F O R E V E R Y W I N D O W and made games of spotting windows without one. Market women tucked W E W A L K T O G E T H E R into aprons and read it aloud as if confirming choreography. Someone had hand-copied B E W I T N E S S in a beautiful looping script across a butcher's chalkboard between the prices for chuck roast and soup bone.
Mr. Bell's runner appeared breathless at the Y with a fresh stack and ink under his nails. "A lady in a red hat bought fifty and told me to charge her husband's poker club," he reported happily. "I didn't ask questions."
Luxe paid him with coins and two names for the hymn ledger. Aurora handed him a sesame cake Grace had "accidentally" packed four of.
On the stoop, a boy pointed at the broadside in the window and asked, "What's witness?" His mother said, "It's when we say we saw a thing, and then we don't let them say it didn't happen." The boy nodded like this was a rule about marbles.
Inside, Alice hovered at the edge of the breakfast table, hand on the back of a chair. She looked at Aurora, at the room, at the door, then said, "Can I… go with you to the library today?"
"Yes," Aurora said, so fast the word tripped. "Yes."
Luxe watched the way Alice's shoulders lifted, then lowered. Not fixed. Less alone.
She folded the last broadside and slid it into her pocket, where the ash-scrap of the burned poem used to be. Paper for paper. But this time, the paper multiplied when touched.
In the late afternoon, Margaret came skidding in with gossip like a spun coin. "Two men were tearing down posters by the docks and Pastor Mulligan started tolling the bell like it was Sunday," she said breathlessly. "People came out like ants. The men left with paste on their coats." She grinned. "Ruby says that's the new sacrament."
Ruth sniffed but couldn't hide her smile. "Shame it ruins wool."
Aurora laughed, a sound that felt less like relief and more like air returning to a room. Luxe allowed herself a small one to match, then went back to counting: where to post next, which corners were greedy for words, which alleys smelled wrong at night, which neighbors didn't need asking to stand in a doorway and quietly tilt the day.
When dusk came, she checked the ribbon, checked the chalk, checked the shade. She laid the little blade where her hand would find it in the dark the way it found Aurora's hand without looking.
Outside, somewhere beyond the block, a match flared and died. Not at their corner. Not tonight.
The house drew breath.
The lamp stayed lit.
And somewhere in the fog, a man who hated roofs did the math and realized the roof now had more edges than his fingers could smudge.