“When are we going to do it?” Krishna spat out his cigarette and shook another out of his pack and stuck it in his mouth.
“Don’t light it,” Drew said. “We’re going to do it when I say it’s time to do it. You have to watch first—watching is the most important part. It’s how you find out what needs doing and to whom. It’s how you find out where you can do the most damage.”
“I know what needs doing,” Krishna said. “We can just go in there and trash the place and fuck him up. That’d suit me just fine. Send the right message, too.”
Danny hopped down off the trash can abruptly and Krishna froze in his paces at the dry rasp of hard blackened skin on the pavement. Davey walked toward him in a bowlegged, splay-hipped gait that was more a scuttle than a walk, the motion of some inhuman creature not accustomed to two legs.
“Have you ever watched your kind, ever? Do you understand them, even a little? Just because you managed to get a little power over one of my people, you think you understand it all. You don’t. That one in there is bone-loyal to my brother. If you vandalized his little shop, he’d just go to my brother for protection and end up more loyal and more. Please stop thinking you know anything, it’ll make it much easier for us to get along.”
Krishna stiffened. “I know things,” he said.
“Your pathetic little birdie girl is nothing,” Davey said. He stumped over to Krishna, stood almost on his toes, looking up at him. Krishna took an involuntary step backward. “A little one-off, a changeling without clan or magic of any kind.”
Krishna stuck his balled fists into the pockets of his space-age future-sarcastic jacket. “I know something about you,” he said. “About your kind.”
“Oh, yes?” Davey’s tone was low, dangerous.
“I know how to recognize you, even when you’re passing for normal. I know how to spot you in a crowd, in a second.” He smiled. “You’ve been watching my kind all your life, but I’ve been watching your kind for all of mine. I’ve seen you on the subway and running corner stores, teaching in classrooms and driving to work.”