Dying Is My Business by Nicholas Kaufmann

straighten, already recovering. I rushed him, ready to put my hands on him again and hoping that whatever had just happened would repeat itself. He didn’t give me the chance. Before I reached him, the Black Knight burst apart. His body separated into a dozen big, black crows. They scattered, cawing, and flew up into the night sky. Stunned, I watched them fly away until I couldn’t see them against the dark anymore. The Black Knight’s horse was gone, too, I saw. Vanished like it had never been there.
    This night was getting crazier. Or maybe I was. Either way, it looked like I’d won. Even if nothing else made sense, I knew that this, at the very least, was a good thing.
    I hopped off the overturned car. I collected the two halves of the staff and brought them over to Bethany and Thornton. “Sorry,” I said. “I guess a staff isn’t so great against a sword.”
    They stared at me with their mouths agape. “It doesn’t matter,” Bethany finally said. “The staff is just a piece of wood. The power is in the hand itself.”
    I supposed that made sense for something called the Anubis Hand.
    Sirens blared suddenly in the distance. Not just one or two cruisers this time. It sounded like dozens. After all the damage the Black Knight had caused, including two demolished police vehicles, the NYPD clearly wasn’t taking any more chances. From the sound of it, they’d called in every cop they could find.
    “We have to get out of here,” Thornton said, before I could. “The last thing we need is the police getting involved. Bethany, can you walk?”
    The gash in her leg looked pretty painful, but she used the wall behind her to push herself up from the sidewalk. Then she winced and groaned and slid back down onto her backside. “Damn it. I—I don’t know if I can.”
    “You’re going to have to,” I said. I handed the pieces of the staff to Thornton so I could help her up. With his good arm he tossed one segment of the staff aside and kept the segment with the fist. He put it in the pocket of his long coat, fist first.
    I held out my hands, and she put hers in mine. They looked so small and delicate that they reminded me of doll’s hands. I helped her to her feet. “Thanks, I think I’ve got it,” she said. I let go. She stayed upright.
    The sirens grew louder. We ducked around the corner, with no choice but to head back toward Eighth Avenue. We moved too slowly for my liking, with Bethany limping and Thornton still not fully mastering the art of walking on dead legs. We only made it half a block before Bethany had to stop. The three of us piled into the shadowy, recessed doorway of a Broadway theater that was locked up for the night.
    I poked my head out and watched the cops pull up to the overturned Explorer. They’d brought the riot van with them. I took that as a good sign. It meant they didn’t know what to expect when they got here, they’d only gotten reports of a disturbance in Times Square. They weren’t looking for anyone in particular. More to the point, they weren’t looking for me.
    The Explorer’s plates were fake. They couldn’t be traced back to me or Underwood. But my fingerprints were all over the car, a cinch to dust and lift. I had no idea if my prints were in AFIS. Certainly the people Underwood sent me to steal from weren’t the type to call the cops, but there were thirty-odd years I couldn’t account for. But even if my prints weren’t in the system, what about Bethany’s and Thornton’s? They were thieves too, even if they refused to call themselves that. Did they have records? Their prints and DNA were all over the inside of the car. They could lead the cops right to me.
    “Tell me the truth,” I said. “Just how many item have you ‘secured’ before now?”
    “Lots,” Thornton said. “We’ve been doing this for years.”
    I watched some of the cops inspect the car while others interviewed people in the crowd. Cell phones changed hands, pictures and videos being