Dawn slid through the curtains like a held breath finally released. Luxe had not really slept. She rinsed her face in the hall washroom until the cold taught her body the lesson her mind refused: move anyway.
Aurora sat at the desk when Luxe returned, hair wild, cardigan crooked, notebook open. Her fingers hovered over the page without moving.
"You're allowed to rest," Luxe said, soft but not untrue.
Aurora shook her head. "If I stop, he takes the silence too."
Luxe tied the cardigan's sagging bow. "Then write the part where we won't be taken."
Aurora's mouth twitched into something like a smile. She wrote three words and underlined them twice: We choose anyway.
Breakfast tasted of oatmeal and nerves. Conversations sloshed around the room but never quite filled it. When the trays were cleared, Mrs. Greene beckoned Luxe to her office.
The room smelled faintly of lavender and ledger ink. A crucifix hung above a neat stack of papers, a small square of sunlight caught in its metal.
"Close the door, dear."
Luxe obeyed, palms damp.
Mrs. Greene folded her hands, all tendons and will. "This house is for young women who are working, learning, and safe. I intend to keep it so." Her gaze didn't waver. "Officer Daniels stopped by again this morning. Not at the door. On the sidewalk. He asked after 'two sisters who don't belong here.'"
Luxe's throat worked once. "What did you say?"
"That we don't discuss residents. And that if he returns without a warrant, I will contact his superior." A flash of dry humor crossed her eyes. "Men do love superiors, in the abstract."
Luxe's breath left her in a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
Mrs. Greene slid a small rectangle across the desk. "A reminder: curfew is nine. If you must be out later for work, you bring a note from your employer. And, Miss—" She hesitated, clearly deciding whether names mattered. "—Miss Luce, I suggest you spend an hour at the library today. Miss Hart is a friend to girls like you."
"Thank you," Luxe said, meaning for the door, for the spine, for believing there's a road through this.
Mrs. Greene's voice softened. "Safety isn't only locks and rules. It's witnesses. Collect them."
Luxe tucked the idea into the same pocket as the laundry pay.
The library wore morning light like a shawl. Ruby Hart looked up at the bell and, seeing Luxe, let her pen finish its sentence before she spoke.
"You're early," she said, which in the language of librarians meant you're frightened and pretending not to be.
"Mrs. Greene suggested I pretend to love newspapers," Luxe said.
"Love is optional." Ruby turned the card catalog drawer as if consulting fortune sticks. "Sit. You can 'read' while we talk like respectable women."
They took a table near the window. Ruby rested her elbow on a copy of The Chronicle and spoke without moving her mouth much, a ventriloquist of ordinary.
"Two problems," she murmured. "Predator in a uniform. Predator behind him. Solutions are boring, not dramatic." She slid a card across the table. YWCA Employment Bureau – Factory Placements (dawn shift) printed in violet ink. "First: diversify where you're seen. Girls with only one path are easier to block."
"We've got Ellis Cleaners," Luxe said. "Salvatore's is… uncertain."
"Then add a third. A short trial at a packing house or glove factory—a week or two." Ruby's eyes flicked toward the entrance, then back. "Second: references. The city runs on paper as much as rumor. Mrs. Greene can sign a curfew extension; I can sign a letter that says you are regulars at the public reading room assisting with children's hour."
Luxe swallowed. "Is that true?"
"It will be Thursday at three," Ruby said, and the corner of her mouth tilted. "It will be true enough."
Luxe breathed once, a clean breath that reached farther than her ribs. "Thank you."
Ruby's pen tapped twice in a private code against the newspaper. "And, Luce? 'The man behind the man' cares for spectacle. He wants to be a storm. Storms hate roofs." She tapped the YWCA card. "Roofs are built of neighbors."
Luxe nodded. "Witnesses."
"Exactly." Ruby's eyes softened. "And books."
"Books?"
"You'd be surprised how often wolves hate rooms where girls read out loud," Ruby said. "It confuses them."
Luxe laughed, too quickly and then truly. The sound surprised them both.
Stockton Street smelled of ginger and oranges, voices weaving a language Luxe's ear didn't speak but her heart understood: buy, sell, feed, live. The bell over Grace Chen's door gave its bright bird-cry when the sisters entered.
Grace glanced up from the ledger, chin tipping its imperial inch. "You look tired. But not dead. Come—crates don't lift themselves."
They hummed through the work: apricots to pyramid, bok choy to rinse, rice bags to stack. When the rhythm steadied their breath, Luxe told Grace the outline—not Beaumont's name, not the cult, only what the day required.
"Police man smells like old socks," Grace summarized, unimpressed. "He wants everyone to know he is a wall. But walls are stupid. They cannot move."
"We can," Aurora said quietly, surprising herself. "Move."
Grace gave her a look that was almost a blessing. From beneath the counter, she produced a small tin of salve and the strangest little device Luxe had ever seen: a compact folding blade, no longer than a thumbnail when shut, mounted to a key-like handle.
"For your hands," Grace said, striking the salve tin with her knuckle. "Cracks get sick." She held up the metal. "And for threads." A shrug. "And fruit twine. And maybe men who forget their hands."
Aurora blinked. Luxe accepted both, the way you accept sacraments. "What do we owe you?"
"You pay when your arms are stronger," Grace said, as if it were obvious. "And you sweep before you go."
They swept. It felt like a ritual for staying alive.
At the door, Grace's eyes softened the way morning softens a hard horizon. "You tell library woman she still owes me scarf back," she said, deadpan.
Luxe snorted. "I'll collect."
Grace's mouth quirked. "Good. Now eat." She pushed a paper sack into Aurora's arms—two steamed buns whose scent almost made Luxe cry. "Poets need lunch."
Aurora did.
The bell at Ellis Cleaners rang uneven when they returned for the afternoon hours. Luxe caught it—ominousness hid in small sounds.
Mrs. Devine stood at the counter, back straight enough to be a weapon. Beside her: a man in a gray suit too tidy for steam and soap. A clipboard angled like judgment in his hand.
"Health Department," he announced to no one in particular, as if the air itself required scolding. "Routine check."
Mrs. Devine's voice was simple iron. "You came yesterday."
He didn't blink. "New directive. Cleanliness initiative." He swept a gaze over the back room and frowned at imagined dirt. "Crowding at the drying line."
Luxe and Aurora exchanged a look, stepped exactly half a pace apart. The man's eyes caught the movement and filed it like a sin.
"Names," he said.
"Devine," Mrs. Devine answered, too fast on purpose.
"Employees," he clarified, tapping the board.
"Learning," Mrs. Devine returned. "Paid by the hour. Which they have earned." She slid a brown-paper packet forward with two coins stacked neatly on top, a ledger open to the line. Her mouth thinned. "Bureaucrats love ink more than soap."
The inspector hesitated. He wanted to be obeyed more than he wanted truth. Daniels's shadow stretched long enough to cover men like this. Luxe saw it in the way he turned his clipboard to a blank page, ready to write whatever story he'd been fed.
"Papers," he said.
A line Mrs. Devine had prepared for exactly this moment dropped like a weight in water. "The YWCA holds their references." She nodded toward the wall clock. "You'll find Mrs. Greene in her office until five."
A pause. Somewhere far back in the city, a trolley rang its plain, honest bell.
The inspector's gaze traveled the room—ledgers, ironing tables, a girl with starch on her cheek, another with salve glistening at the knuckles—and met no fear wide enough to step through. Reluctantly, he slid the clipboard under his arm.
"Tomorrow," he said, making a promise or a threat depending on who owned his evening. "Expect a follow-up."
"Tomorrow," Mrs. Devine echoed, not bowing and not blinking.
The bell jittered its way through his exit. The room exhaled.
Mrs. Devine didn't sigh; she was not the sighing kind. But she did pass a clean hand towel to Aurora and, almost gently, scraped a thumb along a streak of starch on the girl's cheek.
"Eat your food before it sours," she said. "And pin with the grain, not against it. Doors hold better when the cloth is right."
It wasn't poetry. Aurora lit up anyway.
Back at the Y, the writing circle gathered like coals in a grate—small flames, steady heat. Margaret read something scathing about landlords; Ruth tried a sonnet that broke in the middle and refused to apologize for it. When it was Aurora's turn, she looked at Luxe first. Luxe tipped her chin: Go on. Name it.
Aurora's voice wobbled, then found itself.
We choose anyway, in fog and noon.
We choose in rooms with witnesses, with spoons.
We choose with soap in our hands and names in our mouths.
The wolves can knock. We answer south.
The rhyme offended Margaret; she adored it anyway. Someone laughed through tears. The matron, passing, pretended not to hear and, pretending harder, slowed her steps to hear more.
Luxe didn't clap right away. She stored the sound inside first, a pantry of light for lean days.
After curfew, the hallway stilled. Shoes in neat pairs against the wall. Quiet as a house learns to be when it loves its sleeping.
Luxe stood at the window, two fingers parting the curtain just enough. No car tonight. The absence itself was a shape—too careful, too patient.
"Not mercy," she whispered. "Math."
She let the fabric fall and turned to Aurora, already asleep with ink smudged along one knuckle like proof of life.
"Witnesses," Luxe murmured to the dark. "Roofs. Neighbors. Paper."
And under that, a quieter oath, old as river and not yet broken: Over my body.
Near midnight, a scrape—softer than a knock—breathed at their door. Luxe was on her feet before the air settled, palms flat, ear against wood. She caught a scent of lavender and ledger ink through the seam and opened only as far as the chain allowed.
Mrs. Greene's eye met hers. "Quietly," the matron said, voice a thread. She passed a folded envelope through the gap. "From Miss Hart. And a copy for my files."
Inside: a neat letter on library stationery, typed and signed—Luce and Rory assist with children's hour on Thursdays and are regular patrons in good standing. A second sheet bore Mrs. Greene's crisp hand: Curfew extension—employment trial, packing house, predawn shift clearance, valid one week.
"Collect witnesses," Mrs. Greene whispered, as if returning Luxe's words through a mirror. "And keep your shoes by the bed."
The chain unhooked, the door widened, and for a heartbeat Luxe thought she would do something reckless like hug the woman. Instead, she bowed her head, an old gesture repurposed, and said, "We won't waste your roof."
"See that you don't." Mrs. Greene's mouth softened. "Good night, dear."
The door clicked. The house exhaled again.
Luxe slid the papers under Aurora's pillow alongside the notebook. She sat on her own bed and stared at the ceiling until the cracks arranged themselves into a map.
Tomorrow would bring the inspector. Or Daniels. Or both. It would bring steam and starch and poems and the slow work of turning strangers into neighbors.
It would bring, simply, the price of clean hands.
Luxe lay down at last, one hand crossing the gap between the beds. Aurora turned toward the touch in her sleep like a sunflower hunting morning.
Outside, fog unstitched and resewed the street. Inside, the door held.
For now.