[Double update today! Click forward!]

"What was her name?" Hawk asked no one in particular. The crowd was small: a few people pausing on their way to peer into the alley at the white figure pacing it, a few other fuzhu decked in leather harnesses and piercings clustered together.

"Suyan," one of the fuzhu replied.

"Swan?" Hawk tried to repeat the name. Another fuzhu looked around at him.

"Su-yan," they said, slower for his benefit.

"Okay." Hawk stepped forward out of the little throng. Heads turned towards him, the movement drawing their attention away from the ghost.

The mouth of the alley was cast in a cool shade. She was wandering across the cobblestones underneath a glass sign that was worked into a hand grasping its own suspension cables. A short distance beyond her, the alley was roped off by a cord strung with rectangular signs, and further obscured by a cloth tent that stretched from one side to the other, weighted by bricks along the bottom edge.

"Suyan?" Hawk called.

She had been looking idly down at the ground, but her head snapped up and towards him immediately.

A palpable shudder went through the small crowd--even over Luu and Vlad, who had ostensibly been expecting this. Hawk just raised a hand in a sheepish greeting.

"Hi," he said.