You're not a person, they say, circling. You're one of Them. From the other side.

The dusk of a November day was falling fast when John Aylsford came out of his lodging in the cobbled street and started to walk briskly along the road which led eastwards by the shore of the bay. He had been at work while the daylight served him, and now, when the gathering darkness weaned him from his easel, he was accustomed to go out for air and exercise and cover half a dozen miles before he returned to his solitary supper.

But shit Hailey looked good in that dress: dark sequins and holo-vertices, the thin green lines sharp against the sheen of her black skin and juddering with the heavy beats that thumped the air.