By the time I left, the sun was down and the heat didn’t get message. That's August here. The city stores it in the brick and pavement all day, and gives it back after dark. Late night feels roughly like mid-afternoon anywhere else.

I walked down through the squares because I always walk down through the squares. Jones to Bull, then north. The live oaks close over the top of the street so it feels like walking through a tunnel. The moss doesn't move much in that heat. It just hangs.

Monterey had a ghost tour going. Twelve people in a semicircle listening to a guide with a lantern. Talking about a yellow fever outbreak that was maybe thirty percent true. A carriage came through at a walk, the horse knew the route better than the driver did. The fountain in Johnson was lit up, a bachelorette party posed in front of it, doing the thing where nobody can decide who holds the phone.

I read the street the whole way down. I don't do it on purpose anymore. It’s second nature. Doorways, parked cars, the guy on the bench who really was just a guy on a bench. I've been told this is a personality disorder. I've been told that by a therapist I paid. And some guys I dated.

What I noticed by the time I hit Broughton was the other street was quiet. Downtown, there’s a layer of the city that runs underneath the one the tour guide was selling. On an August night it should have some life in it. It didn't. The fae girl who performs with a violin outside the pharmacy wasn't out. The two old vampires who play chess in Wright Square weren't there either, and they are there every night, weather or grievance be damned.

I walked to the Rouge & Bone, a bar flashier than you'd expect for a place that holds a lot of secrets. The place was packed, which was normal. The higher pitched noise wasn't. On a good night the room has a level hum to it, everybody's energy tangled up together. Tonight the humans were fine. The humans were having a great time.

It was the rest of the room that wasn't.

When the Underground goes quiet, it's because it knows something you don't.

—-Addison