He smoked his cigarette, letting the filter press into his lips like a lover. The smoke drifted up languorously to an ashen sky. It twisted into the shape of a snake, a fiery tongue flicking out to taste the ice mist that clung to the earth like a shawl. He smiled at the serpentine apparition and took another drag. Frigid air pressed into the hollow spaces of his face. He laughed at the cold, welcoming the bite.
The visitor's cheekbones cut dark shadows across his face. Deathly pale, he belonged on a bier, not against the wall of a slim alley. His visage was a study in severity, too sharp to be handsome, with a hooked nose that offset the slyness of his flame-blue eyes. A shock of crow-feather hair lay like coils of asps on his brow, tucked into a white fedora hat.
