We started off together down the darkened street, and I had time to look at her. Emily Entropy stands about a meter and a half, more than a head shorter than I am. Her long waves of brown hair and huge liquid brown eyes make her look younger than her twenty years. (I just turned twenty-seven, and Emily calls me a dinosaur.) Her body is all soft, smooth curves, which she insists on hiding beneath baggy black pants and her decrepit leather jacket. She is the best young street mage I’ve ever seen. She is also a little demon in a street fight. She has retractable steel claws, long and hooked like an animal’s instead of the flat, double-edged kind. For the times when all else fails, she keeps a revolver in her boot. (She says I should carry one, too, considering the magnitude of my incompetence at street-fighting. I detest the things, however, and just can’t make myself do it.)