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less-than-desirable neighborhood with twenty-five hundred dollars in my purse and nothing to defend myself with besides a can of mace and a gold keychain. Yes, I was a Templar. Yes, I’d been trained to fight, but the majority of that had been with a sword—a big hand-and-a-half sword. It’s not a modern weapon. People don’t go walking around cities with huge swords strapped to their backs. People don’t even go walking around the countryside with huge swords strapped to their backs. Why couldn’t the Templar weapon of choice be a Glock? We weren’t in the Middle Ages anymore.
    I had a sword, one I’d named Trusty, back in my apartment hidden under the mattress and secured by several magical spells. Why I’d bothered to bring it to Baltimore, I’ll never know. It’s not like I could use the thing for more than a Halloween accessory. The sword was too big to lug around. I might not have a concealed carry permit for a pistol, but I could at least stash a knife in my purse. It would come in handy the next time I got shoved out of a car in a bad area.
    I was wishing I’d had a knife now. Even the ones I used to chop vegetables or cut steak would have been welcome. Dario’s and my little scuffle hadn’t gone unnoticed, and the group on the corner was eyeing me with amusement. Trying to preserve my dignity, I stood and brushed off my ass, giving the small crowd a quick nod as I turned to leave.
    I started walking with false confidence while getting my bearings. It was important to at least look like I knew where I was going. My car was in Mount Vernon. My apartment was in Fells Point. Leonora’s place had been somewhere in north Baltimore. I listened for the sound of traffic as I walked and checked the street signs, hoping to find a major intersection. I’d been here six months, but I hadn’t spent my time roaming the far reaches of the city.
    There were some side streets that looked like residential neighborhoods, but I decided I should stay to the main roads. Sketchy as they might be, streets with loiterers and some traffic were better than quiet neighborhoods where residents were probably used to sleeping through gunshots and fights. I paused at an intersection and made a quick decision, feeling a mixture of relief and anxiety as I saw a sign for Johns Hopkins University—ahead five miles. At least I knew roughly where I was. And I wasn’t in the best neighborhood for after midnight on a Wednesday.
    I headed south, trying for the quickest route south and east. Row houses gave way to shops and stores, small pockets of gentrification nestled among distressed properties and abandoned homes. I turned a corner and saw a church, barely indistinguishable from the shops and houses beside it. The sign above the doorway was worn, but clearly proclaimed that services at Saint Mark’s Evangelical were held Sundays at eight and eleven.
    Pilgrims on the path. One of our three founding principles was to safeguard the journey of pilgrims on the path. Traditionally that had meant Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem or other holy sites. For the last century our elders had debated what this meant in a modern era. What defined a pilgrim? And should we expand the definition of “path” beyond one of Christianity?
    Whatever the elders might eventually agree on, I doubted it included that guy beating the shit out of a hooker in the narrow space between the church and the building next to it.
    I shouldn’t care. I wasn’t a Knight, and even if I was, I doubted any Templar would consider a hooker to be a “pilgrim on the path.” Highway to hell maybe, but not on the path.
    She might not be a pilgrim, and she might not be on a righteous path, but I just couldn’t turn my back and walk away from someone getting the crap beat out of them, especially against the wall of a church. I dug in my purse, thinking that if I was going to be a hero, I wasn’t going to be a stupid one.
    It was times like this I could use that