Stacia Kane - City of Ghosts

The driver’s side sank when he lowered himself onto the seat. Keys jangled.

They didn’t move.

Her water bottle was in her bag. She fumbled for it, concentrating on it so she wouldn’t have to feel him next to her. To smell his skin. To look at his bumpy, craggy profile, black DA haircut swooped up and back and glistening with Murray’s pomade. It didn’t work. She was acutely aware of all those things, and of her sadness spilling over all of it. She … she missed him. He was her friend. No matter how much she wanted him to be more, no matter how much she’d blown her chance at it … all that shit aside, he’d been her friend, and she missed that so much it hurt.

“What’d you do to me?”

The bottle slipped from her fingers; she managed to catch it before it spilled. “What?”

His right hand circled over his chest. Oh, right.

“Oh. It’s a sigil, it … binds your soul to your body.”

Images of that night swirled from her memory, played in front of her again. The way they had so many times since. His body, motionless … the hawk swooping down to claim his soul … her knife handle cold and hard in her hand, carving the sigil into his chest, the blood seeping from the design like it was responding to her summons.

He gave a short nod, barely more than a dip of his chin. Still refused to look at her. “Why?”

“You don’t remember? Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“Ain’t nobody gave me the rundown. Nobody there, you recall, ceptin yon boyfriend, he people.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. I’m not … I’m not seeing him anymore.”

If she thought that would get a response—and she had—she was wrong. His face didn’t move. Nothing.

She tried again. “The hospital Goodys must have told you, though. That you almost died. You would have died if I hadn’t—”

He turned the key and jumped the Chevelle off the curb. Warm air blasted from the vents; Johnny Thunders blasted from the speakers. Born to lose, no shit. One of her favorite albums, but not the message she needed at that moment.

Words kept coming to her tongue and disappearing before she could give them form. He wouldn’t look at her; she couldn’t look away. Through the windows the streets slid past, hookers and customers, Bump’s people selling little bags of cheer on the corners, their forms black smudges around blazing firecans. Some kids in a ragged group, dancing jerkily; they zipped by too fast for her to figure out what they were doing, and it didn’t matter anyway.

“How’s—” She snapped her mouth shut. Asking about Katie would be a mistake, one that could very possibly cost her her life. He would not want to be reminded that she was one of the few people who knew the child existed, that he had a little girl out there with his smile and another man’s name.

“How are you feeling?” she asked finally. “I mean, are you okay?”

Now he did glance at her, his eyes glittering in the dashboard light. Cold. Dead like a shark’s. Apparently chat time was over.

The words tumbled from her mouth before she had time to think. “Terrible, if you would just let me explain—”

He turned up the volume. All the way. So loud her ears rang and her seat vibrated. So loud she couldn’t hear herself screaming in her head. She considered turning it down, but managed to stop herself. No point making him even angrier. If that were possible. She didn’t think her insides would ever thaw from that last look.

The Market had slowed down, save the lines waiting to get into the pipe room. Chess looked longingly at them as Terrible got out of the car; it took her a minute to realize he was just standing by the hood. Waiting for her to get out. No open-the-door service for her at either end anymore, it seemed.

Which was just what she deserved. But damn if it didn’t hurt, almost more than his silence or his dirty look or the fact that he acted like every word he said to her had to be dragged from his mouth.

But anger was one thing. Anger she expected. The door thing … like she wasn’t even human anymore. Didn’t even deserve to be treated like one. She couldn’t even blame that on the fact that he thought she was a junkie whore. Bump ran a lot of junkie whores, and Terrible dealt with them, knew them. She’d never seen him treat any of them like that.

But then, she didn’t guess any of them had made out with him and pretended they didn’t remember it, then made out with him again, listened to him bare his soul, told him they wanted to be with him, then got caught—ahem—red-handed with his enemy on the ground in a graveyard. So she was pretty fucking unique in that respect. And didn’t she feel special because of it.

Shit. She wouldn’t have opened the door for herself either. But then again, she never would have. So Terrible had finally found out she wasn’t worth a second of his time or thought? If she were honest, she’d admit her only real surprise was that it had taken him that long.

She looked down at her hand; she’d grabbed an Oozer. Fine. Why not. Bump wouldn’t have a job for her, she imagined; nothing she’d need to remember later, and she had her notebook anyway if she needed it. All he was going to want was an explanation of what she’d been doing there—oh, fuck.

She couldn’t explain. She couldn’t tell him what she was investigating, not if she wanted to stay alive. Her fingers went numb. She was about to step into the lion’s awful clashing red den, and she had no idea what she could safely say without activating the Binding.

She tossed the pill into her mouth and got out of the car in one movement. Maybe if she was lucky she’d pass out.

Why she expected Bump’s place to be different from before she had no idea, but part of her did. So much had changed since the last time she was there. It somehow didn’t make sense for everything else to remain the same, for the horrible cacophony of reds to assault her and make her already tight nerves jangle as though she’d wandered into a hell dimension, for the naked women on the walls to eye her seductively.

But they were all the same. And so was Bump, leaning against the shiny black bar, toe ring, gold-topped cane, and all.

Terrible sat down; she turned and started to sit beside him the way she would have done before, but his look stopped her. Right. She scooted down, leaned against the opposite arm.

Still Bump did not move. Both his hands rested on the top of the cane. His head was bowed. Sky-blue silk covered his skinny chest and arms; gaudy bright gold covered his wrists and fingers.

“Ladybird,” he drawled. She could feel him watching her out of the corner of his eye. “Hear tell you wanderin round Bump’s places, yay? Bringin you fuckin Churchcops along. Bump hear true?”

“Yes.” Okay. No First Elders showed up; the room was still clean—figuratively speaking. But then, that wasn’t the difficult part, right? Where she’d been wasn’t part of the Binding.

“Got a fuckin tell for me?”

Okay. Deep breath time. “It’s nothing to do with you, okay? Church business.”

The cane switched hands, angled to the side, like Fred Astaire performing some graceful move. But this wasn’t a Technicolor musical. And it sure as fuck wasn’t a beautiful dance hall. “All business Bump’s business down here, Ladybird. All business. You want to keep doing Bump’s business, yay? Keep getting yon fuckin needs? You chatter it out now.”

“I—it’s an investigation we’re doing. That’s all.”

Bump’s brows turned into an arrow; he spun on her with the kind of speed she knew he possessed but had never seen. “Think we playin a fuckin game here? Ain’t fuckin playin, yay? You tell now. Or Terrible get he fuckin fight up. Thinkin you ain’t like that one, yay?”