by Katie French
“Let me go,” I shout. “You have no right!”
He guffaws, his little belly rippling. “In case you’ve not been educatified, I’m Tarrish, local arm of the law. These are my deputies, Nobel and Abel.” He points to each, and they offer me dirty smiles. I can see now they’re brothers, but they have been cut up so much it mars their similarities.
“M’dear, you’re trespassing in the Brown District. My district.” He tips his dirty hat at me. “Anyone who trespasses suffers the consequences. Unless, of course, you gots a pass from Prentice.”
“Prentice,” I say, latching on the name. “I know Prentice. Or, my friend does. He just went around the corner. If we hurry, we can catch him.”
Tarrish rubs a dirty finger along his empty gums and then smacks them together. “‘Scuse our rudeness, but all the rubes say they know Prentice, but don’t nobody do.” He lifts an eyebrow. “So unless you gots a pass…”
I lower my eyes. “No.”
“Very well!” he shouts, gleeful again. “We has us another contestant! Come along, boys.”
Nobel and Abel grip an arm each and march me along. I drag my feet, beg, plead, but they drag me through the streets at a fast clip. When I stumble, they haul me upright and keep going. When I beg, they go faster. Tarrish dances ahead, whistling a merry tune.
I’m going to die and this lunatic will be the last person I see.
My eyes scan the streets and alleys for Gabe. Where is he? Did someone grab him? I never should have left Bell. I’ll never see her again now. My heart clenches.
They pull me up to a large building, a warehouse or department store gone to rot. Tarrish whips open a door and the twins pull me through. Inside, it smells like rot and dust and something else human that I don’t like. Torches burn in metal hooks on the wall, giving the hallway an eerie feeling. Far inside the building, I hear voices. Male voices.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice shrill. “Tell me what’s going on!”
The two men ignore me, but Tarrish walks backwards in front of me, smiling wide. “A game. And now we have us a new contender. We just lost our last one, but you’ll do fine.” His eyes look me up and down. Suddenly, I realize he means me.
“What? What game? What are you talking about?”
Tarrish waggles his eyebrows.
Two double doors hum as the voices behind grow louder.
“Make us proud, little one, and hopefully we won’t have to cut ya.” He winks at me.
“Cut me?” I stagger as they haul me forward. “Please, just let me talk to Prentice.”
But they can’t hear me. Or choose not to. Tarrish pushes open the doors, and light and sound flood in. The brothers carry me through.
When my eyes adjust, I look around the room. It’s a cavernous space, echoing with the men’s voices. I can’t tell how many or what they look like because two tall spotlights shoot harsh beams in the center, making it impossible to see the crowd. The spotlights center on a small card table and two folding chairs. In one chair, an old man in threadbare clothes openly weeps as he stares at a worn spot on the card table.
“Who is that?” I ask. “What’s he got to do with me?”
The brothers walk me into the circle of light and plop me in the chair across from the old man. He barely looks up at me. His wrinkled face is awash with so much terror I can’t take it. I lurch up from my chair. Abel clamps a hand on my shoulder and shoves me down so hard my aching neck twangs. I cry out.
Tarrish comes over and eyes me. “Careful with our contestant. If he’s broke, he won’t play well.”
“Play what well?” I nearly scream. But Tarrish doesn’t answer me. He turns to the crowd and holds up his hands. The room quiets.
“Gentlemen and those folk not so gentle, don’t leave yet.” The crowd turns. “We’re in luck. We found us a new contender. You’ll have five minutes to finish placing your bets. As you can see, we have two prime contestants this afternoon.”
Someone in the crowd boos. There’s a murmur of complaint. Tarrish holds up his hands again. “Now, I know they look like half-strangled chickens, but this contest isn’t for the tough. It’s for the clever.” He taps on the side of his head. “And Prentice says the gin’s half price until the bets are placed.”
Another boo from the crowd, but Tarrish waves it away. “Bah. Just place your goddamned bets.”
He walks into the darkness. The roar of the crowd picks up around me. Men step forward to peer into my face as if sizing me up. Then they trade slips of paper. While they’re distracted, I lean toward the old man.
“What’s going to happen?” I ask him.
He looks up at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen and starts wailing again.
Soon, Tarrish comes back, stuffing slips in his pocket. He winks at me. “Win this and I’ll treat you to supper. Got half a horse I been meaning to eat.” When I make a horrified face, he laughs. “Let the game begin!”
Noble and Abel walk over and set an object in the middle of the table. It’s a grid of cylindrical rods inserted through each other to form a sort of boxlike cage. Then the men place stacks of large and small rods in front of the old man and me.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I ask, looking between the brothers and Tarrish.
“Set the clock!” Tarrish yells.
In the dark, a set of red numbers flash to life: 5:00.
“Remember, contestants, if neither of you solve the puzzle in the five-minute time limit, both will face the hallway. No bets will be honored.”
Another round of boos from the crowd.
“On your mark, get set,” Tarrish says. He leans in to me. “You better win,” he whispers, all play gone from his voice. “Or I’ll see you in the hallway.”
A cold chill runs down my spine. His meaning is clear. If I don’t win, he’ll kill me.
“Go!” he shouts.
Go at what? I look at the rods in front of me and at the model in the center. I have no idea what to do. The old man jumps at Tarrish’s signal and starts jamming rods together with trembling fingers.
I pick up two rods.
“Go!” Tarrish whispers angrily. He jabs my shoulder.
Someone shouts a protest. Tarrish’s towering shadow leaves me, but the fear doesn’t. My fingers shake so much I can’t get the small rod into the hole on the larger rod.
Across from me, the old man is sticking rods in at random. Then again, maybe he knows the secret. I haven’t done a thing. Panic is making me stupid. I can’t think.
Men yell. Feet stamp. My heart pounds.
Where is Gabe? I never should’ve come here.
My eyes find the ticking clock: 4:25, 4:24, 4:23.
I grope for the rods and start matching them up. There are holes on both, big and small. So the littler rods go in the bigger rods, but where? Which holes? I reach for the example in the middle. Abel steps forward and swats my hand away. “No touching,” he says with a glare.
I draw my hand back, but study the structure with my eyes. The rods intersect to form triangles—
Someone staggers into our light. A drunk, barely on his feet, bangs into the table, sending our rods rolling off. He shouts in the old man’s face, yelling and pointing, until he’s dragged away. I scoop up as many rods as I can find from the floor. I look around for Tarrish, and he steps into the light. He’ll stop the contest for sure.
“Never mind Yallow over there. He’s three sheets to the wind. Keep trying, contestants. Tick, tock.” He fixes me with a look, and he blends into darkness.
My eyes find the clock again: 3:02.
Heart pounding, I reach around the floor and find the rest of my rods. With tremulous fingers, I start fitting small rods into bigger rods, building what I think are triangles, but they’re lopsided and twist and slip. I glance up and see the old man is weeping again. His strategy seems to be shoving sticks anywhere they will fit. In his hands is a prickly ball nowhere close to the model in the center.
The clock
ticks down. In the darkness, it sounds like a group of men are fighting. They’re going to kill me in the hallway.
A peg slips and clatters to the table. Tears pool in my eyes and slide down my nose.
“Come on!” Tarrish yells behind me.
I look up at the clock: 1:22.
Oh God.
But something is building in my hand that looks similar to the model. Carefully, I interlock rods until my box is almost finished. At fifty-nine seconds, I have two rods left. At forty-five, all my rods are gone.
“Done!” I scream, holding the box aloft.
A roar erupts from the crowd. The old man shoots me a hateful glance from across the table.
Noble steps up and takes the ball from my hands. My heart is pounding, but relief—huge, floating relief—fills my heart. I did it. I mastered the—
“Not done,” Noble announces.
The crowd loses its mind.
I look at him in shock. “What are you talking about? It looks just like the model.”
“A piece is missing.” He points to a hole in my design.
“But, but…”
He hands it back to me. “Not finished.”
I look at the clock. Twelve seconds.
I curl under the table. The rod must’ve fallen. I scramble on my hands and knees, sweeping the floor while trying to keep my puzzle intact. Sweat drips into my eyes. It’s dark under the table, and the ground is vibrating with the throng of men ready to burst from their seats and attack me.
“Ten. Nine. Eight.” The crowd counts down.
My trembling hands sweep over the dirty floor. Where is that goddamned rod?
“Seven. Six. Five!”
Something rolls under my fingertips. The rod! I grab it and stand up.
“Four. Three!”
I fit the rod in.
“Done!” I scream. “Done, done, done!”
Noble strides over and takes my box. An eternity passes while he examines it. My heartbeat blares into my ears enough to deafen the awful crowd.
“It’s complete!” he says.
Half the crowd cheers. Half the crowd shouts. I did it—
The old man lurches at me, smashing into the card table, the table and a chair flying. The table smashes into me. His arms flail. I smash to the concrete and then he’s on top of me, growling and spitting. His hands slap out, striking my cheek, my ear, my chin.
“Stop!” I try to push him off.
His weight disappears as men haul him up. Tarrish and Noble pull him back and begin punching. I lie on the ground, unable to do anything but watch as they beat him.
“You don’t need to hit him,” I say, but my voice is a tiny thing in this warehouse of noise. No one hears me. No one stops. They drag him away.
Hands hook under my armpits and pull me up. I stagger to my feet. Tarrish stands before me, grinning toothlessly.
“Yahoo! You did it.” He claps me on the back. “Come on,” he says, nodding me ahead. “Prentice wants to see ya.”
“Prentice?” All I want to do is curl into a ball and wish this all away, but men nudge me forward and Tarrish parts the crowd. The men who lost glare at me angrily while those that won pat me on the back. I want no part in this. I just want out.
But then we pass a table in a corner. A man is being held down while several others secure his hand to a wooden block. A burly man lifts a giant meat cleaver. I look away, but I can’t avoid the sound of crunching bone and the tortured scream.
Is that how they pay their debts? With body parts?
My legs go weak. Abel takes me under the arm and helps me forward.
We leave the warehouse through a side door, and the hallway is blissfully quiet. Tarrish whistles merrily, but at least the awful noises of the warehouse are drowned out. They lead me through a door and into a smaller office. A giant guard with a large gun stops us.
“Hey, Frank. Prentice wanted to see tonight’s winner,” Tarrish says.
The guard nods and steps back.
We step into a dim office lit by electric lamps with red and green bulbs, making the room awash in muddy colors. Bookshelves cover the back walls, stacked with games and puzzles—wooden boxes, brightly colored cubes, metal rings looped impossibly through each other. A long desk waits at the far end with Prentice sitting at its center. But my eyes are drawn to the man standing at his right.
Gabe.
Chapter 14
Riley
“I thought you said this was a story about Arn. Neither of these idiots is Arn.” I stare hard at Auntie. “Is this all made up? How can you possibly know every angle of this story? It’s Mama’s story and yet you tell it like it’s your own. You weren’t even awake for half of it.”
Auntie’s mouth quirks as if she’s been waiting for this all along and I’ve only been smart enough now to ask it.
“Janine and I spent decades together. She told me every angle of this story, in and out. And, the parts I don’t know for sure, I make up.”
“I knew it!” I exclaim. “You’re making this up!”
“Not the parts that matter.” She swats at the air. “A good storyteller knows when to embellish and when to cut.”
“It’s a good story,” Doc adds. “Made up or not.”
Auntie winks with her good eye. “Thankee.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I say, adjusting myself on the Jeep seat. My arm still throbs, but the story really is helping. “Where’s Arn? You know, the person you said you’d tell me about?”
Auntie puckers her toothless mouth. “One of them is Arn, puddin’.”
I shake my head. “You said their names were Gabe and Tommy.”
“Arnold was a middle name,” she says.
“Since when?”
“Since forever,” Auntie says, crossing her arms.
“So which one is it?” I ask, still not sure I believe it.
Auntie wags a finger at me. “I save the best secrets for last.”
“That’s no fair.” I pout. “Tell the story right.”
“What’s my job?” she asks. “To keep your mind off the pain?”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“Well, then shut up and let me do it.” She gropes for a water bottle. “My throat’s as dry as a dead whore’s—”
“Auntie!” I point to Doc. “His first words might not’ve made lawless gunman blush.”
Doc laughs. “I’ve heard every cuss and then some. Benders have dirty mouths.” He stretches his arms and leans back against the driver’s seat. “How’re you feeling?”
I take a moment to consider. “Better. I think I can manage if we want to get going.”
Doc eyes the angle of the sun. “It’s mid-afternoon now. Better to wait until dark if we’re gonna take on Ms. Nessa.”
“Ethan and Clay might not have until dark.” I sit up, arming sweat of my brow. My head spins when I’m upright and my arm kills me, but at least I got my senses back.
Doc watches me carefully. “If we barrel in there like this, we’ll all be killed, Clay and Ethan included.”
I won’t admit he’s right. We don’t have time to waste, and I’m already angry for getting myself into this predicament in the first place. Waiting just makes it worse.
“Besides,” Doc says, setting back into the seat, “I want to hear the rest of the story.”
“They both die. The end,” I say bitterly before I can stop myself.
Auntie stiffens. I sometimes forget my mama and Arn were her family, even if they weren’t related by blood. She loved them both, and this story is her way of keeping them alive.
“Sorry,” I say. “Blame the scorpion.”
“You get a pass,” Auntie says. “For now.”
I nod. “I’ll be good. Finish the story.”
Auntie sniffs. “We’ve come to the part I’ve only heard from your mother once long ago. I don’t think she liked to speak of it. Once was enough.”
“It was that bad?” I ask, letting my imagination run wild. “But
they survived this. We know that much.”
Bell shakes her head. “Oh no, dear. Not all of them.”
Chapter 15
Janine
I stare slack-jawed at Gabe. When he sees me, he skirts the desk and takes me in his arms. “Are you okay?” he whispers in my hair. “When I lost you, I was devastated. I came to Prentice—”
“Don’t keep the girl all to yourself, Gabriel,” Prentice says, standing up.
Gabe draws back and lets me go. “Sorry, Prentice. She’s had quite a shock.” Gabe looks me over.
I can’t imagine what I must look like.
“She?” Tarrish the announcer asks.
“Yes,” Prentice says, coming around the desk to stand before me. “Not a bender, as I am sure you assumed. Did you check?”
Tarrish drops his head.
“No,” Prentice says dismissively. “You wouldn’t have offered her up for the game if you’d known she was a girl. That,” he says, turning to lock Tarrish in a cold glare, “that is why you are in charge of the Brown district.”
Tarrish bows his head, but his eyes burn.
“Get out,” Prentice says.
Tarrish doesn’t argue. He and his men bow and walk out. I have a feeling they’ll take their frustration out on someone in the warehouse.
“So,” Prentice says, gazing into my face with a smug smile. “We have a puzzler on our hands. Did you do puzzles in the hospital?”
I meet Prentice’s gaze, but then drop it like it burns. “Sometimes.”
He chuckles. “Our usual contestants are farmers or townies who haven’t had a day of education in their lives. Well, other than how to slaughter pigs or bury their own shit.” Prentice sniffs. “Not an educated lady like you.” He grips my chin and tilts my face toward the light. “Pity you’re ruined.”