by Chloe Garner
“Lives?” Zee asked. “We don’t live. We endure.”
She felt the glower as it happened, knowing it would just make him angrier, but not caring, just then.
“That’s charming,” she said. “You want to tell me why your last angel left?”
He swung at her, not with enough follow-through to actually hit her, but with enough breeze following after his fist that she moved out of the way anyway.
“She was worthless, too,” he said. “And they killed her.”
Lizzie swallowed.
She hadn’t known that effectiveness was one of the furlings’ requirements.
“Okay,” she said. “Do you want to introduce me?”
He laughed. It was a cold noise, even comparing against Trevor, who at least had the decency to be playful.
“As if any of them matter. It’s between you and me, princess, and if you don’t hack it, they’re going to kill you, too.”
She thought of her dead phone, of laying in bed next to Trevor, then looked around the rooftop as people huddled against the wall, now looking like they were trying to stay warm as much as they were trying to be invisible. It was only the middle of September, and Lizzie needed a jacket. A jacket that she didn’t have.
She looked for the skinny young man who had spoken to her before and found him cowering against a wall between two others and she motioned him forward. A furling scuttled past between them, headed down the stairs. The skinny man shook his head quickly and turned his face away, and Lizzie looked around the roof again.
Trevor had liked the look of her because she could take a hit and dish it back out.
This was beyond pathetic.
Sure, most of them had lived in that terrible building, but they’d been independent. This was something entirely different, a different kind of broken.
It wasn’t fair to say that Lizzie had never liked bullies, because she hadn’t met that many in her life, but as she stood there on the roof in that moment, she wondered if it wasn’t because she simply didn’t tolerate them.
She turned to face the demon, standing straight, and drew a breath, stabilizing herself, calming.
She was alone. She was broke. She had no idea what she was doing.
But if he hit her, she was going to hit him back.
That’s just what it was.
“My name is Lizzie,” she said. “And that isn’t how this is going to work. You can call me princess if you like, but it isn’t going to bother me. But that’s who I am, and I am your angel. If you want this to work, you’re going to have to deal with that.”
He laughed and turned back around.
“I don’t have to deal with anything,” he said. “I’m the demon. I don’t care if it works or not. That’s your problem. But if you think you get to pick your name, there you’ve got a problem. Because I pick the names. You married?”
She looked at her ring. She’d forgotten it.
“Yes.”
He shook his head.
“You’ll pawn it. You aren’t married anymore. Whatever life you left, whatever you thought you were going to be able to get away with for the rest of your life? That’s done. You aren’t her anymore. I’m going to call you Mercy.”
“You’re what?” Lizzie retorted.
“He thinks virtues make good angel names,” someone whispered at her elbow, and she looked down to find the skinny young man there, crouched on his hands and toes, but there.
“Who are you?” she asked. He shook his head and retreated half a stride behind her. She looked back at the demon.
“That will be your name as long as you’re alive with us,” he said, sticking his chin out at her. “You’ll learn, like all of them. You don’t mess with me.”
A furling scaled down his back, crawling toward Lizzie, belly down, and she watched it, waiting for it to turn away and scramble off into whatever mischief it found for itself, but it didn’t. The young man behind her squealed and she watched with an increasing sense of incredulity as the furling went on past her and started toward the young man. She pointed at it.
“I don’t think so,” she said. The furling stopped, twisting its head like something had gone tight around its neck, and it took another step toward the skinny man, who was scrambling away toward the wall.
“No,” Lizzie said. “Come here.”
The furling went sideways a couple of steps away from her, then stood on its back feet and began to ease toward her. Like a physical blow, it fell over backwards, and Lizzie gritted her teeth.
“Now.”
It stood up again and walked toward her easily, holding out a paw and letting her absorb it. She shook her head.
“You think you can protect them?” Zee asked. “That’s very… sad.”
“I’m not going to let you abuse them,” Lizzie said.
“Then I’ll kill you faster than I thought,” he answered, turning away and going down the stairs. She watched after him for a moment, waiting to be sure that he wasn’t going to try to do something about it right now, then she went to sit next to the skinny man against the wall. The rest of the hooligans split, leaving a wide gap between themselves and Lizzie, but Lizzie ignored this.
“What’s your name?”
“Slug,” he said.
“Slug,” she echoed, and he nodded. She shook her head.
“What’s your real name?”
He shook his head back, dipping his forehead onto his wrists.
“That’s my name.”
“That’s what he calls you,” Lizzie said.
“He says that it suits me,” he answered.
“I don’t like it,” Lizzie said, and the young man shrugged. He was malnourished enough that he had no stubble and his hair was thin. He peeked at her through skinny fingers.
“What does that matter?”
“I’m the angel,” Lizzie said. He shrugged.
“So?”
She showed him her wrist, with some absurd idea that that would mean something to him, but he just shrugged again, shoulders like a wire hanger under his shirt. How was he not freezing?
She wanted to tell him that she was Zee’s equal, but it was so laughably untrue that she couldn’t even put it forward. Like him or not, she could tell that Zee outmatched her so completely that she couldn’t even measure it.
“I’m going to try,” she said, and he shrugged again.
“They all do.”
She closed her eyes and drew another breath.
“Who are the rest of them?” she asked.
He lifted his head and looked around the roof.
“That’s Beetle, that’s Mud, and that’s Worm. The rest of them don’t matter.”
“They do,” Lizzie said. “You don’t get to be like that. They all matter.”
He laughed to himself and turned away. This was her Robbie. He was drawn to it and couldn’t get away from it, as much as he wanted to. She unwrapped her arms from her purse and dug into it, getting out the smooshed bread and the peanut butter. Heads around the roof lifted and she shrugged.
“It isn’t much, but if you want it, you can have some.”
It took a minute, as the hooligans looked at each other and not at each other in their peculiar way, then Slug picked up the bag of bread and ripped a slice in half, passing the rest on to the next young man and sitting back against the wall and nibbling at the slice of bread with an absurd sense of contentment.
“When was the last time you had a real meal?” Lizzie asked. He shrugged and shook his head.
“Don’t know.”
She drew a breath and sighed.
Well, that was job one.
She needed to make enough money to feed this lot.
It was going to take some thinking, but she had skills and a degree that was still hers. She’d figure it out.
She watched the bread go around the roof one direction while the peanut butter went around the other way, feeling her stomach gnaw on itself with lack of food of her own, but knowing she n
eeded it less than they did. As her eyes finally took them in as individuals, she saw a lot of the characteristics of old drug use, but what seemed much more pressing were the signs of abuse and malnutrition. They were all too skinny.
She looked back at Slug.
“So who’s on our side?” she asked. He looked up sharply from his bread.
“Why does that matter?” he asked. She blinked.
“Because… that’s how it works.”
He shook his head, quickly, with a sort of mousy character to it.
“Not here,” he said. “Not here.”
“Has Zee always been the demon?” she asked. He shrugged, and she raised her eyebrows, waiting. He sighed.
“Maybe,” he said. “Has as long as I’ve been here. Blister might remember.”
He jerked his chin at a dark-skinned man across the roof from them, and Lizzie stood, going to sit next to this man. His jaw strained as she sat, but he didn’t look at her.
“What happened here?” Lizzie asked. He didn’t look at her, didn’t answer her. He might have stopped breathing. He had the last slice of bread out of the bag, whole, clutched between two hands, but he wasn’t eating it.
“Were you here before Zee came?” Lizzie asked.
“Parker,” Blister said. She waited, but he didn’t seem interested in following up with any additional information, so she asked.
“Who was Parker?”
“The demon before Zee.”
“And what was your name before Zee? When Parker was here?”
He shook his head, shooting her a dark look.
“Last time someone used their old name, Zee tipped them over the edge of the roof.”
She jerked her head back.
“That’s not okay,” she said. His lips worked like he wanted to tell her something else about what it was or wasn’t, but he was too angry to do it. He looked back toward the center of the roof.
Was this what demons were like?
Was Trevor just that unusual? Or was Zee a sociopath on top of everything else?
“What was it like, with Parker?” she asked.
Blister turned his head toward her, now, clearly angry.
“There’s no point talking about it,” he said. “You’re just going to die. We aren’t going to be friends.”
“No,” Lizzie said. “I didn’t expect we’d be friends. But I’m not going to try to throw you off the roof.”
“Like to see you try,” he said, taking an angry bite of his bread and turning away. She widened her eyes and stood.
Okay then.
She looked up at the sky, gaging time. She had a few hours before sunset. It might be too late for a plan tonight, but she should have one tomorrow.
She stood in the middle of the roof for a minute, then shook her head and started down the stairs. Slug jumped to his feet.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Walking,” she said.
“You should be here. If he comes back, we have to be ready.”
“Ready for what?” Lizzie asked.
“The next battle,” Blister said bitterly. “There’s always another one.”
“And he doesn’t tell us when,” Slug said, miserable.
“If he wants me to be there, he can tell me in advance,” Lizzie said and started down the stairs. She heard the discord break out above her, but she didn’t care. She may have had a lot to learn, and she dearly wished she had a functioning phone and Trevor’s number in order to ask him a lot of questions, but she reflected, as she reached the ground floor and started off across the stinking cement toward the door, that he had never really been forthcoming with answers to direct questions in the past. There was no reason to think he would have helped her out, now. Certainly, he would have done what he could to keep her from getting herself killed, but she had to work this out her own way. She was the angel, and they all did it their own way.
This was hers.
***
She walked until the sun went down, a new sense of determination driving her. She’d never been hungry like this before, and she felt like she was understanding a part of Robbie’s life that had always been foreign to her. She knew that he had stolen, while he’d been away from the family and before he’d met Lara. This, plus the drugs, were why. What she couldn’t understand was why the hooligans behind her weren’t doing at least as well as Robbie and his friends always had. They hadn’t eaten often but there had been enough to go around that they’d managed to stay high and marginally fed.
Zee.
A man who gave himself a demon name and presumed to name everyone around him.
Mercy.
Okay, it wasn’t the worst name in the world. It wasn’t Slug or Blister, but she wasn’t going to answer to it. She wasn’t going to accept his dominion over her life like that.
Except that she’d seen it before.
She hadn’t just worked on therapy and programs for severe congenital mental issues. She’d also worked with networks of therapists for PTSD, on rescue and rehabilitation systems for domestic abuse.
Even strong people let stronger people break them, if they couldn’t get enough space to repair themselves, in between. Healthy relationships, healthy sense of self, these things were necessary to heal, and the hooligans back there had none of those. Everyone they knew was cowed, perpetually in fear for their lives, and it was possible that Zee ran them so hard that they never got time off to live inside their own heads.
If their own heads were a safe place to be, in the first place.
Lizzie could be safe.
She had lots of practice at that.
But if she was going to withstand Zee, herself, she needed positive, unrelated relationships.
And that meant a job.
The idea of holding a job while she’d been living with Robbie had seemed impossible, but now she was in a strange city with no residence, no money, and apparently no car, and she was going to have to make it work.
What she did have was a resume.
And she could make that work.
What she also had going for her was that the cost of living here was lower, and that the abandoned district she was in now wasn’t far from downtown. She could start scouting for psychiatric practices on foot, if she had to, tomorrow, and start pitching herself as a network and systems consultant for psychiatric services. She hated to use her boss or coworkers as references, after what she’d done, but she would if she had to. She’d put in a lot of really good years there - had devoted her entire life to that job, really - and maybe the balance would still be in her favor.
It was a solid enough plan for now. The sun was going down and the temperature continued to drop, so she started back, hoping that she hadn’t gotten herself lost in the maze of identical buildings. It took her longer than she liked, and she was beginning to worry, when she found the door that Zee had originally gone through. Here she paused.
She didn’t really want to go in there again, but she hadn’t a better idea right now.
She pushed her way through the door, holding her breath until she got to the second floor, and then went for a spot underneath a window that had trash bags on either side. The air pouring down on her through the window was cold, but at least it was fresh. She pulled her knees in around her purse and wedged her head against the wall and she slept.
***
She got up in the morning and she found a breakfast restaurant where she used the bathroom to wash everything she could see and get her hair straightened out and put up, then she put on her makeup from her purse and took a step back.
She wasn’t putting her very best foot forward, but she didn’t look like she was presently homeless, either. She couldn’t worry about how she smelled, because she didn’t have a solution for that one right now.
She walked downtown, wishing she had her professional clothes with her rather than driving ones, but she stood tall as she walked, and she went into the first of the tall buildings downtown and looked at the b
usiness directory in the lobby with a sense of optimism. She took the elevator up to the thirty-sixth floor and got off with a posture of pride, going to the office door and opening it with confidence.
She left with a clear knowledge that this was not going to work.
Even the ones dealing with severe mental illnesses, psychiatrists had expensive practices. Especially in a building like this.
Lizzie hadn’t even been able to talk herself past the receptionist.
She shook it off in the elevator and went on, spending the rest of the morning making similarly pathetic attempts to sell herself as a consultant to doctors around the downtown area. In the elevator on the way out of the last building, she found herself next to a woman in her forties or fifties with her teenage son. The two of them looked so much like Robbie and her mother that Lizzie found herself struggling not to stare. His posture and the way he moved was so characteristic, and the sort of forced optimism that the woman wore was exactly the way that Lizzie’s mother had looked for all of the years she had had Robbie in treatment. It made Lizzie sad, not just for them, but for herself, too, that she was here alone. She missed her brother and in that moment she missed her mom even more.
About eight floors from the lobby, the doors opened, but no one got on. It was a sort of vaguely creepy moment, and then, as the doors had nearly closed, a furling slipped onto the elevator. The young man gasped and flattened himself against the elevator wall, turning his face against it and trying to look at the furling at the same time as the furling crept toward him.
That was the moment that Lizzie realized that the young man had the faintest of glows to him. Like the light over his head was a little bit more powerful than the other ones in the elevator, and she had to grab her hands behind her back to keep from putting one in front of her mouth.
“What is it, Paul? What’s going on?”
“It’s going to get me,” he said. I don’t want to go.”
Lizzie closed her eyes, looking away. She knew that the woman would just see a bystander who didn’t want to be involved, but Lizzie didn’t want whatever expression it was that was there on her face to show. She mastered herself, and she looked down at the furling, focusing as hard as she could so that she wouldn’t have to say anything, then let her hand drop and hang ever so slightly forward.