by Chloe Garner
“Zee. He won’t call you, but if none of us are there, he has to. So if we want you to be there for battles…”
“You have to be here,” Lizzie said. Well, she hadn’t wanted to out-stubborn the hooligans, but if that was how it would work, she’d take it. She watched as the hungry young men and women devoured her food.
“Shoes off,” she said. “Everyone should at least go wash their feet and their hands. You’re welcome to shower if you want to. I’ll figure out how to do laundry later.”
She needed to buy a big bag of socks.
She had a check from Han’s mom in her purse, but she wasn’t going to cash it until she got an account open at the bank. Those three dollars made a difference, right now. She had an appointment with Magda to meet two more kids from Paul’s circle of treatment, and she needed to get going.
This was it.
Could she trust them? Not just were they worthy of trust, but could she force herself to trust them enough to walk away? All of her stuff was in her room. She’d gone without it for weeks, but it was still all of the stuff she had to her name, all of her clothes, all of the important things Robbie had packed for her.
Could she - would she - just walk away and trust that they wouldn’t destroy it all?
Rat was watching her.
“I have somewhere to be,” Lizzie said. “Get clean, get comfortable. We’re going to be packed in here, but it’s better than out there.”
And she picked her purse up off of the counter and she walked out.
She would do it.
If Lara could do it, so could she.
***
She met with Magda and the new families one at a time in a meeting room at a library. Now that she had a car, she could get to them a bit further away, and everyone appreciated not being out in the snow, which was coming down harder and sticking to sidewalks and roads. Lizzie confided to Magda in between families at one point that she was actually nervous to drive on it, because she’d never gone out on snow before, and Magda had laughed at her.
“Going to have to get used to it, then. You live in Pittsburgh now.”
Lizzie nodded.
She lived in Pittsburgh now.
It was still something that felt strange to think. She didn’t live in California. She lived in Pennsylvania.
This was home.
With a sensation of dropping several feet, she realized with new awareness that she wasn’t going back.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Magda said. “Paul is auditioning for a play at school today.”
“He told me,” Lizzie said. “I was really impressed.”
Magda nodded.
“He liked acting in middle school. Terrible at it, don’t tell him I said that, but he loved it. Thought it was gone…”
Her mouth moved funny for a second, then she shook herself and looked at the door.
“Jennifer is here,” she said, getting up. “If any of this is about preference…”
Lizzie shook her head, watching as a slender woman walked up to the door with a furtive, awkward young woman who had all the makings of a ballerina, when her body finally remembered where her feet were.
“If I could help them all, I would,” she said. “It’s either there or it isn’t.”
Magda nodded and opened the door.
***
One of two.
She couldn’t complain about that.
Jennifer and her daughter left disappointed, but James could see the furling that Lizzie had dragged in with her, that she kept pulling back every time it tried to wander off again. She absorbed it as he sat and watched, and he’d hit the wall. Literally.
Magda had said some reassuring things to his mom and dad and walked them out, and Lizzie had talked to James for more than an hour, answering questions and calming him as much as she could. She got the impression that his visions when he flipped were particularly potent. He was a gentle-spirited young man, but the things he described were beyond violent.
“I can’t get rid of them,” she said. “And if they bother you a lot, your parents are going to know, and they may try to get you on medication for them.”
“Will it help?” James asked.
“I don’t think so,” Lizzie said. “My brother takes some things while he’s having them that help some, I think, but I don’t think anything helps prevent them.”
“If they weren’t so…” he said, and she nodded.
“I’m working on getting in touch with my brother.” She’d used a computer at the library and looked up the phone number of the tattoo parlor, hoping that he could get a message to someone with her new phone number - and that she was alive. That had only been a day ago, so she wasn’t expecting anything yet, but surely that would eventually work. “As soon as I hear from him, I’ll let you and the others know if anything can help.”
He nodded.
“Can I meet the others?”
“As soon as you want,” Lizzie said. “We meet once a week, normally, but you already know Paul.”
It had comforted all of them that there were others. This strong a reaction for the fourth time was beginning to make Lizzie think it was characteristic.
“Okay,” he’d said. His mom was standing at the door. Lizzie looked at James, lowering her head.
“How you react is up to you. I’m not going to tell you what to do. But my best advice from everything I’ve seen is for you to just relax. Avoid the furlings if you can, know that sometimes awful things are going to happen, but that it isn’t your fault, and it’s real. No one else I’m meeting with has told their parents that they think it’s real, and I think that’s wise. I wouldn’t normally recommend you lie to your parents, but I don’t think they’re ever going to understand.”
He chewed his lip and nodded.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“I’ll see you soon,” Lizzie answered, and he edged away from the table like she might have bit him in farewell, then scooted toward the door. He was more skittish than the others had been, but she was optimistic - and she certainly wasn’t offended. She’d just sucked up a furling and turned it into nothing but floating hair. The others had taken that remarkably well, considering.
She went out to her car and started the engine, when her phone rang. Expecting Magda, she frowned to see a phone number she didn’t know. James and his parents? Magda would have given them her number. She answered.
“This is Lizzie.”
“I told you your name is Mercy.”
She swallowed.
“Zee.”
“Where is everyone?”
It was a demand, and a rather angry one, at that.
She had power.
This was a cautious moment, one that she hadn’t adequately prepared for. The question was: what type of man did she really think he was? Had he been over-indulged his entire life and simply needed to be treated in a consistent, disciplined manner to generate a functional working relationship, or was he a true sociopath, the wiring in his brain literally unable to learn things like empathy?
If he was trainable, carrot-and-stick could work him around to the point that they actually worked in the same direction.
If he was a sociopath, she needed to hold on to every molecule of power she held over him and use it with the best lever possible simply to improve her chances of surviving.
She had one moment to think, to decide.
“They’re with me,” she said. “They aren’t going to live up on that roof any more, and you’re going to have to call me to tell me where you want us to be. And when.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not how this works.”
He was still angry, and he was going to start to tell her, to make threats, but she interrupted him.
“It is, now,” she said. “We can join you wherever you want us to be, and I’m free now. Whoever is available will come.”
She waited.
“I could kill you all,” he said.
“Then what f
un would we be?” Lizzie asked. “You need to tell me, right now, where you want us to show up, or else I’m hanging up on you.”
She raised her eyebrows.
He gave her an address.
She nodded, writing it down.
“Got it. We will be there when we get there.”
She put the car in gear and turned around to back out of her parking spot. A furling ran across the back of her car and took a flying leap onto the next car over. She wished she’d run him over, then had a sudden heartstab of pain, remembering what Trevor had said: it isn’t about what happens when a car hits a furling. It’s about what happens when a furling hits a car.
That voice.
In her head like a legend of a time that she was someone else.
She shook her head.
She was here. She was now. She was going to a battle with Zee where he might very well kill her.
She needed to get her head in the game.
***
They walked.
She could have driven a few of them, but there seemed to be no point, so she didn’t offer. She still hadn’t worked out a solution on how to get everyone clean and into weather-appropriate clothes, but her income was inching up again, and she had a little more breathing room to work with. Maybe she’d get a handle on it tonight.
It was a long walk, once again, and once again she found that the light was draining out of the world around them as they went, but this time it felt different. It happened faster, not like furlings had simply trashed everything as they went along, but like there was a line where, having crossed it, she transitioned over the course of a couple of blocks to dim and nothing. The world wasn’t changed, the way she normally looked at it, but there was simply no sign of order anywhere as they went.
And then they got to the building whose address Lizzie had from Zee.
There was nothing there.
Well, there was a building, sure, but there were no furlings, there was no glow, there was no sense that she was only a few steps away from where she was supposed to be for a fight.
It was just a building in a scraggly lot, a building where, presumably, people had once lived, but just a tower of brick and metal and drywall, now.
The hooligans were whispering.
Lizzie looked back, but none of them made eye contact. Even after they’d eaten every morsel of food in her apartment, none of them would talk to her.
“Slug,” she said, then frowned, realizing that he still wasn’t there. “Rat.”
The girl shuffled forward, compelled more than anything by the authority Lizzie held here.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Lizzie said. Rat shook her head.
“Don’t know.”
“Tell me what you know,” Lizzie said. Rat shook her head again twisting her arms together and then wrapping her fingers through each other, locking her shoulders in and making her look narrow and fragile.
“It’s not right,” Rat said, then turned and went back to the pack of hooligans, who appeared to be closing rank.
A furling appeared from out of the building and scampered away, not even looking at Lizzie and the hooligans.
Just one.
Fleeing.
There was no order here to feast on. To destroy.
The hooligans had nothing to go after, nor did the furlings.
It had been picked clean.
That’s why they always went to different places. So that they could take down deep pockets of order. That’s what the furlings liked.
There was nothing here at all.
“Come on,” Zee roared, walking away. The hooligans followed meekly after him, and Lizzie hesitated, trying to understand, then followed along last. It was going to be dark, soon, and they should be headed back if they were going to get in before the temperature started to really drop.
Why was this wrong?
They went out and along, cutting across a field that had once been a parking lot, past a church on a hill. The church glimmered ever so slightly, and a furling went running off toward it, disappearing before it got there, but there was nothing for them to feast on.
Just nothing.
An hour later, Zee was pacing up and down a suburban street. Lizzie was uncomfortable being there, because it was the kind of place that the neighbors would call the police because you looked like… well, a pack of hooligans out in the street.
He was getting angrier and angrier, and Lizzie was alert to the way that he moved, watching for signs of violence. The hooligans skittered away from him any time he got too close.
“Get out of here,” he finally yelled. “Go.”
They didn’t have to be told twice. The hooligans scattered down the street and through yards, all in the same general direction, but in the way that a pack of teenagers scatters, everyone for himself. Lizzie waited, wanting to understand, but Zee kept walking this time, his hand gripping the hair on the back of his head.
He didn’t know what was going on, either, and it made him mad.
And then Lizzie caught a faint smell of engine oil, probably off of one of the cars parked there on the street behind her, but it made sense.
There had already been a battle here.
And only one side showed up.
She closed her eyes, pushing herself hard to find her spot, even though it was long gone.
There.
It was a long way back, but it was there.
She followed the tiniest thread for a long time, no longer worrying about Zee or what he might be up to, and she got to the spot on the ground where her feet felt like the earth was moving under her rather than she over it.
And there, far, far away, thin and dim with distance, there was the dark well that all of the light was draining into.
And it was happy to see her.
She looked back the direction she’d come, after Zee with his stormy temper and ongoing threats to kill her and she shook her head.
“Oh, buddy. You’re in trouble now.”
***
She slept on the floor in her apartment with a sort of queasy sense of anticipation, waking up and over and over again and sitting up on the floor without being able to remember where she was.
All of the hooligans had turned up at the apartment, save Slug - still missing - and were scattered throughout the rooms sleeping on the floor. It smelled, but not as bad as the building. She thought someone was sleeping in the tub.
She got up before dawn, unable to sleep any more, and put on her coat, taking her purse and just going out walking.
She couldn’t sit still.
The dark overhead was perfect, now, crystal after the clouds had finished dumping their snow and made a hasty retreat.
She pulled her elbows in against her sides, appreciating again the quality of jacket that Giselle had given her, and she continued on, feeling the clean of the air after the snow and loving the way the city looked under the stars. She was natively walking away from downtown, away from the light, into the district where nothing was lit, and the sky opened up more and more over her head.
There was the sound of claws, and she looked down at her feet, watching as a furling wandered past.
“It’s a nice night,” someone said, and she looked up.
The stars had distracted her too much, and she hadn’t seen him until he was only a few feet away.
“Trevor.”
He grinned, and she found herself rooted to the ground.
He couldn’t be here.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
He shrugged, going to lean against a building.
Like it was nothing.
“Michelle,” he said. “Robbie told her you were missing, and she started kicking in doors. The woman is a force of nature.”
“She didn’t find me.”
He nodded, tipping his head back in a sort of taunting posture.
“No, but she found your escapee.”
“What?”
He nodded, a mocking little smile tw
isting up the corner of his mouth and making Lizzie’s hands itch.
“Hooligans don’t leave home. If you find that they’re trying, you know something’s really wrong. Michelle caught wind of a skinny girl trying to get away from a demon who was hellbent on killing her and an angel who was… brand new.”
Lizzie bit her lips.
“Rat.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Come again?”
“That’s what Zee calls her. Rat. She won’t tell me her real name.”
He opened his mouth to answer, then just drew a breath and closed it again, looking at her for a long moment.
“And what does your new demon call you?” he asked.
She hesitated. Hadn’t even said it out loud, yet.
“Mercy.”
He put the side of his hand up to his mouth to cover a smile.
“I bet that went over like a flying brick.”
She looked away.
“We have artistic differences.”
She heard him grin.
She looked back, and it was like she could float. All she had to do was give a little push with her toes and she’d be airborne.
He grinned wider, and her feet were free. He rolled his back against the wall as she hit him, tangling his hand in her hair and pulling her waist tight against him. She pulled his face down against hers and bit his lips, the heat of his skin against hers stark and shocking in the cold.
He pulled her head back by her hair and tipped his head to look down at her. There was no safer place in the entire world.
“I’ve got a room at a hotel downtown,” he said. “Unless you know someplace closer.”
“My apartment is full of hooligans,” she said. “And I don’t have a bed.”
He grinned.
“Tempting.”
She pulled his head down again and he bobbed away, twirling her over her toes and wrapping her hand in his.
“Nope,” he said. “I’m not distracted that easily.”
She laughed as he dragged her along the sidewalk toward a car. He pressed a set of keys into her hand, then buried his face into her neck, running his teeth along her skin.
“Fast,” he growled, then let go of her hand. She thought about tackling him again, just to have his body against hers once more, but the smolder in his eyes only looked half playful, and she nodded, feeling it too.