by Emma Hamm
She wasn’t a “classic”. She had always known that. But standing next to him suddenly made her feel inferior, and she hated that.
Therefore, she hated him.
“Look,” she started in on him. “If you’re one of M.O.M’s people, this is not how I usually run my establishment. You’re more than welcome to take a few samples of my Juices, but I made them exactly how they’re supposed to be made.”
Lie.
She continued, “And I don’t label them only because they’re perfectly organized. As you can see, there’s obviously a method to my madness.”
Another lie.
“And another thing, I’m quite certain that you’re required to let me know when you’re going to be coming in for an inspection. So I don’t think anything you’ve seen here tonight could be held against me.”
“Oh for God’s sakes, would you stop blabbering?”
Her mouth hung open as he dropped the towel to glare at her.
“Pardon?”
“You never stop talking, do you?”
She was stunned to silence, though it appeared E was not. All she could hear in her head was ringing laughter.
Burke stepped towards her and dropped the bloody towel on the counter in front of her. “I don’t work for M.O.M anymore, and I’m not here for an inspection.”
“Well then why are you here?” She was pressed against the shelves again, as though that would help her. The anger in his gaze was far more intimidating than Rupert’s had been.
“I’m here to offer you a job.”
“I have a job.”
“A better job.”
“I’m not looking for a job,” she said as she climbed over the opposite edge of the counter to get away from him. She popped her butt onto the counter and swung her legs over so that she wouldn’t flash him any glimpse of her leg. This wasn’t a free show.
If he was going to insist upon spouting random words at her that held no meaning, Wren was simply going to leave. She had work that she could be doing upstairs since it was obvious no one was going to be coming back into her shop. There were a few bolts of fabric that she could sew together to make a patchwork gauzy bit to cover up that hole.
The man would have to leave on his own. If she got robbed at this point then so be it. She was shaken, nervous, embarrassed, and angry of all things.
She made her way to the door that led upstairs to her apartment and resigned herself to using the emotions from this moment for Juice. Wren didn’t like to use emotions from her own memories, that was what dreaming was for. As a rule, she didn’t sell bad emotions like this in her shop.
But she would bottle this anyways and keep it in case someone wanted it for a high price. That was the only way she was going to feel better about this moment in time.
“Wren.” His voice made her pause.
Wren glanced over her shoulder to see him standing in the center of her shop. His fists were clenched, and there was still blood on his neck in streaks of faint blue. He was staring at her as though she was some kind of princess leaving him on the floor of a ballroom.
But she wasn’t a princess, and he certainly wasn’t a prince. She was being fanciful in thinking that he was looking at her in any way other than anger. That was how he should feel in this moment, and she wouldn’t have blamed him for it.
The smolder in his eyes was from frustration, nothing more. She couldn’t allow herself to even consider that there might have been something else as he looked at her.
“I need you to listen to me,” he said firmly.
Equally firm in tone, Wren shook her head and replied, “I’m sorry. We’re closed.”
She opened and shut the door to her apartment, locked it firmly behind her, and pressed her spine against the well worn wood. That was quite enough entertainment to last her for the night.
If not for the rest of her life.
Wren tried to dream that night. She wore herself out cleaning the small apartment and watering the hundreds of plants that hung in baskets and pots from her ceiling. It was a regular jungle inside the place where she lived. Wren would have it no other way.
Her apartment was a chaotic mess of books, plants, and fabric. The brick walls had seen better days, the wooden floors were scratched, and she was missing a couple window panes. But whatever was broken, she attempted to fix.
The missing bricks were replaced with bright colored fabric stuck into the wall. Said wall was now a patchwork of color and crumbling red dust. The windows received a similar treatment that made squares of color dance upon her floor during the day.
In the corner of the apartment was a bathroom hidden behind a folding blind, and the kitchen was on the other end with pots and pans hanging above the counters. It was a warm room, full of earth tones and hanging plants. The apartment was by no means opulent, or even safe, but it was Wren’s home.
She made certain that the plants were tamed at least. She kept them watered and rotated them every other day so that the sun could touch all of them in equal amounts. They were feral towards other people, but they appreciated her efforts.
One of her vines had crept out of the window and flourished. She should have snipped it then so that it didn’t take the building with it. However, every living thing deserved a little bit of adventure. So she told it as long as it remained in its pot, it could go wherever it wished.
Watering all of them took more time than anyone else would have devoted, but she so loved the smell of green things growing. She lived in the thick of what used to be New York where metal and concrete had still managed to beat back nature. It was good to have the smell of earth around her while she rested.
Wren had thought that sleep would have come easily. She had been pushing herself lately with work and producing more exotic emotions. The void of nothingness should have been easily attainable.
But it wasn’t.
Every time she started to fall asleep, something would hold her back from that dreaming place. She didn’t know if it was E annoying her or just that she had too much on her mind.
The strange man, Burke, she reminded herself, haunted her thoughts. He had so easily dealt in pain and acted as though it hadn’t bothered him. He had scared Rupert with just his name.
Who was this man that hadn’t let his eyes drift from her form the entire night? She didn’t know how to feel about that. If he was really not an agent of M.O.M then there was someone else telling him to meet her.
And offering a job? What in the world had that been? She had a job. It wasn’t a particularly easy job or one that was rewarding, but it paid the bills and let her do magic without consequences. Why would she let go of everything she knew for something he didn’t even explain?
The other tantalizing question was who offered the job. Definitely not Burke. He didn’t seem like the kind of man that tracked people down to work for him. He wasn’t a rich philanthropist who was gathering people to change the world.
She shuddered when she remembered how easily he had threatened death. No, not death. Death over and over again in the dreaming world until madness traveled from dream to reality.
He had been cold when he said those words. His eyes had been dead and his hands strong. He wasn’t the kind of man who she needed to be around or working for.
She sighed and rolled over on her mattress. It was on the floor since she didn’t have enough money for a bed frame, but that was perfectly fine with her. She had covered an entire corner of her apartment with old pillows and bunched up blankets.
When she was feeling sorry for herself, she pretended that she was a lady in a harem full of women. This was her corner of silken fabrics and velvet touches where she dreamt a man would visit her. She would beguile him with her stories, and he would eventually fall in love with her.
Right, as if. Wren didn’t need a man anyways. Who did? She was perfectly happy alone and mildly successful.
She blew out a breath to send her black hair flying away from her forehead. Tomorrow she’d ch
ange her hair again. Pink was simply not working for her, and she was feeling like red was a more appropriate color.
Not because Burke had suggested she should have red hair. That would have been a foolish reason for her to change her hair color.
A soft scratching sound on her window made her squeeze her eyes shut. Whatever it was could wait until the morning. The window was right next to her bed and went out onto the fire escape. She wouldn’t step foot on the rickety metal rungs if her life depended on it.
Again the scratching sound, though this time it had a few raps at the end of it.
Sounds like that couldn’t be attested to the wind or the stray vines that had crawled away from her. Grumpy and overtired, she blinked open her eyes to look out her window.
The dark shadow of a man sat there. He was reclined on the steps that went further up the building with his long legs stretched out before him. Wren didn’t think comfort like that could be faked. The man should really be worried about the metal breaking and sending him plummeting to a painful fall.
She didn’t flinch back from the form that she could have reached out and touched if the window had been opened. Sadly, Wren was used to early morning visits like this.
She grumbled as she rolled onto her knees to open the window. Some people could wake up happy as a lamb, and some could have only a few hours of sleep and feel well rested. Wren was not either of these people.
The window jittered open with a loud squeaking sound.
Smoke drifted towards her as the wind blew into her apartment. The scent of sweet cigar smoke was what she always thought of when it came to this man. Pitch: the most dangerous person on her block and perhaps the most dangerous person in the city.
He turned to look at her with dark, obsidian eyes and blew a red smoke ring in her direction.
She flinched back and waved her hand in front of her face. “Stop it. You know I don’t like that in my apartment.”
Pitch was an odd person when it came to these parts, but then again most of them were. He was tall and lanky with long limbs and ropey muscles that corded over his shoulders and legs. He was wearing a simple tank top and leather pants that seemed to disappear into the murky darkness beneath him.
She supposed he was a handsome man. If one didn’t know him. His black hair was shoulder length and roughly hewn. A hawk like nose and full lips made his porcelain skin just pretty enough to be dangerous. He was a waking dream that she knew held a nightmare within its shell.
Wren had seen him fight before. The man had no mercy for anyone or anything that stood in his way. Thankfully, she had never been in his way.
Folding her legs so that she was settled onto her knees, she braced her arms against the window frame and looked up at him. “What is it that you want, Pitch?”
The cigar between his hands always held an odd color of smoke. Red, tonight, made her nervous, because it always meant that he was angry. Blue was a safe smoke, green even better. She would never tell him that his cigars were a clear indication of his mood. If he knew, then he used them as a warning. If he didn’t know, then she wasn’t going to ruin it for everyone else.
“Heard you had some trouble tonight.” Another smoke ring was blown, but at least this time he aimed it away from her building.
“Just Rupert. I made a mistake that I shouldn’t have. It won’t happen again.”
“You don’t make mistakes.”
“I did this time.”
He made a sound that sounded like an affirmation and stared off into the distance.
Wren had noticed early on in their odd relationship that he didn’t make eye contact with people. Whenever she watched his eyes, it was too hard to pay attention. He flickered between his own dark eyes and that of a Demon too quickly for most people to feel comfortable with.
She had a feeling that Pitch was a little too close to whatever creature possessed him.
“I’ll take care of him,” he said.
“I don’t need you to take care of him, Pitch. Rupert’s harmless enough; he was just upset.”
“People get what they pay for. But I can’t have customers roughing up distributors.”
“I’m not one of your distributors,” Wren said. He had no right to step in with her patrons when she didn’t ask him to.
“Close enough.”
“I am not!”
He looked at her then. His eyes were completely black as he stared her down. Red smoke hovered around him like a halo before he finally nodded.
Pitch wasn’t usually so serious. Though his expression rarely changed, he was always so sarcastic that she thought he was making jokes. Tonight the intensity in his gaze made her nervous. It seemed to be a constant state for her lately.
“Why are you worried about me anyways?” she asked as one of her brows raised.
“I don’t mind you.”
“That’s--” Wren was about to make a stinging reply but stopped herself with a shrug. “Actually from you, that’s probably about the best I’ll get. Is that the only reason you came to visit me at this ungodly hour?”
He didn’t move in the slightest, but she noticed the change in his demeanor as he appeared to relax more. “I’ve got news.”
Wren waited for him to say something after that, but he only dragged a breath of his cigar and let the smoke trail out his nose. The billows of red looked as though he was bleeding.
She rolled her eyes.
“Pitch, really. Do I have to ask?”
The bright flash of teeth in the darkness proved her right.
“For God’s sake, Pitch. What’s the news?”
“I’ve got a new product coming out soon.”
“Oh really.” She yanked a pillow towards her to get more comfortable and sighed. “Are you going to make me ask this time or were you planning to tell me?”
“We’ve found a way to put the emotions into pills. We’re going to start bottling and selling those.”
Wren wrinkled her nose at him. “The entire point of Juice is that it’s not a pill.”
“But if it’s a pill, we can sell many of them that give the same result without having to have vials for each treatment.”
“Oh they’re treatments now?” Wren shook her head. “Juice is meant to be a recreational activity not something that’s medication. Pitch, you know this. It’s in our contract with M.O.M.”
“The pills won’t last as long, and they’ll be more expensive, but they’re going out on the market, Wren. I didn’t want you to be blindsided.” He blew out another smoke ring, though she imagined this one had edges that were a little spiked.
“You haven’t run this past M.O.M. Have you.” It wasn’t a question. Wren knew that he hadn’t. Pitch always pushed a little too hard at the government, and that was going to get him hanged.
He didn’t say anything in response.
“Pitch, you know how dangerous that is.”
“We’re so far out from them; they’ll have no idea what hit them until everyone wants some.”
“You don’t have enough people working for you to do this, Pitch. Do you even understand the amount of memories that would be required to mass produce something as simple as Happiness? Let alone others!”
“Do I not?” He looked at her again, and she watched as his eyes slowly changed entirely to black. She always thought that his eyes changed differently than others. It was as though someone had dropped ink directly into the center of his pupil and the darkness spread to swallow everything in its path.
“Pitch…” She started to chide him but stopped herself. Wren didn’t have any control over this man, nor did she want to. Pitch was as uncontrollable as a hurricane and just as deadly. Instead, she shrugged.
“Just wanted you to be in on the loop, little bird.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I’ll call you what I want.” He grinned at her as he started to get up.
Wren couldn’t help herself. She leaned out her window and snatched ahold of his wrist. He fr
oze as though she had broken some unspoken rule. In a way, she guessed she had. Wren had never seen anyone touch Pitch.
He stared down at her hand with such intensity that she worried he was going to rip it off of him. But when he reached down to touch her, it was with infinite care as he gently took hold of her wrist and pushed it away from him.
“Just be careful,” she murmured as she pulled her hand back. Her skin felt hot where he had touched her arm. Not the kind of warm tingles when she was attracted to someone but the lingering burn after she had touched a hot pan. She could feel the imprints of his fingers against her skin and refused to look down to see if red marks were welted against her freckled skin.
“I always am,” he said quietly.
Wren always had questions for Pitch. He was a dangerous man with an agenda she didn’t have time to consider. But there was a question that burned in her head as he turned to leave once more.
“Pitch?”
He paused but did not look back at her. His gaze remained trained upon the crumbling sidewalk outside her building.
“Have you ever heard of a Dream Walker named Burke?”
“I heard he paid you a visit.” Wren watched as the muscles of Pitch’s shoulders rolled. “The name used to send shockwaves whenever it was mentioned. People were afraid of him. I can’t say I’ve heard anything recently, though. He left M.O.M., and as far as I know, has been making his rounds. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.” Pitch paused. “But if he stepped in when you needed him to, then he can’t be as bad as the rumors say.”
Wren didn’t watch as he hopped down from her fire escape, but she could hear the solid thump as his boots hit the pavement two stories below.
She wasn’t sure if Pitch taking Burke’s side was a good or bad thing. Most likely, it was both.
“What is it with today?” she muttered as she fell back against her nest of pillows.
“Technically, it’s yesterday and today.”
“With the sass? Really?”
“Can’t help it, love.”
“Yes, you can.” Wren pressed the pillow firmly against her face and let out an angry shout. Whatever drain her life was traveling down had better end in a treasure trove and not a gutter or she would be very angry.