by Ellie Margot
“What’s in it for you?” asked Riette.
“I’m not a shit bag, okay? I didn’t want to trade her. I only did it because I needed Danny for a job I was doing and I knew she’d be okay. I want to make it right.”
“What else?” said Cassian.
“That’s it,” said Guy. He put his hands up in a defenseless gesture. “I’m trying to do the right thing.” He paused again. “How about this? You take me with you. I help you find Corin, or I give you the money I got for her.”
“Why would you do that?” asked Riette.
“Moral compass?” asked Guy. He let out a breath. “I’m not in the business of selling people. It doesn’t sit well with me. Let me fix this.” He looked at each of them. “Please.”
Riette and Cassian shared a look. They didn’t say out loud that Guy was full of shit, but they both knew it. They knew better.
“Besides, if you’re anything like her, you don’t have the money or the means to get by. I mean, she’d be okay, but she wouldn’t like how she got that way.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” said Cassian.
“Easy, tiger. I’m not infringing.”
“It’s not about infringing,” Riette said. “I don’t belong to him, and I warn once and cut fucking twice. Am I crystal?”
“Of course, darling, I wouldn’t think otherwise,” said Guy, and he looked at her again, wide eyed and eager.
“Shall we go to our little home far the fuck away from home then?” Guy asked before standing. He stretched and walked toward the front of the bar, not looking behind to see if they followed, but after a beat, they did.
Guy nodded at the woman at the bar, and she smiled back. Riette noticed it was a real one, one that brightened her whole face, right up to the eyes, and she wondered what had transpired between the two of them.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but whatever they were doing, they were in with Guy until they had better options.
Chapter 15
They didn’t make it all the way outside before Mekhi pulled them aside. Guy was right outside the entrance, and Mekhi was at his wit’s utter end.
“Let’s ghost this fuckwit,” said Mekhi. “I mean, I’m likely to kill him.”
“That’s not an option,” said Riette.
Cassian thought about it for a second before speaking. “She’s right.”
Guy poked his head back and tilted his head for them to follow him. They walked out and stood outside the bar away from the ears of the bums outside. The sun was lower in the sky. The air was dense with the humidity of the sea. Being that close to the water also brought on a chill that settled into one’s core. It was a dampness that a person couldn’t shake.
“You need me,” Guy said. “I thought I made that clear.”
“I need you like I need a gaping, bleeding, gnarly hole in my head,” said Mekhi.
“Anything would be an improvement,” said Guy.
“Fuck you, I’m a fucking model compared to you.”
“You’re right. In the right lighting, I could pretend you didn’t have straight from Demura red hair and the face only someone with that color would have.”
“I have red in my hair, too, shit head,” said Riette.
“No, yours is rose kissed. Big fucking difference, but all of this is beside the point. You need me. I need to help you all.”
No one said anything.
“How about this? How far do you think you’re going to get with this one? She’s a distraction to every creature with a dick that walks by her. Number two, I’m the only way you’re going to find Vitan tree roots here.”
Riette, Cassian, and Mekhi looked at each other. They knew that Vitan was where the most trees were. To find any outside of Vitan was surprising and relieving to Riette.
“Exactly,” said Guy. “I eat them because it calms me down, but if you need them to live, then you need me.”
“We have supplies.”
“Which will last fuck all,” said Guy. “You’ll deplete whatever you fit in your knapsacks in two days tops. Then you’ll be sitting ducks with nothing to trade but fucking sorrows. Let. Me. Help. You.”
“If it came to it, we’d find a way,” said Riette. “Period.”
“Oh yeah? How did you pay your way here? Did you take some of mommy’s precious jewels?”
“What do you know of my mother?”
“It wasn’t that long ago that I was one of you all. Sure, you all were children when I was there, but I would recognize you anywhere. I didn’t make it as high as I have by not taking notice. Anyone who’s paying enough attention would. You ever thought about why some people leave? They don’t come back for a reason.”
“They get killed,” said Mekhi.
“Some. Fuck, a lot. Yes, but not everyone. From what I know, people could choose not to go back. I know that might be hard to understand with you all being so fresh out of the bubble of good old home, but it isn’t perfect. My family worked for yours. They probably still do. The freckles alone are your calling card.”
Riette’s tattoo tingled. Her back was against a wall, and she hated it.
“None of that now,” said Guy. “You’re the voice of reason here with these two. There’s no time for you to turn on me, let alone the attention it would garner.”
He tried another tactic. “How did you pay your way here? I know you traveled by Georgette. If you were with anyone else, you wouldn’t have been here by now or in one piece. You were real lucky to have found Georgette. Luckier to find me. The other ship owners aren’t that good.”
Riette looked to Cassian. He shook his head. Mekhi said nothing.
Guy watched the exchange. “Tell me you didn’t do the stupid option. The option that no one in their right fucking mind does.”
“What I did—”
“You blood-oathed her? Seriously? Are they growing you all dumber back home now? Shit.”
Riette stepped forward. Her tattoo was burning, and she knew her hands were about to.
“No, Ri, it’s not worth it,” said Cassian.
Guy turned, running his hand through his hair and staring up at the sky.
“To Georgette of all people?”
“There’s nothing wrong with Georgette,” said Riette. She felt some loyalty to the woman who’d gotten them across the sea safely. Relatively. And she knew she had her share of the blame there.
Guy laughed, full out. “Nothing wrong with Georgette? Nothing at all? I guess that’s one way of thinking. A creative one.”
“Why would you say that?” asked Cassian. He turned to Riette. “If there’s something up with her, we need to know.”
“She’s crazy for one,” said Guy. “Looped out on a siren. Won’t leave her ship. I could keep going.”
“Shut up about her,” said Mekhi. “Or just shut up period.”
Guy nodded and shook his head. “Okay, some advice. Don’t give anyone a blood oath. No one. Whatever you’re trading for isn’t worth it. I have money. You need something, you see me.”
“I don’t do well in debt,” said Riette.
“You’re in more debt than you know, darling. I’m trying to get you out of it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing I can talk about on a street corner. There’s only one thing that happens on a street corner, and it’s not something you’d want to witness.” Guy turned, still shaking his head. He turned back. “Are you coming?”
Riette turned to the others. “What choice do we have?” she whispered. They shrugged.
“Fine,” she said.
“I’m touched,” said Guy.
“No, you’re about to be,” said Mekhi.
“Not you I’m interested in, buddy, but thanks anyway.”
Chapter 16
Riette’s version of around the corner was very, very different from Guy’s. She didn’t want to complain, but by that point, darkness had come upon them. They had been walking for hours, and she didn’t want to be
outside when she didn’t know what would crawl the streets of Gnatty Point when the night fell. There was also the issue of monsters that go bump in the darkness that Guy talked about.
He wasn’t nervous, though. Each building in the outskirts of the port was in similar disrepair as the Low End was. The walls crumbled in places. Things were cobbled together as if someone wanted the idea of a town but didn’t have the resources or the knowledge to put it together in a functional way. Many of the buildings were made of clay.
Guy showed them the house that belonged to the town doctor. A sign was on the man’s door. There was a place to buy provisions, groceries and the like, but while Riette could have stopped to look at each aspect of the town, it was the people that gave her the most pause. They were people that Riette had never seen before, and they looked at her as she passed. Despite it being late, there were still so many people out. They traveled alone, the majority single creatures each on their own mission.
Some of these creatures, unknown to Riette, had eyes that took up most of their heads. Some were impossibly tall, and her neck strained to take them in before she realized she shouldn’t look at them at all. Not with Guy’s warnings in her ears. She covered her head in the hood of the cloak and tried to shake off the worries growing steadily inside of her.
The skin around her tattoo twitched.
She had gone too long without recharging herself. If she had the ability to look at her shoulder, she knew she would find it red and throbbing from overuse. After a few more steps, she grabbed Guy’s arm, and he turned at the contact.
“Are we close?”
“Of course. I said we wouldn’t have to travel far.”
“And I said you were full of shit, and you continue proving it,” said Mekhi. He cracked his shoulders and stretched. He had taken on most of the bags from the journey. When Riette had protested, he told her he needed things in his hand to avoid killing their host. She hadn’t argued with him at that point.
They made it to the inn, if it could be called that, a few streets later. The place was dark. It looked like a building like the rest except it kept a candle in the window. Guy told them that was a sign that they were open to boarders. No candle, no service.
They made their way inside, and a man stood behind a desk. He hunched over it, and when he lifted his head, Riette realized she was in the presence of her second cyclops. This one was smaller, though. The only thing that gave him away was the obvious, one eye socket, square in the middle of his forehead.
He was more tanned than Jeffery, with a smaller build, though Riette guessed he could double as a shed if he was pressed. They were roughly the same proportions.
He stood and was several feet above all of them.
“Guy.”
“Baron,” said Guy.
“The room is still ready?” Guy asked.
“Prepped, though I’ll need to give more pillows since you have more guests.”
“We’d appreciate it,” said Riette.
“At least this one has manners,” said Baron. He smiled, and most of his front teeth were missing.
“He brings people here often?” asked Mekhi. He looked at Guy when he asked.
“Not usually. I think he mostly goes to their place. Except for the last girl. She was nice too.”
“Last girl?” Cassian asked. He stepped forward.
Guy waved the comment away. “We’re not here to count notches on a bedpost, okay?”
“She looked a little like you, come to think of it,” Baron said. “Elf too. All of you smell alike, you see.”
“Brown hair, this tall, wore black and green?” Cassian asked.
“Yep, give or take. It’s hard to see at night, and they were a little preoccupied.”
Mekhi frowned. “You son of a b—”
“Not like that,” Guy said. “It wasn’t Corin. Okay? It wasn’t. It was someone else. I didn’t have your girlfriend that long.” He held his hand up. “Can we get the keys and go upstairs before you get me killed, Baron?”
Baron laughed deep from his chest and tossed keys over to Guy. “Always in mischief, this one.”
“No, not true. I try to keep my shit localized, and you know it.”
Mekhi looked like he was two seconds from killing Guy again, but Riette pushed past him to follow Guy upstairs. When they got to the room, it was small. It had two beds, which looked problematic, but it was a stable place to lay one’s head.
“There’s a pull-out cot under that one,” Guy said as he motioned to the bed under the window. “Riette can get the main one, you two can share, and I’ll take the cot.”
“Fine,” Cassian said. “Whatever is fine. We need to make a plan, and we need to go over the details of who you sold my sister to.” His neck was red, and Riette knew he was at his breaking point.
“You all need to rest. I have Vitan in the closet there. Probably not as strong as your shit, but it’s enough to get you all back on your feet.” Guy bit off a chunk and chewed it with a smile on his face. “Can’t beat it.”
“Us recharging doesn’t block you from talking,” said Mekhi.
“Did you all chug testosterone on the trip over?”
“Enough. We do need to make a plan, and we do need to rest.” Riette walked over to one of the two windows in the room and started to open it to look down to the street below them.
“Don’t.” Guy jumped. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Girls showing their faces in windows get visitors, okay?” Guy scratched his neck saying this. He stepped back at the look he got from Cassian and Mekhi.
“I’m with you guys. I’m trying to keep her safe.”
“Let me worry about that,” said Riette. “If there’s a rule, just tell me. Not everything needs to be a pissing contest.”
The others kept talking, and Riette looked through the blinds outside. Her stomach clenched at the idea of being so far away from her mother. She let out a breath. It was one thing when they were at sea. She had enough things around her to keep her mind busy, but now she had a street just outside of her window that looked like it would never go to sleep, even when that was all she wanted to do.
Riette touched the curtain. She saw creatures, small ones and tall ones walking the streets. Then she heard a buzz. It was soft, and just outside of her window, she saw the creature. It was a woman, but it was small. It had tiny wings to support itself.
The window was cracked, which let the noise in from the street, but it also let the creature, what Riette had to believe was a Fairy, land on the opening too.
“Shit, don’t let it in,” said Guy. He moved closer.
“She’s beautiful,” Riette said, her voice all but air. She leaned down to touch it with one fingertip. The Fairy smiled at her, and as she got closer, it reared back and bit her finger.
“Fucker!” Riette yelled. She barely missed catching the Fairy in the window as she slammed it shut.
“Woah,” said Mekhi.
“I tried to tell you not to let it in,” said Guy.
Riette rubbed her finger. What the actual Demura was up with this place? Farther up the street, under a small light, people were fighting. She swallowed. Was she feeling this way because she was actually in danger, Fairy and beyond, or was it her mother’s speeches replaying in her head that were making her paranoid?
“I’m starving,” said Riette. She needed to do something normal. Eating could keep her brain busy for a few minutes.
“Was that a restaurant off the main lobby downstairs?”
“Yeah,” said Guy. “Baron does some cooking on the side. It’s kind of shit, but it won’t kill us.”
“With that recommendation…” Mekhi said.
“Let’s go,” said Riette. She grabbed her bag and headed out before the rest could even follow. She knew if she lingered, they’d fight about that too.
They found a seat downstairs, and Guy ordered them food. Baron had looked put out at first, but Riette could tell he wanted to be
useful. He even hummed to himself as he walked back to the small kitchen behind the main floor.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Riette pulled the small map she had folded until it fit into her bag. It was the map she had taken from her mother’s office. Seeing her mother’s delicate handwriting on the map made Riette’s stomach hurt once more.
“How accurate is this map?” She turned to Guy. The others didn’t say anything, but when she looked into Cassian’s eyes, it was obvious he knew what she had done.
Guy looked it over and started to laugh, big belly laughs that rocked his long sinewy body. He grabbed his side when he did it.
“It’s that funny?” Riette asked. She thought about how she had caught her mother looking over the map sometimes at night when she didn’t know Riette was looking. She saw her mother run her fingertips over it as if the map was telling her secrets through touch.
Riette had never told her mother that she knew, nor did she ask her why, but seeing Guy laugh at it, something that was so sacred to her mother, made her tattoo tingle and rage burn her insides.
“This was the world outside of Vitan when Esper was barely formed,” Guy said. He wiped a tear from his eye. He sobered a little when he saw the look on Riette’s face. “The artist must have thought he was a bona fide genius to come up with this shit. But that’s what it is. Shit. I’m sorry to be insensitive. It’s been a while since I got to see how backward Vitan was from the outside.”
“Why didn’t you return?” Riette asked. “Why did you leave in the first place?” Her face pinched. If it hadn’t been for Corin, she couldn’t have said if she would have ever left. She wouldn’t admit that out loud, but it was true.
“It doesn’t even matter anymore,” said Guy. His voice was quiet.
“How could it not matter? It’s part of you.” Mekhi frowned.
“It’s part of us that we can hardly even tap anymore. After the shift—”
“What shift? The Weakening?”
“Right. Yeah, after we were cut off from our full power.”
“That’s not even a world we knew,” Riette said. “It’s myth. It’s fucking legend. Why worry about that?”