Jonas shook his head. “No. Private contract. I branched out a bit after you left.”
Lita squinted at him, trying to discern whether he was lying. She didn’t enjoy the fact that he probably was. Looking back down, she flipped through the last couple of pages. Most of them were scrawled notes detailing Amelie’s physical description, various habits, and usual whereabouts at any given time of day. “You riding shotgun on this?”
“Not this time around. Strictly solo mission, no cleanup necessary. My employer wants it to be publicly known that this was a hit, just not discovered by whom. Get in, do the job, get out. No traces.”
Lita nodded and closed the folder, then looked past Jonas, staring off into space. “Timeline?”
“Soon. For the next three days, you’ll have a four-hour window of entry every night between 10 pm and 2 am. The sooner you do it, the better the pay. If you can do it tonight, I’m authorized to accept virtually any price you can name.”
Lita’s jaw tensed and her eyes shot back to him. “A job like this requires two weeks’ prep, minimum. You know that.”
“Sure, for gathering intel—which you have—and securing entry and exit—which you also have. This is giftwrapped for you, Lita. All we need is someone to pull the trigger.”
“If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it? Or anyone else on the usual roster, huh?” She shoved the folder at him and snatched up her drink, throwing back a large gulp. She was getting tired of this. Her gut wasn’t feeling it and her head was starting to ache.
Jonas took the folder and sighed, leaning against the banister. “A lot’s changed in the last few years. It’s not like it used to be. The major city uniforms have started cracking down hard on contract jobs. Nearly every hitter worth a damn has an enforcer or two in his pocket now, but it’s just some piggy who’d squeal to anyone with a bigger sack of gold. This job needs anonymity. We need a ghost, someone who can just disappear after the payout. No strings, no connections. That’s why I came to you. It’s in your wheelhome and nobody will question you dropping off the continent without any notice.”
“It’s ‘wheelhouse’, you dumb shit,” Lita said absently as she rolled her glass between her palms, taking a moment to think things over. “Five-hundred thousand,” she said finally, “in Ayenee Marks, no bullshit Chicane Credits. Plus safe passage to England.” She paused for a beat, then added, “And a car. A decent one. And you know I want half up front, especially if you expect me to do this tonight.”
Jonas reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a very small notebook. He flipped it open and scanned over a couple of pages, then nodded to himself and pocketed it once more. “I can do two-hundred thousand and probably trade ship papers by this afternoon, but if you want a decent car you’ll have to pick it up at the finish line with the rest of the cash.”
Lita quirked a brow. “And how am I supposed to get to the job, huh? Skip merrily the whole way?”
Jonas scoffed. “Like you’ve never stolen a car before. You can borrow my toolkit if you misplaced yours.” She glared at him, but when a moment passed and she hadn’t thrown any more arguments at him, he pressed further. “So does this mean you’re in?”
Taking a slow, deep breath, Lita looked down at her glass. After staring into the clear liquid’s reflective surface for another long moment, she finally replied, “You get me the cash by 5 o’clock, and I’m in,” then quaffed the rest of her drink.
IV
“I don’t like him,” Rain said flatly as Alex slipped into the bedroom. He looked up from where he had just finished lighting three candles on a small nightstand, illuminating the room in soft, flickering shades of orange. There wasn’t much to it. Four walls and a curtain-shrouded window. By the nightstand was a simple twin bed with a yellow quilt, and a nondescript wooden chair sat against the wall to the left of the door, next to a small closet. Alex found it odd that someone like Lita would even own a spare bed, though he supposed it was possible that the apartment had come furnished.
“You don’t like anyone,” Alex teased as he crossed the room. He put his food on the nightstand and sat down on the bed, then bounced his rear on it twice, feeling its comfort level before reaching down to untie his shoes.
“I don’t mind you,” Rain said. He pulled off his long coat and draped it over the back of the chair.
“Of course you don’t, I’m your brother. It’s inherent.” Alex stretched out on the bed with a groan followed by a satisfied sigh as he folded his hands behind his head. He had fully intended on eating more before doing that, but he was finding himself far more tired than hungry.
“Not necessarily…” Rain said absently. He went to the side of the window and pulled the curtain away just enough to carefully peek outside. This side of the building faced west and was still heavily shadowed in the low morning light. “…look at Cain and Abel.”
“You don’t believe in God,” Alex said, staring up at the ceiling as he spoke.
“He doesn’t believe in me either. The disdain is mutual,” Rain said in a low tone. Down below, a pair of children was running across the road towards a small grassy park. Two young boys, one blond and one dark-haired. They appeared to be playing tag. Rain closed his eyes with a sigh and let the curtain fall closed.
“You going to rest?” Alex asked.
Rain shrugged. “If I do, I’ll take the floor. You need to get some sleep.” He could tell the boy was exhausted. They’d been travelling around Ayenee and hadn’t been home in the better part of a week. Rain insisted on educating his brother to the best of his ability, and sometimes that involved taking him on long trips across the continent. It also allowed them to look for places to stock up on various supplies. Good days were spent on lumpy inn beds, and bad ones camped out in the car which, while beautiful, was considerably less than comfortable to sleep in.
When Alex didn’t respond, Rain looked over to see that his eyes had slipped closed, so he left him be and went to the closet to glance around inside. There was no clothing, just a couple of small wooden packing crates stacked on top of one another and an old hunting rifle leaning against them. Turning his eyes up to the closet’s single shelf, he quirked a brow at the sight of multiple small boxes of ammunition in sizes ranging from nine millimeter to forty-four caliber. He wondered what a tender who seemed to rarely make it home would need with such munitions.
Rain hated guns, always had. He had never fired one himself, though he was quite adept with a crossbow and would probably be a very good shot if he had any interest in such things. Still, he loathed the devices. Found no purpose in their existence other than to kill.
He considered them the vampires of technology.
Next to the boxes of ammunition were a couple of empty mason jars. Rain grabbed one and closed the closet door. Digging his cigarettes and lighter out of his coat, he then went and found a seat on the floor against the corner opposite the bed. He placed the jar in front of him and was just about to light a cigarette when he heard something slam back in the living room, followed by the creak of the front door opening.
He could hear them talking out there, and were he to concentrate, he could easily make out everything being said. Hell, he could likely hear interaction two apartments down, were the speakers discoursing loudly enough. Without intending to, he picked up the words “shitty apartment” and “lap of luxury,” but then Alex began to stir and Rain’s attention was drawn to him.
“Mmmm,” Alex said sleepily. “What about her?” He turned his head, half opening his eyes to look at his brother.
“What are you talking about?” Rain asked, then lit his cigarette.
“You said you don’t like him, but what about her?”
He jetted smoke from his nostrils. “She’s abrasive and off-putting.”
Alex laughed a little. “And you’re not?”
Rain sighed. “There’s something about her.” He looked to the door, his mind skimming over the few short hours they had known the young woman. “It seems like
there’s more to her than just some bartender.”
“I think you like her,” Alex said with a chuckle.
Rain snorted in response.
“Well, either way, being around her might do you some good,” Alex said, then yawned.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, interacting with a human. Maybe making a friend.”
“You’re the only friend I need.” He took a deep drag and let the smoke out slow.
“Maybe…but maybe you need more than just a teenage boy to talk with. Did you ever think that involving yourself with people might make you feel more human?”
“But I’m not human,” Rain said, looking to his brother.
“You were once,” Alex replied, then offered him a warm smile before rolling over to face the wall. He was asleep within moments.
Rain finished off his cigarette, snuffing it out on the inner side of the jar and dropping it to the bottom. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned his head back against the corner and closed his eyes. He began taking slow, even breaths, gradually falling into a state of meditative relaxation.
The breathing wasn’t necessary. He had encountered a number of vampires in his time, but never saw one that shared his own personal urge to continue the autonomic chore of the humans. If anything, the process was actually somewhat painful. The air caused a slight burning sensation as it ran through his dry trachea and pushed open his withered lungs, only to escape back out just as pure as it went in, completely unfiltered by his dead body.
He sometimes wondered why he did it. He hadn’t for so many years, but then just seemed to pick it up again out of the blue. It wasn’t even automatic. Alex once told him that he stopped if he was concentrating very hard on a task, sometimes for hours at a time. His brother believed it was a subconscious wish to be human again, but Rain dismissed this with a wave of his hand. It was a fool’s errand to dream of such things, and it betrayed the naïveté of his brother’s youth to suggest it.
Still, he sometimes wished he could remember a time when taking a deep breath felt good. A time when it didn’t come with pain. The closest he could come were the first cool inhalations after a cigarette. Smoking hurt worse than breathing, so for a scant few seconds after he took that last drag, breathing felt almost refreshing. Almost.
“Restin’, eh?”
Rain’s eyes snapped wide open, then narrowed at the sight of the old man standing in front of him. He was clad in garb circa mid-1800’s, but its white button-down shirt was stained red from where his throat had been torn wide open, revealing all the cords of his neck beneath.
“Go away,” Rain said in a low tone, finding a cigarette as he did. It was always the old man first.
“I know a thing or two about rest, young man. Not the peaceful variety, mind you, but rest nonetheless.” The man’s lips turned up into a leer, baring crooked yellow teeth.
“Young?” Rain scoffed. “I’m older than you.”
“I suppose you are, boyo,” the old man said with a laugh. In the exposed meat of his throat, little red bubbles birthed themselves and popped, dropping specks here and there on the floor. “But you an’ me, we’re not agin’ a day, are we? Not now, not ever, aye?”
Rain pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Look, would you just—” when he looked up again, the man was gone. He sighed, took a slow drag off his cigarette, and said unenthusiastically, “Who’s next?”
No sooner had he asked than a little girl, about six, stepped out of the shadows across the room. Her curly red hair matched the smears of blood streaking her otherwise white nightgown where it was torn from the center of her chest down to the hem just past her knees. Her right eye was missing, and thick fluid dripped down her cheek like morbid tears.
“Where’s Dad and Mum?” she asked in a squeaky voice.
“They’re dead, love,” Rain said flatly and took another pull from his cigarette. He had seen this show too many times to be shocked by most of its acts anymore. “But you outlived them by a couple of weeks, if memory serves.”
“My pretty night dress is all ruined,” she whimpered.
“So it is,” Rain said absently. He looked up toward the ceiling and shot a jet of smoke from his nose. But when he brought his eyes back down, every muscle in his body tensed. “No,” he whispered. “Not you.”
A young boy of about eleven had taken the girl’s place. “I only wanted help.” He was a brown-skinned boy with black hair and dark eyes. Not mutilated like the others, he bore only a single deep bite on the side of his neck. His blood had been much too precious to waste.
Rain shook his head and pushed himself back further against the wall as if trying to shrink away into it. “No. Pick someone else. Anyone else, just not you.”
“But I trusted you,” the boy said, taking a step closer. “I trusted you and then I was your last. Your very last.” His hands moved to the wound on his throat. “Can you still taste it? Is it still sweet like before, or has it turned to ashes in your mouth?”
“No. No, no, no, no…” Rain turned his head to the side until his cheek pressed against the wall and he shut his eyes as tightly as he could. His breathing stopped and he held still, waiting for whatever the boy would say next.
But there was only silence.
Letting out a slow, shuddering breath, Rain slowly turned his head back. He was just about to open his eyes when a hiss came from right next to his ear, close enough that he could smell sour, decrepit breath. “I trusted you!”
“No!” Rain gasped, sitting bolt upright, his breath fast and frightened. He looked frantically around the dim room, but there was nothing. Nothing but his coat on a chair and his brother in a bed.
Had he passed out? Had he been dreaming? At first it seemed to make perfect sense, until he looked down to see a burnt-out cigarette butt between his fingers. That, and the room was filled with the overpowering smell of death.
Rain knew that scent quite well.
He dropped the butt into the jar and pulled himself to his feet. Running a hand through his hair, he sighed and looked over the sleeping form of his brother. Dreaming or not, he must not have made much noise. The boy was a light sleeper.
Turning to the window, he leaned against the wall and pulled the curtain back just a hair again. Time certainly had passed. It was late afternoon now, and the sun would be falling to a safe level in just over an hour. Rain pushed himself off the wall and went about the task of waking up Alex.
It was time to get heading home.
FIVE
I
While Alex slept, Rain spoke to ghosts, and Lita stared at her bedroom ceiling, Amelie was on a small stone bench in the apple orchard past the palace’s west wing.
It was a particularly beautiful late summer day. The rain from the previous night had brought out a wonderful smell in the grassy orchard, and the whole world seemed to be at play in the brilliant sunlight. From her vantage point atop the hill, Amelie could see out across the vineyard, past the high stone wall, all the way to the citizens of Chicane as they made their way about town, enjoying the delightfully warm weather as they lived their daily lives.
But Amelie was not gleefully taking in the day. She felt a dim level of relaxation wash over her at the feeling of the sunshine on her bare shoulders, but the sensation was superficial at best. Inside, she was filled with unease. Though she had eventually made her way back to her own bedchamber last night, she had returned early in the morning to visit her father once more and had found him in a much different state than she left him. He was incoherent with pain, and Nurse Winters had to usher her out of the room so she could focus on caring for him. The encounter had startled her badly, and after that had faded she was left with the realization that she and Michael could be taking control of this city in a matter of days, if not only hours.
With that realization came even greater concern over her impending partnership. These were the times that she and her stepbrother should be coming together, beginning
to form plans for transitioning Chicane into a new era of leadership. But it seemed as though Amelie had seen less of Michael than ever the past couple of days. She was sure he was probably very busy making arrangements for everything that was to come, but if that was true then why wasn’t he involving her? Was he intentionally excluding her, or might he be sitting somewhere right now wondering all these things about her? There was an intangible wall between them, but she couldn’t be sure if it was one of intentional design or if it was simply born out of mutual hesitance about getting to know one another. And whichever it may be, Amelie had no idea what to do about it.
Lying back on the bench with a sigh, she looked up at the treetops as her hand fiddled with the end of her long braid. It was a nervous habit she’d had since childhood, one her father always admired while still admonishing her for tying up her hair into knots.
As she watched the leaves sway above her, two monarch butterflies made their way out of the tree. They flitted around one another, dancing through the air in their own private ballet. Amelie smiled, wondering if they might be in love. She pondered whether she would ever find love, whether she would be allowed to. Her father had found his before taking the throne, but was forced into a new union once the first had ended. Would she, too, be pushed into marriage for the sake of image as leader of this city? She wasn’t even sure there were statutes to govern such a thing. A ruler of her age and sex was completely unprecedented.
“Hello, Ms. Lamoureux,” Christopher said with a smile as he passed by, jolting her out of her daydream and into an upright position.
“Christopher!” Amelie called out as he continued on his path through the orchard. “Wait a moment.”
He paused and turned. “I know, I know. You want me to call you Amelie.”
She waved a hand and shook her head. “No, n—I mean, yes, please do—but I thought perhaps you could take a break from your rounds for a short while. Come talk with me?”
The Crimes of Orphans Page 7