Delirium (Debt Collector 1)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  She doesn’t cry out in pain, so my anger surges back. “Now I know you’re lying!”

  She’s sprawled on my floor, struggling to push off her shoes.

  “Sick children are highest on the transfer list.” I’m breathing hard, the anger coming out in huffs of breath. “They’ve got sky-high potential. If you’re going to lie, at least make up a better one than that.”

  I want to hit something. The bottle of vodka on the table beckons me, and a sensation sinks through me, like my cut of Mr. Henry’s life energy is draining down to my toes and leaking out of my body. The ritual is ruined. I’m going to drink that entire bottle by myself, and maybe the other one I have stashed in the kitchen, too. It feels like a punch to the stomach, and my eyes start to glaze. I don’t notice the girl again until I see her scrambling to her feet, spiky shoe in hand.

  She throws it at me.

  The shoe hits me square in the stomach, the sharp heel biting into my shirt and actually hurting like hell. I’m stunned.

  “You jerk!” she yells at me and throws the other shoe. I manage to duck this time. “You stupid, mean, nasty jerk! You don’t know anything!”

  I straighten and check if she has anything else to throw, choking back a laugh at her name calling. “Stupid, mean, and nasty?” Then I lose it a little and actually laugh. “Whoever you work for needs to teach you how to curse.” But as I say it, I know something’s wrong. Something about all of this is wrong, but I can’t put my vodka-buzzed finger on it.

  She lets out a guttural growl, throwing both hands in the air and shaking her fists at something above her. I actually look up to the ceiling to see if there’s something there, but of course there’s just the light panels shining down on her.

  “Who do you work for?” I doubt she’ll tell me, but it’s worth asking. I’d like to know who’s trying to capture and torture me into doing their collecting.

  She stares at me. Angry tears have watered her cheeks, but she’s smeared them away. “Why do you care where I work?” She throws her hands out. “Why does that matter?” She looks at me like I just asked why she paints her toenails, which are bright red on her bare feet, but not her fingernails. As if I’m the crazy one, when she’s posing as a sex worker to entrap a collector, something only a demented person would do.

  I look at her anew. She’s standing with her fists curled, her hair mussed on one side, in her bare feet. She’s sending me death glares. She’s not afraid—of me, of whoever sent her here, of anything. Instead of being afraid, she’s spitting-nails angry.

  I’d be entirely within my rights to drain her life energy right now, at least enough to subdue her. Never mind that I’m half-drunk and pissed off, you don’t physically assault a collector without expecting at least the possibility of losing years off your life. That’s something no sane person would do, if they had a choice.

  Maybe she doesn’t have a choice.

  A flicker of something alive lights up inside me; this girl is brave. I’m not sure what she’s brave about, but she’s facing an impossible situation where she has no choice but to go up against a collector, and she does it with righteous anger. And thrown shoes. And weak curses.

  If she’s the tool of a mob boss, I’m a choir boy.

  “How old is your sister?” I ask.

  She blinks, the anger dropping off her face like it never belonged there. “She’s… she’s ten.”

  “No family?” I guess.

  “No, our… our parents died a few years ago,” she says. “I take care of Tilly now.”

  I bend down to pick up the shoe she threw at me, the broken-heeled one she nailed me with. I step to within a couple feet of her and hand it over. “How old are you?”

  She takes the shoe and stares at it, then looks at me. “Does this mean… are you going to help me?”

  “Are you going to dodge my questions?”

  She swallows and straightens. “Does it matter how old I am?”

  I repress a smile. Does she think I’m going to bust her for being an underage sex worker? I’m guessing she’s nineteen or twenty, but she could be less. I’m no good at gauging ages. “I suppose not.”

  She grips the shoe in her hand and looks up into my face. She’s a lot shorter without the heels. “If you help my sister,” she says very solemnly, “I’ll have sex with you, just like I said.”

  I take the shoe from her, break off the dangling, busted heel, and hand it back with a smirk. “Then we better go see if you actually have a sister.”

  She turns red, then ducks her head and skitters across my apartment in her red vinyl slicker, looking for her other shoe.

  I’m going to regret this. I know I am.

  But as I watch her give a quick glance to the vodka bottle and shot glasses, I know the alternative is sitting on my couch and trying to drink away the memory of her apple smell. And that’s the kind of weekend where I end up pulling out a gun and thinking thoughts my psych officer would not approve of.

  I think my odds are actually better with Apple Girl.

  It’s strange to see that it’s still daylight outside. It feels like days have passed since I rode the Metro down to LifeLong to pay out to Whitby. Maybe because I had planned to spend the next few days hiding in my cave of an apartment. But instead, I’m back on the Metro with Apple Girl, hoping she’s not taking me on a long ride to a painful death. With each train station we pass, that seems less and less likely. There are plenty of mob bosses out in the east side where I live; they wouldn’t need to send me on a train ride out of town to torture me into collecting for them.

  The car is half occupied, the rush-hour just starting, but Apple Girl’s in a row by herself, sitting by the window and watching the slum houses go by like it’s critically important that she burn each one into her memory. She’s avoided looking at me since we left my apartment. I’m standing near the train door, hand on a metal pole that holds up the thin, waist-high partition between us.

  “What’s your name?” I ask. She glances at me, then crosses her arms across her red slicker. The movement reminds me that I still don’t know what’s underneath.

  “Elena.” She looks back out the window.

  I move around to her side of the divider, so I can talk to her without the entire train car overhearing. The rattle of loose windows and creak of the car as it rocks back and forth gives us a small amount of sound privacy.

  “Thanks, Elena,” I say.

  That finally draws her attention from the crumbling architecture whizzing by outside. She frowns. “Thanks for what?”

  “For telling me your true name.”

  She seems irritated by this. “I could be lying about that.”

  She’s so bad at lying it makes me grin. I put my hand on the seatback and lean in to whisper in her ear, “I don’t think so,” just to provoke her some more. She scoots closer to the window, giving me a dirty look, and I pull back, internally chastising myself. I’m already on a very dangerous, slippery slope with her—liking the way she smells, the way she looks, the way she talks back to me and isn’t afraid.

  “What’s your name?” she asks, and there’s that edge again. That defiance, like everything that comes out of her mouth is a direct challenge to something about me.

  “Lirium,” I say automatically, then add, “That’s not my real name,” and instantly regret it.

  “What’s your real name?”

  I ignore her question, fold my arms, and lean back against the partition. That was a stupid mistake. I need to be more careful, not get taken in by her. Her story about her little sister on her death bed doesn’t hold up: those kids have their whole lives ahead of them. They can get the best medical treatment and still never use up all their future worth. Elena has something else—someone else—she wants this hit for, although she seems to be sticking to the little sister story for now. I don’t think she’s luring me into a trap, but I could still be wrong about that.

  The rocking motion of the train fills the silence between us.


  Just when she’s done glaring at me and about to look out the window again, I ask, “How did you find me?” Whether her story about her sister is true or not, if she can find me, another collector hunter can do the same.

  “I didn’t find you,” she says, giving me an icy look. “Any collector would do.”

  “Ouch.” I give a small smile. “I guess I should ask how you knew that Madam Anastazja serviced collectors. I’m going to guess that you didn’t just join one sex worker union after another until you found one that takes collector clients.”

  She frowns and studies the hand rail next to the window, unfolding her arms and grasping onto it. I stare a little too long at her slender fingers working the metal of the bar, then drag my gaze back to her face and wait for an answer.

  Finally, she says, “The nurses that take care of Tilly… I asked them if they knew any collectors. They didn’t.”

  I nod. As a general rule, nurses don’t get friendly with the collectors who come to kill the patients in their care.

  “But there was one,” Elena says, then stops and looks at me. “I don’t want to get her in trouble.” Her warm brown eyes once again convince me that she’s not leading me into a trap.

  “I just want to know so I can decide if I need to change apartments once we’re through with our business.”

  Her hand moves to the center clasp on her slicker. That’s not the business I meant, but I choose to ignore it.

  “Why?” she asks, her voice turning sour. “Are you afraid more girls with sick sisters will find you and ask you for favors?”

  I take a breath, close my eyes, and lean my head against the metal pole at the end of the partition, banging it lightly. She has no idea what could happen, but really, why would she? It’s not like most people think about what it’s like, the life of a debt collector. When I look back, the sarcastic scrunch on her pretty face is gone.

  “Someone’s after you, aren’t they?” she asks, eyes wide. It’s like she’s concerned for me now—like I’m next in the endless line of people that she apparently worries about. This makes something soften inside me and, at the same time, razor scratches me like the heel of her shoe, which still stings where it cut me.

  “Not someone in particular,” I say sharply. “Just any of several mob families. Or the families of anyone who has ever had a debt collected. Or anyone who wants an illegal hit that they’re not entitled to which could be used for better purposes in the world.” I make my words at the end point directly at her.

  She flinches and pauses before saying, “I don’t think… I’m sure my nurse friend wouldn’t tell anyone else. And she doesn’t really know anything anyway. She only told me there was a madam on the east side who has collector clients. I figured the rest out for myself.”

  I raise my eyebrows and tilt my head to show my skepticism. “So you did go to all the sex worker unions, one by one—”

  “No,” she cuts me off. “I pretended to be a hit-seeker. It didn’t take long to figure out which madam would hook me up.”

  “Didn’t Anastazja check your background?” I ask, mostly out of desperation. Now I’m wondering how many other times I’ve been rolling the dice and coming up lucky instead of dead with Anastazja’s girls.

  “Yes.”

  “And you fooled her?” I asked. “Where do you work, government records? You’re obviously not…” I wave my hand at her midsection, where she’s still clutching the clasp of her slicker.

  “Not what?”

  “Not an experienced sex worker,” I say. “What did you do, forge documents?”

  “I told her the truth.”

  That stops me cold. I stare at her, open my mouth, and close it again. “You told her about your sister?” I say, my brain still processing this new, highly improbable information.

  “Yes.”

  “That you have a dying sister and are seeking a hit for her?”

  “Yes.”

  Anastazja set me up. My face gets hot, and I’m thinking that I may not be able to return to my apartment after all. That my idea about going on this little adventure with Apple Girl and then returning to my normal life just got shot all to hell. I run my hand over my face and peer out the window, and only then notice that we’re nearly stopped.

  Elena notices it too. She pushes quickly away from her window and shuffles past me. The train door slides open. I follow her as she darts around the partition.

  “This is our stop,” she says breathlessly, hustling down the three steps to exit the train. She stops when she reaches the platform and turns to look at me.

  I don’t move.

  Fear flashes across her face. “Please,” she says, or I think she says it. I can’t hear her over the noise of the platform and the other passengers shuffling in the train car, but I see her lips move.

  She says it again.

  I should turn around, ride the Metro home, and start packing. I’ll have to, obviously, stop using sex worker services. There will be no more ritual, no more drinking and sexing away the blots on my soul. I’ll have to find some other way to get through the nights. I may have to relocate out of California altogether, and not just because Elena knows where to find me now. A whole lot of Anastazja’s other sex workers know who I am and could identify me on the street. If I can’t trust that Anastazja has cleared them, if she’s steering illegal hit-seekers to me, for God’s sake, I can’t trust anything anymore. I can’t remember the name of the debt collector who referred me to Madam A in the first place, but it doesn’t really matter. I need to call my psych officer, move, and find somewhere safe again. Whatever Elena’s problem is, whatever the truth is behind her dying-sister-story, she’ll have to deal with it on her own.

  It’s not my business.

  The train car doors start to close.

  Suddenly I’m leaping through them, jamming my hand on the sharp edge of the door on the way. I stumble but catch myself before I splay out on the rough, rubberized surface of the station platform. I’m breathing hard and looking into Elena’s brown eyes, half convinced that something supernatural shoved me off the train. And fully convinced that I’m crazy to be doing this.

  The relief is plain on her face. The train buffets us with wind as it whisks away.

  Please don’t make me regret this, I think.

  She shyly takes my hand, and I let her lead me away from the platform.

  I thought my apartment was in the low-rent district, but Elena’s makes mine look spacious. From the front door, I can see the whole place, with different corners serving as kitchenette, bedroom, and living room. There’s only one bed, but on the couch, a miniature version of Elena is sleeping. The sofa appears to be her permanent residence, judging by the number of tattered, stuffed animals that stand guard around the perimeter of the cushions. The girl’s skin is gray, her eyes sunken, and if the blanket on her chest didn’t move with a tiny breath of life while I watched, I would swear she was already dead.

  I’ll be damned. Elena has a sick sister, after all.

  Elena tugs my arm, finger pressed to her lips, but it’s not like I’m in danger of saying anything. I’m still trying to process what I’m seeing. Elena urges me across the room, but not near the sister. There’s a door in the wall, and I think she’s going to take me into a closet, but when she slides it open, I realize it’s the bathroom.

  We shuffle inside, but the bathroom is the size of a closet anyway. I press against the wall, and Elena scoots up on the edge of the sink, but we’re still knocking knees. Hers poke attractively out of the red slicker, which she’s trying to adjust so it doesn’t show any more leg. The coat squeaks loudly against the tile of the sink, so she stops moving and closes the door again.

  “How…” I start, then stop. This makes no sense to my brain. “Why don’t you have her in the hospital?” I figure that’s the most logical place to start.

  “She’s been in the hospital, off and on, for most of the last year. She has leukemia. I brought her home six weeks ago.”
>
  “Why?”

  “‘Why,’ Lirium?” she asks, her voice rising. “Why? Did you see her? She’s dying.”

  “But, she’s so young,” I say, still not understanding. “She should be getting life force hits all the time. She should still be in the hospital, where they can give her proper care and keep trying new treatments. There are new treatments all the time…” As I’m speaking, I see the weakness of my words reflected in the growing anger on Elena’s face.

  “They’re not giving her any new treatments, Lirium,” she says, her face getting closer to the color of her coat. “She’s not going to recover. She’s not going to live long enough to reach her potential, so she doesn’t make the list for the life hits. She’s not going to make it to adulthood. They know that. I…” She pauses like she’s choking on something. “Even I know that.”

  I’m speechless. This shouldn’t happen. “But they should keep trying,” I say weakly. “Even if… even if they think she’s going to die, they should still keep giving her hits.” That’s how it’s supposed to go. That’s what I’ve always been told happens. That’s what should happen.

  Her hands clench the side of the sink. They’ve gone completely white with how hard she’s gripping it. “I brought her home, Lirium, because if I didn’t, they were going to transfer her out.”

  “They can’t—” My stomach feels like it’s sinking into a bottomless pit. “She’s a kid!”

  Elena just looks at me, tears glassing her eyes.

  “No one transfers out a kid.” I have to explain this to her, make her understand. There has to be some kind of mistake. “The law specifically states that no one under eighteen can be cashed out. There’s just too much potential, they can’t ever use it up. And no decent debt collector would do it anyway—” I stop and my stomach hollows out completely. Because I know—I know deep in the pit of my soul—that debt collectors aren’t decent.

  Not even close.

  I lean back against the wall, weakness spreading throughout my body. I can see it. Some debt collector that’s looking for that big hit. The doctors could be wrong; that kid might make it, and then they would score an entire lifetime in one hit. It would be… it’s crazy, actually. A recipe for almost certain madness and death. But I know there are collectors who would take the chance.