by Lana Sky
God, I hope so.
“I’m drunk, Espi,” Arno says as if that explains everything. “Tomorrow, I’ll worry about that shit. For now, how about I pay you double? Francisco!” He gestures to the man behind the bar. “Pay up. Our little Espi’s going to party tonight.”
“Is he now?” Chuckling, Francisco wrenches the register drawer open and counts out double the amount Arno initially promised. Combined with what I found on good old Vlad, it’s…it’s enough to get by.
“Thanks.” I pocket the bills and rise from my stool.
The bar’s packed tonight. Naked girls gyrate on the stage for cash. Fighters cast bets in the back before slugging it out in the basement. Arno’s done his best to make the place “bigger and better than the old piece of shit” by letting nearly every vice under the sun fly. When asked why, he claims that doing it all for the money—but that’s only part of it. He’s trying to forget every fucked-up thing that happened this past year. Dante’s leaving. His sister’s death. Somehow, the chaos helps.
“Leaving already?” he slurs in my direction when I start past him.
“Yeah. See you tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow? You should have some fun now.” He shoves one of the women clinging to him toward me. “This kid,” he slurs into her ear. “This kid is the fucking best. He’s happy, that’s what he is. Happy all the fucking time—”
“Bye, Arno.” I slip past him, and he’s too wasted already to follow me to the door.
It’s dark out. Druggies perch on the corners, dishing out whatever their clients are willing to pay for. The man I pass knows what I want. I don’t even have to ask before slipping a fifty into his hand in exchange for a vial I tuck into my pocket.
I take the long way home, cutting through alleys while wishing I had a can of paint. Some things are better left scrawled onto the sides of buildings rather than said out loud. Or drawn. Like the fact that an entire branch of the Russian Syndicate went up in smoke without a fucking trace as to who set the first match. Or that Dante seems to think my life is a revolving door. Not to mention my cell phone hasn’t rung yet, and a certain woman with yellow, catlike eyes keeps popping into my head.
She’s probably bled out by now…
I cut the thought off by fishing three new cigs from the new pack in my pocket and lighting them up one after the other. I drag on them all at once, and three puffs later, she’s locked away behind a nicotine buzz. The rest of the whiskey in the fridge might drown her out for good.
If not, I could always head back to the bar and take Arno up on his offer. Have some “fun.” Get wasted. Be happy. Try to forget the shit in my head—it’s so easy for him. Though everything must seem easy when you choose to battle your demons with a shot glass and a bullet. Maybe he has the right idea, considering I don’t know how I’ll deal with my own.
And they just keep multiplying.
I round the corner and find the front door to my place swinging loose on the frame and glass all over the fucking walkway. The pieces glitter in the dark as if to taunt me. Shit. There goes most of my goddamn money.
I cross the street and shove all three cigs between my lips as I reach into the rusted mailbox hanging near the door. I withdraw the knife I keep there, testing the edge over the thumb of my left hand. It’s sharp, but I’ll still have to call Arno for backup, cutting his own fun short.
Or maybe not. Fresh blood paints a vibrant trail across the entryway, leading down the hall. I follow it, expecting a druggie or, at worst, some punk who might flee at the sight of the knife. The weapon turns out to be just for show, as my intruder can barely hold themselves upright. Herself.
“Damn it.” She staggers against the table, swiping at my sketchbook, hunting for something. Her spine stiffens when I come closer. “The money Vlad gave you. Where is it?” Her accent’s returned in full force, mangling her English. Her hands leave blood over the pages of my sketchbook as she flips through them. Red… Her face is green when she glances over her shoulder at me, her eyes bloodshot. “Where? I need it. Where is it?”
“I spent most of it,” I admit. I have to juggle all three cigs in one hand while I reach into my pocket and withdraw the new vial, holding it up to the light. “I had to replenish my stock. I used the last bit on you.”
She stares right through me, her eyes unfocused. Like how Arno looks when he’s more upset than simply drunk. Old pain makes him reckless. Senseless. Dangerous. She moves the same disjointed way as she turns to the table and flicks through the shit piled in the center—empty cig packs, loose pages, and pens. “I need that money—”
“Why?” I toss two cigs onto the table, freeing my hands. From experience, I know they won’t burn through the surface. “You want to get high?”
She doesn’t look like a druggie—not that there really is a look. A hooker might shoot up heroin in an alley, while some doctor’s wife snorts cocaine in her fancy boudoir. To each his own.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I need the money. I need it.”
Her hands, braced against the table, are the only things keeping her upright. Her legs quit that job a long time ago. I start to drop the knife. Then I slide it onto the table instead, far enough out of her reach but still within mine.
“You need more stitches,” I tell her, eyeing her hands. “And let’s just hope you didn’t open the ones on your arm.”
For fuck’s sake, I hope she didn’t. The only thread I have left is silk.
“I need…”
“You need rest.” I risk taking another step so that her arm is within my reach. “I hate repeating myself, but hemorrhaging to death isn’t a pleasant way to go. Trust me on that. And, if you fall, you’ll bang yourself up even more.”
She looks up at me with unfocused, yellow eyes. The blood loss will cause her body lasting damage. But the agony… That will drive her crazy.
I lift the vial in my hand and give it a shake. “How about this? I’ll give you something to take the pain away. You stay here for the night. You don’t hit me over the head with a whiskey bottle, and I’ll give you the money in the morning. Khorosho?”
She eyes me warily—red and green on the same pale canvas. When she finally opens her mouth, I’m not sure if she’ll speak or throw up. “Yes,” she croaks in Russian, along with something I have to guess the general gist of—Make it go away.
Can do. The lit cigarette is still hanging from my lips as I cross over to the fridge and grab my kit from the top of it. I fish a needle out, crack the top off the vial, and draw up just enough to take the edge off.
When I turn around, she’s watching me, part of her face pressed against the table. She clings to the surface, one of her hands braced against my open sketchbook, but she hasn’t gone for the knife, at least. When I approach her with the needle, she holds her arm out. I strip off the sweater she’s still wearing and roll her sleeve up. Thank god for small miracles; she’s pale enough that I don’t have to hunt for a vein. Once the needle goes in, I push on the plunger and watch her face change.
When her pupils dilate, I toss the empty syringe aside and grab her by the arm to lead her to the couch. She collapses on top of it, her head lolling back against the cushions, her glazed-over eyes finding mine.
“Why are you so beautiful?” She shakes her head and sighs. “It’s not fair. You shouldn’t be beautiful.”
I don’t know whether or not to take the word as a compliment. Beautiful. Going off her tortured frown, I’ll assume it’s an insult.
If only she knew. The worst forms of art tend to be the most eye-catching. The most dangerous. Like yellow eyes glaring through a haze of pain, disguising secrets the average observer would be too distracted to see.
If I’m beautiful, then she’s mesmerizing. A fire, consuming anyone stupid enough to stop and stare for too long.
I wait until I’m sure the drug’s kicked in before I stitch her hand up and wrap the worst of it in gauze. She’s hiding more secrets than just the accent; she’s been stitched up b
efore. In fact, someone went through a lot of trouble to make sure her pretty face stayed that way. The only anomaly is the sloppy scar along her hairline. My guess is that the goal in treating it was making sure she didn’t die.
Tearing my gaze from her, I feel through the dark for one of my cigarettes. A glance out the window doesn’t help me guess the time.
Morning in this neighborhood is usually marked by the sound of a car backfiring as the single mom across the street gets in from her nightshift. She’ll dart into her house for about twenty minutes before rushing to her day job. Sure enough, I hear the mechanical pop as pink light spreads along the horizon.
The growing daylight colors Yellow in shades of gray. She’s knocked her covering off again, though not on purpose this time. Even from across the room, I can see the sweat beading on her skin. She’s fighting something in her nightmares.
She’s losing.
It’s a strange thing to witness from the observing end. She claws at the air while gritting out broken bits of Russian. “Anna…Anna!”
Someone she knows? The dream swallows her back up without any clarification, and she goes limp.
I don’t know how long I watch her. An hour maybe? Longer? I’m not sure if I intend to sketch her when my hand drifts toward a nearby pen. The shriek of a ringtone takes precedence, and I can’t smother a sigh as I grab my cell phone.
“It’s about fucking time,” I answer gruffly on purpose, disguising the sound of my voice. Not that I need to. There’s only one person with this number.
“You know that help you promised me?” a woman wonders, her words distorted by a thick accent. “I need it now.”
“Domi.” I sigh. Relief and dread battle for supremacy, though I’m not sure which one my body decides to feel in the end. “Where are you?”
The options aren’t many. If she escaped the Syndicate long enough to call, she couldn’t have gotten far.
“The downtown precinct,” she says, confirming the second-worst scenario. “For questioning. I don’t like questions. You need to get me out. Now.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I wonder tiredly. The brush-off is just for show. I already have a plan forming. It’s not a very good one, but it’s all I’ve fucking got.
“Our…friend,” Domi says as if reading my mind. “Did you get her out? She’s okay?”
“She’s alive,” I admit, watching the woman in question stir in her sleep.
“Good,” Domi says, a yawn in her voice. They must have kept her in a holding cell overnight. Though, ironically, even a cot in a precinct was a step up for her. “Then get her down here. Make her flash her badge and get me the hell out of here before they find me first.”
There is no use in telling her that her “cop” turned out to be merely an informant right now. Instead, I glance at the clock above the stove and sigh. “Give me an hour.”
I get an earful of Russian in return.
“I’ll assume that all means ‘please and thank you,’” I tell her. “Sit tight. I’m on my way.”
She hangs up, and I use the resulting silence to inhale the rest of my second-to-last cig.
The damn thing’s barely gone cold when I sense Yellow watching me. I can’t tell how much of the phone call she heard, if any of it. She scans the wall behind my head while she attempts to regain control of her body.
She doesn’t look so green, at least. The sleep did her some good on that front. Not so much for her suspicion though.
“I see that you did more of your…art while I was out,” she says warily.
I find her gazing at her bandaged hand.
She inspects the sloppy job, flexing her fingers. “Thank you—”
“Don’t,” I say. “At least not until you see the nasty scar you’re gonna have.” A result that couldn’t have been helped given the state of my kit. I need new thread. New needles. Details I’ll just have to worry about later. I shake my head to clear it and run my free hand through my hair. “How do you feel?”
She takes her time before answering. The tilt to her mouth could almost be described as thoughtful. Or maybe it’s a grimace. “Like shit.”
“Good,” I say, flicking a wad of ash onto a blank page in my sketchbook. It doesn’t catch fire. The paper just smokes, and the ivory is swallowed up by ebony. “Last night, you could barely say the word shit.”
“I’m sorry.” She doesn’t even seem to know why she’s apologizing. Her mouth curls into a frown, her brow furrowing. “I didn’t mean…”
“Don’t worry about it.” I can’t resist the urge to physically shrug her guilt off. “Think of it this way—You were just part of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
She cocks an eyebrow. It’s several shades darker than her hair. Either she fills them in, or she’s not a natural blonde, a suspicion I file away for later.
“A what?” she asks.
I shake my head, turning my attention back to her face. She may know English well enough to suppress her accent, but she doesn’t seem to have picked up many phrases. I take it she doesn’t socialize much.
“Nothing. Just a friend of mine told me to have fun last night. What’s more fun than stitching up a pretty girl?”
It’s only when she flinches that I infer that “pretty” isn’t a compliment where she’s from.
“I didn’t mean it like that—”
“It’s fine,” she says, but she draws her knees defensively to her chest. One of her hands feels down along her hip. She still isn’t wearing much, other than my shirt paired with that bloodstained pair of white shorts, and she bites her lip at the realization.
“Change of subject.” I clear the middle of the table with a sweep of my hand, as if the lack of clutter can reduce the tension. “Last night, you said something about money.”
“I don’t remember.” Her gaze hardens up.
“Look, I’ll give you every bit of what dear old Vlad left behind.” I mean it, despite the fact that I could certainly use every dime. “But, first, I need you to do something for me.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. So much for putting her at ease.
“Like what?” she asks.
I pinch my lower lip beneath my teeth and bite down hard. I don’t like revealing the cards in my deck so soon. But a good rat needs his birdy friends, and this one won’t keep singing if she’s locked up.
“Remember that little flying friend I told you about?”
She stirs, renewed interest washing some of the wariness away.
“Well, she went and found herself a new cage,” I continue. “I need your help to spring her. Do that, and I’ll give you double what Vlad gave me.”
“Her.” The woman’s quicker than I gave her credit for. Recognition swells in her eyes, and she sits upright. “Her. The girl—”
“Domi,” I interject. I couldn’t hide the annoyance in my tone even if I tried. So much for protecting my birdy’s identity.
“Is she your informant?”
“She’s my friend,” I admit. “And, to be honest, she’s the one who told me to request that dance from you—”
“Oh.” She sighs, eyeing her hands. “And here I was, assuming you really were a pervert.”
“That explains the whiskey bottle,” I say. “You willing to help me or not?”
“I don’t see how.” She chews over the words, carefully spitting them out. “I told you—I’m not a cop.”
“You don’t have to be. Even an informant can get in the door. All you have to do is whisper into the right cop’s ear. Your handler would be a good start.”
Her face pales. “It’s not that simple.”
“Nothing ever is.”
“I guess so.” She sizes me up with those yellow eyes and turns away. “Do you have a bathroom?”
I point to the left, and she starts in that direction.
“Down the hall,” I tell her. “Last door. Though, if you plan on climbing out of the window, don’t.”
Her steps falter just beyond th
e door.
“You’ll just rip your stitches open. It’s nowhere near as dramatic, but the good old-fashioned front door is the place to leave from if you want to bail. You should at least change first so that my neighbors don’t think I make a habit out of having bloodied woman enter and leave my house. You can help yourself to anything in my closet.”
When the sound of her footsteps starts again, they head for my bedroom. Not long after, the bathroom door closes and then the water runs, drowning out whatever she’s doing inside it.
I eye the used-up butts of my last few cigs and wait. Ten minutes later, the door finally opens.
She took my good jeans, I see. One of my gray shirts hangs loosely on her, and she paired it with a black hoodie. She did what she could with her tangled hair and scrubbed the blood away, but she definitely doesn’t look like a cop.
“Let’s go.” I push back from the table, slamming my sketchbook shut. I make a pit stop near the fridge for a bottle of water, which I toss in her direction. While she drinks, I grab a clean hoodie from the hook by the door and then lead the way out onto the street.
The single mom’s rushing from the house across the way, scrambling to get into her car and drive over to the diner across town. Two scrawny kids peek out from behind the screen door, expressionless, as she warns them to get to school on time.
She’s already driven off as Yellow and I clear the next block. It takes twenty minutes to walk to the precinct. Usually, it’s fifteen, but she’s walking slowly. Not out of pain, either. She’s dragging her feet, looking more and more like a deer in headlights the closer we get to the station. Just as the building comes into view, she pulls ahead of me.
“Wait here,” she says, her face hidden by the fringe of my hood, which casts a shadow all the way down to her jaw.
“Don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I tell her, remaining right on her heels.
“Do you have a better idea?”
Fair enough. I fall back and watch her. From a distance, she almost blends into the riffraff of students and homeless crawling around this part of town. Almost.