by Tessa Elwood
“You’re right,” I say. “I don’t.”
We walk in silence. Low South fights for dominance for a few blocks, upkeep battling age, but eventually the grime wins out. Skytowers loom in old heavy skestone, chipped and faded. People hunch into themselves, or dare the world to give a damn. The world never takes the bet.
We’re quiet as the towers slink together. The half-constructed skeleton of a high-class hotel, a listing line of residences with busted screens, a small grocery with dead things in the window.
I hang a left down the alley with the teeth graffiti—a long row of white molars painted with the stuff that burns green in direct sunlight. Not that this place has ever seen sunlight. We pass between rusty escape lifts and metal doors with busted access panels. Niles shifts closer to me, elbow brushing my arm.
Near the end of the alley, just around the corner from the other street lies another identically gritty door with a busted panel.
Decker has very specific hours. He’s closed tomorrow but should be open today.
I bang the door with the side of my fist. Niles does his blank-out thing, elbow frozen near mine. He’s an East 5th’er all right. He knows where we are.
I meet his eyes. “Really. Go home.”
The tension disappears at speed and he grins. “What are you talking about? I like an adventure.”
Maybe I misread the tension thing.
The door cracks and Decker sticks his skinny neck out. “What the hell do you—well, my, my, my. If it isn’t the asshole’s kid sister. I thought you were too good for us.”
“Cousin,” I say. “And have you seen the feeds? I’m not good enough for shit. Can I come in?”
Niles’s eyes narrow, but he’s not the important one here.
Decker widens the door and leans into the space, head outstretched as if to sniff me. He’s got big eyes and bony arms and bright clothes that scream for attention. “Maybe. Who’s he?”
No one Decker needs to have on his radar.
“Just some guy from the district,” I say. “Didn’t want me walking the 5th alone.”
“Which district?”
“Mine. Can we come in?”
“No.” Decker flashes teeth as wide and long as the graffiti’s. “Not we, you. Come on.” He waggles his fingers and steps inside.
Good. Niles doesn’t need to be in the middle of this.
I shoot him a nod and follow Decker.
Niles takes my arm with light fingers, voice dropping low, “What are you doing?”
“What? I have to.” I shake him off and step through the door. It slams shut.
A narrow hall stretches into darkness, with a spitting overhead light. The walls peel. The floor creaks.
“Well, well, well,” says Decker, sliding past me to creak his way forward. “And what’s the elusive daughter of the infamous Millie have to say for herself?”
“Elusive?” I ask.
Decker winks at me over his shoulder. “Nice hat.”
Like it’d stop anyone from recognizing me. Didn’t stop him.
Decker’s shadow chases the dark and mine gets tangled in his steps. We reach the end of the hall, and he pushes the final door open onto a universe of junk. Piles, tables, and shelves of old mugs, dataslates, pillows, figurines, furniture, dishware, circuits, and who knows what all. Decker shimmies his way through the mess to the big glass counter in the center of the room, yellow in the yellow light. He swings around behind it, spreads his palms on its smudged top.
The last time I was here, Yonni’s pendant lay on that counter—its green vines entwined protectively over a lonely red heart. Missa had given it to Yonni for their anniversary. Greg had swiped it from her dresser. I grabbed the pendant before the sale could go through and hauled Greg’s thieving ass out.
Decker leans forward, as if the memory plays in his head, too. “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“Dad,” I say. “I’m here to clear his debt.”
Whole data systems run at speed behind Decker’s eyes. “Mmm Ricky? Yes, Ricky Franks.”
I reach into my pocket and lay Yonni’s heart on the counter. It beats softly from the mesh circuits inside, isolated. Betrayed.
“This cover it?” I ask, flat.
Decker’s eyes narrow and he sniffs. “Isn’t this the piece you’d see your brother’s ass in hell over?”
“Cousin, and this covers it.”
Decker reaches for the heart with spider fingers, and I have to curl my own to keep from snapping his off.
“A Pulsebeat Echo 38–9.” He lifts it in his palm, strokes its subtle beats. “Pretty. But it was pretty the first time round.”
Yes. Back when I had a soul I wouldn’t sell.
“Is. The debt. Covered?”
Decker sighs and rocks. “I don’t know, will I actually get to keep it this time?”
“Decker.” Full of warning. He may be the lord of East 5th, but that’s Yonni’s soul between his pawing fingers.
“You’re the one who came to me, girl.” He catches my eye and sighs again. “All right, all right. I’d say this is worth six hundred reds?”
“A thousand, and you know it.” Which is a hundred more than he quoted Greg and likely less than half what it’s worth.
And still five hundred short of Dad’s debt.
Decker barks, laugh pitched deep for his high voice.
“You’re in dreamland, dearie.”
I hold out my palm. “Then hand it back.”
His fingers close automatically, eyes taking on the same lust they’d had the last time around. I’ve already pried it from his clasp once, with him cursing up hell while Greg freaked out. I’ll do it again.
“A thousand or nothing,” I say.
There are other dealers in the city. I don’t know who they are or where they are, but I’ll find them, get a better price, and come back with actual reds.
“You’re as crazy as your mother.”
Doesn’t matter what hand you’re dealt, Yonni aways said. You play the cards you have.
I reach over the counter and grab his wrist to drive that point home. “Yep.”
He’s got thick bones despite his lack of muscle. If he calls my bluff, I’m screwed.
If he calls my bluff, I can just reach for the naked steel woman holding up a serving plate on the end of the counter and hit him over the head with it.
Decker tries to pull away. I hold fast.
“You think you’re some Enactor Shadow or something? Get your hands off me!”
“Give me the pendant.”
“Why did I let her in?” he asks the ceiling, pathetic and abused. “Why, why?”
“The pendant.”
His gaze flips to me. “You do like to repeat yourself, don’t you?”
I squeeze tighter. My hand aches. My arm too. He better do something soon, because there’s no way I can keep this up.
He grins. Actually grins. “Oh, I do like my pretties with bite. All right. A thousand. But if I remember right, for daddy dearest, that still leaves you five hundred short. Maybe we could come to an arrangement?”
Not that kind, we can’t.
I let go and manage not to shake out my aching fingers. “I’ve got another piece for you.”
His ears perk up. Literally.
“Another Pulsebeat? My girl, what crypts have you raided?”
“No.” I pull my last bit of pawn-ability from my pocket and toss it on the counter. “A bracelet.”
It shimmers, and its silver threads and dangle charms seem to float. A coiled, sparkling snake.
It’d spun snakelike from Mom’s wrist, too, whenever she moved her arm. Sleek and subtle, like the neat knot of her hair and the silky weave of her clothes. Each charm represented a place—planets, cities, waterfalls—all far away
and some even out of House. Beyond Galton’s borders, and into the Houses of Westlet or Fane. I know, because watching it was easier than watching her.
The last night I saw her, she’d slipped it off her wrist and laid it in my palm.
“Ooo.” Decker lays the pendant down, forgotten, to claim his next prize. He holds it up to the light so the charms flutter yellow. Far away wonders from distant planets.
You’ve the whole world, remember?
The whole world.
Decker purses his lips and tilts his head in a whole “It’s pretty, but mostly worthless” routine, then glances at me.
I don’t know what my face is doing, but it wipes the smile off his.
“Four hundred,” he says.
Holy hell. I thought he’d come back with half that. Mom can’t have put much money in it. But then, she did like to throw money around.
“Eight,” I say. That’d give me three hundred over what Dad owes, enough to set him up somewhere else.
He laughs, a breathy, soundless thing. “You’re joking.”
Probably, but I don’t much care.
“You’re the expert. You tell me.”
He tries to pry me apart, second by glaring second. I cross my arms and let him work. If he’s looking for a soul, I haven’t one to speak of.
Or won’t, after this.
“You know,” he sets down the bracelet and leans in to sniff. “I could use someone like you. Want a job?”
I blink slow, drag out my syllables. “Bracelet.”
He waves his finger at my nose. “A bit repetitive, but honestly doesn’t give a shit. I could use you.”
I slap my hand over the bracelet on the counter, and Decker’s oily fingers cover mine. “Don’t be hasty, now. I’m just sayin’.”
He reaches into his pocket with his free hand, pulls out a transaction card, and holds it to his mouth.
“Load three hundred reds,” he says. The card’s thin flexi-digit coating flashes 3 0 0. I pull my own card out, scratched and bent at one edge, and tell it to “Find transactent.”
It blinks blue and beeps at the found signal.
“Send,” says Decker.
My card fills with numbers that calculate at speed, ending in 3 0 0. A counterpoint to his card’s three zeros.
Odd, my card still feels like the empty one. Or maybe that’s my chest, its center lost between Decker’s grubby fingers.
That’s it, then. The worst of it was done.
Decker purrs. “Excellent. I’d about given up hope of getting any money out of Ricky.”
“He’s clear?” I ask.
“He’s clear, and lucky in his choice of offspring, I must say.”
I pocket my transaction card and do not look at Yonni’s heart.
“Always a pleasure,” says Decker. “Next time we meet, try not to manhandle me.”
There won’t be a next time. My only other thing of value is the suite. If Dad screws himself over, he’ll just be screwed. I turn for the hall. “Thanks, Decker.”
“I’m serious about the job, you know. Come back anytime.”
The alley blinds me after the corridor’s dark, teeth gaping in a crooked smirk. I make a beeline for the street. Out of the underbelly and into the mouth.
“Hey!” Niles’s voice, then the boy himself jogs at my elbow. I don’t slow. We break into the street and I bound across the thoroughfare.
He keeps up. “I take it that didn’t go well.”
It went great. It went perfectly. Dad’s clear, Decker’s happy, and everything’s gone exactly to plan.
I’m going to be sick.
“Are you ever going home?” I ask.
I might not have spoken. He skips it entirely. “Decker’s bad news, you shouldn’t—”
“What?” I skid to a stop and round on him. “What is up with you? What do you want?”
“Not to end up on the wrong side of Decker. He murders people, or didn’t you know?”
“How would you end up on Decker’s wrong side?”
He leans close. “I hate to bust your bubble, but death-via-Decker breaks our contract. You want me to keep my mouth shut? Stay away from him.”
“God dammit.” I run my hands over my head, catching my hat as it slips off.
This day. Dad, this idiot, Decker—God, Decker—and Yonni’s beating heart in his grasping, oily hands.
And there’s no way in hell I can jump off ledges now, even without that stupid promise—Yonni’s ghost would find me and skin me and kick me out.
“Whoa,” says Niles.
I look around for the next neon disaster, but he’s staring at my head.
Right. The disaster that already happened.
I throw the hat against the streetside tower wall. It bounces to the cracked pavement.
“Can’t you just go home?” I ask.
His gaze never leaves my hair. “Okay, let’s go.”
“You, not me.”
His eyebrows arc, the not likely practically audible.
I move to the nearest streetlight and lean into the hot metal. Stare up into the skytowers with sharp, jagged roofs.
“This could all have been so over by now,” I say, quiet. Days over. All I had to be was faster. All I had to do was jump.
“Hey.” Niles steps closer, humor gone. “Am I really bothering you?”
“Seriously?” I ask and the exhaustion creeps in.
“Right.” For some reason, that hits home. His hands dig deep into his pockets, and for one stupid second I want to reach out and tell him it’s fine, everything’s okay.
Not a damn thing in the universe is okay.
I thump my head against the pole. “Look, it’s not you you, but I have to sort out family and you’re making it hard.”
“Was that what Decker was about?” Niles asks.
“That’s what everything is about.”
He takes in the cracked streetlight casings, the barred tower windows, me. “You know, I get it. The mom thing. My old man left me with a reputation, too, and some things you can’t live down. Sometimes you can’t see things worth living for.” His voice drops and there’s something nice about it, in whispers. A quiet register that reverberates.
“Yeah, well.” I kick at the cracks in the walkway. “This isn’t about Mom.”
I sold her off with Yonni’s heart.
We’re silent amid the lurking traffic. The sun tries to bake us on the pavement.
He checks his watch. “Breakfast is shot, so . . . lunch?”
I shake my head. “I’m not done yet.”
“You’re going back to—?”
“No, just stupid stuff. The rest is easy.” Or should be, with luck. With the debt paid, it’s just finding Dad a room.
“Want company?” he asks.
“I’ll still be here tomorrow, you have my word.”
“That’s not why I was asking.” He smiles. Half smiles. The way uncertainty catches its edges, it might not be a smile at all.
Oh.
“Go home,” I say.
“Okay.” He slides back a couple steps, and suddenly there is space. Breathing room. I like breathing room. It breathes.
He turns to go.
“I’d be up for dinner,” I say.
He pauses, hair brushing his neck as his head turns. He winks. “Done.”
I am such an idiot.
“It’s a day-to-day thing,” says the guy behind the desk. “We don’t do long terms.”
The boarding tower clerk is the inverse of Decker—short, small-eyed, and muscled. He owns the counter while barely able to see over it. I don’t impress him. The looming giant at my elbow vying for attention doesn’t impress him, either. In fact, the clerk looks about two seconds from bouncing the giant out the door. “No,” he
says.
“But Gerry,” says the giant. “I need another night!”
“Get me the reds, Lend.”
“But Gerry—”
“Reds or nothing. Out.” The clerk jerks a thumb over his shoulder, toward the small back entrance that might as well be a revolving door. It rattles and competes with the chatter. The ornate front doors are glass-less, boarded and barred, their carved starscapes half-hidden by scrap.
The giant storms off, and I slide into his spot. “I have reds.”
“I only accept funds from them as is paying,” says the clerk. “And we don’t do long terms. What you doing here, anyway? This is a male establishment.”
“It’s for my dad and he’s not responsible, so—”
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” The clerk squints at me, supremely uninterested in anything coming out of my mouth.
“No,” I say.
“You look familiar.” He leans in a little, ignoring my hair for my face.
I brace for the inevitable.
A skeleton with skin pops up beside the counter and hip-butts me out of the way. The clerk sighs. “What you want, Jo?”
I slip away from the desk and toward a pillar before the clerk figures out how he knows me. The lobby has several pillars, soaring up to third-story heights. This tower was something once—an old sky-rated hotel maybe, or a lordling residential. The walls are wood and inlaid with glass. The stone floor is seamless below the pockmarks. There’s even a grand staircase flanked by golden pillars. Give the sixteen or so guys spread-eagled on its steps some laundered clothes and data-feed ear clips, and this place could double for the House Lord’s skytower.
Assuming it was scrubbed by an army.
Not a bad place as such. Dad will do okay here. Greg did okay here. It’s where he came the first time he sobered up. Or the second. This will work.
As long as I swing by and pay for Dad’s bed every morning.
If I hand Dad my transaction card, the first place he’ll hit is the bar.
The room goes dark. Pitch black. The lights, the fuzzy wall-screen in the corner, the whirring fans overhead—all throttled.
I freeze. Of all the places to be stuck in a power-out. Didn’t we just have one of these?
The whole room groans.
“God dammit! I didn’t pay no fifty reds to live in some damn cave!” yells a deep bass voice, followed by the clerk’s resigned, “Sammy, check the breakers.”