Poisoned Pearls

by Leah Cutter

  “Josh will warn us if any police officers are on their way. Correct?” Hunter said, his eyes boring into Josh’s.

  Uh oh. Trouble in paradise. Josh still seemed to be fawning all over Hunter, but Hunter didn’t trust Josh.

  Then again, I doubted that Hunter trusted anyone.

  “So what did you not kidnap me for?” These two had to want something. And Hunter had mentioned something about a true blood brother.

  “When I was in Afghanistan, the government gave us an experimental drug. PHS-370. Psychic enHancement and Stimulant. It enhanced my pre-cog abilities,” Hunter said seriously.

  Wow. I hadn’t thought Hunter could pull it together enough to express himself so clearly.

  “The drug worked, but it had…side effects,” Hunter said. “I couldn’t fight the government on my own,” he continued. He sounded eager. “I was alone. I hadn’t found my blood brother yet.”

  Hunter trembled slightly and took a deep breath. He mouthed some words.

  That was when I realized that this was a rehearsed speech that Hunter had in the can for whenever he met a “blood brother.” He was barely holding it together.

  “Now, together, with your abilities and mine, we’ll be able to stop the government from experimenting on more of our brothers. Stop them from wasting more lives. Turn them away—”

  “I don’t have any abilities,” I told Hunter.

  The silence that spread through the room was deafening. Shit. Maybe I should have eased him into it, or pretended or something.

  “What do you mean, you don’t have any abilities?” Hunter asked, continuing to hold himself completely still, as if he were a statue or something.

  “Zip. Nada. Not a lick. One-hundred-percent mundane,” I assured him.

  “What was your PADT score?” Josh asked. He seemed concerned.

  Did he also think I was a blood brother? Had he been with Hunter in the Army? That didn’t seem right. Josh was much younger and softer.

  “I don’t remember,” I lied. I’d actually never taken the Psychic Ability and Distribution Test. I’d already been thrown out of the house by the time I was eighteen. Though the testing was free, I’d just never bothered to get myself to a facility to see.

  I already knew I didn’t have any talent.

  “The test must have been wrong,” Hunter insisted.

  “Sorry,” I said, shrugging and standing up. “Don’t think I’m your blood brother.”

  “No,” Hunter said. “I’ve seen it. And you will, too.”

  That made me pause. “I was warned—twice tonight—about being careful what I see. What if I don’t want to see?”

  “You must,” Hunter insisted.

  “I think the young woman has a choice like everyone about the type of training she should have,” Josh interrupted.

  Hunter looked at Josh, then back at me. He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what she chooses. She will see. For I have seen it.”

  And while I know Hunter meant it as a positive, good thing, it sure sounded like a curse to me.

  ***

  I couldn’t believe that Hunter and Josh let me walk out of there after just a bit more fuss.

  Maybe it was how I kept emphasizing that the cops were going to believe I’d been kidnapped by the pair of them.

  Or maybe it was because Hunter was so certain in his vision, in what he’d seen, he didn’t need for me to stick around.

  I wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse.

  The city was waking up now. Lots of cars on the streets, people briskly walking by. The sky was clear and blue, the worst kind of winter weather, because it looked like it would be halfway decent out but it was still cold as fuck.

  I didn’t have to wait too long for a bus to come. All the passengers sat like mummified bobbleheads in their seats, nodding as the bus went along. No one talked. The windows were fogged with their hot breath anyway, making the bus seem like a cave hurtling down the street.

  I got off at Five Corners, changing buses to head back downtown, to my place.

  Sure, the cops might be there. They could haul me in and try to question me as well. But I’d been up for twenty hours at that point. I needed to crash, and crash hard.

  Besides, it would be more of a pain if they waited to visit me until I worked my next shift at Chinaman Joe’s later this afternoon.

  Still, I walked slowly up the street toward my apartment block. No sense in making it too easy for anyone waiting for me by blithely walking along. But there weren’t any cop cars parked in the street. No one would be waiting outside to snitch on me—it was too fucking cold.

  After my mom had kicked me out, I’d lived on the streets for a while. It had been October and almost pretty with the red and orange leaves swirling everywhere. I’d never gotten too into the heavy shit—meth freaked me out. And needles were never my thing.

  Speed, though, made all the corners sharp and gave halos to the lights. I crashed on my new-found friends’ couches, when they had them, or in someone’s tent, or curled up on a pad in the doorway of a shop. Nothing really softened the rage, which fueled me for months.

  But then that first real cold snap came. It wasn’t enough to make me go crawling back to the bitch who’d birthed me. However, I understood why people would put up with just about anything—the singing and praise-the-lording—to get out of that kind of weather.

  There weren’t many who cared about the people on the street. Sure, there were services, but they were overloaded trying to get the kids off the streets, not the hookers and junkies. Not the ones strung out on anything they could beg, borrow or steal.

  To this day, I still don’t remember some of those weeks, what went on. That luck of mine must have kicked in. I never got hooked on the hard stuff, just pills and booze.

  It was some kind of luck that finally got me off the streets a year later, away from my gang. Stupid ice patch ended up putting me in the hospital with a broken wrist. I got dried out there, and decided that being inside was actually nicer than living outside, particularly in Minnesota, especially since I was facing another winter out there.

  So I got assigned to a case worker who actually kind of gave a damn and I was able to move into housing, and, as they say, merge back into society.

  The kids I’d left behind said I’d betrayed them. I could kind of see their point. They had a pretty black-and-white worldview. Either with us or against us.

  It was a coping mechanism, a survival technique. I knew I still carried some of it. Knew that was why my friends remained so important to me.

  Hell, I even realized it was part of what was driving me to find out what had actually happened to Kyle.

  My current place wasn’t a dump. I’d lived in dumps—or rather, crashed in them for a while. It hadn’t really been living. But this place was mine, and mine alone. I didn’t have a roommate. I was able to keep the place as clean, or as messy, as I wanted.

  And after shared housing, believe me, that mattered.

  The first thing I did when I walked in the door was empty the ashtrays. I never let them fill to overflowing. That was my thing. This was my place. I had nice toilet paper, not that single-ply nasty shit, but stuff that was soft and expensive feeling. The ashtrays were always clean. And the garbage never piled up—I threw it out regularly.

  The place was small as a shoebox, too. The kitchen and bedroom were all one room. I had this tiny stove that barely held a pizza that I’m sure the hipsters would consider “retro” but I knew was just old and a fire hazard.

  I had a proper bedframe that I’d found in an alley, made of black wrought iron (all the better to tie you to, my dear). The mattress was cheap but new—hadn’t trusted the ones I’d found used that I could afford. It was hard and uncomfortable but better than sleeping on concrete. I kept the bed pushed under the windows. Sure, I boiled in the summertime and froze in the winter, but I could look up and at least pretend to see the stars at night.

  The top of my dresser was still
shockingly empty since Natasha had removed all her jewelry and scarves and nail polish and everything else.

  I knew Sam would never leave her things in a dump like mine.

  I shook my head. Couldn’t think about Sam, not that way. Not ever.

  Had it only been a few hours ago that we’d been flirting? Since I’d smelled her lemongrass perfume?

  I stripped out of my jacket and two shirts and leggings and underwear and went straight to the bathroom.

  That was one thing this place had going for it—really hot water at all times, and as much as I wanted.

  One steaming hot shower later and I was feeling mostly human. I made myself some tea, one of my real indulgences, not that Lip-torn shit but real loose-leaf tea that came from that yuppie place on Nicolette Mall. I piled up my pillows on my bed and was about to settle myself down for one nice, last cigarette before I went to sleep when someone knocked on the door.

  It better not be the cops. I couldn’t handle any more drama that night. Or morning, really, I needed sleep, damn it.

  “Who is it?” I called as I pulled myself out of my bed and walked cautiously toward the door.

  “It’s Csaba, bitch. And you owe me an explanation.”

  Shit. Now I had a local drug dealer pissed at me.

  This day just couldn’t get any better, could it?

  “Look, Csaba,” I said as I opened the door. “I don’t know—”

  I didn’t have a chance to say anything else before Dusty and two of Csaba’s other buddies came barreling into my place.

  “Why don’t you make yourself at home?” I asked as they started looking around my place.

  Looking for that extra room that I didn’t have.

  “You live here?” Csaba finally asked as he stepped over the threshold.

  “Yeah. Beats the concrete,” I told him.

  He just grunted in reply as he tried to invade my space as well.

  It was kind of comical watching four big guys make their way through the maze of my mess, trying to space themselves out so they weren’t all standing on top of each other.

  It wasn’t like I threw a lot of parties there.

  Maybe I should have been scared, but I felt like they were just being ridiculous. “Is there something I can help you gentlemen with?” I finally asked. I’d stayed near the door, not so I could run away or anything but because there wasn’t more room in my tiny space.

  Csaba finally ordered the other two thugs to wait outside in the hallway while we chatted. I stepped to the side to let them pass, then closed the door.

  Really—I wasn’t a threat to Csaba. Or Dusty.

  “You brought the cops with you, to my place,” Csaba accused me.

  I couldn’t help but snort with laughter. “You’re kidding, right? Like they wouldn’t have made a run at you because of Kyle anyway.”

  “That one cop, Ferguson, said he was looking for you. That you’d run away from him. Seems like he got a hard-on for you or something,” Csaba said as he finally settled, collapsing down on my bed.

  I was glad the frame held his weight and didn’t break.

  “Yeah. Their stupid post-cog keeps saying I’m involved in Kyle’s murder, somehow,” I explained. “But I’m not. I wasn’t there. She’s got her lines crossed.”

  “Ferguson said you ran away with Hunter,” Dusty said casually.

  Were these two working for the cops or something? Wouldn’t have surprised me, actually. The lines between good guys and bad guys always seemed to blur on the TV shows when murder was involved.

  “More like kidnapped by Hunter,” I told them honestly. “He just picked me up under one arm and started running.” It was close enough to the truth.

  Dusty looked me up and down, obviously not believing me. It wasn’t as if I was a petite girl or something. But Hunter was freaky strong. And fast.

  “Why’d he do that?” Csaba asked, seeming genuinely curious.

  “He’s had some vision with me in it,” I told him. I rolled my eyes. “Doubt it was real. Probably just ghost tripping.”

  Csaba and Dusty looked at each other when I said that. They knew something more, something about Hunter, that they weren’t telling me.

  And I honestly didn’t care too much, either.

  “So if that’s all you’re here for, I’d like to call it a night. Get my beauty sleep before my next shift,” I told them.

  “Well, I was going to insist that you pay for the product I lost tonight,” Csaba said, looking around my oh-so-tiny kingdom. “But after seeing this place, it’d take you three lifetimes to do it.”

  Csaba stood suddenly, and started walking toward me slowly. “But I don’t ever want to see your face again. Not anywhere near anything that’s mine. Got it?” His voice sounded low and mean, like some kind of rough gangster.

  “You practice that in front of a mirror? That was good,” I told him. “Threatening. Yeah.”

  At least he didn’t hit me in the face. Instead, he punched my stomach, hard, leaving me coiled over, my breath coming short. “Nice chatting with you!” I called after him as he left.

  Dusty gave me a second punch, taking the air right out of me and leaving my legs without the power to hold me up. I lay curled up on my side on the floor, barely able to breathe through the pain.

  I knew me and my mouth were going to get me killed someday. But they’d come into my house, my space, looking to tear into my life.

  Of course I was going to give them what hell I could.

  After I’d staggered back up and closed the door, I collapsed on my bed, setting two alarms on my phone so I’d be sure to wake up and go to my shift at Chinaman Joe’s that afternoon.

  Needed to keep to my schedule so the cops would be sure to find me. So I could get the rest of my daily allowance of abuse.

  Chapter Six

  Thick, brown shag rug scratched Loki’s bare shins and didn’t provide any cushion for his bare ass as he sat naked and cross-legged in the living room of the apartment he’d “borrowed.” However, it was much better than being outside, which was where he normally performed any ceremony.

  Not that the cold that bothered the humans so much would have affected Loki. However, in this crowded human city, he needed privacy more than heat or comfort, and while there were many parks, there were also many humans.

  The apartment was “garden level”—who would have thought that meant it was underground! When the artist—the original owner—had told Loki about it, Loki had envisioned a place with wide doors that opened out onto a garden. Not a set of dark, dank rooms with windows that he had to stand in order to see the constant traffic just outside.

  Across the tiny living room hulked an overly large couch in the shape of an “L.” They must have had to assemble it in the room—it was too big to fit through any of the doors. It was a lighter brown than the rug, and just as scratchy and uncomfortable. Two smaller chairs faced it, both of them in dark red corduroy.

  It all felt closed in and tight. How did the humans even breathe in here?

  However, it didn’t matter. Not really. Loki just needed a place on earth from which to work. Much easier to have a physical location than always working from between the worlds.

  The apartment belonged to an artist, a sculptor. He had a series of muscular torsos hanging in a line, about eye height, on the two walls that didn’t have windows. They were all the same shape, each cast from the same mold, just painted and decorated differently. They were reminiscent of those stupid Greek and Roman statues that had the arms broken off. More than one wore armor, leather or tin or tiny plastic rings supposed to look like chainmail.

  In front of Loki, spread out on the carpet before him, lay his magical implements, what he needed for his next creation. A tiny, green plastic sword that he’d acquired from a nearby bar, its end holding a single drop of his blood. The purple and white horse he’d stolen from a child playing in the park, distracting the annoying brat with a spider the size of his hand. Two large oak leaves glue
d together and roughly shaped into a cloak.

  Loki took a deep breath and tasted the night around him, the bitter cold snow and harsh starlight. Idiotic humans thought that their clocks imposed some sort of order on the natural world, that just because the hour stroked midnight that had some relevance to creatures natural and unnatural.

  That somehow, their time mattered or made things magical.

  No, the hours that mattered were set by the moon and the stars and the night winds. When the worlds slid into alignment, not when the humans said it was right.

  With a sense of irony, Loki started his spell exactly at 1:13 a.m.

  Spirits of the night Slayers of rock and tree

  Come across the whale road Along the paths of stone and steel

  Gather around the too-clever one Scarred-faced and sweet-tongued

  Dance to my lip streams Play in my blood light

  Find form and purpose Find spear-din eternal

  Raise up bone beak and shield Raise up the feeders of eagles

  All for the glory of the draught of giants All for the uncut thread

  Red light poured from Loki, overtaking the harsh overhead lamp. The torsos on the walls started to writhe. Wisps of white smoke streaked into the room, swirling past Loki, the ugly couches, the skinny windows.

  The swirling winds picked up the light, the red bleeding into the white until their color had changed. The torsos continued their writhing, some now bucking, as if trying to escape. Faint screams followed the winds, some in pain, others in triumph. The scent of campfires and fresh-cooked boar filled the room.

  Loki repeated his chant. His magical implements took on the same red cast. Their forms changed. The sword turned to steel, the horse lost its cartoon nature and became real, the cloak gained weight and form and flowed like silk.

  Spirits embodied the torsos on the walls. Shield maidens for Loki’s army. The prostitutes and whores and junkies whose souls Loki had taken. They broke free from where they hung and picked up their swords, their cloaks streaming down their backs, their horses snorting and waiting for them.

  The edges of the room expanded out beyond the world, into the gray mists of between, rolling forever in all directions.