Twig

by wildbow

  “No,” he said.

  “No?” I asked. “You forgot? All of the other times, the heaps of comments and put-downs, the little jokes at my expense, the height jokes? I saw the pattern and you forgot.”

  “I didn’t forget anything. There’s no pattern. Take my word for it.”

  He was keeping his gaze too straight ahead, his posture too rigid. Lying through his teeth.

  I waited, letting that sit. Jamie did mess with me, but he always course corrected if he wasn’t sure I understood he was messing with me.

  Unless it was the innuendo thing. He always left me to wonder on those things.

  Jamie broke the silence. “Every time I made those comments, you were smiling. We were joking. I don’t want you twisting it around in your head in a bad way.”

  “So you admit it. You get on my case whenever you’re having fun. There’s probably a pathology behind that.”

  Jamie sighed.

  “It’s okay. We all have our quirks.”

  “You more than most, Sy,” Jamie said.

  “Hey! Hey! You’re doing it. That thing I was just talking about.”

  “And this is the station. Empty. Your gut was right. Again.”

  “You’re changing the subject,” I said. I looked around, then checked the door. Finding it locked, I searched my pockets for my picks. I ended up doing a pat-down of my front pockets, back pockets, shirt pocket—

  Jamie handed over the picks. “Your gut is remarkable. Does that count for one of the three compliments?”

  “That game ended a while ago, and you’re still changing the subject,” I said. I started working on the door.

  “They could transplant that gut of yours to someone else, see if they can get the gut feelings.”

  “Lil said there was a link between the stomach and the mind, but I don’t think it goes that far, Mr. Changing-the-subject.”

  “That’s the fourth time you’ve brought her up tonight,” Jamie remarked.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Feeling lonely, Sy?”

  “Never completely lonely, not with you around,” I said, as I worked the lock. “You’re my best friend, and I don’t know if I can even articulate what it means that I can say that, when—”

  I stopped, not sure how to articulate it. When I feel like I’m betraying the old Jamie by saying so.

  “I get it, Sy.”

  “But I miss her. I miss that she was good and she made me feel like a force for good just because I was supporting her or because I was close to her. I miss how sweet she could be, when it was just me and her. That she clutched me so tight, all the time, whenever she could. I miss Helen chewing on me or licking me or trying to manipulate me for my desserts.”

  I opened the lock. Jamie went straight to the network of metal pipes and intestine-like lengths of flesh that were at one end of the closet-shaped space. Here and there were large wheels fixed to the pipes, set beneath pressure gauges. The room was unlit and hard to see in the gloom. He glanced over his shoulder to show that he was still listening, moving through the dark room as if it were lit.

  “I miss Mary and the way she and I could work together like she was amazing at what she did and she made me amazing by proxy, and how, when she really wanted to win at something really trivial, she would hold back and wrinkle up her nose unconsciously. I… I don’t miss Ashton, but I wake up some days and I wonder how he’s doing and what he’s becoming, and it eats at me that I’m not there for that when I really want to be. I remember sleeping on the floor of the lab of Ashton the first, and it was a really early, really important memory for me, and I feel like I should be paying Ashton the second back for that, for some reason?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jamie said.

  He started to turn a wheel. I put the butter dish down and helped him, adding my strength to his. I knew his shoulder bothered him ever since I’d done the surgery on him. Exertion made it worse.

  I continued, “I miss Evette, and she doesn’t exist outside of my own head, you know? I miss that she doesn’t exist and I know if she existed I wouldn’t, but I feel like she should be around. I miss those moments, once or twice a year, when Ms. Earles would be sweet to me and act like a mother might, rubbing my hair, or giving me a treat, or even giving me a hug. I can count those hugs on one hand, but I remember them clearly, and I don’t remember much.”

  As the wheel finished turning, Jamie and I strained to fix it into position. I blinked in the midst of the straining, and my eyes were wet.

  “Didn’t mean to open that floodgate,” he added, as we shut off the water supply to… going by the label I could barely make out in the gloom, water supply number main two.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “I just wanted to distract you from what we were talking about before. I did it in a stupid way.”

  I cursed under my breath. “What were we talking about before?”

  “Ha,” Jamie said. but it was humorless, without the mischief. Just letting me know he’d gotten one over on me.

  “Mark my words,” I said. “That small victory doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Honestly, I feel like a heel, knowing it hit you where it hurt.”

  “Good,” I said. “But I am clever, which is a fact that you neglected to mention when you were listing off the compliments. I think about things!”

  I scooped up the butter dish. I threw away the top and I liberally applied the butter to the wheel.

  “That you do,” Jamie remarked.

  “Mark my words—” I started.

  “You already said that.”

  “Mark them!” I exclaimed, a third time, for emphasis. “I will be the man on top, in the end.”

  “I swear you’re doing that on purpose at this point,” Jamie said.

  We gathered ourselves together, and quickly left the building. I closed the door, put a pick into the lock, wedged it as much as I could, then stood back, my foot in the air, knee against my chest. I kicked the end of the pick, snapping it off in the lock. We maintained a fairly leisurely pace as we made our way away from the scene of the crime.

  The Devil’s headquarters had to burn. We knew he stockpiled drugs, and he maintained paperwork and papers. We knew that, after meetings, he tended to loop around to stop at points where his lieutenants worked, to make the most of his time and ensure they were on the same page as him, updated on the key points of the meeting. After meeting us he would want his soldiers in line, warned about possible attacks, and ready.

  Mr. Colby was a logistician. He moved things from A to B. The Devil was a monster, and he removed any obstacle that kept his better, kinder half from moving things from A to B. But the Devil didn’t strike me as a warlord. Nothing we’d been able to turn up suggested he had any experience in outright war.

  With that in mind, Jamie gauged the time Colby would take to get from the meeting back home. We’d tracked him following one meeting to verify and adjust our estimates.

  His people might well be able to save some of the stock, but they wouldn’t save all of it, and our hope was that they wouldn’t know what to prioritize, and Colby would be absent and unavailable to give that direction. The buildings nearest the headquarters were warehouses and apartments, nineteen twentieths of which were reserved for Colby’s wider enterprise. The fire would spread to them. Shutting off the water to the line that the fire service needed would help ensure that.

  Our destination was a restaurant, not that far from the fire or Corinth Crown Academy. It was a big place, sprawling, occupying three floors, with extended patios and balconies. As we’d guessed, it was heavily populated with people who’d wanted a vantage point to see the flame.

  We’d chosen a point that wasn’t such a vantage point, where the overhanging balcony and the surrounding railings and decoration provided some cover.

  The Rabbit wasn’t there.

  Jamie and I walked over to the railing, me putting my elbows and forearms across it and placing my chin on the
back of my hands. I watched the orange glow of the fire.

  “I miss them too,” Jamie said. “Not in the same way, I don’t think. I don’t think I loved them, exactly, but they were a big piece of me. I get this frustrated feeling at this feeling I have, like I have a hole that won’t close or heal.”

  “Loss,” I said.

  “Yeah. But you’re good enough company,” he said.

  “Aw shucks. You’re not so bad yourself. Even if you’re dishonest.”

  “You’re a bad influence on me,” he said.

  A motion behind us made us turn.

  The Rabbit. Pierre. I kept almost forgetting his name. I forced myself to commit to it, because I knew I’d forget if I gave myself the chance.

  “All went well?” I asked.

  “A little bit more dramatic than my usual fare,” Pierre said. The light of the fire tinted his bloodshot, watery rabbit eyes. “I think I like starting fires. There’s something about it.”

  “We all need our hobbies,” I said. “You were late though. I didn’t expect that. Any trouble?”

  “I was on time,” Pierre said. “You were late. I knew what our next phase was, so I did a circuit, ran around, checked on the places I knew we’d be checking on. You were right. They were there.”

  “Of course I was right,” I said.

  “He means me,” Jamie said, quiet. I shrugged.

  “They were where you said they’d be. The Mayor, his family, the Devil’s men.”

  I noted the distinction. Not the mayor and his family. It was the mayor, faint pause, then his family.

  “Perfect,” I said. “Said family includes the young’uns?”

  “Said family includes the young’uns,” the eight foot tall rabbit with the burning eyes told me.

  Previous Next

  Dyed in the Wool—12.6

  “There we go,” Jamie said. “The magic word.”

  “How do they do that?” I wondered aloud, a non-sequitur.

  “Do what?”

  “Those kids,” I said, indicating the kids that were half a block away. They had just encountered the Devil’s thugs. The nanny stood between the lead thug and the children. She barely looked any older than the eldest child. Eighteen, perhaps? “Look at them. Yes, they’ve been running around, and they’re a touch disheveled, but they’re so prim and proper, dressed like they’re ready to go out to dinner, with their shirts ironed and everything matching. Do they just have late bedtimes, or is that how they dress for bed?”

  “I think you’re putting too much thought into this, Sy.”

  “Hair neatly parted for the boys, tidy curls for the girls. The eldest boy is wearing a tie, Jamie. A tie! Our house is on fire. It’s the middle of summer, sweltering, and the city’s going to be even hotter, by the looks of those five other fires we can see out the window. Get on out of bed, sons and daughter, get your shirt on, button it up, put on your tie, we can’t have you looking slovenly. Sit down at the dressers while the nanny does your hair. Don’t mind the smoke or the tongues of flame licking at your feet in the meanwhile.”

  “It is a bit strange,” Pierre said.

  “I mean, I’d expect this from Helen, but this is a well-to-do family in a not-too-important city. Dear nanny, given the immediate circumstances, perhaps we shouldn’t use the flammable oils to slick down Junior’s hair.”

  “Is it really that important?” Jamie asked, in that way he sometimes had, where he sounded very tired of me.

  “Yes!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know!”

  Jamie sighed.

  One of the thugs grabbed the nanny. He jerked her arm, hauling her close, and wrapped his arms around her, holding her back against his front.

  “Speaking of, we didn’t really account for the nanny,” Jamie said.

  “I accounted for the nanny,” I said.

  Jamie gave me a suspicious look, but he didn’t argue the point with me.

  “She’ll be upset, slightly traumatized, but she’ll be intact in the end,” I said.

  The nanny was talking to the children. Reluctantly, the trio of youths moved closer. There were two boys, aged fourteen and sixteen, by my best guess, and a girl that might have been nine or ten.

  The second of the three thugs grabbed the oldest child. The third grabbed the youngest. The middle child, a boy of roughly Ashton’s age, was left alone, but his ties to the others kept him close.

  “There you go,” I said, to the gloom, voice quiet. “You’ve got the situation well in hand. They’re listening, and they’re being obedient. The Devil is going to be pleased with you. But you don’t want to fly too high or sink too low in his estimation, or he might pay attention to you. So you’re going to take these captives to him. You’ll do nothing else.”

  “They can’t hear you, you know.”

  “Shhh,” I told Jamie. My focus was on the body language in play, with particular attention to the degree of confidence displayed. Were these thugs operating as extensions of the Devil of Corinth, or were they being themselves? I had an instinct that they were the former, but I wanted to be ready to act in an instant if they hinted at the latter.

  “This seems like as good a time as any to bring up something that’s been niggling at me. We should have a talk at some point, about what you call an acceptable level of trauma and discomfort, and what other people might define as an acceptable level of trauma and discomfort.”

  “You’re talking about the nanny?” I asked.

  “I’m talking about the nanny, yes. The man is getting more… close with her than he needs to be?”

  “I saw that,” I said. There wasn’t anything that I could point to that was especially vulgar, but the man toed the line. There was more physical contact and holding her close than was necessary, and the way he leaned in to speak into her ear, presumably at a lower, more intimate volume?

  I could see her body language, now that Jamie had drawn special attention to the situation. The way she turned her face away. It was hard to see in the gloom, even with the help of nearby streetlights, but I saw disgust on her expression.

  “Pierre,” I said.

  “This is all very interesting, listening to you two,” Pierre commented.

  “Go,” I told him, ignoring the commentary. “Show yourself, not too close to here. Distract them and put them on their guard.”

  “If you’re sure,” Pierre said. He didn’t quite straighten, but he did stand, and made his way off the side of the roof furthest from the thugs.

  I watched the scene unfolding. The lead thug was too into this. The more he talked, the more the nanny shrank down into herself. If there was a ladder, a hierarchy of power, then she’d dropped below the oldest boy.

  “Shut up, just shut up,” Jamie said, in a low voice, the words a delayed recitation that matched the movements of the boy’s lips. “You leave her alone, you let her go. You want us, you have us, my dad will pay any ransom you ask for, but you let her go.”

  “They’re not going to let her go,” I said. I judged the thug’s body language. “Especially now that you asked.”

  “Earlier, we talked about conscience,” Jamie said. “Mine is… less comfortable with this. Maybe, in the future, you could, I don’t know, assign more weight to this kind of trauma?”

  “More weight?” I asked.

  The middle child backed away from the shouting and the threats, only for attention to get turned his way. He was being warned not to move.

  He had, I suspected, done the perfect thing for the moment, if inadvertently. He’d drawn attention to himself, and I wanted attention drawn away from the eldest child and the nanny.

  “Just… give it consideration. We’re used to variations on this theme. You more so than me. Their conception of ‘the worst day of their lives’ is… this. That has a gravity.”

  I looked at the quartet of innocents.

  “What she’s facing. Don’t trivialize that. Respect it.”

  “Why single
out the nanny? The children are being exposed to it too, aren’t they?”

  “You’re not wholly wrong, but I was referring—”

  He dropped the sentence as something caught the eye of the three thugs. Two of them drew guns, loosening their grips on their captives. One of them fired, and the children and nanny cried out at the volume of the shot and what it represented.

  The middle child’s retreat and now Pierre had moved the focus of the thugs two steps away from their hostages. The tension was still there, that dangerous anger that threatened to make them do something I’d regret, but the one was no longer dwelling on the nanny, and the children no longer had weapons pointed at them. The thug’s eyes roved, searching for the rabbit and any potential attackers.

  “That works,” Jamie said. “Thank you. For helping the nanny.”

  “Does complicate things that they have their guns out,” I observed. “But this is doable.”

  They had weapons in hand, while they gave their hostages light pushes with the weaponless hands, herding them like cattle to move them in the general direction of the Devil’s place.

  That route would mean they passed right by us. Jamie and I were crouched on a flat rooftop, watching proceedings over a short wall that bounded the edge of the roof, as if the home was a small castle.

  As the group approached us, the rabbit emerged from cover, standing so that the corner of the building blocked the group from seeing him. He glanced up at us, his ears twitching.

  I pointed, and he ran, passing behind them to duck into a side street. A very liberal interpretation of the direction I’d indicated.

  Kind of impudent, now that I’m paying attention. We would have to be careful.

  Still, the group was now moving down the street, right beneath us.

  I ducked low as I walked along the short wall that bounded the roof, scooping up a coil of rope. The knotting was already in place, with weights at the corners. Not quite a net, not quite a lasso, but somewhere in between. I liked to think of it as a cat’s cradle.

  Jamie, right behind me, had the other.

  After gesturing to get the timing down pat, I threw it over, the action synchronized with Jamie. The rope attached to the top corner of the cat’s cradle ran through my open hand. As I’d overshot a bit, I gripped the rope at the last moment, so it would land across the gunman’s hand, head, and shoulders.