Devon jogged back to the rest of the group, the ring shoved safely into his front pocket. Danielle barked at him to carry Clyde to her apartment.
Marlow pulled a flat black box toward him and pushed a button on top, his voice cracking over its protruding mic.
“Evan, get in here please. Bring your computer.”
A warbled pause, and then, “Sure, Boss, just a couple seconds.”
Charlie perked up his ears and nose the moment Marlow's second assistant sashayed from a door at the end of the hall.
“Are you buzzed?” Marlow chuckled.
“More like sorely overworked, Boss.” Evan cleared away the fatigue from his throat. “I’ve been up for the past fourteen hours and haven’t gone home in three days. My wife thinks I’m dead.”
“Send her my condolences.”
“And?”
Marlow sat back in his chair. “Do me a favor and access the electronic archives. Tell me what all the other Third Pieces looked like.”
“Oh, well, that’s easy.” Evan still did not bother to pick up his tablet. “A little blue ring.”
“Are you serious?”
Evan shrugged. “That’s one of the few consistent things in all of this, Boss. Third Pieces all look the same, regardless of what forms the other Relics take.”
Marlow considered his information for a moment before smacking his lips and leaning forward. “Thank you, that’s all I needed to know. Feel free to take the rest of the night off and let your wife know I haven’t worked you to death.”
“Sure thing, Boss.” Evan stuffed the pen into his front pocket and returned to his world on the other side of the marked door at the end of the hall. Marlow continued to sit in his chair with Charlie grunting in sleep at his feet.
“How could I not have seen it before?” Marlow muttered to his dog. “I think we’re reaching the root of her problems… and expanding ours.”
FORTY-TWO
Miranda adjusted her clothes while in the freight elevator leading to Syrfila’s flat. When she called a half hour earlier, she was sent to voicemail. God only knew what had happened that evening.
The door opened with a crash loud enough to wake the neighbors, if there were any. Utter darkness greeted Miranda as she stepped off the elevator and wandered into the depths of the apartment. A grunt sent a chill down her aching spine.
Syrfila stood in the kitchen, hunched over the industrial-sized sink with a flashlight shining on a mirror before her. An array of tools ranging from screwdrivers to hammers covered the counters. When Miranda approached, Syrfila stood up and pointed the flashlight into her visitor’s eyes.
“Hey.” She returned to the sink.
Miranda stood at the edge of the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”
Syrfila motioned her over.
With each step Miranda took, it became more apparent that something was amiss. The tools, while not strange themselves, did not suggest that Syrfila was fixing the plumbing. There was no need for a mirror attached to a sink. A pool of dark blood congealed on the edge of the counter.
“What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever seen in your life?”
Miranda stopped again, her face pulled down into a startled scowl. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“A woman came back with a blown torso. She was shot in the abdomen, and her guts were spilling all over the place as she died on the ground in a massive pool of her own blood.” No big deal. Only the occasional flashback when her brain was already settling in for the night. “Why?”
Syrfila looked up again, this time with the flashlight illuminating her own face. Half her left cheek was missing, with gobs of flesh hanging off her skull and blood drying around her mouth and nose. It was enough to make Miranda’s vulgar sensibilities tremble in disgust.
“What happened?”
“I got shot.”
“But…”
“Bullet’s still in me. I’m trying to get it out.” That at least accounted for the tools and the blood all over the sink. There were large tweezers in Syrfila’s other hand.
“Who shot you?”
Syrfila shrugged and went back to her chore, the tweezers disappearing into her cheek. “That black guy under your command. He’s packing.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Just a fucking tad.”
“Shouldn’t you go to the hospital?”
Syrfila turned on the sink to rinse the blood off the tweezers. “It’ll heal itself in a couple days. Not like I haven’t been shot before.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
They remained silent while Syrfila continued her chore and Miranda stood in the glow of the flashlight. “Help me with this, will you?” Syrfila finally said.
Miranda did not want to help her. At all. As far as she was concerned, Syrfila could keep her half-blasted face over on the other side of the room. But she put her purse on the floor and walked over to take the tweezers and flashlight out of Syrfila’s hand. Some things weren’t worth fighting about, especially with blood gushing from open wounds.
Miranda tilted Syrfila’s chin up so she could get a better look at the inside of her cheek. Between the folds of flesh and blood, the bottom edge of the bullet wedged around Syrfila’s upper jaw. Any further in and Troy would have given her a free wisdom tooth extraction.
“This is beyond disgusting.” She steadied the chin between her fingers and poked at the cheek with the other. “Hold still and don’t say anything.”
A minute of tinkering later, Miranda loosened the bullet from Syrfila’s flesh. It clinked into the drain.
“Praise Jesus,” Syrfila said, her face still hanging over the sink, “wherever that bastard may be hiding.”
Miranda backed away. The clunky sounds of Syrfila turning on the sink and her shoes trudging to the bathroom rang through the air. She returned a few seconds later with bandages in her hand.
“One last favor?”
How could Miranda keep helping her? I’m a disgusting, pitiful human being, she thought. Miranda had done many things society would find deplorable in her life. Disobeying her family, being gay, promiscuous sex, soft drugs, hard drugs, stealing, taking off her clothes for money, prostituting her lack of vocal and dancing skills, committing fraud against the military, acting as a double agent for a mad man bent on destroying the world… but to her, none of that compared to the self-hatred when she showed Syrfila an ounce of compassion.
After the years of abuse, Miranda could not understand why she kept coming back, like she was in a bad made-for-TV movie. Syrfila was a horrible means to an end, and Miranda aptly feared her, but that still did not excuse the loving light she felt when she cleaned up and tended to the broken woman. Syrfila did not have many sympathetic soft sides to her personhood. Miranda also did not have much of a spine in her body.
Even so, she stretched a bandage across Syrfila’s face until she could no longer see the biological monstrosity in front of her. Syrfila tilted her dark eyes up and took the rest of the bandages from Miranda’s hand.
“How long will it be like that?” Miranda’s own morbid curiosity bubbled through her throat.
Syrfila shrugged. “Two days, a week? I don’t know. If I sleep well enough tonight, the hole should be gone by the morning.”
“That’s insane.”
“How long have you known me? This is how my body works.”
“Somehow I doubt humans in other galaxies are quite as advanced as you.”
“It helps to be huling, dear. They say we’re the closest humanoids to the julah.”
“Is that so?”
Syrfila tossed the rest of the roll of bandages into the garbage. “You’re not fully human yourself.”
Miranda sucked in her breath. Her mother was as human as the day the cavemen rose, but her father was an alien sorcerer. She only vaguely knew what it meant to be biologically half-julah. Somewhat longer lifespan, but nowhere near the thousands of years a healthy julah could live. On the ot
her hand, she rarely got sick and healed from injury faster than anyone else. Well, aside from Syrfila, apparently.
She also had no magical capabilities, since that part of julah physiology was matrilineal. Her father may be the single-most powerful sorcerer in the galaxy, but the most Miranda could accomplish was a great sense of direction.
“If you don’t have the Third Piece anymore,” Syrfila continued, her shadow moving toward her bed, “then I guess that means you left it to your blond ambition.”
“Not quite like that.”
“But she took it, no?”
“More or less.”
“You’re so fucked.”
“I don’t care.”
“And bitter.” Syrfila bent down and removed a box from under her bed. “Very bitter.”
Miranda needed to stay far away from the box and its contents. Naturally, she went and sat next to Syrfila, who occasionally groaned from her bullet wound.
“I wonder what will happen now.”
“We’re fucked. It was your job to hold onto the Third Piece.”
“He knew I couldn’t be trusted.”
“Then that’s his issue.” Syrfila pulled a small bag out of the box. “Sometimes I think he’s sabotaging himself.”
“That’s not his MO, though.”
“Whatever. As long as I get off this planet before we all die.”
Miranda shivered.
“You didn’t get hurt, did you?”
Was that concern? “No, not really,” Miranda said at first. “Got a little banged up, but that’s it. My house is a mess, though.”
Syrfila opened the bag and straightened the box on her lap. A white powder poured onto its surface. “I’m warning you right now that I am going to get totally shitfaced on this crap, so you might want to go home. This is strictly medical, not recreational… don’t give me that look, I just got shot in the face.”
“I’m going to use the bathroom…”
“Whatever.” Syrfila bent over the box, a loud, hearty sniff following Miranda into the bathroom.
She stood before the sink, head hanging before the mirror. Miranda turned on the water and wiped her lips clean. The water continued to run even after she finished washing away the traces of Danielle’s breath on her lips.
She then remembered where she was – in the bathroom of her abuser, who was in the other room getting high. The sudden onslaught of self-disgust was too much for Miranda, and she bent over the sink in a fit of tears she did not expect. But tears rarely showed up on a certain schedule.
Miranda cried long enough to get the pain out. How could I attack Danielle like that? she wondered. All because she couldn’t remember me or the ring? Am I really any better than the monster in the other room? She wiped away the remnants of tears on her cheeks and turned to see Syrfila standing in the bathroom doorway with something in her hand.
“You look like you could use some of this,” she said, the bag passing to Miranda.
She did not decline.
***
The moment everyone arrived back in Danielle’s apartment, she locked herself in the bathroom.
Troy cupped his hand around his mouth. “I love you, but I’m gonna go home and have some nightmares before work tomorrow. You gonna be there?”
A thump from the bathroom caught them off guard, “If I’m not dead! See ya!”
Devon turned to Clyde. “I don’t think I should go. I was told to keep an eye on her in case something happens, and that’s what I intend to do.”
A string of curses emerged from the bathroom. “Your beautiful princess is an example of grace and dignity, for sure,” Clyde said.
“I thought you were leaving?”
Scoffing, Clyde took a step toward the door. “Guess I was hoping for a better fond farewell than getting dumped for a woman I barely know.”
“Farewell?”
“I’m taking your advice and flying back to Denver tomorrow. Figure it’s safer than here.”
“How is being up in the mountains safer than here?”
“For one, Denver isn’t on a huge fault line that could easily make the entire west coast fall into the ocean once the world starts falling apart…”
“Super volcano?”
“What about it?”
“It’ll probably explode.”
“Yeah, while you’re in the ocean, jeez.”
Devon mustered up one last smile for his friend’s sake. “If this is goodbye, then I suppose I should make some half-assed promise to not die or something.”
“Well, this is goodbye, and you should be making promises to still be around when I come back in a couple months for school.”
“Optimism.”
“I’m overflowing with it.” Clyde marched toward the door. “Bye, Dev, write me some good songs to play when I get back.”
“Hey, Clyde?”
He stopped in the doorway long enough for Devon to catch up. “Yeah?”
Deep in Devon’s buried memory was a type of salute passed to warriors on their way to assignment: unthreatening, but respectful, a tribute to the possibility the person may never return. He figured it was not much different from the rigid salutes passing between uniforms in M-Town, but he also doubted any of those salutes carried the affection a mercenary of Cerilyn would bestow. Almost natural for Devon to want to salute his friend.
“Bye.” Devon lazily patted his friend’s shoulder. “Have a safe flight.”
Clyde’s frown transformed into a few tears as he latched onto his friend and sobbed a goodbye, as if he were going off to summer camp instead of running away from the world.
“Don’t go dyin’ on me, man!” He held onto Devon’s torso until neither of them could breathe. “You’re the only one who doesn’t laugh at me for wearing socks with my sandals!”
“Oh, for the love of the gays, get a room, you two.” Danielle’s voice preceded her as she came back into the living room. “Preferably not in my apartment.”
Clyde showed himself out. Devon flopped onto the couch. When he showed no signs of moving, Danielle said, “Don’t be so damn dramatic.”
“Having a panic attack yet?”
It took severe refrain to not slap Devon on the head. “Why are you even still here? Go home!”
“Go to bed!”
“I am!”
“Good!” Devon threw his arms up. “Maybe if you pass out you can regress, and this will be halfway over.”
“Why are you still here?”
Devon sighed in defeat. “Because I can’t leave you here by yourself. What happens if you actually do go back to regressing?”
Even Danielle could not argue with that. “Fine. But you’re not sleeping with me tonight. You can sleep out here.”
“Sounds great.”
Danielle scuttled back into her room to rummage through her closet for an extra blanket. She reemerged with a quilt and a flimsy pillow, tossing them at Devon before going to the kitchen for pain killers and a glass of water. “As soon as I take this medicine, I’m going to bed, and would appreciate if you didn’t make a lot of noise. I’ve got like… five hours until I have to be up for work, and I intend on using those hours for sleep.”
“Good night, then.” Devon remained under his pile. “I’ll go to sleep too. Holler if you need anything.”
Danielle scoffed. “I’m sure if I start regressing, you’ll be able to tell from one room away.” She put her bottle of pills back into their cupboard and returned to her bedroom, leaving the door ajar behind her.
Devon arranged his makeshift bed on the couch. He finally settled in and willed himself into the early stages of sleep. He did not know how he felt about sleeping on top of Danielle’s scent, as if his nose were buried into the crook of her neck like it had been the night before.
***
When Miranda awoke to Syrfila’s alarm the next morning, it was as if a renegade truck careened off the highway and slammed into the side of her head.
She sat up, her skirt hiked
up around her waist and her blouse falling off one of her arms. Her hand curled into her hair. She leaned back after moving made her dizzy.
The alarm continued to buzz until Syrfila’s arm emerged and her hand smacked down upon it. She looked as haggard as Miranda, and her facial bandage oozed with dried blood.
“Rise and shine,” Syrfila chortled, “it’s time to go to work.”
“Fuck off.” Miranda held her head in her hands.
“What’s wrong with you? Hung over?”
“Ugh…” Miranda noted that more than her skull hurt. “Did we have sex last night?”
Syrfila shoved herself out of bed. “As if. You did one line and then passed out. I pretty much followed you after that.”
Miranda wiped her nose. Even with her sporadic hard drug use since her teen years, she was never prepared for the good quality shit Syrfila procured.
She searched for her purse and sweater before stumbling through the flat. Syrfila soon stepped out of the bedroom, bandage ripped off to reveal new skin growing across her cheek.
“You’re unreal.” Miranda found the top of her purse.
“Possibly. Where are you going? You sure you should be driving?”
“I’m going home. I gotta get ready for work.”
“Why are you going to work? Stay here and rest up. I gave you the good shit, after all.”
“Apparently. I’ve got an important call to make during lunch, if you catch my drift.”
“Not at all.” Syrfila went back to the bathroom and started the shower. “Can’t even suggest letting you stay for a shower?”
“No. I’m going to shower at home.” Miranda’s voice rose higher as she increased the distance between them. “Besides, I am so not scrubbing that wannabe-skin-graft on your face.”
Syrfila smiled as Miranda left, the steam from the hot water dissipating through the bathroom and escaping out the open door.
FORTY-THREE
The office was lively for a Wednesday morning. Danielle arrived with stomach cramps and a sour temper, and Miranda marched to her office with a cocaine hangover rivaling her party-girl years. However, Danielle was not the one privileged enough to close herself off in her own room, and it grew on her nerves within five minutes of stepping out of the elevator.
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