Dead Man in a Ditch

by Luke Arnold

  I’d stopped listening. My ears were ringing. The floor felt like liquid under my feet.

  Tippity didn’t have any accomplices. He was a loner, like me. The police had seized everything from his pharmacy. They’d taken all his Faery hearts and they’d taken all those little orbs he’d made; the glass globes of acid that were needed to set the magic free.

  All except one.

  When I’d woken up to find Hendricks in my office, he had an orb in his hands. He was holding it up to the light and splashing the acid around inside. He’d asked if he could borrow it. I’d let him.

  And then a tree had grown out of the ground.

  I ran straight out the door and onto the street.

  72

  The gate was wrenched open. There were marks in the mud on the steps. Lock broken off. Door kicked in. Porch littered with splinters.

  Nobody was supposed to come here. Nobody but me.

  I stepped inside and there were two sets of footprints on the floor. The ones marked in blood were my own: left by my bare, bleeding feet on the night I first came back after the Coda. The others were fresh and dirty, made by the man who was supposed to be my friend. I followed them across the floor, keeping my eyes down till I reached the place where my love was waiting.

  A groan escaped my lips as I raised my head.

  Amari.

  Her body was where it had always been but the ground around her was scattered with sawdust and curls of papery bark. Her arms were still wrapped around her waist. Her fingers, so delicate. Her breast. Her shoulders. Her neck—

  I screamed as I absorbed the full horror of what Hendricks had done.

  Her face was gone. Cracked open. I could see right through to the back of her head. Everything inside was shattered. Snapped. Destroyed. One of her ears was still there but the other was in pieces on the floor. Where were her lips? Her little nose? Those cheeks? Where had she gone?

  I knelt among the debris and ran my fingers through her remains. I picked up the largest piece. An eye stared back at me. Her eye.

  No. No. God, no.

  I wrapped my arms around her. My head pressed against the sharp corners of what was left of her skull. Tears dropped from my cheeks into the hollow of her neck. Her hair crunched between my fingers like autumn leaves and pieces of her skin snapped off in my shaking fingers. She crumbled under my touch and I crushed her body into a million tiny pieces. All empty. All cold. She dissolved into dust and with every breath, I blew another piece of her away.

  I was alone.

  She’d been gone for six years but I’d kept her body safe. Just in case. I’d been right to do it, too, because some piece of her had remained. A glowing heart full of power. Full of life. Until Hendricks had turned it into a weapon so he could free Rick Tippity from his cell.

  I found Amari’s cheek on the floor and put it to mine. It was rough and cold but it still felt good to touch her.

  Pat. Pat, tap.

  I looked up at the shadow on the second-floor balcony and roared.

  “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO HER?”

  The shadow shook its head.

  “How could I do this? What about what you did to her, boy? Kept her here, like this, for so long. Pinned together and dressed up like a little doll. Don’t you have any respect for—”

  “I was keeping her safe!”

  “You were keeping her for YOU! Because it was the only way you could ever have her. I knew you were weak but I never imagined you could be so cruel. Especially to her.”

  “I was protecting her! In case it came back.”

  There was another shadow beside the first.

  “But it’s never coming back,” said Linda. “You told me that so many times, Fetch. Why were you saving her for a day that would never come?”

  “I… I…”

  Hendricks leaned over the railing.

  “What were you thinking, boy? That she’d come back to life, in her broken body full of cracks and nails and bits of glue, and thank you for doing this to her? Finally run away with you?” His words landed on me like dropped knives. “In all this time, with all the things you’ve done, how is it possible that you still haven’t grown up?”

  “But… but Tippity found the light inside them. Inside her. We could have used that to—”

  “She was dead,” said a third shadow. “They all were. I told you that over and over but you didn’t listen. You just wanted me to be the bad guy so you could be the hero.” Tippity’s glasses shimmered in the dark. “The Fae are gone. I just borrowed the last spark of what was left. There was nothing alive in her or in any of them. You blamed me for moving forward while you were here, cuddling a corpse.”

  She was all over me. Splinters on my clothes and dust on the palms of my hands. So dry. So fragile. All gone.

  “Boy, we can’t go back in time. We can’t bring the past into the present, no matter how much we want to. But we can make a new future. I still want to do that with you. If you’re ready.”

  My cheeks were hot. My chest sore. My hands reached for weapons but I had no machine. Just a knife. I drew it without thinking. I’d been doing everything without thinking for so long, why should I start now?

  “I told you,” said Tippity.

  Hendricks lowered his head.

  “Yes, I suppose you did.”

  Something dropped from above. Then, the sound of broken glass. A little white bottle had landed at my feet. The smell reminded me of that wake-up powder that Tippity and I had used to get back from the church, but it must have been the other kind because when the fumes hit my nose, my legs buckled out from under me and my head hit the floor.

  73

  The drugs wore off slowly. I was in jail. Downtown. Nothing in my cell but a cold stone bench. I couldn’t move but I could feel. I could think. I could remember.

  I could also overhear what the cops were saying about me. Apparently I’d been dropped on their doorstep and when Simms heard about it, she gave firm instructions to keep me locked up until she was ready to deal with me herself.

  In a way, I was happy to be taken out of it all. To be locked up where I couldn’t do any more damage. The real world was too confusing. Too hard to navigate. Too easy to screw up.

  After a while, when I could roll my head to the side, I saw that I had neighbors: three grim-looking Mages sitting in the opposite cell. After a few hours, I gained enough control of my tongue and lips to turn my slurring into speech.

  “What are you fffolks in fffor?”

  They told me they’d been locked up for three nights as part of Sunder City’s crackdown on unapproved magical practices.

  “We were just experimenting,” said the shortest of the trio. The other two had taken an instant dislike to me and refused to contribute anything more than a grunt.

  “What kind of experiments?” I had neither the ability nor the inclination to get up.

  “Lightning bugs. It used to be an old Mage trick. We’d tap into the bit of electricity in the beetles and use it to light candles or entertain children. When we heard what Tippity was doing with the Fae, we thought about other places where a piece of magic might be hidden. Jim here mentioned the bugs so we thought about crushing them up and seeing if we could do something interesting with the lights.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Probably not. It was just an idea. We were catching a bunch of them up in what’s left of Brisak Reserve when these guys in suits asked us what we were doing. When we told them, they called the cops who put us in here.”

  So, Thurston and the police were working together to enact this Tippity-inspired attack on illegal magic. A few days earlier, thoughts like that might have pissed me off. But I’d burned myself out on bigger fights since then. I shrugged myself back to sleep.

  Another day sidled past my window without acknowledging me. In the morning, the nervous cop came in. The one who’d picked me off the floor of my place and then dropped into Simms’s office while I was at the station. He approached
my cell and handed me the worst cup of coffee I’d ever tasted.

  “Simms told you to do this, didn’t she?”

  “I’ve been told not to tell you anything about anything, sir.”

  “I’m your prisoner, kid. Best stop calling me sir or it’ll damage your fearsome reputation.”

  “Yes… uh, yes.”

  He was a real ballbuster, this one. A carrot-topped broomstick with a resilient smile.

  “What was your name again?”

  “I’ve been told not to tell you anything about anything, sir.”

  “I don’t think they mean your name, kid.”

  He thought about it for a good ten seconds.

  “Corporal Bath, Si… Corporal Bath.”

  “Nice to meet you, Corporal Bath. Any news on where Tippity has got to? Do the cops know who broke him out?”

  “I’ve been told not to tell you—”

  “I know you have! Well, fuck off then, Bath. See you tomorrow. I eagerly await my next weak cup of piss.”

  He left me there. The talkative Mage stopped talking too. The world outside was quiet. All I could hear was the occasional sound of construction as another piece of Niles-funded architecture came into existence.

  I wondered what Hendricks was doing with Linda and Tippity. Had they all agreed to his plan? Were they working to take down Niles, as well as the whole damned city?

  Hendricks had been using the Governor’s mansion as a base. I wondered if they were still there. I could tell Corporal Bath about it and see what happened, but then I’d be putting my nose in it again, which is just what I’d decided I wasn’t going to do.

  I kept thinking about putting the hole in that pipe and how much it would have slowed the Niles Company down. Maybe not at all. Maybe a lot. Maybe all that happened was that some innocent citizen would be kept in darkness because of what I did. A house would be left cold. A business broken. When I started to feel bad, I reminded myself that none of it would matter soon because my old friend was planning to bring the whole thing down.

  Hendricks already had a plan, I was sure of that. He was never one to talk big without being able to back it up. Somehow, he already knew how he was going to tear this city to the ground.

  But it wasn’t my business anymore. I’d been left out. Whatever they did, it was up to them, and I’d just have to wait and see.

  At sundown, a cockroach crawled across the floor, onto my foot and up my leg. I tried to kick it off but he clung on and crawled higher.

  I took off my hat and slapped the sucker.

  BANG!

  I jumped up. In the next room, where the cops were, a scream turned into a muzzled cry. The Mages all jumped to their feet. Smoke and dust blew into the jail, along with Linda Rosemary.

  She was carrying her switchblade in one hand and a set of keys in the other. She’d come for me. Hendricks must have changed his mind.

  “Linda, what’s happening. Are you—”

  She turned to face the Mages.

  “Gentlemen, I’m here on behalf of Rick Tippity. We have declared war against Sunder City and need soldiers who are willing to fight for our cause. We believe you’ve been wrongfully imprisoned by a private company: an enemy who has taken control of this city and its people. I am setting you free. You are under no obligation to join us but, if you do, we are ready to empower you. We have weapons waiting for you to wield, allies in need of your assistance and a world ready to be saved.” She turned the key and the door swung open. “Gentlemen, the choice is yours.”

  They didn’t even need to think about it. They exited the cell and shook her hand one by one. She handed the short one a piece of paper.

  “Here’s the address. Get there as soon as you can. I have one more piece of business to complete here first.”

  The Mages rushed out. Linda finally faced me. She had that glassy look in her eyes as she put the key in the lock.

  “Linda, I—”

  “What’s it going to be?”

  The key was in her hand, in the lock, but she hadn’t turned it. Not yet.

  “Are you really going ahead with this?” I asked.

  “With what?”

  She was fucking with me: enjoying having all the power.

  “Look, I was fine with stopping the Niles Company but—”

  “Were you?”

  She caught me off guard. Until then, I’d fooled myself into thinking that I’d agreed with some of Hendricks’ plan. That the Niles Company needed to be stopped, no matter how much they were helping people, but destroying the city was a step too far.

  But I’d been here too long. Alongside the sick and the injured. The ones who could never find work. The broken families with no hope. Maybe Hendricks was right. Maybe I didn’t know how to look at the big picture. Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe I wanted to look up close at all the ugly details.

  “No,” I admitted. “Not really. I’ve seen too many people struggle too much.”

  “You’ve seen the people here. That’s it. You don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. But I can’t help you destroy this city. It’s madness.”

  “This city is madness. You can’t see that because you’re part of it. I almost let it take me too, until Hendricks reminded me that there’s another way. Without Sunder, the rest of the world will have a chance.”

  “But we can work within it. We can make it better.”

  “Do you know what I received the other day? A letter from the city telling me to stop the work I was doing because it promoted illegal behavior. They said that it was dangerous. They told me the same shit you told me the first time I met you, but now they’ve made it law. I understand why you want to hold onto this place. It feeds you and you feed it. But I’m ready to watch it burn.”

  She said it so straight. So clear. It almost hid the uncertainty underneath.

  “Linda, we can find another way. There is—”

  “He told me about you. All about you.”

  Shit.

  “I… I’m sorry. I—”

  “I get it. You needed to kill the monster that killed your family. It was personal. Right? More important than politics or morals. I don’t blame you for that. I really don’t.” She pulled the key out of the lock. “But because of what you did, my family died. You’re my Chimera, Fetch Phillips. I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to let you out of your cage.”

  Then, she left.

  74

  A while later, Bath came back. His face was all scratched up after his introduction to Linda Rosemary. He looked around at the state of the room, made some notes, and left. I went back to sleep.

  “Curious,” said a voice from beyond the bars. I sat up to see the square jaw and unflinching stare of Thurston Niles. “They left you behind. I didn’t expect that.”

  I didn’t bother to stand.

  “Yep.”

  “How’s that job coming along? The one where you were supposed to find my brother’s killer. The one I paid you in advance for.”

  “I told you, I don’t work for Humans.”

  “You don’t work for anyone. Simms and Thatch have cut you loose. Your rebel buddies don’t want you tagging along either. What happened? It was just starting to get exciting.”

  Thurston was used to being untouchable. I’d already seen how folks would fawn over him without question just because he liked to throw his money around. Maybe that’s why he was so impressed that I’d dared to break his nose.

  “The last time I offered you friendship, you scoffed at it,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve taken the time to reconsider.”

  He’d seemed so benign when we’d met at his house: a grieving brother picking up the pieces. Now, I could see what Hendricks was so afraid of. Thurston wore his ego like a gold breastplate. His air of superiority reeked like cheap perfume.

  No. This man should never be given the reins to my city. But I’d screwed up any chance to stop him.

  “I’m fine
on my own, thanks. It’s safe in here. Better than being out on the streets when everyone starts carrying your pistols on their belt.”

  He snickered.

  “You have a point, but at least they’ll be prepared if more radicals like Deamar show up.” He stepped right up to the bars. “What’s his plan?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. Why would you run around killing Dragons and breaking into factories if you didn’t?”

  “Maybe that’s why I went with him; to find out what his plan was.”

  “Maybe you’re full of shit.”

  “Maybe you’ve been feeding it to me.”

  “Enough. I like you, Mr Phillips. I’ve always said so. But my time is precious. Tell me what Deamar wants and we can start working together. For real, this time. No more lies.”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  A Human wanted me to betray the head of the Opus and side with them. Again.

  It was the most impossible thing I’d ever heard. He could pull out my teeth and cut off my toes but there was no way in the world that I would let it happen. That mistake had been hammered into my head like a steel beam. Every single day for six years, I’d been regretting one thing, and Thurston thought he could get me to make the exact same mistake by asking nicely? It was the funniest fucking thing I’d ever heard.

  “That’s gonna be a no from me, Niles. Thanks for stopping by.”

  A different kind of man would have got angry. Not Niles. Anger, guilt, rent and taxes were for other people to worry about.

  “If you change your mind and want to contact me,” he said, “I’ll let the Corporal know that he should put you through.”

  “Don’t spend your nights sitting by the phone on my account, Thurston. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”

  He gave a little laugh.

  “If only you knew how small your pond really is, Mr Phillips, it might make you reconsider your attitude to your own kind. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, Humans have owned this city from long before you ever saw my face. You are a Human. One of the most Human men I’ve ever met. Maybe one day, you’ll take a walk outside Sunder and see what life is like without men like me around to keep you safe.”