by Lumen Reese
“You’ve got no training, you’d probably be more of a hindrance than anything.” He started to wander, circling around me.
“But if you found them on your own, and something happened to you, it would be your fault they got away. Two’s better than one, and you know it. -Even when the one is me.”
“You did point a gun at me last time.”
“We’ll do things your way while we’ve got time.”
I didn’t like it when he disappeared behind me, but I wouldn’t follow, refused to let him turn me around.
“My way? You wanna sneak away from your boyfriend, up there, and come and do things my way? You want me to be your back-door man?”
He was stopped behind me, and finally I turned.
He was looking at me that way he had when we first saw each other, in the hidden library. “I can hardly imagine anything more appetizing.”
“Can you stop that?”
He smiled with only the corners of his mouth, part of the mask. “Stop what?”
“You know what.” And despite the thrill it gave me, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, Your sister is someone’s captive, and here you are flirting with me.
He seemed to realize it, too, because all of a sudden, he looked contrite, shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled away. He put Danielle St. Peter’s body between us, and it seemed enough distance. I watched him, where he stood at the back of the train, where we could see the track spilling out behind us through a small window there.
“If that’s all, you can head back to Henry. I’ll find you tonight.”
“ We had guards stationed at every place we’ve checked. Every main road and the docks, too. They can’t all be crooked. Makes it harder for them to move around. We’ll close in on them.”
He looked over his shoulder at me, and gave a nod
*
The shore I was standing on was not a sheet of white sand, but instead thousands of gray and black pebbles which shifted as I dug my heels in. The sun setting out over the horizon threw brilliant shades of orange and gold on the waves lapping at jagged rocks further out. I wondered if Elena were still entertaining her love interest.
“They’re not here,” I called.
Henry was still exploring the little house that was more of a shack, allegedly home to a beautiful siren who lured ships into the cove, to be smashed on the rocks. Like the setting of the longest story line to run through the Quarters, the place turned up empty with no sign of having been disturbed.
One sailor of the crew, she might save. The woman who played the siren was one of the most famous love interests in the four quarters. For the ones who liked a bit of danger in their love stories. She was on vacation; ironically leaving the place where people went for vacations.
“You’re right,” Henry said. “But this is just a couple of places down. Still lots more to go.”
“There’s too many places they could be. The traffickers could have smuggled them into the city by now, and they could be anywhere in the second quarter. Or they could have just tied them up and thrown them into the ocean to get rid of the evidence. We’re never going to find them.”
“Hey.” He nudged me with one elbow, hands tucked into his pockets. “Don’t give up. Tomorrow we’ll try again.”
Tomorrow there would be one less day until taxes. But I knew that the earlier we turned in for the night, the earlier I could slip away to Corso, or maybe get an hour or two of rest before he came. Tired though I was, my night would be long.
Chapter Fourteen
The inn got a few customers that night. One family and a few single farmers coming in for drinks. Dinner was soup that I ate heartily. It would be hard to go back to not eating on some days, I thought. Of course, if they paid me enough, me and Joey and the family could all live decent lives. Maybe. I was no closer to finding the girls, and if it came down to it, I doubted I could bring Corso in without his cooperation.
Henry was nearby, flirting with a pretty waitress dressed in bushy skirts and a blouse with leather ties that crossed over her chest. She was a bit older than me, the daughter of the man who owned the inn. Henry was always within my line of vision, which meant I was always in his.
When he moved back to me, sipping from a mug of ‘mead’ as they called it, he was grinning like the cat who ate the canary.
“What are you doing?”
His eyes followed the path of the waitress. “Fishing.”
“Yeah? And if you catch that fish, what are you planning on doing? Bringing her back to my room? Is she into that?”
“I hadn’t considered…. Maybe she lives alone.”
“You’re not supposed to leave me alone,” I reminded.
“You’ll just have to come.” He waggled an eyebrow and leaned in closer. “And by that I mean-.”
“Shut up,” I laughed, shoving him away. “You’re drunk.”
Henry held up his hands defensively. He returned to his buxom waitress, and I sipped water. The man at the bar beside me stood to leave, and another figure instantly slid into his place.
“Finally.”
I stiffened, recognizing the voice.
Corso said, “I thought he’d never leave.”
“What do you want?”
“I just wanted to let you know I was here.”
He was dressed to the time, white shirt cut low on his thin but square chest, black coat over it, and he was freshly shaved, so that I could see the handsome angles of his face, and the hollows of his cheeks and the sink of his eyes looked especially extreme. His blue eyes drifted. Henry was beginning to make his way back. He turned to call back to his waitress. It bought us another second.
“We can pretend we’re leaving together,” Corso said.
“No.”
Only the corners of his mouth turned up in a tiny smile. “We actually could. Leave together, I mean.”
“No!”
“Then meet me outside tonight, after your guard dog goes to sleep. Now, pretend I’ve said something to offend you.”
“What?”
Corso looked behind me once more to Henry, and then he looked at me, and I knew what was coming the second before it happened. I felt myself shrink but something froze me, a latent excitement that rose up as he swiveled in and down, pressing his lips to mine. My body reacted an instant later and my arm was swinging up. I slapped him as hard as I felt I needed to, and his head snapped to the side and he fell out of his seat, barely catching himself.
Henry had started to lurch over but stopped when I reacted.
Corso stumbled away and Henry took his place. “What was that?”
“The guy mauled me,” I stammered, and took a quick drink to hide my lips in my glass. I was smiling at the absurdity of it. My heart was pounding.
“Hey, I’m glad you smacked him. I’m just surprised. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I’m going to bed.”
Henry fell into step beside me. He tried to drape an arm over my shoulders, but I shrugged him off.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
We turned in for the night. Adjoining rooms again, although this time there was no lock on the door between us. It made me nervous, and made me lay on my cot for almost an hour after I had turned out my light. No sound came from Henry’s room. I finally built up my courage and slung my satchel over my shoulder, moving toward the door. But I stopped short. It had squeaked on the way in. The window opened out onto a downward sloping roof. I moved to it, opened it quietly and swung one leg out. The whole town was dark. The stars were shining brilliantly over tiny homes on the fields further out. I tested the strength of the roof. Soft hay squished under my foot, but below, the support held. I stood on the roof, pulled the window almost completely closed, then jumped down, hitting the ground hard. I hissed at pain that blossomed in my ankles and knees, but scrambled up when Corso spoke.
“You looked like a flying squirrel, just now.”
“Shut up.”
I nodded.
“Good.” He stopped a minute. “How’re you gonna get back into your room?”
“I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Do you ever?”
I scowled. “You almost got yourself caught, in there.”
Corso gave a tiny smile. “I’m sorry about that… I guess I panicked.”
Bashful smile and hands in pockets, I was shocked how boyish he suddenly looked. I had to look away. “It’s fine. Do it again, and I’ll shoot you, though.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
“Let’s go.” He waved for me to follow on the dark, dirt road, and I reluctantly did.
“Where are we going?”
“Into the city. I know a fella who works at the castle. He’s a former cop.”
“Why are we going to see him?”
“He’s gonna help us check out a few spots that aren’t on the maps. Your friend can’t know. He’s too close to the company.”
“What kind of spots?”
“The illegal kind.”
“Like what?”
He turned to face me. “You said you wanted to help. If we’re gonna find those girls, you’ll have to go places you’re not comfortable being and do things you’re not comfortable doing. But if you won’t help me, then our deal is off.”
I felt like we were making a silent bet. He didn’t think I could handle it, and while I might normally have agreed I was determined to prove him wrong.
*
The moonlit streets we walked along were still dirt, but high buildings of gray stone were erected against the starry sky. The town was Wraith, the capital of Faylan, the fictional nation that formed the Second Quarter. The streets were almost empty, so late at night. The two of us were walking side by side, more like equals.
“How do you know about these places?” I asked.
“I don’t. James did some digging, we’re gonna see what he’s got for us.”
“Well then how do you know there even are places where illegal stuff happens here?”
His expression was sympathetic, like he thought I was precious. “Oh, Honey,” he said. “Where there is a society, there’s an underbelly of that society. James is gonna help us with navigating those channels.”
We turned into a little alley, where a man appeared to be waiting for us. He was past his prime and curdled looking, bearded, with a lantern and a sword hung on his hip. “Corso,” he said, and the two shook hands.
Corso introduced us. “Stella, the exalted Duke of Faylan.”
The man grinned, shaking my hand. “Joey’s daughter! He talked about you all the time, when I was on the force. Though you would’ve been just a little thing, then. He’s a good man.”
I was smiling, and wasn’t about to correct him.
But Corso said softly, “Stella was Paul’s daughter.”
Shame sunk in that I was about to let the moment pass without declaring that I was my father’s daughter. Like I was letting his memory slip away. “I still am…”
It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that Corso could have known my father. He was a rookie when he was first partnered with Joey, and my father had to have died by then.
James softened. “Your father was a great man.”
“I know.” I tried to lighten the mood with, “So should I address you as, ‘My Lord’?”
“Just James, I think. Where we’re going, there’s no need for the pretense.”
“Where are we going?”
“Tonight?” James turned and heaved open the door to the cellar he had been leaning against. “Hell.”
Light and sound spilled out from down the stairs, and Corso led the way, mumbling, “That was dramatic.” Inside, there was a bar, with people playing cards at tables. Two men were arguing, and over their heads was a sign that said, ‘Hell’.
The bartender watched with sharp eyes. “Who are those two?”
James said, “They’re not here to bust you. They’re just looking for some girls who may have come through here.”
“She looks like she works for the company.”
They started walking towards the back. It didn’t surprise me that I seemed too uptight to be around that sort of people. I wasn’t like Corso. The way that some cops I knew could never escape the fact that they were the police, in their posture and their gaze, Corso slunk and surveyed like a member of the scum of society.
The large room he led us into was dark. Only faint shapes of huddled up humans were visible amidst a thick cloud of smoke. I pulled the collar of my shirt up to cover my mouth and nose, not sure if I could get a contact high from whatever they were smoking. James did the same, but Corso didn’t bother.
Some of the people in the room had been shooting up. We looked around, sifting through people, but there were almost no girls present. The few that were present were druggies with dreamy smiles on their faces, showing no signs of captivity. Nobody was aware enough to answer any questions.
It was another dead end. We left the tavern, stepping back out into the night, where I took deep breaths of fresh air.
“Bit of a walk to the next place. It’s a brothel.”
He was in the lead, and Corso was bringing up the back, but I slowed up to fall into step beside him.
“Did you know my father?” I asked. I had been turning the question over in my mind, and finally knew that I had to ask it.
He looked over at me, only a couple of inches taller than me, and nodded. “Briefly.”
“But you didn’t get your job until after he died.”
“Correct. I met him a couple of years before. When I was seventeen. He arrested me.”
That made me smile. “What for?”
He was smiling, too, with only the corners of his mouth. “Something stupid. I should say that he almost arrested me. He seemed to see that I was on a bad path and elected not to take me in. Instead he just sat me down and talked to me for a couple of hours. About what it means to be a man. When you’ve been down south like me, that’s usually it, you know. It’s not just what the place does to you, but people treat you differently once they know. But your dad wrote me a letter that got me into the police academy. I didn’t go to the funeral, it wasn’t my place, but I wished I could have.”
We were walking among empty alleys, and crossed a well-lit area where there were still people out in the night. Music from simple instruments came tumbling out of one place. We headed back into the dark. Walking together, talking, I felt like we were removed from the place for a minute. It might as well have been Joey’s living room, though we had never spoken so much or so intimately before.
I focused my attention ahead, turning it all over for a minute as we went. I was glad he had not gone to the funeral. I had been a wreck. I had dug the grave myself, on the plot that the state had paid for. A field full of thousands of other bodies, with indistinguishable markers. Joey had been with me for the hours that it took me to dig, but I would not let him help. I would just cry and dig and cry, and if he tried to touch me or even came too close I would shriek at him. Eventually the hole was big enough, and the crowd gathered, and I ran out of tears and just watched as they lowered my father’s cheap coffin below the surface of the earth. There were other cops from the precinct there whom I recognized, a few neighbors from our building. James had probably been there, I realized.
“He talked to you,” I said finally, “And it changed who you were completely?”
He shrugged. “He was a persuasive man.”
Corso had gotten a talk with my father that I would never get to have, and it made me burn for a moment. It surprised me that even after fourteen years, and I-didn’t-know-how-many of those since I last truly ached or cried about it, the loss could still come back around in new ways.
The streets got sort of dank, and because it would be odd to quicken my pace and move away from him, I went
on walking beside Corso though we didn’t have anything else to say. The silence, at least, was easy. He kept his eyes open, and I got the distinct feeling that he was seeing things in the night which I could not. I wondered for the hundredth time how I had come to be where I was, a factory worker in a land out of time, deceiving everyone around me either directly or indirectly by letting them think that I could handle it.
James pulled us up to a door down a set of steps set in the stone of the alley. He knocked, and a large man stuck his head out.
“Can we help you?”
“We’re looking for Doug.”
“Right this way.” He waved a hand, and the three of us walked in.
Inside, past a little room with chairs and tables, up a steep flight of stairs, we were led down a hall that was dimly lit. Gossamer curtains were hung over the doorways, so inside I could see women sleeping on beds. One room had a man inside as well, and he was moving over her. I stiffened, and took a single step toward the room, but Corso caught my arm.
At the end of the hall, we were let into a little office. A man I assumed was Doug was reading a book, which he set down, smiling warmly when he noticed us.
“Good evening, gentlemen and lady.” His eyes swept over me. “Are you looking to sell her?”
“Women aren’t things for you to buy-!” I growled, surprising myself with the anger that swelled up in my chest.
Corso tugged his gun from the back of his jeans, and crossed the room in three stalking steps, he slammed the man up against the wall, sticking his gun straight into the man’s temple. “Don’t so much as look at her. Keep your eyes on me, listen: don’t lie to me.”
Doug had hardly blinked after the initial impact of the wall. “I sure hope I can help you find what you’re looking for tonight.”
“Shut up. The girls you’ve got working here, how long have they been working with you?”
“That depends on the girl,” Doug said through clenched teeth and a forced smile. The gun was clearly pressing in hard against his skin, and James huffed a sigh, looking the other way, while I only watched without sympathy.
