The Debt Collector (Season 1)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Cursing at Valac under my breath, I struggle into the rest of the clothes. For how tightly they fit, they’re actually comfortable, moving with me as I fish out the clanking accessories from the bottom of the bag. I slip the leather bands around my wrists, but there’s no way I’m wearing the blue electric snake that’s either a necklace or an elaborate earring… even if I could figure out where the fangs are supposed to go.

  I stalk to the door and pound on it. When it slides open, Valac’s standing outside. I expect to see Nico and Two-Pints, but he’s alone.

  “What the hell is this?” I gesture to my clothes. He’s dressed in his usual high-end fare, open-collared shirt and imported shoes. Not like a freak show.

  “Shut up.” He grabs me by the jacket and hauls me out of the room. I’m so surprised, I hardly react. He breathes in my face, angry again. “We’re going for a walk.”

  I look at him like he’s crazed, but he ignores me and shoves me toward the stairs. I imagine the towncar is waiting for us downstairs with Kolek’s thugs, but Valac takes me up the stairs instead. I’ve never been in this part of the house. We tromp up two flights, Valac crowding me from behind and urging me on.

  When we reach the top, the stairwell opens onto the roof. I stumble over the threshold, the flat, rough surface almost too dark to see. The spotlights that shine on the outside walls bounce a sickly-white light off the palm trees that hem the house. The close-bound leaves are lit up like ghoul faces peeking over the edge of the roof.

  I turn back to Valac, but he’s in my face again, forcing me backward. The garish light throws stripes of illumination across the roof. It’s not easy to see where the ledge is, but we’re getting dangerously close. I glance at my footing, but then Valac grabs the collar of my jacket again. I stare wide-eyed at him, trying to assess what’s going on, but his face is close and full of shadows.

  “I know what you’re doing!” His voice is rough, but he’s not touching me skin-to-skin, so I’m not panicking. Yet.

  “What I’m… doing?” My mind flails for an explanation. Does he seriously think I’m angling for his job? Is that what this is about? Or were there really hidden microphones in my room, and he overheard Ophelia and me last night? It’s not like we made any solid plans, but maybe he’s pissed that I’m still looking to escape.

  Valac lets go with one hand and draws it back. I try to shove him away, but the backs of my legs bang against the lip of the roof. It’s only a foot high. I grab his wrist, finding a sliver of flesh and holding tight. I can’t decide if he’s going to push me off the roof or suck the life out of me, but I don’t want to be the one to go first, either way. If he’s going to drain me, I might be strong enough to fight him, but I’m not sure. And I certainly don’t want to do it while I’m dangling half off the roof.

  “What is your problem?” I say through gritted teeth.

  He just teeters, words seemingly stopped in his throat. Finally, he steps back, dropping his collecting hand and releasing my jacket with the other. But his stare continues to pin me to the edge of the roof. “You’re not fooling me, Lirium.”

  I straighten my jacket. “Okay.” I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “You were ready to die for that boy,” he says, like it’s an accusation. “I could see it in your eyes. It wasn’t any bluff. You weren’t standing up to Kolek.”

  This is what he’s mad about? “I never said—”

  He stabs a finger at my chest, but I hold my ground. Especially since I have nowhere to go but three stories down.

  “You played it like you were tough!” He’s practically shouting, but then he glances at the grounds below. Maybe Nico and Two-Pints are down there and he doesn’t want them to hear. He looks back to me and speaks in a hushed voice. “But I saw it in your eyes, Lirium. I saw it. You were expecting a bullet. You were surprised when he didn’t kill you. Hell, I was surprised when he didn’t kill you.”

  “Yeah, well…” I guess sometimes you have to get lucky, and that was my one and only time. There’s really no explaining it. I glance at my feet, judging whether I can move away from the edge without pissing him off even more. I’m still not sure he didn’t bring me up here to throw me off.

  “Why?” he asks. “Why did you do it?” His blue eyes catch the light from the palm trees and seem to shine, but his voice is pained. “Why couldn’t you just listen to me and do what I told you?”

  “Why does it matter to you?” I edge slightly away from the lip of the roof. “It worked out okay in the end.”

  Valac closes his eyes, like he’s in pain. Like the fact that I’m not in the morgue is causing him bodily injury that he can barely endure. I take a full step away from the edge. And Valac’s insanity.

  “Sorry to disappoint you by still breathing.” As soon as Ophelia and I have a way out, I’m taking it, risky or not. But I don’t need to take shit from Valac in the meantime.

  He opens his eyes. He sees I’ve shifted away from the ledge and frowns. But he doesn’t come any closer. “You don’t believe me, do you? Everything I told you about… about after. How there’s no life for us after this—you don’t believe it. You think we still have souls.”

  I frown at his sudden change in tone. He’s so earnest, like he really cares if I believe him. It compels me to answer him honestly. “I don’t know. I think you’re probably right about the afterlife being a whole lot of nothing. At least for people like us.”

  “Then why?”

  It’s like he thinks I’ve got some answer for him. But I don’t even know the question. “Maybe…” I try, but stop. Valac’s hanging on my words, and it unsettles my stomach. I swallow down my uneasiness. “Maybe there are worse things than nothing. I had to make a choice. And I chose not to be a child-killer. That’s all there is to it.”

  Valac blinks, then drops his gaze to the dark surface of the roof, searching it like he’s lost something important. Then he nods, I guess to himself and whatever craziness is rambling inside his head. He rubs his face with two hands, his movements slow and measured. He’s thinking.

  He sucks in a breath and lets it out. The sound spills over the quiet of the night.

  Valac half-turns and holds one hand out toward the door. “You should get back to your room,” he says, quietly. Almost reverently. “We’ll be leaving in half an hour.”

  I hesitate. “Is Ophelia coming with us?”

  He bows his head, then gives me a sorrowful look that convinces me he’s fully gone round the bend. “Would you like her to?”

  As if it’s actually up to me. “Yes,” I say, like that should be obvious.

  “Whatever you’d like, Lirium.” He gives me a half-bow, half-nod that makes my face twist up. Valac is definitely losing it.

  I stride past him to the door, and he follows behind me, but not close. Whatever conversation he wanted to have with me on the roof, it’s done.

  I only wish I knew what it was really about.

  The ride to wherever we’re going is long. Valac is moody, rubbing his fingers across his forehead and staring out the window at the streaked lights of the Metro. He hasn’t said a word since we left, when he explained that we’re paying out to a special client, and Ophelia is along to make sure I don’t blow the transfer. She’s glammed up, but the electric blue eye shadow and harsh makeup steal some of her beauty. Still, I’m having a hard time keeping my hands to myself. She had to have heard the wallbanging sex. I want to tell her it was fake, but I can’t risk it with Valac right next to her. So I use stolen touches and whispered kisses to show I’m all about her. She doesn’t seem to mind, which keys me up even more and makes it difficult to focus on thinking through a plan, like I should. If I know Ophelia, she’s figuring out all the angles inside that beautiful head of hers. I want to map out ways to break free, so I’m ready when she is, but I don’t even know where we’re going.

  Or why we’re dressed like low-rent sex workers.

  We leave the freeway at West Hollywood, and our pace slows to a
crawl in the traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard. The see-and-be-seen bars spill patrons onto the streets, and we’re fighting the drunken foot traffic. Valac comes out of his stupor and scans the crowds as we inch forward. Nico is driving with Two-Pints riding shotgun. He points to a bar up ahead that shouts Shooter in neon-blue electric graffiti. The air is so thick with smog that the blaze of the lettering mutes and turns hazy. As we climb from the car, I realize that Shooter has at least three different connotations, none of which are good for me, being here, dressed the way I am.

  Music from the club pulsates through the warm night air, and I feel the hum of it through my thin-soled shoes on the sidewalk. Nico and Two-Pints push ahead through the crowd, looking like security in their imported suits. Valac stands out a little less, in his half-unbuttoned black silk shirt and tailored pants. Ophelia is invisible among the stumbling, similarly makeup-drenched girls weaving along the walk. Valac drapes his arm across my shoulders and yanks me out of the path of two barrel-chested men in leather shorts, blue glow-tattoos, and not much else.

  I shoulder his arm away. “I’m not your date, Valac,” I say loud enough to be heard over the thumping of the music.

  He slips a hand around my waist and leans close to my ear. “If you’re my date, little bird, you’re more likely to make it to the back room where we’re meeting our client.”

  I glare at him and pull away. “I’m not exactly unarmed,” I say as we stride toward the door, mostly because I think he’s messing with me.

  But the usual humor is gone from his eyes. “Well, you could announce your status as a debt collector to a bar filled with junkies. Your choice.” I can barely hear him over the noise now that we’re at the entrance. Nico and Two-Pints negotiate our entry.

  When we step inside, I see what Valac means.

  Barely dressed boys dangle from electric-blue ropes and swing from light-up bars that have to be maglev by the way they float over the heads of the crowd. Curls of smoke stir up as the aerialists glide past. The glow-tattooed hands that reach for them belong to a full range of clubbers from shirtless, muscle-bound men in leather pants to skinny, trash-dressed junkies that look like me. There’s a sprinkling of glam girls like Ophelia and slick-haired fashion plates like Valac, but mostly the bar is wall-to-wall male flesh on display.

  “Ok,” I say to Valac. “Get me through the gauntlet with all my body parts intact.”

  He nods and claims me by curling an arm around my neck and pressing his palm flat against my chest. Ophelia struts ahead of us like she owns the place, and the sea of men parts before her. Even in a gay bar, she commands presence.

  Nico and Two-Pints follow her, leading us across the main floor, where couples undulate to the music in a way that’s half-dance, half-sex. Scattered among them are tables with clubbers smoking skeet. The bar is rank with its sickly sweet smell. The giant bulbous lamps in the center of the tables look vaguely Turkish, each stacked globe lit up with blue plasma and sprouting a tentacle that ends in a smoking mask strapped to a junkie’s face. Their eyes are too glazed to notice us passing, but the neon-jacketed dealers supplying them watch us like hawks.

  Valac should be laughing at me, but instead he’s glaring at everyone, like he’s ready to suck down their life energy with the slightest excuse. Which almost makes me laugh.

  I lean into him. “Next time, you get to play the skeet-addict boy-toy. And you owe me big time for this.” The music from the club is so loud I have to shout, and even then I’m not sure if he’s heard me.

  He bites his lip, like he’s actually sorry for putting me through this, so I go for more.

  “I want some alone time with Ophelia.”

  He grimaces. “Fine. When we get back, I’ll sneak her into your room.”

  That was easy. Too easy. “No, now. Otherwise, Kolek will find out. Find us a closet or something and get Nico and his pal to look the other way.” I smirk at him. “I plan to make some noise, and this seems like the perfect place to do it.”

  He looks even more pained, clenching my chest tighter and holding me against him. I have to sync my steps with his to avoid a junkie passed out on the floor and the hulk who’s bent over him, picking his pockets. A guy who could be security or might just be another patron pulls the pick-pocket up by his hair. They go down in a tumble of sweaty, muscle-bound arms that could be fighting. Or foreplay. It’s hard to tell.

  “Didn’t you get enough last night?” Valac says in my ear. “That’s what your sex worker was for.”

  “What can I say? I’m insatiable.”

  Valac shakes his head, but my heart is pounding with the possibility. If Valac gives Ophelia and I even a minute of privacy—for whatever reason—we’ll have a chance to make a plan. And the chaos of the club is the perfect place to escape into. Together. We would only need a moment, a distraction, and a little luck—

  “We’ll see,” Valac says. “Maybe. If the client hasn’t gotten here yet.”

  I grin. My heart beats double the time of the slow-pounding music. We make it across the club to a set of transparent stairs held to the wall with electric-blue rails. Valac unlatches from me, and we follow Nico, Two-Pints, and Ophelia up. At the top is a small office with what looks like a bedroom down a hallway in back. The noise steps down to a tolerable level once the door is closed, but the vibration still thumps through my body in a way that makes me slightly nauseous. Or possibly it’s the idea that this could be our chance, if only we can make it work. Ophelia gives me a look like she’s waiting for me to say or do something.

  I don’t see anyone else in the room. “Looks like your client is late.”

  Valac glances at his palm. “They’ll be here.” He strides down the skinny hall: there’s a bathroom at the end, and the door to the bedroom is open. Valac pokes his head inside, inspecting it, then gestures to me and tilts his head to the bedroom. I can hardly believe it. I grab Ophelia’s hand and drag her down the hall.

  I sweep my hand dramatically for Ophelia to go first, giving her a sex-filled grin for Valac’s sake. She plays along and floats into the room.

  “You might be all right, after all, Valac. Give us ten minutes.” I slip in after Ophelia and start to close the door.

  Valac’s hand stops it before it shuts. “Five minutes, maybe less. When they get here, the fun’s over.”

  “Deal.”

  Valac lets me close the door the rest of the way. I’m kind of stunned that he’s allowing this, but there’s no time to question it. Ophelia’s already checking the room for escape routes, but Valac’s not that stupid. There are no windows or doors, just a lumpy mattress propped up on a decaying wooden frame and a dresser with more bare wood than paint.

  “What’s your plan for our getaway, baby?” she says, and in that instant, I think I might actually love her.

  I step away from the door to make sure Valac can’t overhear and take both of her hands in mine. “We can do this. Valac’s off his game tonight. I don’t know why, but I think the whole incident with the boy unsettled him. If we make a break for it, he’ll never see it coming.”

  She peers up at me with those dark, deep eyes. “There are still two of them with guns. And Valac’s more powerful than me now. But… maybe not more powerful than both of us together.” She arches one eyebrow.

  Definitely in love with her.

  I hold her cheek with one hand and kiss her gently. “I love it when you talk like that.”

  She frowns and shakes her head. “It’s still risky.”

  “We’ll wait until after the payout, on the way out, through the bar.”

  “Nico will shoot straight through a roomful of junkies to get to you, Lirium,” she says, her voice grave. “Don’t forget that.”

  “Then we’ll have to take Nico first.”

  She nods. “I can stick close to him.” She looks at her palm, hand flexed out. “I guess I can handle having one scar.”

  I take her hand and press her palm to my lips. “I’ll heal it for you.”

 
She smiles. “So, I take Nico…”

  “And I’ll take Two-Pints.”

  She frowns. “You’ll take what?”

  I give a short laugh. “The other thug.”

  “Larry.”

  “What? His name is Larry?”

  She grins.

  I think of shotglass-Larry and his disgusted frown. “That’s so wrong. Okay, once we’re on the floor, we take out Larry and Nico. If we’re fast enough, by the time Valac figures out what’s happening, we should be ready to face him.”

  “Or we could use Nico’s gun.”

  My stomach turns inside out. “I… I don’t want to kill Valac.” Words I honestly never thought would come out of my mouth. “Maybe he’ll come with us?”

  Ophelia gives me a look like I just proposed turning Valac into a hamster.

  “It’s possible,” I say. “He might be willing.”

  “Or he might kill us both for asking. You don’t know him like I do. That ship sailed a long, long time ago for Valac.”

  I nod, but I’m not sure I agree. “Well, if we have a gun, he can’t really stop us, can he? And that’s all we need. We can fade into the street and be gone. We’re already out of the east side. We could just go straight from here to—”

  Someone pounds on the door, making us both jump. There’s a muffled sound outside, probably Valac yelling at us through the door.

  “Time’s up,” I say softly. Then I take both her cheeks in my hands and kiss her thoroughly. I take care to smear her bright red lipstick and dig my hands through her hair, mussing it.

  She’s a little breathless when I release her. “Was that really necessary?” she asks.

  I grin and wipe the lipstick from my face with the back of my hand. “Completely.”

  Valac pounds on the door again, harder this time.

  “Coming!” I gently pull Ophelia toward the door. I look at her for a moment before I open it. I want to tell her how I feel. How I want things to be once we’re out. But it’s not the right time.

  I kiss her lightly instead and open the door.