Not Even Bones

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  “Ten is awfully young.”

  He shrugged. “After INHUP arrested my mother and took my sister into protective custody, I was alone on the streets of Bangkok. Let me tell you, joining an organized crime syndicate in search of a zannie was by far my best option.”

  His smile was a little mean, like he was daring her to challenge him. She just waved for him to continue.

  “Well, at any rate, I’ve been working for this family since I was ten.” His eyes were off staring at a memory. “Mostly in the States. This is my first time working with their Latin American branch.”

  Nita had a good picture of the mafia Kovit worked for. Because many unnaturals were only found in certain places in the world, many criminal organizations required international partners or multiple branches to meet the growing demand for illegal parts.

  She wondered which group he worked for. The only one she knew much about was the Chicago mafia. It was full of vampires who ran large underground auctions online every few years of all the different things they’d kidnapped, collected, and encountered in the course of their business. Everything from addresses of INHUP employees to interesting unnaturals.

  “A few weeks ago, they gave me someone, and they told me I was to make an example of him, and then they were going to publicly kill him.” Kovit ran a hand through his hair. “You know, people have this idea about torturing for information and all this kind of thing, but really, torture information is useless. The only thing causing pain is good for is punishing people and sending messages.”

  Kovit paused another moment. “Anyways, it was someone from the Family. Or well, another person in our organization. I’d known him for six years. He was only a few years older than me. One of the few people who knew what I was and didn’t avoid me.”

  Kovit laughed, sharp and cruel. “Obviously, he was being nice so that when this day came, he could try and use my sympathy to get out of whatever punishment was in store for him. It was a smart move—befriend the local monster so that if you’re ever put in a cage with it, it doesn’t bite.”

  “It worked, though, didn’t it?” The words were out of Nita’s mouth before she could stop them. They were gentler than she expected.

  Kovit looked up at her, and she nearly flinched, heart slamming in her chest until she remembered he was on the other side of the cage.

  “You’re not pitying me, are you?” His voice was cold, angry.

  Nita’s heart continued to thunder. “Not really. But it’s an ugly situation, whoever’s in it.”

  Kovit pulled back, eyes still angry, mouth twisting downward. “It was. And afterward, you know what? Suddenly everyone wants to be my friend. They finally realized I’m a monster, but not the specific type of monster they thought. They think, ‘If I’m nice to him, he won’t torture me if I screw up.’ And you know what happens then? The Family’s punisher loses all his reputation and fear associated with him. And you know who else loses their reputation? The Family.”

  Kovit’s jaw was clenched tight. “So they’ll be needing a new zannie, one who isn’t so easily bought. And in the meantime, it’s not like they can just let me go, because I know too much. So here I am, in what must be the worst job in the industry, waiting for them to kill me.”

  Nita was silent a long time. That certainly wasn’t the story she’d been expecting. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting.

  In a weird, twisted way, Nita almost felt like Kovit’s and her stories were opposite facets on the same diamond. Different, sure, but similar in some fundamental ways. It made Nita feel . . . weird. Squiggly, not-quite empathy, but sort of fear-empathy . . . something. Nita couldn’t put it into words.

  She sighed, cupping her chin in her hand. “You’re right.”

  “About?” He looked up.

  “People thinking you’re the wrong sort of monster.” Nita looked down at her hands, imagining a scalpel in them. “I’m so very good at taking people apart. But that’s because they’re not people. I can’t do it when they have a name or a face.” She fisted her hands. “I was hopeless the minute that boy in the cage introduced himself.”

  “It’s a dehumanizing tactic.” Kovit shrugged, and Nita wondered if he would have been able to dehumanize Mirella so easily if they’d shared a language. “I don’t hurt people I know. I’ve met zannies who can—those guys are so insanely obsessed with themselves and their own gratification, they can’t even interact with the world normally. Nothing is real to them except themselves. I’m not like that . . . yet. Someday, probably.”

  “That’s fatalistic.” But Nita didn’t disagree with it.

  “Not really. Just truth.”

  Nita lay down on the floor, and stared up at the fluorescent lights. “You can’t hurt people you know, huh? Am I included in that?”

  He laughed, and it wasn’t as dark a laugh as she expected. “You’ve been safe for a while.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t turn my pain circuits on just yet.”

  He snorted. “You do remember that I’m on the wrong side of the cage now?”

  She turned to him, and the floor was cool against her cheek. “I’m pretty sure we’re both on the wrong side of the cage.”

  He smiled, and Nita liked the smile he gave her.

  What are you doing, Nita? Are you sympathizing with this guy? Stop having a moment!

  Screams echoed through her mind, Mirella’s agonized cries. Nita felt her smile falling, and Kovit’s smile fell with it.

  “I’m sorry.” Nita sat up, not sure why she was apologizing.

  “It’s fine.” Kovit turned away. “I like it better when people remember what I am. The only thing I hate more than being demonized is when people actively ignore what I do or try to make excuses for it.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I know.” His hand ran across the floor, making shapes in the nonexistent dust. “Have you ever seen those shows starring serial-killer main characters? Dexter? Hannibal? Some of those sexy vampire ones the mafia funds to lure victims to them? They make all sorts of excuses for the serial killers. ‘It’s okay, he’s killing bad guys.’ ‘It’s okay, because it happened offscreen.’ I hate those. I hate when people do that to me. When they try to make me sympathetic, moralize all the decisions that aren’t moral.”

  Nita swallowed and folded her hands in her lap, letting herself collect her thoughts. After a moment, she spoke. “No. I agree. That’s wrong. Your actions aren’t sympathetic. And I think the only person who tries to justify your choices is you.”

  He blinked, and looked up at her, uncertain.

  “You torture people for a living. Not just because you need to, but because you like to. There is so much pain in this market—I’m sure you could find a meal if you walked around. But you choose not to. You choose to make your own meal.” Nita met his eyes. “I don’t think your decisions are moral or that they can be moralized.”

  He was silent before a cruel smile twisted his lips. “So you think I’m a monster.”

  “No.”

  His smile fell. “No?”

  “I think Reyes is a monster. She lacks any form of discernible empathy for others. Not just her prisoners, but her employees. Even her customers, I can tell she’d kill them in a second. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world she cares for or any lines she wouldn’t cross.” Nita shrugged. “I’ve seen you. You have empathy. You just choose to use it selectively. That’s a totally different thing. That’s a human thing.”

  Nita rose and dusted herself off. She wasn’t sure why her hands were shaking, but she tried to still them. Kovit watched her, face schooled to a forced neutral state.

  As she turned to leave, Kovit called out, “Nita.”

  “Yes?”

  He gave her a long look. “There’s a gun hidden behind the security screen. It’s wedged between the screen and the wall. It’s loaded.”

  She blinked, uncertain why he was telling her. “Oh.”

  He closed his eyes, lay back, staring up at the c
eiling, and said nothing more.

  Twenty-One

  THERE WAS MORE than just a gun hidden behind the screen. Nita also found another switchblade, which she pocketed, a crumpled beginner Spanish textbook, and a wad of American dollars that totaled just under forty.

  Nita stared at the money a long time. Was it enough to take the boat out of here? If it was, she didn’t need to rob Reyes. She could just leave.

  Her fingers flicked through the money, counting it again. She didn’t know if it was enough. It might be. Did she want to take the risk? She could leave at dawn, be on a boat, and be in Brazil by noon. And then call INHUP. Once she was in Brazil, she could request INHUP’s protection until she could contact her father and go home. She could report every sordid detail about Boulder and Reyes so the police could arrest them next time they left Peru. Mirella would appreciate that.

  She put the money down on the floor and sat cross-legged beside it. Why had Kovit told her about this?

  And when he told her to look for it, he mentioned the gun, not the money. She found that interesting too. She didn’t know what it meant, but she found it interesting.

  So. She might be able to leave. Nita checked the time. Almost dawn. The sun would be rising in the next half hour. She had enough time to go down to the docks, see if she could barter passage to Brazil, and if she didn’t have enough cash, there’d still be time to come back, set her trap for Reyes, and rob her.

  It was a good plan.

  She grabbed the money and stuffed it in her pocket, and after a moment, she took the gun and shoved it in her other pocket. It made a big, distinctive bulge, but Nita figured it made her look more dangerous and less like a target for anyone who might be out and about at this hour.

  Her hand lingered on the door far longer than it should have. She knew if she left and took a boat, she was essentially killing Kovit. Could she do that?

  The door creaked when she opened it. Kovit wasn’t her responsibility—Nita wasn’t culpable for either his or Reyes’ actions. Besides. She had time, if she changed her mind. Reyes wasn’t coming until eleven.

  She still didn’t have shoes, which annoyed her. She didn’t want to step on anything, but as Mirella had said, the only shoes in the building were on Kovit’s feet. She wasn’t willing to go back and ask for them. She didn’t want to talk to him again. It might make her resolve waver.

  Nita crept out into the predawn and clicked on the cell phone light. She tried to be careful where she stepped, because thick calluses or not, things would be unpleasant if she stepped on a poisonous caterpillar. But it was hard when she could barely see in front of her. She slipped in the gravel several times when she spun toward movement she thought she’d seen out of the corner of her eyes.

  There was no one out. Nita wasn’t sure what she had expected—dawn seemed like the sort of time that things came alive in the jungle. And indeed, the jungle around the market was coming to life. Crickets and cicadas were a background chorus to bird chirps and caws. Other noises too, ones Nita couldn’t place. Sounds like sandpaper laughing. Something resembling bells scraping together. The shaking branches rustling against each other as things high above leapt between trees.

  But the market itself was quiet. Dark.

  Closer to the pier, neon lights still shone from the entryways to gambling dens and shady brothels. There were a few people passed out in front, but either the rest of the customers were still in there or they’d gone back to wherever they were staying for the night.

  Nita took a deep breath before turning down the path toward the dock. In her memory, she could still see Mirella saluting her before marching down this path to her doom. Nita walked in the footsteps of a dead girl.

  The pier still had its guards, but the sun was just coming up, and there were two other people doing things with boats. Getting ready for the first clients of the morning, she assumed.

  The guards moved to block Nita from entry. She resisted the urge to turn and run, and instead forced herself to smile, and say in Spanish, “Good morning. I’d like to go to Tabatinga.”

  One of them raised his eyebrows, and looked her up and down, taking in her jeans, T-shirt, and bare feet. Nita hoped she didn’t look like an escaped prisoner—was that what these guards were supposed to watch out for?

  “I’m supposed to be picking something up,” Nita continued, trying to draw off suspicion and not sure if it was making her seem more suspicious. “Since you guys see all the transactions that go on here, I wanted to know what time of day you thought I could get the best price.”

  Nita didn’t want to just come right out and ask how much it would cost to get to Tabatinga. That would be suspicious . . . right? But time of day and price was less suspicious. Maybe.

  She had no clue what she was doing.

  But she must have been doing something right, because the guard said, “Probably around one p.m. That’s when all the boats from Tabatinga who’ve brought customers in today decide they want to get back home before dark. They’re more willing to go lower then.”

  Nita licked her lips. “How much cheaper is it, do you think?”

  The other guard shrugged. “Maybe ten dollars cheaper? I’ve never seen them go below eighty, though.”

  Eighty dollars? What a rip-off! Fabricio’s bus ticket from Peru to Ecuador had been half that, and it was a sixteen-hour ride, not a—what?—four-hour one.

  But she was cornered—there was no other way she knew of out of the market. Maybe that was why the boat owners could charge so much. They knew they could get away with it.

  Or maybe the guard was testing her and was lying. How did she know he was telling the truth? Was it paranoid to think he was lying? No. Better to assume everyone in the market wanted to scam you out of money.

  “Eighty?” Her eyebrows rose. “I find that hard to believe.”

  One of them laughed at her skepticism. “Yeah, I don’t think you’ll get a deal that good.”

  She tried to smile. “Well, I’ll see what they offer me.”

  By this time, one of the men who’d been working on a boat came over to Nita. He had a large belly and was smoking a nearly nonexistent cigarette.

  Nita approached him. “I’d like to go to Tabatinga. Give me a price.”

  The man smiled and responded to Nita in heavily Portuguese-accented Spanish. “One hundred fifty dollars. Good price! Special price for a lovely lady.”

  Nita turned and walked away. Behind her, the guards chuckled, and the man chased her, trying to get her to bargain. But there was no point—there was no way his prices would go low enough that Nita could afford them with her forty dollars.

  At least she still had her backup plan.

  As she trudged back through the streets as dawn lit the crumbling jungle market, street vendors started setting up their tables, pulling jars from crates on dollies. The stench of formaldehyde and bug spray mixed together. A mosquito bit Nita, and she wondered if it carried dengue fever or malaria. She didn’t have antibodies for either in her bloodstream. She was going to have to be careful and keep a close eye on her body’s condition. She didn’t need some tropical disease on top of everything else.

  She turned the corner onto the street with Reyes’ building and froze.

  Reyes was on the other side of the street. Her hair was pulled back, and she looked unruffled in her business suit, as though she were frozen in stasis, doomed to look exactly the same for all eternity.

  Nita watched in horror as Reyes walked over to the building and opened the door, six hours before Nita had been expecting her.

  Twenty-Two

  NITA FROZE, MUSCLES stiffening in the hope that if she didn’t move, Reyes’ eyes wouldn’t be drawn to her.

  What was Reyes doing here so early?

  Something had changed, but what? Or had she lied in the text she sent to Kovit? Nita didn’t know enough about their relationship to know if that was something Reyes would do.

  It didn’t matter why she was here. What mattered was th
at she was here, and she wasn’t supposed to be, and Nita’s plans had all become worthless because she hadn’t prepared anything yet.

  Fuck.

  The door clanged shut behind Reyes, and Nita let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her shoulders sagged. Safe. For now.

  But what should she do?

  She wasn’t in position. She had no way of getting Reyes out of the way. And in a few moments, Reyes would realize Nita was gone. Then what? Reyes might call Jorge and Lorenzo, who would start hunting Nita through the market. They might alert other people, like the guards at the pier, and arm them with pictures of Nita from the video clips.

  Nita couldn’t let that happen.

  Money, escape, everything could wait. Nita had to stop Reyes.

  Her feet were moving before her mind had time to form a plan, slipping across the street and up to the front of the building. Nita hesitated at the door, worried Reyes might be waiting on the other side.

  Swallowing, Nita pulled the gun out of her pocket. It wasn’t as heavy as she’d thought it would be, but there was a sense of weightiness to the decision to pull it out that she didn’t like. But better to have it out and not need it than not have it out and need it.

  Maybe she could use it to threaten Reyes into a cage. Then lock her in too—all her enemies trapped in cages the way they had trapped her.

  What if she resists? part of her asked.

  I’ll deal with that if it happens.

  The other part of her wasn’t happy about that, but it quieted.

  Nita took a deep breath and opened the door, gun raised high. She ducked her head and her gun through the door, and kept the rest of her body shielded behind it. She scanned the hall and the part of the security room she could see. No Reyes.

  Nita slipped through the door and closed it as silently as possible behind her.

  Breathing shallowly, the gun slippery in her sweaty palms, Nita edged forward and peered into the security room. Empty. She checked the closet they called a dissection room. Also empty.