by S T Branton
Mac shook his head. He was smiling still, but there was a tinge of worry in his face. “Thanks, Vic. I mean it, but you shouldn’t be doing things like that, kiddo.”
“Don’t worry about it. He was decked out in designer shit. He won’t miss his pocket change.” I scanned the display of papers in the front, and my heart almost stopped when I spotted a tabloid with a grainy photo of something familiar on the cover. GOLDEN METEORITE, the headline bellowed. BREAKING EXCLUSIVE REPORT. I snatched it up and covered it with a copy of the local rag. “How about these today?”
“Glad to see you’re putting that mind of yours to good use,” Mac sighed as he rang me up.
I put a five in his hand. “Keep the change.” I winked as I pocketed the wallet.
“Stay away from trouble, Vic,” Mac said.
I laughed. “Why? It won’t stay the hell away from me.”
The smile fell off my face as soon as I turned away from him. I pulled the local paper out from under my arm and unfolded it, scouring the columns for any mention of bodies found near the river.
My heart pounded. That was more trouble than I’d ever gotten into before, times ten. I was terrified that someone might have recognized me at the bar, or that the driver of the sedan that hit Rocco’s goon was someone I knew. I half expected to see myself named explicitly in the article as a suspect.
But the blurb wasn’t anything to write home about. There was no mention of me or any woman. Just the usual. “Bodies of Local Mobsters Located by the East River.” That was good. Maybe the investigating cops would be paid to stop. I hated to think of myself benefiting from the same negligence and greed that made my parents’ case a living nightmare. Still, as long as I was free, it meant I could keep tracking Rocco Durant.
At this point, I’d take what I could get.
I got to the store before I had the chance to look at the tabloid, but I saw it again in the magazine racks in the checkout line. The photo of the “golden meteorite” was indistinct, and it was a lot smaller than it had looked coming down at me. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but now that the parallel had been drawn, it refused to be dismissed.
Images from the night danced in my mind as I stuck the credit card from the stolen wallet into the reader to pay for my groceries. I always felt a pang of guilt when I did that, a relic from my decent upbringing. Stealing was never good, but then again, I had come upon this guy as he was berating Mac for no reason.
Besides, what was the harm? Soon, he’d see charges on his card that he didn’t make, he’d call the bank to dispute them, and they’d give him his money back. I had a credit card once. I understood how it worked. In the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t doing him any damage at all.
He wasn’t special, either. I’d been pickpocketing and raiding purses for at least three years. In my defense, before that, I tried starving, and I much preferred being able to feed myself. Plus, now there was Marcus and, apparently, a cat. Funny how these things happened.
I reflected on the things Marcus had told me as I made my way back toward the loft, my arms full of the paper bag. After a night’s rest, his story sounded crazier than ever. Gods? Monsters? A dead king whose protection of Earth was now broken? A magical, gods-only realm? The more I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. There was no way Marcus could actually be telling the truth.
Right?
“Vic?” The bag of groceries nearly dropped out of my hands. I stared over the top of it into a pair of painfully familiar blue eyes. “Hey, I thought that was you!”
I gave my old best friend a tight smile as my stomach tied in knots. “Hey, Jules. Long time, no see.”
“No kidding.” She looked me up and down. “You look a little rough. Have you been getting enough sleep?”
The tight smile turned into a tight laugh. “No, of course not.” Mothering me, as usual.
Jules had always been a wine and romcom kind of girl. I could count the number of parties I’d dragged her to on my fingers. It was jarring to see that I could change so much in the last three years of our friendship, and she could stay so much the same. But it did make me feel a little less bad about not keeping up with her life.
“Vic, you need to take better care of yourself. You know I worry about you.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” The guilt crashed over me.
“Really, though. You look like you could use a pick-me-up. Want to stop in that little café around the corner?” She squeezed my arm. “I feel like it’s been forever, and I miss you.”
That was exactly what I hadn’t wanted her to say, and I thought she knew it. She always had a way of pushing me outside my comfort zone, encouraging me to try new things or to look at old things in a new way. Which was funny because Jules was a homebody. She never wanted to jump to conclusions or make unnecessary waves.
When it was time to rock the boat, though, Jules Lugnor could rock like nobody’s business. That was how she ended up a public defender. She was always looking for ways to work pro bono.
A better person than me in every way, it wasn’t surprising that we drifted apart.
“I don’t have time,” I said apologetically. “Not right now.”
“Just a few minutes. I’m buying, obviously.” She nodded toward the café’s storefront, thirty feet behind us. “All you have to do is turn around and walk through that door. I’ll even carry your bag.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” There was no way out of this without hurting her feelings, so I pivoted and closed the short distance to the café. What was I so neurotic about anyway? I had nothing to hide from her. She knew every inch of my whole sad story, including the things I had done in the name of vengeance.
Well, not all the things.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A bell chimed as we stepped over the coffeeshop threshold, and a cheerful barista called a greeting from behind the espresso machine. I was uncomfortable out on the street, but in here, I was way the hell out of my element. It reminded me of times that might as well have belonged to a different lifetime, a different person. Where was the Vic I had been in high school? In college?
Nowhere.
Too far in to back out now, so I read the menu over the long counter. I didn’t pay attention to what Jules ordered, but I chose the drink with the simplest name: flat white. The less syllables for me to say, the better. Jules paid with a shiny new credit card. I escaped to a table in the back. We had to sit away from windows in which Rocco or his men could possibly spot me. Just in case they were looking.
There was no conversation until we were both sitting, our drinks positioned in front of us. Mine had a perfectly circular, foamy dot in the middle. I tried to channel my thoughts through it in the hope that they’d start making more sense. No dice.
This was a bad idea.
“I think about you all the time, Vic,” Jules said as she poked at her coffee with a stirrer. She dove right in. “You’ve been through so much, and I worry you’re going to lose sight of the big picture. Like, what does your future look like to you?”
I shrugged. “A dumpster fire?”
She sighed. “That’s kind of what I’m talking about. I don’t like to see you not looking at least a little bit ahead.”
I scowled into my coffee cup. “That’s because it doesn’t matter what’s ahead if I can’t… find out what really happened with my parents.” Decapitate Rocco Durant was what tried to slip out, but I caught it at the last second.
Something told me Jules would not appreciate my plans for bloody murder. Nor would she understand the scene at the bar last night—especially if she ended up defending me in court. That thought almost made me laugh out loud. In hindsight, I had to admit it was pretty surreal. I was getting used to coming within inches of instant death.
It didn’t bother me as much as it probably should have.
“I know.” She fiddled with the button on her cuff. “I can’t tell you how to live or what to feel, and I promise I don’t want to. But it scares me to
think of you getting too deep into this stuff. That’s all.”
“I won’t,” I lied. “I can manage it. I’m stronger than I look.”
“I know. You always have been.” She was quiet for a little while. Then she said, “Do you remember that time we knocked the bee’s nest out of the eaves of your house, and your mom ran around shutting all the windows in the dead heat of summer?”
The memory was so vivid it was almost physical. I smiled. “Yeah. We thought she was mad, but she was laughing.” In my mind’s eye, I saw my mother, housedress whirling, hair tied up, slamming the windows down against a furious onslaught of bees. The radiant smile on her face was edged in red lipstick. She made sure we weren’t hurt, but she never blamed us. “I miss her.”
Jules reached across the table and took my hand. “Me too.”
Then the picture of my mom disappeared, replaced by Rocco’s scowl. Reminiscing always did this to me. But this time was different.
A golden light shone across his image in my mind.
With everything that happened last night, I felt like I was falling down a rabbit hole I couldn’t escape from. Gods, meteors, and magic swords. Jules had always done her best to keep me grounded. Maybe that’s what I needed now. I sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Jules, do you think I’m crazy?”
She cocked her head to the side. “Who wants to know?”
The Roman Centurion sitting in my apartment, I thought.
“I mean, actually crazy. Do you think I can tell what’s real?”
It took her a long time to answer that. Too long, maybe. At last, she looked me in the eye and said, “You’re driven. You’re stubborn. You’re hyper-focused and sometimes a huge pain in the ass. But no, I don’t think you’re crazy. Even at the height of your obsession with your parents’ murders, I never doubted what you saw or what you told me. I never doubted it was real.”
I felt the old wound reopening. “Then why didn’t you help me?”
Talk about shit I remembered like it was yesterday. Jules was the first person—fresh out of law school—I had asked for help in locating and prosecuting Rocco Durant.
I had expected her to say yes, no questions asked. She asked a lot of questions, she referred me to a lot of people, but ultimately, she said she wouldn’t join me going down that road. At the time, my feelings were more than hurt. I felt betrayed, abandoned by the person I trusted most. From there, the distance only grew between us.
“I tried to help you, Vic, in all the ways I legally could. You wanted me to do things that would’ve gotten me disbarred if I was caught. You asked me to violate all the protocols I’d just finished learning in law school. You wouldn’t go through the proper channels. You wouldn’t be patient about all the inevitable red tape. I know it would’ve been slower, but we would have gotten there in the end, and we would have gotten there without you ending up like….” She gazed at the tabletop, her thought unspoken. “I just couldn’t watch you hurt yourself, knowing there was nothing I could do.”
Rationally, it was more than fair. Jules was on her way to a law career, and there was a lot on the line for her. She could have lost everything she’d worked for, the same way I did. My friend was right, and I knew it—then and now.
“I should go,” I said.
“Yeah. It’s been a few minutes, hasn’t it?” She got up from her seat and lifted my grocery bag. “Don’t forget these.” Her eyes caught the top of the bag of cat food I’d tossed in as an afterthought. “Did you get a cat?”
“Uh, sort of. He kind of found me.” I shuffled toward the door and let her open it for me. “Thanks.”
“So, a stray, huh? I love when that happens.” Jules touched my arm lightly. “Remember what I said, Vic. Take care of yourself. You know, you might feel a little less crazy if you spent more time around people. Maybe you could give therapy a go. Worked wonders for me.”
“Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes. “Why don’t I just open the phone book, call a random number, and tell them about my problems?”
“They’re trained professionals,” she said. “But, fine. If you won’t do that, you should at least come to this thing on Saturday. My friend is throwing it. She’s renting out a whole restaurant for the night. It’ll be like a house party, except quieter, and hopefully, with less throwing up.”
I chuckled wryly. The last thing I wanted right now was to force a smile with a bunch of Jules’ overeducated friends.
“I’ll think about it,” I said in the least convincing tone possible.
Jules frowned a little. “Please do think about it, Vic. You know how much I hate these things.” She smiled. “I could use a wingman, like the old days.”
I looked back at my oldest friend and grinned.“Wingwoman. And… I will. Text me the details?” Jules tapped on her phone as I spouted off the number for the burner in my pocket.
“Sure thing. You better show up. I need my best friend back.”
We went our separate ways. I didn’t turn back to get a last look at Jules.
***
I trundled my bag of groceries down the street toward my loft building, lost in the words that my once-best friend dropped like a grenade between our overpriced coffees. My convictions fought my better judgment, and I knew it would take more than Jules’ admonition to break my mission.
But my mental meanderings were cut short when the voice of an oversized man-child cut through the air. It was deep and harsh, with just a hint of a booze-addled slur.
“I don’t know, bro,” he said to his friend, who wore a shit-eating grin, “it might just be my hobophobia, but this piece of filth needs to find a fucking job.”
I stopped in my tracks and watched the twenty-something asshats laugh as Sam cowered at their feet, his arms clenched tightly over his chest. The floppy hat, which I always found so endearing, sat next to him on the stoop in front of my building.
“Hobophobia,” the other one said, “now that’s funny.” He looked down at Sam. “Why don’t ya go flip burgers so we can get another bum off the streets?”
There’s three things I really don’t like: bad breath, green olives (the black ones are fine), and assholes who get a rise out of picking on the weak. The first two are pretty easy to avoid. Sadly, Brooklyn Heights has its share of idiots getting off on harassing those who can’t fight back.
Blood boiling, I dropped the groceries and shot toward the young jocks. Just as I arrived, bro number one gave Sam a little kick to the ribs, hard enough to make him grunt.
“Hey, taintbreath,” I yelled, “why don’t you and your friend pick on someone your own size?”
The guy turned, looked down at me, and laughed. “This your boyfriend, honey? Cause if so, why don’t you ditch him for a real man?” He glanced at his friend and winked.
When he turned back to me, he was greeted by the hardened knuckles of my right hand connecting with the side of his head. He stumbled back onto the steps, landing on his ass and holding his temple. “The hell, you whore?” He pushed himself to standing and stepped up to me. “I’m going to teach you a—”
Cutting him off, I drove my knee into his groin. As he bent in half, I followed it up with a quick jab, catching the douchebag in the Adam’s apple. Before his crumpled mass hit the concrete, I was on his friend.
I grabbed his shirt and rammed his thick frame against the brick wall of my building. His head snapped back with a thud. Wisdom told me to drop it and run, but my short fuse and impatience for assholes won the day.
The dude was tall, way taller than me. So, I pulled him down toward my and spoke slowly. “I’ll give you one chance. Pick up your friend and get the hell out of my neighborhood. If I see you again, you won’t be walking home.” I paused, looking into his wide eyes. “Or…we could always pick up where your friend and I left off.”
He shook his head. “No,” he muttered weakly.
I gave him one more shove for good measure, and then watched him drag his friend off down the block.
; “Remind me not to mess with you,” Sam said.
I turned my attention from the assailants and knelt by his side. “You okay, Sam?”
He waved his hand at me. “Nah, I’m fine. Just a hazard of livin’ on the streets. Always some kid wants to mess with you.” He grabbed his hat and place it back on his head. “But you...you have to be more careful. One of them might have had a knife. Or worse.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the irony. If only Sam knew the shit I was knee deep in. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”
Standing, I walked over and grabbed the grocery bag. Just before going inside, I took a sandwich and a bottle of iced tea out of the top of the bag and set them down beside Sam. Again, he lifted it to peek at me from under his floppy hat. The smile lit up his whole face. “God bless you, miss. God bless you. Thank you for this.” He glanced at the sandwich. “And for having my back.”
“Nothing to it, Sam. We have to look out for each other. And enough with the ‘miss’ stuff. It’s Vic.”
“All right,” he replied, twisting the plastic top off the iced tea.
My feet and legs complained bitterly about the stairs. I narrowly avoided sending the bag cascading to the floor as the door opened inward. Marcus looked up from where he sat under the window. My knuckles were still stinging from the right hook I landed on that dude’s thick skull.
“I was beginning to fear for your safety,” he said.
“Sorry. Ran into someone I know.” I set the bag down on the table and unloaded its contents piece by piece. I figured it was better not to get into the details on my altercation on the street. “I got eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, bread for toast, and some other things. I figured you’re probably a real meat lover, since you were going to eat our little friend there.” I pointed toward the cat that nestled in the crook of his elbow, purring audibly. The little fur ball didn’t have a care in the world.
“This, Vic, is why I need a guide.”
“Can’t argue there.” I switched on the hot plate, put some butter in my one beat-up skillet, and cooked us up a damn good hearty breakfast. The smell of the food began permeating the room. My empty stomach rumbled. Food always alleviated a shit ton of guilt.
