by Rhys Ford
“Cole?” Jae’s soft whisper stopped me before I left the room.
“Yeah, Jae?”
“Agi.”
“What?” My head was already throbbing with a headache, probably from the stress leaving my pores, but the word made no sense. “I don’t understand you.”
“If you insist on calling me baby, at least do it in Korean.” He grunted. “It’s agi. Now go find my cat.”
“EXPLAIN to me why I was stupid enough to let you talk me into doing this?” Bobby stifled a yawn, more for show than sleepiness. I’d been with him on pub crawls that lasted until six in the morning, and he was as fresh then as when he’d started. “The cat’s dead. A building fell on it. The only thing left of it should be its ruby slippers.”
“Was that a gay joke?” I poked, sipping at the rancid coffee we’d gotten from a convenience store. “Because if it was, it sucked.”
“I just don’t know why we’re going into the wilds of Garden Grove to go look for a dead cat.”
“Because I promised him.” Pointing out the obvious usually worked with Bobby, so I tried my hand at it. “And because there was that night when you called me at three in the morning to come get you, and then you made me promise not to laugh or say anything when you came out of a club wearing only pink suede chaps and a black thong. That’s why.”
“I’m never going to call you again. You’re going to sit by the phone and wait for me like some lovesick puppy, and I’m going to sit back and laugh at you.”
“Right. You have no other friends but me.” The coffee wasn’t so bad once I shook more sugar into it. I’d already dumped five packets in and was more than willing to sacrifice another five to thin the oil slick forming at the top of the cup. “And I’m taking pictures of your naked white ass the next time it’s in those chaps.”
“You are a cruel bitch, Princess.”
“I learned from the best, old man.”
We turned the corner, and my heart stopped. It looked like there was nothing left of Jae’s side of the building. Three of the retaining walls were caved in, leaving the already pathetic porch structure standing solo amid rubble. A municipal truck was parked near the curb, workers already trying to establish power to the block. The blast had taken out the lights for at least five buildings, and from the looks of things, the rest of the building hadn’t fared well either.
Three police cars sat watch, wide-shouldered patrolmen leaning against a hood and keeping a steady watch on us as we pulled up. A fire utility truck was parked slantways across the driveway, blocking any vehicle from entering the cordoned-off area. All together, it looked like a block party had gone wild, and the city had sent reinforcements to contain the crowd.
“Jesus, it looks like a fucking bomb went off.” Bobby whistled, parking the truck. “That kid’s damned lucky to be alive.”
He wasn’t far from wrong about how the building looked. I thought we’d seen the worst of it from the street, but as I stepped out of the cab, the fickle light from the streetlamps turned the place into something I’d only seen in apocalypse movies.
The bathroom walls were blown back against the brick, the gypsum board no match for the force of the alleged gas leak. Most of the ground was flooded, probably from the fire trucks who’d answered the call. I approached the place carefully. Investigators would be crawling over the place come morning, and the last thing I wanted to do was move something. As it was, there were a couple of men poking about the place. They gave us the briefest of glances before they continued walking around the perimeter of the building.
“Hey, boss-looking guy at two o’clock. You go sniff around, and I’ll go schmooze.” Bobby elbowed me in the gut. “He probably wants to kick us out. I’ll do my best retired-cop impression. Try not to look like a looter.”
“Tell him I won’t touch anything.”
There wasn’t much to touch. What wasn’t sodden was burnt. Jae’s photos were black, flat corpses, their edges curled in. I wondered if I could get them to release his photo equipment, but there was no telling where it was. The cinderblock lay in puzzle pieces over the remains of the apartment. It was a wonder Jae had survived. It would be a miracle if his cat had.
“Hey.” Bobby joined me, clapping me on the shoulder. “The supervisor said that we can go looking around the edges but not to touch anything. He hasn’t heard anything, but things have been pretty loud down here. Neighbors keep yelling that they want their power back on. One of the idiots took a shot at the line crew.”
“Yeah, this looks so promising.” I stared at the crumbled walls. “Okay, maybe we can take a look and hope we can at least see something.”
“Hold up, Cole.” He grabbed at my arm, pulling me back. “You hear that?”
“Don’t pull this shit on me, Bobby,” I said, jerking myself free. “Too long of a night for practical jokes.”
“Shut up. I’m serious.” Stepping toward the pile of gypsum, Bobby stood with his head cocked, listening intently. “I am telling you. I heard something.”
“I am going to break your ass if you start laughing at me.” The threat was thin. I was too worn to do any serious damage to him, even if I wanted to. I nearly fell flat on my face when my foot caught on the bed frame. Bobby caught me before I made a total fool of myself, but I could hear the snickers from the cops watching us. “Okay, what am I listening to?”
“I swear to God, I heard a cat,” he said, pointing toward the pile of debris against the intact wall. “Over there.”
The screaming demand was faint, but I heard it. Lifting a section of wet drywall, I opened up a small hole to peer through. “Shit, it’s too dark. You have a flashlight in the truck?”
“Yeah, let me grab it.” Bobby nimbly maneuvered through the brick minefield that I’d stumbled over. He was back with a thick, black Maglite, turning the beam on. “Here. Don’t let them see you digging.”
“What do you do with this thing?” The light pierced even the darkest corner as I moved closer to the mess. “Call down UFOs?”
“I got it because it’s heavy enough to whack assholes like you over the head with,” he sniped back. “Look for the damned cat.”
A pair of orange-gold eyes peered out at me from the hole, her rumbling voice nearly as tortured as Jae’s. From the sounds of it, the cat had been crying for hours, probably incensed that her pet human hadn’t come for her. Handing the flashlight to Bobby, I reached in, snagging her by the shoulders. She came without a fight, blinking when she emerged into the flashlight-drenched world.
“Fuck me, Cole,” Bobby whispered. “You are so going to get laid for this.”
“Shut up.” I gripped Neko tightly, trying out some baby talk to keep her calm. “I didn’t do this to get laid.”
“Then I’ll tell him I found her,” he teased. “What I saw through the door was fucking hot. I want to get laid for finding the cat.”
I decided that once I got Jae’s cat to someplace safe, my first order of business would be to punch Bobby in the face. Maybe break his nose. I informed him of my plans as we picked our way out.
“Keep dreaming, Princess,” Bobby said, unlocking the door to the truck. I slid in, holding the cat tight against my chest. The last thing I wanted was to lose her now.
“Home, Robert,” I yawned, trying not to hit my jaw against her tiny head.
“Nuh-uh. I’m afraid our night isn’t over yet.” Bobby tapped the call button of his navigation system, bringing the information screen online. I groaned when I saw the listings he pulled up.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. She’s fine. She looks fine.”
“Hey, last thing you need after rescuing your boyfriend’s cat is for it to get sick from breathing in all that smoke,” he pointed out. “Dead cats don’t get you laid. Here’s one close by. Nothing says I want you like a huge emergency vet bill.”
DAWN was shaking the world awake by the time I got in. I didn’t want to look at the clock because I feared it would tell me I only had a few minutes le
ft of the night before Claudia would begin her round of wake-up-Cole calls. I jostled the cat carrier inside, apologizing to Neko when she screamed her disapproval at the treatment she was getting at my hands. Behind me, Bobby carried the paraphernalia the emergency vet said I would need to make Neko happy while she stayed with me.
I’ve seen a mother of infant twins carry less shit with her than what that cat scored at the vet.
“Where do you want this?” Bobby asked, scraping off the price tag from the litter box. “Downstairs bathroom?”
“She going to find it there?” I peered into the carrier. Neko spat another demand to be released, and I was fairly certain I heard a death threat included in her displeasure. They’d given her a bath to wash off the soot and drywall debris from her fur, and now she was a poofy black ball of cute. Demonic and possessed, but still cute.
“Doc said she would.” He shrugged, ambling off to the bathroom. I left him to assemble the potty and braved opening the cage, belatedly wishing I had a rolled-up magazine to defend myself with when she leapt out to rake my throat open.
My chest smarted where her claws dug into me during her examination, and my thumb throbbed under a thick bandage the vet assured me could come off in an hour or so. I was planning on leaving it as a type of gauze armor in case she decided she wanted another piece of me for a snack. I didn’t believe them when they told me cats sometimes got aggressive when they were stressed and was rather insulted when they laughed at my request for kitty Prozac.
She bounced out of the carrier, a gleeful bundle of furred and clawed vengeance looking for my jugular. Stretching, Neko took her time in exacting her justice, sniffing at the couch and then heading over to the bag of food I’d not opened yet. I did her bidding and filled a dish with kibble, then poured water into another one and watched her inhale a good portion of both.
“Okay, I’m going to head out.” Bobby stopped at the archway leading into the living room. I finished picking up the last of the papers we’d left on the floor, stacking them as neatly as I could considering I couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of me. “Get some sleep, Cole. We’ll do this again tomorrow.”
“You want to crash here?” I offered, but he shook his head. Grunting a goodnight, I walked him to the door and locked it shut after he left. Turning around, I found Neko in the middle of the foyer, offering me a view of her foot as she cleaned her leg. “You’re a very classy broad there, cat. I’m going to bed. Well, right after I leave a message for your daddy telling him I found your scrawny ass.”
The water on my skin made the cat scratches itch. I cursed the fluffball under my breath as I dried off, stepping over her sprawled body when I got out of the bathroom.
“You.” I nudged her with my foot, a gentle tap that caused her to roll over and offer me her belly. “You are in the way, little girl.”
The sheets were cold against my skin, and I luxuriated in the comfort of my bed for a moment. A second later, I felt a weight against my legs and then a heaviness settling on my hip. Opening my eyes, I was treated to the inscrutable view of the back end of a cat. Tentatively scratching her back lightly with my fingers, I used my free hand to dial Scarlet’s cell phone, hoping to leave a message.
I was shocked when Jae answered, breathless and worried.
“Hey, what are you doing up?” It was stupid to ask him that. The reason he was awake was currently kneading her pointy little claws into my hip. The blankets seemed not to be a deterrent at all. Shifting, I hoped to distract her, but she mewed in contentment and continued to aerate my skin.
“Did you find her?” His already strained voice was too tight for my liking. “Was she….”
“She’s okay.” His sigh of relief made me glad I’d spent a good chunk of change for the vet to tell me she was perfectly fine and would probably be terrorizing generations of humans to come. “She’s here now.”
“You sure it’s her? I mean,” Jae stammered a bit. “Did she have her collar on?”
“Yep. Trust me, baby,” I replied, moving my attention from her spine to her chin. She set up a faint rumble of a purr, puffing her white-starred chest out in approval. “It’s your cat. Satan’s mistress is perfectly safe.”
“Agi,” he reminded me. “And don’t call her that. She’s a good cat.”
“She tore me to ribbons.” I felt a little bit guilty for lying to him, but I was going to milk my injuries for as long as he would let me. Compared to the dual concussion, being shot at, and then having a building blow in on him, I was far behind on the sympathy list. “You should be asleep.”
“Couldn’t sleep. I was worried.”
“Yeah, I should have called you sooner to tell you we’d found her,” I said. “We went to an emergency vet to make sure she was okay. He said she checks out fine. She’s already eaten, and I think I’m going to be learning how to clean a litter box in the morning.”
Jae’s whisper was so soft I nearly missed it. “I was worried about you.”
“Hey, I’m okay, ba… agi.” It was like being fifteen all over again and having one of the football players palm my ass in the middle of gym class. I wasn’t going to be able to sit down comfortably for about a week if he purred at me again. “What are you doing using Scarlet’s cell phone? You’re in a hospital room.”
“Aish, your Korean is horrible. Never mind. Stick with English,” he teased, a soft laugh turning into a short bout of coughing. “Nuna is asleep on the chair, and no one knows I answered it. She had it on vibrate.”
“Scarlet tell you we decided you were coming here?” I ventured carefully. We’d not talked more than a few seconds, but she’d agreed with me that Jae needed looking after. She even partially forgave me for getting him blown up, although I was disinclined to take full responsibility for the matter.
“Nuna said you decided and that she had nothing to do with it.” While he sounded stronger and I was glad for it, the wisdom of having a fully sentient Jae roaming through my house was beginning to terrify me. Neko meowed her opinion, hooking her claws into my sheets one last time before tucking her chin in to sleep.
“Nuna lies,” I laughed, startling the cat. She opened her eyes, slits of malevolent gold in her petite black head, then went back to sleep. “Hide the phone before the nurses come in and beat you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Cole?”
My stomach clenched at the sound of his voice trembling. The teasing flirt disappeared, and in its place was the battered young man I saw on the hospital bed.
“Yeah, Jae?” I wished Scarlet awake or for the ability to crawl through the phone. He ached. I heard it clearly in his splintered, whispering sobs. “I’m here, baby.”
“I’m scared,” he confessed softly. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Me too, baby.” The ache in my chest grew. In the front of my mind, I suspected I’d brought this trouble to Jae’s doorstep. The last twenty-four hours blew apart any normal that his life might have had. “I don’t know if that makes you feel better, but I’m scared shitless.”
“You don’t act like it,” Jae accused with a sniff.
“That’s my tough-guy exterior. You should see me right now.” I teased at him, hoping to draw him out of his melancholy. “I’m lying in bed on sheets with big roses on them with a cat on my hip. Very macho.”
“You’re lying.”
“About the sheets, but not about the cat,” I said. “She’s like a lead weight. How can something so small weigh so much?”
“She eats a lot.” There was a smile in his words, lightening his mood. It darkened as quickly as when clouds moved over the sun. “Are you going to protect me, hyung?”
“I didn’t do such a good job at protecting my last boyfriend, baby.” Thoughts of Rick surfaced. His laughter when I blew raspberries on his belly after sex, the horrible omelets that he insisted on making every Sunday morning, the deadness in his eyes as he slid down in my arms. I shut those memories away, concentrating on the memory of Jae’s br
ight brown eyes. “But I want to try. More than anything, baby, I want to protect you from all this shit.”
We lay on either side of the call, listening to one another breathe. It was a glorious thing, the in and out of his breath against the phone. I didn’t want it to end, but sleep tugged hard on my eyelids, and I suspected that Jae wasn’t long for consciousness if he’d been up waiting for me to call.
“Go to bed, Jae. I’ll be there in the morning.” Shushing his protests, I listened to his grumbling assent. “I promise.”
“Pfah.” He dismissed me with a harsh explosion of sound. “Fine, sleep. But Cole?”
“Yeah?” It was like putting a three-year-old to bed. There was always something else a kid wanted: a story or a glass of water.
“I like it when you call me baby,” Jae growled through the phone. “But not in Korean. Really, you stink.”
Chapter 12
THE cat kneaded at my skin, piercing through the sheets and the pajama bottoms I wore. I was nothing more than a prone scratching post, and she mewed her disgust at me when I moved her off me. She was back before I could turn over, tenderizing my body for what I was certain would be her midmorning snack. Being evil took a lot of energy, and something as small as she was probably had to keep up her strength.
It was raining outside, a sound that was drowned out by my doorbell ringing. The bells echoed, deep and booming, through the empty house. It hadn’t fully faded when it rang again, and the cat dislodged herself, jumping off the bed in a bounding prance.
“Okay! I’m coming!” I nearly tripped on Jae’s cat, goose-stepping around her as I made my way down to the first floor, pulling on a T-shirt. The hall clock chimed at me as I passed, marking off the morning. Rounding the landing, I glanced through the glass window in the door, and my heart skipped its beat when I flung open the door.
