My legs give out, and I sag to the ground. Ten paces behind me is Roy, lying in the very same position. We’re mirroring each other, separated by an invisible barrier: me on one side, Roy on the other, a million miles apart. The only difference between us is that Roy’s not moving.
Skinner comes and stands beside me. He jabs the golden straw behind my ear, and now I’ve got a matching set of two. His gloved hand strokes the hair on my head. It’s humiliating, as if I’m his pet.
“Congratulations,” he says. “You got the job.”
19
FLOPHOUSE
SKINNER VANISHED AFTER THE RACE. HE WAS SPIRITED OFF INSIDE A TIGHT formation of loyal globs. At least that’s what I remember from before I passed out. When I came to again, the elegant cat was perched on a barrel, ignoring me as I slept.
The refinery was empty. The only thing left were speckles of red on the concrete floor. Roy was gone, too. The stain he left behind was the largest of all. The cat led me out through another tunnel to an underground parking lot.
Which is how I ended up here, packed into the back seat of a long black brougham, apparently just one of several in Skinner’s fleet. Back in the lot, they were lined up like soldiers awaiting commands.
“Can I ask you something?” I say to the cat behind the wheel.
“No,” he says. He keeps his gaze on the road.
It’s a long way to the surface. We spiral up ramp after ramp. It gives you the impression of being in another city, down below the one you know. A very literal underground economy of crime. A black market of black magic.
The cat’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. Despite his cool demeanor, I take the eye contact as an invitation to speak. He’s a cat after all. When do they acknowledge anyone?
“I guess you know Skinner pretty well.”
He nods, a subtle dip of his chin.
“He’s pretty tough for a little guy, huh?”
Another nod.
“You know what happened to his face?”
“Not just his face.”
That must be why Skinner keeps his shirt buttoned up so high and tight. It’s to hide as much of his body as possible. I can’t help but wince. “What happened to him?”
The cat’s attention returns to the road. Neon lights wash over the windscreen, rinsing Skinner’s brougham in a rainbow of lurid light.
“What about the nixies? You know where their dust comes from?”
The cat hits the brakes. We’re deep in Dockside now, far from the open air of the reservoir. Refineries and warehouses squeeze the car on all sides. The cat throws a languid arm over the passenger seat. In his other paw, he’s got the gun he showed me earlier. “You ask too many questions.”
“I was just—”
“You’re a runner now,” says the cat. “You understand what that means?”
“‘Run’ isn’t exactly the most difficult word in the dictionary.”
The cat shuts his eyes and opens them slowly. “I can kick you out anytime,” he says. “Skinner won’t care. I could tell him you got spooked, changed your mind—just like you told me you did back at the warehouse. I could tell him you jumped out of the car at a traffic light and vanished in the dark.” He scrapes his rough tongue along his lips. “No one will ever hear from you again. That’s because you’ll be at the bottom of the reservoir. We’ll arrange for guppies to swim through your bullet holes. At which point no amount of dust—nixie or otherwise—is gonna bring you back. Is that also something you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Good.” He turns around in his seat. “Now, let’s get you to your new home.”
After driving in silence for a few more minutes, we come upon a building that slouches in every direction. Located on what might have been an elegant if sprawling apartment block once upon a time, the building is now close to disintegration. It looks to be mostly built out of soot, with only a meager patchwork of sheet metal to cover the holes in the brick.
“Welcome to the flophouse,” says the cat, grinning at me for the first time, showing off his fangs.
The foyer is a huge square space, its edges divvied up by countless corridors and stairways. If the outside was dismal, the inside is worse. The floor angles up and down like a fun house. The ceiling tiles are entirely missing so the lights dangle bare and flickering from exposed wires. Wolves are everywhere: lolling on the floor, swinging from the roof beams, crowded around tables, where even more wolves bark and howl over cards and dice games. As soon as the cat leads me in, the room hushes to a menacing silence.
“Everyone,” says the cat, “this is Henry. He was the winner tonight.”
Nobody speaks. Off in the corner, there’s a small pack of blackhaired wolves. Every one of them frowns at me from around a crooked table, where only a moment ago the dice were clattering freely. One of them scoffs. “Cheat!”
“Come along,” says the cat. “You can meet your new friends later.”
He leads me up to the first floor and down a corridor. There’s a hefty door at the end, locked up tight. The cat thumps it with a fist.
“Hey! Got this week’s newbie.”
No response.
The cat pounds again. “Wake up, ya bum!”
There’s a clinking of glass and then the racket of a thousand locks. An old wolf opens the door. He’s the light brown color of dead grass. His paw is draped at his side, loosely clutching a bottle, dregs of a pungent whiskey sloshing at the bottom.
“Fresh meat,” says the cat. “Show him around.”
The wolf shakes his head. His eyes are half-asleep, but in spite of his drunken tilt, there’s a kind of regal bearing to him, his head held high on a ramrod spine. “Put him up in, uh—three-oh-nine.” He sways a little to the left, then braces himself on the door frame. “Orientation’s in the morning, then it’ll be his first run.”
The cat regards the drunken wolf with disdainfully hooded lids. “Whatever you say, Matt.” He looks around at the rotten walls and the dangling fixtures. “You’re the boss around here.”
The wolf grunts and shuts the door. He never even looked at me.
The cat leads me up a few flights of stairs, past numbers haphazardly scrawled on the doors. Three-oh-nine is a windowless cube on the third floor, furnished with a three-legged chair and a bare mattress. No pillow, and only a thin blue sheet. My only consolation is that the mattress is enormous. It looks almost big enough for me to stretch out in full.
The cat watches me from the doorless entryway. “Better get some sleep.” He flashes me an unfriendly smile. “Big day tomorrow.”
I lie in semi-darkness, but it’s impossible to sleep. The mattress reeks of mold, and intermittent howls of laughter rise up through the floorboards. What am I doing here? How am I ever going to get close enough to Skinner to find out anything at all? And perhaps most importantly, what if my father is completely insane?
No. I know that deep down I want everything he said to be true. I want the fairies to come back. I want my world to be the way it was, once upon a time—even if I can’t remember exactly what that means.
Eventually—in spite of the noise, the smell, the worry—I drift off. But my sleep is as fitful as ever. It isn’t long before the nightmares set in. The trees. The cottage. The little girl. The blood and the bones . . .
20
A MILLION GLITTERING TEETH
SUDDENLY, I’M AWAKE. ALL THE FOLLICLES I’VE GOT—FIFTY BAZILLION OF them—vibrate like the plucked strings of a symphony (a fugue, no doubt). The room is pitch-black, lonely and empty.
Or not.
I prick up my ears. I can hear shallow breathing. It’s not mine.
A voice I don’t recognize says, “You really toss and turn, don’t you?” It’s somebody young, like me, but I can’t place it. But I can smell him. A wet scent of licorice and foul breath.
“Who are you?”
“Didn’t you hear what Manx said? We’re your new friends.”
There are more
of them—four others besides the voice—clinging to the corners of the room like huge, black cobwebs. Suddenly they’re on top of me. Five against one. I lash out against somebody, punching blindly. There’s a yelp, and I’m kicked in the gut. A pillowcase is hitched over my head, and suddenly the enormous bed sheet cocoons me.
Whump! Something heavy rams my skull, and I’m thrown back into the nightmare.
The bones pop through my hide. I can’t tell which is worse, my dream or my reality. No, that’s not true. Nothing’s worse than my nightmares. I choose reality. I want to wake up. Happily (or not), that’s exactly what I get.
Cold air sieves through the cloth of the pillowcase, chilling my snout. My arms are wrenched up behind me and bound up in the sheet. I’m doubled over something. Feels like a squat hunk of cement. I’m outside. Clanks and rattles rise up from below.
Somebody yanks the pillowcase off. For a dizzying moment I’m blinded by a million pinpricks of light, too many stars to count. Only they’re not stars. It’s the city, sprawling out below me.
They’ve got me on the roof. It’s not a tall building (buildings made of soot rarely are), but it’s more than high enough to give me a sudden shot of vertigo. A fall from up here would kill you.
“You’re a cheat,” one of them informs me. Looks like five of them altogether. It’s the pack of dice players from when I arrived. Three of them have me braced over the ledge, while two more—a big one and a little one—pace behind my back.
“Yeah,” says the little one. “A cheat!”
“Shut up, Squitch,” says the big one. He comes over to me and leans against the concrete barrier. “There’s been some kind of mistake,” he says. He almost looks genuinely puzzled. “You see, uh . . .?”
“Henry.”
“Wrong. Your name’s Newbie, got it?” He glances over his shoulder at the constellation of lighted dust refineries below us. “Nice view, huh, Newbie?”
“Listen,” I say. “I just got here, so if I did something to make you guys angry, then . . .”
One of the wolves pinning me down jabs me in the ribs, robbing me of air. I’m sputtering for breath, but the other guy keeps talking.
“In fact, you did do something to upset us, see? My cousin was supposed to win today. Name’s Zeb. Black hair. Skinny as anything, but fast. He was supposed to win tonight. Not you.”
“Yeah!” says the little one, leaping up behind his friend. “Tom’s cousin was s’posed to win!”
“I said shut up, Squitch.”
Squitch is obviously an annoyance for everyone involved. Each time they tell him to shut up, my arm gets cranked a little higher. If he doesn’t stop yammering soon, they’ll rip my shoulder out of its socket.
“Ow!”
“You can shut up, too,” says the one called Tom, pointing at me.
“Yeah, you can shut up too!”
“Squitch!”
“Sorry, Tom.”
“Maybe I owe you an explanation,” Tom tells me, leaning casually on his elbow. “My whole family works for Skinner, see? He takes good care of us. This is a good job for wolves like us. Not for wolves like you.”
Finally, I catch my breath. “Aren’t we all in the same boat here?”
“Naw,” says Tom, waving me off. “I saw it as soon as you walked in. You’re not like us. You’re one of them wolves who thinks they’re above their species, see? You think you’re a hominid, right? But you’re not. You’re an animal. Only you can’t see it. That’s your problem. Not comfortable in your own hide.”
“I know who I am.” I say it calmly. Almost as though I believe it.
“Maybe so,” says Tom. “If you do, then you’ll know that you don’t belong here.”
“I won that race.”
Tom bares his teeth. “You cheated!”
“Yeah! He cheated!”
“Squitch!”
My arm gets shoved even higher.
Tom looks up at the sky. Eden floats silently above us. Its underbelly is an upturned mountain, one great finger pointing at the city. Up on top it’s nothing but glimmering towers of light. Tom squints at it, contemplating. “Them fairies knew it. Never waved the magic wands for us, now did they? They knew where to draw the line. Just a fact of life. But you’re too young to remember any of that.”
I shake my head. “That’s not true,” I tell him. Besides, he doesn’t look much older than me. “I knew a fairy once. Her name was Faelynn. She said things were gonna change.”
Tom gives me a pitying look. “You guys hear? That’s the sort of company he keeps. Not that anybody here believes you.” He laughs and spits over the ledge. “Phew! That is a long way down.” His features are still, hard as stone. “This won’t be pretty.”
He nods to his friends and they struggle to lift me over the ledge. But struggle is the operative word.
“Damn!” says one of them. “Guy weighs a ton!”
“Help us out, Tom.”
“Weaklings.”
He gathers up my ankles and heaves. I’m clear off the ground, wriggling as best I can with my arms in a tangle. The city opens up below with its million glittering teeth. Thoughts of my mother and my father flash through my head. Thoughts of Jack, too, of Siobhan and Gram and Faelynn. Of Fiona. Even of Roy.
“Nice knowin’ ya, Newbie.”
“Hold it, fellahs,” says a new voice. “Think you better put him down.”
Tom drops my legs. The sheet loosens and I’m able to turn enough to see that it’s Matt, the wolf I met when I first came in. He’s still draped in his housecoat, bottle in hand. “I doubt Skinner’d be pleased to hear about how you’re treating the newest member of the family.”
“No part of my family.” Tom’s face remains set in stone.
But Squitch isn’t so coolheaded. His bottom lip is drawn back from his teeth in worry. “Don’t tell Skinner! Please-please-please, don’t tell Skinner.”
“Squitch,” says Tom. “What’ve I been telling you all night long?”
Squitch shuts up for once.
Matt slips the bottle into the pocket of his housecoat. “’Kay, boys, get back in your beds in five minutes and I’ll consider keeping this little episode between us.” He points at me. “And you, the newbie. You come with me. Evidently, I gotta find you a new room.” He eyes Tom. “Someplace with a door.”
Squitch folds his forearms and pouts. “How come he gets a door?”
“Cuz you fidos just tried to toss him off a roof, that’s why.”
“Good point,” says Squitch.
The dark-hairs disperse like nothing happened, as if attempting to throw the newbie off the roof is no more momentous than a dice game. Matt leads me down a musty stairwell and back to the solid door where I first met him. He takes out a massive ring of keys and unlocks it.
I feel a distinct wave of privilege. “You’re gonna let me stay with you?”
Matt laughs. “Not a chance.”
I peer into the room and see it’s a well-furnished disaster. There’s not one, but three desks, a herd of swivel chairs, couches, armchairs, chests of drawers, and a bunch of bookshelves filled more with empty bottles than books. Everything is askew. It looks like the furnishings were arranged by a bomb blast. The walls, meanwhile, are covered with maps, each one of them dense with fine black lines and arcane notations. Matt opens one of the countless drawers and pulls out a folded blanket, along with a thin pillow.
“Nobody sleeps in here but me,” he says, stepping back into the hall. “You can have the room next door.”
The room next door, it turns out, is a broom closet. Only there aren’t any brooms. It’s just vacant shelving and a single dustpan. Matt shakes out the blanket and spreads it on the floor, topping it off with a thin pillow.
“You’ll be safe in here,” he says.
I stoop in through the doorway. The closet is so squat I fill the whole thing wall-to-wall. I lower myself to the floor in a gambit for more headroom and find it’s not quite as uncomfortable as it loo
ks.
“Matt?” I say, looking up at him.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. They always give newbies a hard time.” He shakes his head. “Stupid thing is, all those guys are newbies themselves. Joined the crew in the last couple of months. But don’t worry, it’s my job to look after you guys. And speaking of which, you better get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.” He starts pulling the door shut.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Hurry up,” he says. “You’re not the only one who needs some shut-eye.”
“Is Matt short for something? Like say, Mattius?”
He gives me a puzzled look. “How’d you know that? Nobody calls me that. Not anymore.”
“My dad did.”
Matt stares at me a long time. My face must look half-baked and cadaverous under the closet’s bare bulb. Maybe that’s why he recognizes me.
“Oh my God. You’re George Whelp’s son.”
21
THE DEADEST OF ENDS
“HENRY?” SAYS MATT. “LITTLE HENRY WHELP?”
I shrug. “Not so little anymore.”
“Why didn’t I see it? You look just like him.”
“Guess you haven’t seen him lately.”
Matt looks down sheepishly. “Skinner wouldn’t like it.”
“He told me you guys were friends.”
“We were. But after what he did—wait! You can’t stay! We gotta get you out of here.” He looks anxiously down the corridor. “He made me promise that if you ever showed up here, I would send you packing, but not before giving you a good swift kick in the pants for being so stupid for falling into this stuff!”
“But—”
“A promise is a promise, kid. I stick by that.” He checks his watch. “Won’t be hard to smuggle you out. We can use the tunnels.” He steps into the closet, grabs my shirt, and gives me a sharp tug to my feet. “If George wasn’t in the clink right now, he’d kill me for letting those guys nearly toss you off the roof!”
“But he’s the one who sent me. He wants me to work for Skinner.”
Dust City Page 10
