The Color of Rain

by Cori McCarthy

  But Johnny doesn’t see it. He’s too busy combing me with his eyes. “Let’s take a walk, Rain.” His hand creeps to my arm, then up my back until it’s resting on the nape of my neck.

  We head back toward the elevator, and I wait until we’re out of view of the crew members before I shrug away from his grip. “I can walk. You don’t have to leash me.”

  An amused grin plays on Johnny’s lips, but he doesn’t say a word—not until we’ve taken the elevator up to a floor where the only door is labeled Captain’s Quarters.

  The room is the nicest I’ve ever seen. Deep carpet cushions each step and ornate silver light fixtures fill the room with a low glow. An overstuffed chair takes up one corner, backed by a bar loaded with dozens of bottles. Finally, my eyes are drawn to the large window at the foot of a huge slippery-looking bed.

  Fear dawns like a brilliant sun. It was easy to say that I would sleep with Johnny, but the actuality of it is blinding.

  He pours a drink, and I strangle the coat still weighing down my hands. “Come, Rain. You’ve never been shy before. Where’s the ‘say anything’ quality?”

  “You barely know me.”

  He collapses in the large chair, his knees spread a little too wide as he sips his drink with one hand and unbuttons his silky shirt with the other. “True, but let’s not play strangers. That game is truly boring.”

  “Am I a game?” I toss the coat on the edge of his bed. “I’m starting to doubt our agreement. This ship is—”

  “Is a Void ship that’s taking you and your damaged brother to the Edge. I would treat her like a lady, Rain. Particularly if you want me to keep up my end of the bargain.”

  The truth is obvious: it doesn’t matter if it is a game or not. I have to play. “So we still have our arrangement if I do . . . what I said I’d do?”

  I watch his eyes wander up my tight outfit. This is nuts, and still, my heart beats in a rushing, warm sort of way.

  “We have our agreement.” He sips from his glass while his free hand touches his neck. His chest. “But I’ve been awake for three days to make sure we made it into the Void while you girls napped in storage, so check your bitterness.”

  I sit on the footstool, forcing a reserve that I don’t feel. “I’m not bitter. So you didn’t tell me that you’re a pimp. I should have guessed as much, but it doesn’t matter. You get my body either way.” My words are meant to please him, but they also feel damned with reality.

  “I don’t like the word pimp. Clear it from your vocabulary.” His eyes narrow for a moment. “But this attitude is refreshing. You don’t seem to want to play the ‘Oh, but don’t you love me, Johnny?’ game. Still, you must have questions. Tell you what, you give me something to take my mind off my exhaustion, and I’ll answer a few of the concerns knotting up that pretty face.”

  My mind streams with images of red alarms and bracelet tags as well as Lo and Walker, but I know that I have to tease him. And I need to start at the beginning. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.” He swirls the amber liquid in his glass.

  “How’d you end up with a starship? You’re so young.”

  He points to his knees, and it takes me a moment to remember that this is tit for tat. I massage the top of his legs, and he groans. “The short answer is that my father owns a fleet.”

  I venture a little further up his toned legs. One thing is for certain: Johnny may be lean, but he’s no weakling. “So he just gave you Imreas?” This is the first time that I’ve used the ship’s name, and I don’t like the way it slips off my tongue.

  “My father gave me nothing. He marooned me on Entra when I was fourteen, determined to make me ‘Find my own way.’” He takes a drag from his drink. “I’d never been without my servants for so much as a day, and there I was in the middle of a fucking forest planet. Truth be told, I was starving, eating dead things that I found in the woods.” I bring my massage back toward his knees, and he doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are glazed with a kind of crazy glow, which makes my breath go shallow. “But my girl came and found me. My Crysta. She stepped out of the clearing between two trees like a Void angel.”

  Johnny has withdrawn into a memory, but it feels dangerous. “She was my lifesaver.”

  “She helped you find your way out?”

  “She gave me the way out through the casino. She has this body. I tell you what, finding men to pay for her was the easiest job I’ve ever done.”

  “You pimped her?”

  Johnny sits up fast, knocking me back a little. His hand is on my neck in a second, tugging the zipper and opening my clothes all the way to my cleavage. “I warned you about that word.”

  “You did.”

  He touches my newly exposed chest. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Sometimes,” I admit.

  He leans back and finishes his drink. “You’ll get over that. It’s a virgin thing. To be honest, I detest virgins. Too high maintenance. By the way, what do you think of your color?”

  I think that he means my bracelet, but he motions to my skin. I glance at my arm. It’s got an olive tan to it like Johnny’s. A healthy glow. “It’s all right.”

  He puts my hand on his leg again, but when I start stroking him, he scoops me into his lap. “So where were we?”

  “Crysta was making you money.”

  “Right, so I soon saved enough to collect the interest of other girls, and then my own ship. I used that ship to commandeer the best in my father’s fleet. Imreas was his gem.”

  “Was he angry?”

  “He was proud in his own way. You might say that I exceeded his expectations.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Seventeen.” He sighs. “Now I run the Void with passengers. A self-made man at twenty-two. Are you impressed?” He fingers my jaw as I nod. And the truth is, I am impressed. I don’t even have a set of clothes to my name, and yet when he was my age, he was in command of a starship. Pimp or no, that’s no simple feat.

  “But Kaya said you have even more lucrative business onboard.” My curiosity gets the best of me. “Why do you keep trading girls?”

  “Demand mostly. Plus I like giving beautiful girls a home and job. I take care of them like I’ll take care of you. You’ll come to respect me like they do. Or at least need me.” He shifts forward, and I almost tumble off his lap. “Who says I have more lucrative business?” His arms have slipped around my waist so that I can’t turn.

  “One of the girls.”

  “You said ‘Kaya.’”

  “I did.”

  “Oh, Kaya.” He sits back with a sigh, and I can’t help but push him further, remembering his angry mumbling on the rooftop beside my greenhouse.

  “So you don’t work for your father?”

  “Did Kaya say that I work for my father?”

  “No,” I say in a rush. “I was just curious. So you don’t run errands for him?” I should have stopped sentences ago. His arm tightens me to him until I’m breathing his breath.

  “I’m no errand boy.” Johnny’s eyes have blackened, sending a chill down my entire body. “But I’m glad you asked about my past as it might serve your future. I see through you right now. You’re damming up your fears and growing as solid as stone, but”—he says while stroking my hair from my ear, and then whispers into it—“I don’t want you like this. We’ll wait until you want me. We’ll wait until you’ve gone . . . soft. I have big plans for us.”

  He parts my lips with his thumb. “What do you think?”

  I ache to bite his fingers. “I think you’ll be waiting a long time. I’m not going to drool over you like these other girls.”

  Johnny smiles. “Yes, well, I loved Crysta. Before my exile, I couldn’t have imagined trading her to other men, but then, it’s amazing what you’ll do when everything else has been taken from you. Nothing to lose. Everything to gain. It’s the truest kind of freedom. You’ll thank me for showing you.”

  “I already have nothing,” I say t
hrough gritted teeth.

  “Are you sure?” He smiles, but his lips are a tight line, and I can’t help but think of Lo and her yellow bracelet. Walker in his frozen prison. “Just wait, Rain. Soon you’ll be dying for me,” he adds with the confidence of a stone-cold killer.

  And with a rush, I realize that Johnny may very well be one.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Lo is missing.

  So is Kaya.

  I stand by the small window at the back of the Family Room, hiding behind one of the many colored curtains. I’m sucked in by the outer space of my dreams—huge silver orbs gleam against the black stretch while in the distance, smaller stars streak like a hard rain.

  And yet, it all weighs upon me like some great penalty. What have I gotten into?

  The green-braceleted girls are silent or snoring, each one nestled on a bed mat in a different section of the veiled room. None of them would speak to me when I came back from meeting Johnny. Not one word about Lo or Kaya. Almost as though they had been warned.

  Or maybe Lo had been right; I’m Johnny’s red tag now. I’m the one to beat.

  The lingering men left with their chosen girls when the lights dimmed for the night, and I find myself hoping that Ben might appear and leak his cryptic information. His body isn’t so bad either.

  “There’s no reason to flirt with him,” I whisper. “No good reason.” And a whole host of bad ones. Not the least being, did he really get some girl thrown out the airlock?

  But whether or not I want him to, Ben doesn’t show, and all I have are the stars.

  “Can’t take those from me,” I say, remembering Johnny’s bizarre threat. “No matter whatever else you have in that twisted head of yours.” I’m no longer foolish enough to believe that Johnny and I met by accident, and I’ve gathered that Lo is a pawn in this game he wants to play. He must have seen her on the docks and factored her into his plans. . . .

  Lo’s yellow tag must mean that she’s somewhere on the crew deck, and yet her absence feels too sudden. Too permanent. She could be in trouble already. Knowing Lo, I don’t doubt it for a second.

  A guilty thought trips up my fears: if Johnny’s going to use Lo, maybe he’s not focused on Walker. I force myself to breathe, fogging up the window. Only a few weeks ago, Walker and I worked a double shift. He was so tired that I was practically carrying him home, and then I looked up, and that girl was falling from the sky, and everything changed.

  I squeeze my eyes so hard that they ache. Samson put Walker somewhere on this ship, and I’m going to find him. “You haven’t disappeared,” I whisper.

  But Lo has.

  And Kaya is a green bracelet; she should be in this room, right? I remember Johnny’s intense sigh as he said Kaya’s name. Did I get her in trouble? Are they being punished?

  I push the thoughts away. Lo, at least, is street tough. She knows about men and desperation. And if she were here, she could tell me how to do things with Johnny. How to kiss him. How to move against him . . .

  SCHREECHEEENSCH! SCHREECHEEENSCH!

  I fall to the floor, clutching my ears against the siren. A red light turns on and off, throwing an eerie pall over the room. Someone trips from behind a nearby veil, and Ben stumbles twice as he makes for the door. The siren stops, but the red light continues to flicker as he bolts out of the room.

  So he was here! Right next to me the whole time! Was he watching? Did Johnny make him spy on me? My brain recovers from the searing volume of the alarm as I watch the door close in his wake.

  It will lock, and I’ll be a prisoner just like we were in the elevator. Shut in. Stuck.

  I sprint, catching the handle a second before it clicks into the frame. I slip into the hallway, letting the door lock behind me. A far door slams behind Ben, and I follow slowly, stepping down a tower of steep stairs.

  The air is grim on the low decks, and I breathe in a foul, steamy stench that is a little like livestock and more like a butcher’s shop. I come out of the stairway before two huge storage units that stretch from floor to ceiling and duck behind a large support beam. High above, strips of fluorescent light attempt to dull the red glow of the lockdown lamps, but fail.

  Ben paces before an enormous cargo door.

  “The same one as earlier.” Johnny appears as though he materialized from the shadow. He throws someone at Ben’s feet—a balding man in filthy clothes. His face is bowed to the floor.

  “The same one,” Johnny repeats. His voice is cutting, and my heart bangs with speed. I’m going to see Johnny, the Killer. I know it through to my bones. . . .

  But Johnny tosses something else on the floor instead, and it clatters to a stop before Ben’s boots. “Take care of it.”

  Ben doesn’t move.

  “Don’t make me rethink our relationship, not after all we’ve done together.” Johnny touches Ben’s shoulder in a strangely friendly way. Too friendly. “You want me to trust you. You don’t want this relationship to sour like it did with her.”

  Ben’s face is red with the glow of the lights, and he slowly picks up the same knife that Johnny used to fix my shirt on the pier. “I know a more secure place where we could place him,” he says in a raspy voice.

  Johnny shakes his head. “Do it. I have a dinner to get to.”

  Ben’s shoulders straighten, and a terrible sense of foreboding floods my veins. My fingers slip into my mouth, and I bite down as he pulls the man onto his knees by the back of his ragged clothes.

  “Help us,” he moans, but it’s too late. Ben slams the knife into his chest and pulls it out in one slick movement. The man’s head lolls forward, and Ben drops him facedown.

  Johnny just smiles. “I do love watching you. As skilled as a surgeon.”

  “Shut up, Johnny.” Ben shoves the knife into his hand and leaves, his heavy boots echoing like swears in his wake. Johnny wipes the blade on the dead man’s clothes before dropping it in his pocket and disappearing into the shadows.

  I taste blood. I’ve bitten into my knuckle, and my fingers are stiff.

  The lockdown light vanishes, and the dank area fills with the yellowed overhead lighting. I stumble out of my hiding place and fall to my knees before the man. I want to check for signs of life, but my hands won’t close on his greasy clothes. Why didn’t I do something? I could have rushed out to stop them . . . right?

  Wrong.

  A circle of blood pools from beneath his body, and I scuttle back to escape it.

  And still it grows and grows, filling the floor with crimson. The color slides after me like something insatiable—something drawn to me—until I have no choice but to run away.

  People die on Imreas. The words chase through my mind as I toss on my mat back in the Family Room. People die when no one’s looking. What could have been that man’s crime?

  Help us.

  A shiver lights my spine. So there are more where he came from. If I was smart, I’d realize that I shouldn’t be sticking my nose into the shadows of this starship, but I’m already desperate to find out what’s happening. Where are these people? And why are they here? This is a passenger ship, but the passengers I’ve seen are rich traders and questionable personalities like Johnny.

  The window throbs with whiteness, the view shifting from an endless stretch of stars to a net of gossamer strings unlike anything I’ve ever imagined. They weave as they embrace the ship, and I catch my breath.

  I have to warn Lo. And above all, I must find Walker.

  I step silently around the bodies of the sleeping girls, but when I push through the shower room door I can’t hold back a scream. My voice powers off the tiled walls as Ben faces me. His arms and hands are dipped in bloody water at the white sink. Blood stains his shirt.

  He runs at me, and I bring my fists up, but he slams into the door, locking me in.

  “Don’t!” I shout.

  “Shut up!” He returns to the sink and scours his hands like he’s trying to take the skin off. “I’m not going to explain
, so don’t ask,” he manages after a few moments, before adding, “Someone needed help.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say as he yanks his bloody shirt over his head and tosses it down a garbage chute. His brown boots are stained as well, like he walked through a stream of red.

  Wait.

  He didn’t have any blood on him when he left Johnny. Not a drop. That’s how swift he was with that knife. How cold. Did he go back to clean up the body? Did he see me?

  “So you were just helping someone?”

  “That’s what I said.” He kicks his boots off and unbuttons his pants. I should be demanding answers or just looking away, but the quiver of his back stuns me—like he’s trying not to cry. “You going to stand there and watch me change?”

  I feel warm. “Maybe. You saw me naked.”

  “Not by choice.” He slams his boots in the sink. “And I didn’t look. I’m no pervert.” His hair is askew across his forehead, his expression pained. He’s a killer—I saw it, but then what am I seeing now?

  “What did you . . .”

  “Just get OUT!” Ben struggles with heavy breaths as he scrubs his boots over the rushing stream of steaming water. I switch the lock and go back into the dead quiet of the Family Room.

  I sit under the starry window, curl my legs into my chest and squeeze my eyes against what I just saw. I can’t afford to be naïve. No matter what I think I know about Ben, he is a murderer. Johnny may have been the one to order it, but Ben did it. I rock on my heels until something like sleep finds me, but it’s pierced by a familiar nightmare of chasing my dad’s bloody trail out of the apartment building, down the street, and this time, into a black sky.

  Waking in a sweat, I press myself to the cool window. “I miss you,” I admit to the universe, hoping that somehow, he can hear me. Just outside, purple and orange rings mark the spot where a supernova blew itself to pieces ages ago.

  CHAPTER

  9

  I have to sleep with Johnny.

  I unzip my clothes to the very border of indecency and wear a fixed smile as he takes me on a bragging tour of the passenger levels. I bury the image of the stabbed man as best as I can, needing to focus on Walker and Lo. Not to forget the overwhelming question of Johnny’s endgame.