She committed to keeping her head down as much as she could the rest of the evening. Angel clearly noticed her distress and occasionally tried to engage her in mild conversation underneath the blaring of the band onstage, but eventually Rudolph insisted that they dance together, and Daisy was left on her own with the warehouse girls. Vicks, when she was at the table long enough to sit and drink for a moment, flashed her a few friendly grins, but something about her toothy mouth and the sharp facial features framing it made it feel somehow predatory. Regina was content to ignore Daisy entirely, and Frisk and Amelia sometimes looked her way with either curiosity or disdain – she wasn’t sure which. Maybe they weren’t sure, either. There was a moment where she wistfully considered activating the smokescreen ability enchanted into her headband and slipping away entirely, though of course for the smokescreen to go off indoors would be too obvious and cause a panic. For a while, she tried to just focus on the music, humming along to the strings so softly that even she couldn’t hear herself.
When Angel and Rudolph returned, Frisk and Amelia began whispering to each other in hurried tones. While Angel and Rudolph still looked radiant, and even Daisy was only beginning to feel tired, the warehouse girls were starting to look exhausted. Frisk glanced over at Regina and turned back to Angel, and Daisy was surprised that instead of suggesting that they turn in for the night, she said, “We’re thinking of taking this to a different scene.” When Angel frowned, Frisk rolled a shoulder, adding, “You know,” as though that were supposed to mean anything.
Angel crossed her arms and sighed. “Well, go if you want. I should probably take my team home. Andre already let me know that he’d skin me if I brought Daisy back unfit to work tomorrow, and Rudolph is already in his cups.” Indeed, Rudolph had to lean to his girlfriend to keep himself standing upright, and his eyes were merrily glazed. He had ordered a few more drinks since that first glass of white wine. Daisy hadn’t seen Angel drink anything since that introductory glass, which she hadn’t even finished, and she assumed that Angel would still be in the driver’s seat on the way home.
Frisk’s lips pulled into an expression that was not exactly a sneer. It gave the impression of being both disappointed and unsurprised. “Right, right. Want me to, uh, pick you up anything while we’re out?”
Daisy noticed Angel’s eyes dart quickly toward her before settling back on Frisk with a darkened expression. “That won’t be necessary.” A chill went up Daisy’s back, and she suppressed a shudder. What was that about? Angel and Frisk talked like friends, but it seemed as though the latter had hardly said a thing all night that didn’t get Angel all prickly. It felt at odds with the calm and charismatic woman Daisy had seen Angel as in the office or on the dance floor.
With a brief and tense exchange of goodbyes, Angel was soon escorting her dates back to the lot where she’d parked the jalopy. She had to help Rudolph clamber into the back seat, struggling to get his feet pushed all the way into the body of the car rather than left to dangle out the door. Daisy settled in the passenger seat, stewing quietly in her own embarrassment over how dull and foolish she had made herself out to be that night. When Angel had successfully stuffed her half-cognitive boyfriend in the back, she nearly flopped into the driver’s seat, heaving a grating sigh. Her frustration and exhaustion appeared to vanish a moment later as she turned to Daisy and beamed a sunny grin.
“Well, that was a lovely evening, wasn’t it?” Daisy wanted to be polite and charming – she wanted Angel to know that the misery she was feeling was not the older woman’s fault – but she couldn’t summon the same reserves of cheer as Angel could. The wan smile she offered felt listless and lopsided on her face. Angel pouted when she saw it, and that expression quickly burned into a scowl. “Oh, that brat Frisk!”
“No, truly, I had an excellent time,” Daisy hurried to say, but Angel ignored her, turning in her seat to face Daisy fully.
“Now, you listen. Those girls can be rough, and although they should and do know better, sometimes they let their worser natures get the better of them. I don’t want you worrying about what they think. Frisk and Amelia are territorial, and Regina is a ditz who goes along with whatever they say. Vicks can be sweet, but she’s a wild one, and when he’s one of the boys, he is one of the boys. They’ll all be crass and reckless till it kills them, but I don’t want you thinking that it has anything to do with you or what they think of you as a person.” She sighed again, turning to face the steering wheel and start the car, and the exhale carried off her anger. “They’re a bunch of silly punks who are nervous about newcomers, is all. Trust me, when Amelia was first hired, Frisk was the same way about her, and now they’re dating.” She turned the key in the ignition and paused, glancing again at Daisy. “Don’t date Frisk.”
Angel’s outburst surprised Daisy, and although it didn’t do much to make her feel better about Frisk and the others, it did make her more at ease with Angel herself. She had never had friends growing up who were close enough to care about her emotional distress, and her parents had always been avoidant types to skirt around firm heart-to-hearts. It was an intimate compassion that Angel offered to her, one that she wasn’t used to, and she felt the tension under her shoulders loosen.
She smiled at Angel, even though the other woman had her eyes on the road as she pulled out of the parking lot. “Thank you for saying that. I needed to hear it.”
The drive home was peaceful, and in the quiet darkness of the car Daisy’s fatigue began to catch up with her. She wondered, as her eyelids drooped and the spots of light from the city blurred through her lashes, how long Frisk and her friends intended to stay out, and what kind of condition they could expect to return to work tomorrow. Rudolph, at least, would probably sleep off the night’s entertainment – he was already snoring in the backseat. Daisy was about ready to follow suit when she heard Angel cry out, “Damn!”
Daisy blinked once, and it was far easier to keep her eyes open once she spotted the large trailer truck swerving into their lane from the opposite direction. There was a warning blare of a horn as the truck tried to correct its course, and Daisy’s breath caught, her heart nearly stopping. Angel slammed on the brakes, and all three occupants of her vehicle cried out as they were flung forward from the momentum. Head whipping while her body remained strapped in tight by the seatbelt, Daisy caught a view of her own knees and lap, and a taunting devil in her mind whispered that this would be her last sight. She heard a booming thud and the screech of friction on metal, and then a hush of silence. Wondering for a brief moment if she were dead, that taunting voice in her head changed its tune, politely reminding her that she could still see her knees and smell burnt rubber. She looked up to see Angel gripping the steering wheel with knuckles lined with bulging blue veins, staring unblinking ahead while she panted wildly. Daisy peered out through the windshield, too.
The truck, in its desperation to realign itself in the correct lane, had flipped on its side, and the passengers of Angel’s car stared at its steely underbelly. The thankful silence of survival stretched on for a long moment while Angel and Daisy gawked at the enormous vehicle that had nearly run them down, breaking only when Angel gasped and clutched at her chest.
Rudolph, shaken from his drunken slumber by the momentous event, scrambled to unbuckle himself and lean into the front half of the car. “Angel, darling!”
“Are you all right?” Daisy asked, unable to keep herself from pawing helplessly at Angel’s arm.
Angel took two more shaky breaths before waving them both off. “I’m f- fine. Go, check the other driver.” She was nearly wheezing, and Daisy worried that she was suffering some heart issue in response to the stress of the situation, but she did as she was told, no less alarmed over the possible fate of the trucker. She hurried out of the car, her legs shaking hard enough to send her staggering her first step onto the road – empty but for the accident – but she hobbled as quickly as she could to the cabin of the truck. The driver’s side door was pinned to the as
phalt, so Daisy had to climb up the sideways cabin to get to the passenger’s side, smudging her dress with dust, ash, and oil from the truck’s exterior. Pulling the passenger’s side door up and open, she peered down to see a heavy-bodied individual struggling to untangle himself from his seatbelt.
“Are you all right?”
The driver paused and looked up at her. He was an ogre, one of the non-human races native to the continent who had come to Ashland about two hundred years before humans began returning. Much taller and broader than the average human, with longer arms and thick, greyish skin, most ogres still lived in the mountains in towns like Oleylo, out where the ash and gas was still too severe for most humans. Some, however, chose to live in the company of humans in the greener lowlands. While other intelligent beings like faeries, fauns, and doppelgangers lived on the distant margins of human society, sometimes so far disconnected that history had nearly forgotten them entirely, ogres integrated in sizable – though still minority – populations, at least in Ashland. The human’s word “ogre” was a derogatory term, Daisy knew, but so widely in use that she didn’t know what they called themselves, and thus she had no other name for such beings.
The ogre pushed his hair up from his forehead, shaking off shards of glass from the shattered driver’s window. If he had been human, the impact of the turnover or cuts from the glass might have killed him. Thick skin and heavy bones appeared to leave the ogre largely unharmed, or so Daisy hoped. He waved up to her.
“Battered a bit, but fine. Just give me a–” He gave up on trying to unbuckle himself and gripped the strap across his chest, jerking it aside until it tore. Free from its constraint, he struggled to stand in the sideways compartment, but once he was on his feet, it was easy for him to reach up and pull himself out. When his head and shoulders emerged from the open doorway, he glanced at Daisy before trying to peer around the body of his truck. “Are you all right? Were you in that car?”
“I’m fine,” Daisy said, only just then realizing that she hadn’t even thought to check herself for any sort of injury. “I think the others with me are, as well, although maybe I should…” She paused, uncertain of what she should do. She didn’t know the neighborhood they were in and wasn’t sure where she might find a payphone to call for help. And although Angel and Rudolph had both been conscious and speaking, she worried about Angel’s frantic breathing. “I need to make sure they’re OK. Are you sure you’re all right?”
The ogre finished pulling himself up, clambering out of the cabin to settle on its upturned side. “Yes, just need to catch my breath. Go see to your friends.” Daisy climbed back down to the road, slipping on the last step down and tumbling to her knees as she landed, but she ignored the scrapes to her legs and the tear in her skirt to hurry back to the car.
She circled around to the driver’s window, which Angel lowered for her. “Angel, how are you feeling?”
“A bit in shock, dear. I’m not hurt, though.” She seemed calmer, but her breathing hadn’t evened out much, and she flinched as though she had a migraine. “How is the driver?”
“Alive and unhurt, or mostly unhurt.”
Angel sighed, slumping her shoulders. Daisy began to feel her own heartbeat stabilize seeing Angel relax.
“We should call the police,” Angel said, staring absently ahead, again in the direction of the truck’s underside. Daisy didn’t like the sound of that – ogres and other non-humans weren’t high society in Soot City, and the police had a history of giving them trouble when they could, and it didn’t help that the trucker appeared to be at fault for the accident – but there wasn’t much help for it. The truck couldn’t drive away, and the road would have to be cleared sooner or later. The flat delivery of Angel’s suggestion made it clear that she didn’t much like the circumstances, either, although she couldn’t have known that the driver was an ogre.
Rudolph, still in the backseat, reached up to place a hand on Angel’s arm. “Darling, do you need to stay here and rest?”
Angel didn’t blink as she nodded. “I think that may be for the best. Will you be able to assist Daisy in helping the other driver?”
Her beau patted her hand. “Of course, my sweet.” Daisy helped him out of the car – panic and concern appeared to help him through the haze of alcohol, and he climbed out with less stumbling than Daisy had suffered – and together they returned to the trucker, where they found a pair of nearby residents already gathered to examine the scene and assist. The pair, a couple who lived close enough to hear the crash, offered to phone the police for them before fussing over the safety and well-being of all the parties involved. Once sure that the trucker would find assistance with his vehicle and after assuring everyone that their own car and everyone in it was safe, Daisy and Rudolph excused themselves to make their way home.
As they returned to the car, Daisy could see Angel in the driver’s seat drinking from what appeared to be a flask. That didn’t make sense to Daisy – Angel was a responsible woman, from everything Daisy had seen, and she hadn’t allowed herself to drink too much while they were out, knowing that she’d be accountable for driving them home. Daisy shook her head, telling herself that it was probably medicine. Maybe Angel had some sort of chronic condition that had been aggravated by the crash. Whatever it was, she had it tucked away by the time Daisy and Rudolph climbed back in.
“Are you well enough to drive?” Rudolph asked, and Daisy understood the hesitant lilt of his question. He was drunk, and Daisy didn’t know how to drive. If Angel was too out of sorts to continue, they would have to call a cab.
Angel nodded. Breathing now even, she looked alert. She still appeared shaken, but under control. “Yes. Let’s get ourselves home, shall we?” As she reached for the steering wheel, Daisy noticed a smudge on Angel’s thumb. In the dimness of night, it looked almost like blood, but there was just enough light from the city around them to make out a blue glint. Not dark blue, like ink, but something brighter and more vibrant than a clear summer sky. Daisy wasn’t sure what it was, but she thought to the flask she had seen Angel drinking from. That certainly wasn’t alcohol she saw daubed on her friend’s hand.
Chapter 3
Sleep came uneasily to Daisy after that ordeal, but she had enough of her senses about her when she arrived at the office the next morning. She was about five minutes late, hurrying in with her hair left unslicked and tucked under a maroon felt hat. Mr Swarz, already in his own office, appeared not to notice her tardiness. At least she could expect work to be uncomplicated after the previous night’s excitement.
Mr Swarz had no special tasks for her that morning, and the phone on her lobby desk was silent, so she took to menial cleaning to pass the time. She tidied the refreshment table in the back of the lobby, washed out the coffee carafe and scrubbed Angel’s lipstick off of one of the white mugs sitting next to it. She had decided to slip on her bronze pendant that morning – one of her grandmother’s more useful trinkets that could levitate objects lighter than about a dozen pounds, as she had woken up with the feeling that she’d be more butterfingered than usual. Her prediction proved accurate when, while moving aside the sugar bowl to wipe down the table, the little ceramic dish slipped from her hold. It didn’t flip as it fell, leaving most of its contents inside its belly, and she was able to activate the spell fast enough to keep it from slamming into the hardwood and exploding white grains and shards all over the room. It hovered intact little more than an inch off the floor.
Once she wiped down the table and returned the sugar bowl to its place, she noticed flakes of dirt that had gathered around the front door. Mr Swarz’s cane had toppled over from where he had rested it against the wall, too, and was now also smudged with filth. There must have been a broom somewhere in the office, she reasoned. There were three narrow doors in the back corner beyond the refreshment counter, one which led to a toilet and at least one of the others presumably connected to a supply closet. She went to the furthest one and tried it.
Locked.
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She stepped back, examining the door. Why lock a supply closet? She tried again, wondering if perhaps the door was jammed, but the handle resisted with the definite feel of a lock. She turned to the other unknown door, which opened to reveal what she wanted – a broom and bucket and smaller cleaning tools stacked upon clustered and grimy shelves. The first door must have contained overflow from Mr Swarz’s shelves of client paperwork, she decided, when she grabbed the broom and went to clear up the office entrance.
She swept the most obvious of the mess out the front door and off the steps before leaning the broom against the wall to see to Mr Swarz’s cane. As she knelt to pick it up, though, she noticed something too shiny to be dirt on its shaft near the head. The head itself was polished copper, but what she saw was a narrow strip of silver just below that. Taking hold of the cane and lifting it, the exposed silver expanded as the head of the cane slipped further away from the shaft she clutched. Grabbing the head and pulling it further, she realized what she was looking at.
A narrow steel blade was hidden within the cylindrical body of the cane.
She slammed the head back into place. It was nothing to be alarmed about, she assured herself. Soot City had crime just like any other, and honest residents might feel the need to prepare defenses against muggers. Daisy herself had her trinkets, and it wasn’t uncommon for others to hide small blades in their purses or pockets. That Mr Swarz had a slightly more dramatic means of self-defense did not detract from how ordinary and reasonable it was for him to keep a weapon. He needed the cane, regardless, so why not stash a mode of defense within it?
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