Chapter Nine #2
Hen’s frown stayed etched between her eyebrows as she stared at him. Before she could say anything, though, the barista called her name. She tried to lift her hand to shush him, but he just yelled the order out again.
“All right,” Hen huffed as she got up. “I’m coming.”
She went over to grab the cups, throwing a thin, tin-dull bit of coin into the tip jar. When she brought the coffees back and set them down, foam oozed out from under the lid of Hill’s and ran down the side to puddle on the table.
“Do you remember Fraser?” he asked as he pulled a napkin out of the dispenser to wipe the foam. “My…mom’s husband worked for him.”
Hen still looked uneasy, but it passed as she leaned back and nodded.
“Of course,” she said as she popped the top off the cup. She added sugar and jabbed it down through the foam into the coffee with her straw. “Fraser Jones. He was a robot in the sack. Businesslike, but got the job done.”
That was…that was more than Hill had ever wanted to know. He took a second to try and aggressively NOT write that into his long-term memory. To give himself a second to recover, he took a drink of his latte.
….his chest hurt and his eyes stung. He couldn’t breathe, and he never wanted to again.
The attempt to compose himself failed as laughter and coffee snorted down his nose. He fanned himself with one hand and…OK…it was fine. He could do this.
He glanced across the table at his friend’s miserable, mortified face and… Nope.
The more they cringed, the funnier it was.
Hill coughed on the memory of meanness. He wiped foam off his lips on his crumpled-up napkin. He shouldn’t have gotten iced, maybe.
“That’s not really the sort of…information I need,” he said. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea. I was going to CIRATTA. The receptionist there, the dead one, had to have seen a lot over the years. She—”
Hen rolled her eyes at him and gestured over her shoulder with one finger.
“How much of the living do you see?” she asked. “A lot? A little? Nothing?”
Hill knew what she meant. He looked anyhow. The living world had, if anything, faded back more since that quick, shock flash of solidity. If he squinted he could see them, just as blurred shapes that passed to and fro.
He clung to the idea anyhow. “Fraser isn’t an…affable man. There have to be spirits that want to haunt him. That’d be the first place—”
What he was about to say was muffled as Hen pressed a finger to his mouth.
“Don’t use that word in public,” she said. “What next? Call us…ghosts?”
She muttered the last word under her breath and then looked around quickly, offering an awkward smile to a nearby table that frowned at her.
“Sorry,” she murmured, making a placating hand gesture. “Sorry.”
Hill wiped his mouth. “I didn’t know that was—”
“Well, it is,” Hen said. She took a drink of her coffee and swallowed whatever rage was brewed into Mad at You Mocha. “And the odds of anyone who hated Fraser dying, reaching the Beyond, and escaping the gauntlet—”
“You mean the men with snares?” Hill asked.
Hen clicked her beak shut and went a funny color. Even her wattles blanched, the red lobes fading to a dull burgundy.
“We don’t talk about them,” she said sharply.
“What if they hear you? And to the living it might seem Fraser had a lot of enemies, but among the dead it’s a drop in the bucket.
A drop in the bucket with no map. Whereas I have all the resources of the Company, and a remit to show you just how invaluable that is. ”
Hill twiddled with the straw in his cup. The ice cubes clattered against each other.
“Was he afraid of anyone?”
“His brother,” Hen said immediately. “They were both dangerous men, but Davy could charm… Fraser could never understand that, and it bothered him.”
Hill felt the hollow lack-of-heat flush through him as he thought of the way Davy’s eyes crinkled when he was pleased with himself and the blunt nudge of a tentacle against the seam of his mouth. He reached for his coffee and took a sip.
The sharp tang of meanness cut through the honey-sweetness of the smooth roasted beans. Hill licked the mockery off his lips. He’d always assumed that sort of crowing meanness was performative, to make the victim feel bad. Whoever’s coffee this had been was…genuinely having a good time.
“Is there anyone else? Anyone that worried him or put him on edge?” he asked.
Hen wrinkled her brow as she thought about it, obviously stumped.
Hill stirred his drink and thought about the real delight brewed into it.
What would Fraser’s coffee order be like?
He tried again. “Anyone he gloated about getting one over on?”
That struck a chord with Hen. She started to smile before she answered him.
“I don’t know, this is maybe stupid,” she said.
“But there was this deli—umm—Delilicious? The everything bagels were to die for. I went there all the time, but Fraser wouldn’t even drop me off outside to pick up an order.
I remember when the place got closed down by the health department, he was so smug about it.
He took me to eat at one of their competitors the night they were closing down. Spent a fortune. It wasn’t—”
Someone hit the door into the shop hard, nearly tripped over their own feet as they fell over the threshold, and shoved the door shut behind them.
Hen put her coffee down and stood up. She came around the table to peer out into the street.
When Hill twisted around to see what she was looking at, he was surprised to see the pavements were nearly empty.
The few people left on the street looked nervous and on edge.
A black Buick drove down the road, stopped, and a lean man in gray got out.
He had a muzzle, but it wasn’t living. It was a carved bone dog skull, yellowed and scored with cracks repaired with a dull, grayish solder.
“What did you do?” Hen asked.
“Me?” Hill said. It wasn’t a protest; he was genuinely confused. “I don’t…I didn’t do anything. I don’t know HOW to do anything.”
She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard, her nails digging down into the muscle.
“You did,” she insisted. “I felt it. When we saw the living and they…did they see us?”
“I didn’t think they…”
She shook him. “Did they see us?”
He focused on the flash he’d seen, red-faced toddlers on a snowflake mat, and the elf as it bounced off the floor. The one toddler’s shocked face before it screwed up into a howl.
“I guess the baby might have?” he said. “Maybe? I don’t…”
Hen dragged him to his feet. “Idiot,” she hissed. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”
She dragged him behind her as she headed toward the back of the store. A sort of uneasy muttering built up around them.
“Where are they going?”
“Haunting…”
“He said something about ghosts…”
“He’s wet. The kid’s still wet. He’s not been stripped.”
What started as private murmurs began to pick up volume as chairs were pushed back and people stood up.
“What’s going on?” Hill asked.
“Great things,” Hen snapped at him. “Good things. This is going to do my career absolutely no harm.”
The barista stepped up from behind the counter to block them. His mask was cheap, wood pieces carved together so the dog’s teeth clacked against each other when he talked.
“Is that about you out there?” he asked.
“Get out of the way,” Hen said.
“Is it about him?” The barista pointed.
“It’s not just a patrol,” someone yelled over their shoulder as people jostled for position at the window. “That’s a whole pack. I think there’s a fucking Handler.”
Hen clacked her beak and glared at the barista. “I work for the Company,” she said. “Get out of my way or I’ll—”
The barista grabbed her shoulders and shoved her back. “You’re just one of the birds,” he said and jabbed his finger toward the window. “They’re Hounds. I know who I’m more scared of.”
“Maybe she’s a traitor.”
“They’ll give you her muzzle if she is. That’s what I hear.”
Hen made a low clucking noise in her throat as she looked around. The only way out was the door or the back room.
“I thought you said the Company wanted me on their side,” Hill hissed at her in protest. “You said they sent you.”
She swung her head around and glared at him. “They did,” she snapped. “And someone else sent the dogs in after you.”
That…didn’t sound good.
“Fuck fuck fuck.”
She sounded a lot like a chicken in that moment. Inappropriate laughter hitched at the back of Hill’s throat, but he managed to control it.
“I’ve been dead a long time,” the barista said as he tightened his grip on Hen’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s time the Company gets to see what I can do.”
Hen’s grip on Hill’s wrist tightened.
“This is nothing to do with me,” she said in a tight, controlled voice.
“Why don’t we let the Hounds decide that?” the barista said.
His mouth was hidden behind the clacking wooden teeth, but the smirk was in his voice. He shoved them back a step and half-turned to catch the attention of the customers.
“One of you go and tell the Hounds we’ve got them,” he said. Nobody moved. Their enthusiasm for the detainment suddenly dried up as they shifted uncomfortably. “Go on! She’s—”
Hen snapped her head forward and…pecked…at him viciously. The scissor-sharp jab of her beak carved long worms of flesh out of the barista’s face and cracked his muzzle. The tip caught his eyelid and peeled it back until it ripped.
There was no blood, just dribbles of smoky-wet stuff that clotted as it dripped.
The barista let go of her and fell back with a shriek, hands clapped to his savaged face. His back hit the counter, and he slid down it, his heels kicking the ground in pain. The rest of the customers drew back.
“How do you feel about me being ‘just one of the birds’ now?” Hen spat as she stepped over his legs. She dragged Hill with her. The spilled “blood” was tacky under his feet as he stepped through it.
“You won’t get far!” the other customers warned from behind them. “We’ll tell the Hounds what you did.”