Chapter Eighteen
Y’ALL SEEM AWFUL ANXIOUS TO GET YOUR HANDS ON THIS SO-CALLED “USELESS” PUZZLE BOX. RECKON GOLD TOWN WILL KEEP IT SAFE IN OUR VAULT FOR A LITTLE BIT LONGER. AT LEAST UNTIL OUR PRESENT ISSUE IS SETTLED AND THE BUTCHER IS DEAD. THEN WE CAN DISCUSS IT FURTHER.
Dani wasn’t lying—her place is only half a block from the alley we were lurking in, in a short, shabby boardinghouse where every inch of it sags and slants and threatens to collapse.
She takes us to small, cramped lodgings on the second floor, the air indoors dense and warm, the building’s naphtha barely enough to combat the sunshine and heat outside.
Inside, all the furnishings are old and worn, but well taken care of with not a speck of dust in sight.
I spot a framed grainy photograph tucked away in a corner: a man and a woman, smiling, their arms wrapped around a young girl, not much more than a toddler, with the same clever, amber eyes as Dani’s.
The sight of her makes my head reel a bit.
It’s difficult to imagine Dani as a little kid, running around these streets, maybe working jobs for her family, maybe wild and getting into mischief.
Everything about her makes you feel like she just appeared, fully formed, with an arched brow and a quirk to her mouth.
“It’s cozy,” Orion says approvingly. He’s already put his pistol away, like we’re all friends here. Like no one in this room has set the other person’s family up for the benefit of her own revenge plans.
I kick the front door closed and lean back against it, my hands in my pockets, scowling. “Pretty sure I paid you enough to get a better place than this.”
“Yeah, you did.” Dani pulls out a hard chair from the tiny little table in her tiny little kitchen, flips it around, and sits down on it backward, her arms folded over the back.
“Just because everyone else looks down on the Shipyards, though, doesn’t mean the people who live here do.
Haven’t really had an interest in trading up. ”
“This was your folks’ place?” Orion asks as he drops onto a sofa that sits so low his knees are practically level with his chest. “They still around?”
Dani shakes her head. “They’re long gone. Papa got taken out by a bone sickness when I was ten. My mom was a yarder who had an accident and fell into the Crater when I was around thirteen. I ran around with a group of people for a few years after that, but … they’re gone now.”
Her eyes flick to me and then quickly away again, and I try to ignore the flash of guilt that squeezes my chest. Her story is so similar to mine, even down to the ages she lost her parents, but with one significant difference: After I took out Big Haul and Kilpatrick routed out the rest of his followers, Dani was left with no one.
Halle and Kelda … they at least still had me.
Whatever good that is.
“I’m sorry.” It says something about Orion that, even though he barely knows Dani at all, he truly sounds sorry.
Dani is less impressed. She glances at him just long enough to give him a scornful look. “Save your sympathies, Skywayman. Covenant is lousy with orphans, the Shipyards especially.”
“I’m sorry anyway,” he says. “No one should have to go through that.”
I roll my eyes at that. “Except that all of us did. It’s the most common duster backstory in the book.”
He looks over at me, slicing through my derision with one soft glance. “All the more reason to choose empathy. Otherwise, what else have we got left?”
I can’t hold his gaze; it’s too earnest, too vulnerable. I don’t know what to do with it. So I turn my glare back to Dani again. “You still haven’t said why you turned up. I’m pretty sure I warned you I’d send you to the Depths if I ever saw you again.”
“And look at me now”—she spreads her arms wide—“still surface-side and thriving. Maybe the Butcher isn’t quite such a scary monster, after all.”
Orion jerks his chin at the window on the opposite wall—small but crystal clear, each pane polished clean. “This area is kind of a maze. How exactly did you know where we were?”
Dani shrugs. “I told you, the Shipyards is where I grew up. I know everything that goes on here. As soon as I saw some signs Halle and Kelda—”
“You don’t get to say their names,” I snap.
“—were here, I started keeping an eye out. Knew you two would turn up and thought I could be of some help.”
I push off the door, my hands slipping out of my pockets and balling into fists at my sides. “Absolutely not. This is ridiculous. We shouldn’t have even come here.”
Orion raises a quizzical eyebrow as he eyes my stance, the angry tension in my jaw and the lines of my body. “You know what we’re up against at the Rack. We could use some help.”
“I don’t care! She sold me out and used me for her personal revenge against Kilpatrick, and it got my sisters kidnapped.”
Dani’s glaring at me, fingers clenched so tight her nails are digging into her palms. She stands abruptly, shoving off the chair hard enough that it tips over and clatters on the floor.
“A revenge that was only necessary because you killed Big Haul Cruz and didn’t give a shit about the consequences! ”
Orion looks between the two of us for a long moment and then blows out an exasperated breath, rubbing his hands over his face.
“You two are giving me a headache. V, give me your goggles.” He gets to his feet and holds out a hand, and I reluctantly look away from my glaring contest with Dani to fish them out of my rucksack.
“I’m going to go up on the roof and give the billiards hall a full look over, see if we’ve got a good way in.
You all, maybe figure out this mess while I’m gone.
” He opens the door and then pauses, reaching over to poke me hard in the ribs. “Without violence, got it?”
The door shuts quietly behind him, and it’s just Dani and me, in the tight, close silence of the lodgings.
She kicks the chair upright and sits back down on it, forward this time, her legs and arms both crossed. “You don’t get to look at me like that. Like I’m the bad guy here.”
I snort, stepping farther into the room, hooking my thumbs into the pockets of my pants. “Aren’t you? Let me just ask my sisters—oh, wait. I can’t do that.”
“Your sisters are still alive, at least, unlike Big Haul. The one guy who had a chance at putting Gold Town on their heels. The guy who gave angry little Shipyard orphans like me somewhere to go and something to fight for. Can I get an I’m sorry for that?
A little contrition would go a long way here. ”
“I don’t do contrition. You know that.”
“Not for other people, no.” The timbre of her voice wavers, and she suddenly sounds vulnerable in a way I don’t know what to do with.
Exposing her soft underbelly and trusting me not to rip it open and spill out her insides.
“I guess I thought maybe … I don’t know. That I meant more to you than that.”
Flickers of guilt roil my stomach. I feel that tug at my heart again, like the one I sometimes feel with Orion, pulling taut, binding us together, and I hate that it’s there. That it’s still there after all this. Too many threads wrapped around my ribs, yanking at my bones until they crack.
I harden my jaw, going Butcher-cold. She should know better than to show a killer your weak spots. “The job is the job. That’s all there is to it.”
Lightning-fast, Dani springs to her feet and lunges at me, like she’s going to shoulder-check me against the wall, but I phase away, pulling myself back together just behind her—
—only to find her already waiting, and the instant I’m solid, she kicks a heavy, booted foot into my chest, sending me stumbling backward into the kitchen table.
I gasp and double over, the wind knocked out of me a little, both from the blow and the shock. I’ve never seen Dani fight; I didn’t even know she could. But she’s a lot quicker and more agile than I would’ve ever guessed.
A few feet away, Dani smirks and shakes her head. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but your moves are kind of predictable.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” I spit back through gritted teeth, “but you’re kind of an asshole.”
I phase-skip around the room—flickering into sight on the couch, by the window, by the door, trying to disorient her—and then finally reappear at her back, aiming a kick at the backs of her knees.
The second she feels my blow, she moves with it, rolling onto the floor and then spinning on her back to sweep my legs out from underneath me.
I’ve barely hit the floor when Dani is on top of me, snatching my wrists and pinning them above my head, her face inches from mine.
Close enough for me to count the long lashes that ring her amber eyes, to see the tiny white scar just above her top lip.
“Come on, ghoulie.” She leans close, her breath a whisper against my mouth. “You’re not even trying. It’s like your heart isn’t in it.”
Baring my teeth, I quick-phase away, reappearing behind her half a second later. Fisting my fingers into her hair, I yank her head back, my lips brushing her ear.
“Let’s think about why that is. Who could possibly be to blame for the shit time I’m having right now?”
Dani laughs breathily. “I dunno. Yourself maybe?”
“Tread carefully,” I growl.
“That’s not really my strong suit.”
She jams her elbow backward, into my stomach, and my stitched-up stab wound flares with pain. My grip loosens, and Dani twists free, scrambling out of my reach.
For a moment, the two of us just lie there on the floor, panting, in pain, staring at each other across the few feet of space between us.
It might as well be as far as the Depths.
“You lied to me,” I finally say, my voice rough and low. “From the moment I met you, it was all a lie.”
“Not all of it. I meant what I said. About liking you. Caring about you.” I roll my eyes pretty hard at that, and she flinches, hurt. Her eyes flick down to the floor as she tucks her deep purple hair behind her ear. “Take it or leave it, ghoulie, but it’s true. I contain multitudes.”
She’s right. She does contain multitudes.
Even the way she’s been talking and moving since I found her in the Old Clock Tower has been a little different.
There’s an edge to her voice and a coiled readiness to her body, even when she’s lounging like she is right now.
It’s not that she’s fundamentally a different person or anything—it’s more like the Dani I knew was a paler version and now the veil is lifted.
I shake my head, rubbing a hand over my close-shorn hair as I shift over so I can lean on the couch, relaxing against its frame. “I never really knew you at all, did I?”
Another flicker of hurt crosses her face, so quickly I almost miss it. And then she smooths it away, replaces it with that devil-may-care energy she’s wearing. “You knew me a little. Parts of me, anyway. Just like your sisters only knew parts of you.”
“Don’t bring them into this.”
“I didn’t. You did.” She waves a disdainful hand at my Butcher kit. “The moment you put on that suit for the first time, you plopped them into the center of this mess. And the worst part is they didn’t even know about it. At least if you’d clued them in, they could’ve been prepared.”
I stiffen, her words biting into me. I don’t know if the rage licking up my spine is because what she said is so absurd—or because it’s true. “They wouldn’t have needed to be prepared if you hadn’t set me up to kill Kilpatrick,” I snap. “You pushed me around like a pawn.”
Her jaw tightens, and she looks away out the window, her golden eyes shining too bright, like they’re filling with unshed tears. She quickly scrubs them dry, swallowing hard, but she still can’t bring herself to look at me.
“Everybody’s a pawn, ghoulie,” she says, soft, almost apologetic.
“At any given time, we’re all either using someone or getting used.
You used Big Haul to create the Butcher.
I used you to get revenge on Kilpatrick.
And now you get to use me, to help get your sisters back. It’s the beautiful cycle of Trinity.”
There’s something jarring about hearing it laid out like that.
Play or be played, screw or get screwed.
Not that I’ve ever had a very optimistic perspective on how life here works.
I wouldn’t have become the Butcher if I did.
But right now, in this moment, I’m so tired of it.
I feel like I’ve lived a hundred lifetimes playing this game.
Silence stretches around us, pulled across one minute, then two.
I stare up through the window at the evening sky, peppered with the glow of airships and homesteads drifting along.
Dani fidgets, tapping her feet, rubbing her hands back and forth across the tops of her thighs.
Once or twice, her whole body twitches like she might be about to get to her feet, but she never does.
“Okay,” I say finally, my gaze still fixed on the sky. “Fine. Help me get Halle and Kelda back, and we’re square after that. We’re totally done.”
She smirks. “We’ll see, ghoulie. It’s not the first time you’ve needed me to watch your back, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”
I shrug. “Orion’s the one who’s got my back now. He’ll watch out for me.”
“Oh yeah?” There’s no smile now, every word as fragile as blown glass. “How long has it been since you’ve seen him? Two years? More? How do you know he’s even worth all the trust you’re giving him? He could give you up or screw you over in a million different ways for his own benefit.”
“He won’t.”
Dani scoots over beside me, close enough that our arms and legs could touch if either of us shifted just a little bit, but neither of us do. “You can’t be sure of that.”
I think of Orion’s hard, determined expression in the glare of the Copper Plains. Of how soft and close he was sitting with me in that room above the dram shop.
“Yes, I can. He’s good people,” I say quietly. “That’s not how he thinks. It’s how you and I think.”