Chapter 6 #3
“Damn right. Nobody here’d question her unless they wanted a fist to the face. I’ve seen her tear apart guys twice her size. I know she’s tiny, but she’s scary as hell. ’Sides, I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He looks down, then up with a wink. “And quite fond of my appendages.”
“I’m sure you are.” After a lingering flirty smile, I press further. “She is a bossy little thing, huh?”
He serves a mixed drink to someone a few feet away from me and smirks as he pulls Mason’s beer. “Got that right. The only person I’ve ever seen her defer to was that hot brunette she used to come here with.”
Hot brunette. I file that and drink more of my water. Johnny is probably right that I would go unrecognized by these dusty-looking denizens, but I shield my face from the patrons on either side of me. “Is that why she gets free drinks?”
“I always took care of her and her friends, especially after they recruited these no-good lowlifes. Thieves and killers, most of them. Would’ve ended up on the end of barrel, or dead in an alley with a needle in their arm.
Instead, she shaped ’em up and made them into soldiers.
” Johnny scoots to the right to serve another patron, then slides back to me and rests his elbow on the counter.
“Not to mention them two used to tear the place up from time to time.”
“Tear the place up?” I ask, visibly bewildered. “As in danced?”
“Oh, yeah. Blondie’d do anything the other one asked her to. Can’t say I blame her, either. She was gorgeous. Could’ve charmed the devil outta hell.”
“Are you trying to make me jealous, Johnny the Bartender?” My motivation for flirting is to keep him talking about this mysterious woman, as I think it might peel back a layer of my captor. Additionally, it’s been so long since anyone has flirted with me, I can’t say I’m not enjoying the attention.
“Not at all. You’re a stunner too, but we both know you’re out of my league.” He grins at me. “And Blondie is shooting daggers at me, so I can take a hint. Tell her I said hi.”
“Will do. Thanks for the drinks.” I raise them in salute and slink back to the table. Mason’s chair is empty, and I place the beer in front of his vacant seat. “Where’s Mason?”
Taylor shrugs and pours her drink into a glass, leaning back in her chair and enjoying a languid sip.
The band switches to contemporary blues, which I guess is more palatable based on how many people suddenly swarm the dance floor.
Couples dance slowly, with gyrating hips and deliberate steps.
I envy them this intimacy, this free expression of attraction.
I can’t help but be reminded of when I danced with the woman across the table from me, close enough to feel her heartbeat.
Did she like dancing with me? Did she consider, for a moment, whisking me away?
Does the desire still live inside her like it does for me?
Seemingly unaffected by my presence, Taylor methodically imbibes her liquor, glass after glass. After about three of them I think maybe she’ll be loose enough to start a conversation. “So, the bartender’s chatty.”
She quirks a pale eyebrow at me. “I saw.”
“He told me how you used to be quite the dancer. That true, Blondie?” Her eyes narrow dangerously over the top of her glass.
They have their familiar focused quality, but the haze of alcohol lowers the intensity.
She drains the tumbler and floods it again from the bottle.
“And here I thought our time at the ball was special.”
“What else did he tell you?” Her accusatory tone makes me hesitant to ask her about this random other woman, but curiosity and jealousy get the better of me.
“That you, Mason, and a ‘gorgeous brunette’ used to blow off steam here.” Taylor halts midsip, glass to her mouth. In her eyes, the heartbreaking mix of anguish and anger I’ve seen on her once before, in Lady Leather’s office. “That’s whose room I’m in, isn’t it?”
“Her name…is Hunter.” An uncharacteristic vulnerability softens her voice. This must be what Claire was talking about. Not a hunter, but a woman. A woman named Hunter who is the most beautiful woman Johnny the Bartender has ever seen. Who used to live with Taylor.
“He said you two came here a lot.”
She nods, thoughts clearly miles away. “We did. Hunter likes to dance and the Order does business here.”
“Where is she?”
“Let’s not.” Usually, she’d outright tell me to mind my business, so I’m surprised by her candor. However, I’d like to know more about this person who has seeped so deeply into my otherwise airtight captor.
Matching her intense gaze, I lean in with my forearms on the table. “Why not?”
“Because it’s irrelevant to you.” She knocks back another gulp.
With an impatient sigh, I slide her glass away. “C’mon, Taylor. Give me an inch. We don’t have to be friends since you’re so staunchly against it, but I can’t trust someone I don’t know anything about.”
Her amber eyes storm with so much hurt, the rare display of raw emotion shuts me up in a heartbeat. The door’s been opened, but she hasn’t let me inside yet. We are getting somewhere, though. She jerks her head. “Come with me.”
We exit through a back door into a chilly stairwell and hop up a few flights of stairs, which leaves me out of breath.
Taylor uses her shoulder to force open a rusted metal door onto the roof.
Not a tall building by any means, but the view is outstanding.
Light, both lunar and manmade, shimmers across the black water of the river.
Like the eye of a hurricane, there is a strange serenity here on this roof, even knowing we are surrounded by Order activity and simmering social unrest.
Taylor saunters to a concrete barrier and straddles it, swinging one leg over the street. Lacking the same bravery, I sit nearer to the inside and tuck my leg beneath my knee. “Don’t you think you might be too drunk to be sitting so close to the edge?”
Apparently, I issued a challenge I was unaware of, because she pulls her legs beneath her and stands on the edge of the roof, walking backward with her arms outstretched.
“Taylor, sit down.” I pat the space in front of me. “You’re going to open up your wound again and Doctor Lucy’s office hours are officially closed. Please stop.”
“Or what? Will I be scolded to death?” Planting her palms on the ground, she kicks her legs up into a handstand and walks forward on her hands. My heart leaps into my throat as she teeters back and forth, body swayed by the wind. Finally, she dismounts back to solid ground and plops across from me.
“Can I ask you something?” I can’t let this go, not yet. Taylor squints at my question, but ultimately shrugs and takes another swig of whiskey. “Who’s Selene?”
“Everyone talks too much.” Sighing, she looks down and rubs her thumb back and forth against the rough concrete, like there’s a spot she’s trying to remove. “That is Hunter’s code name.”
“Oh. She was your partner. Like Mason.”
“Yeah. Family, sort of. As much family as this place gets you.”
I’m not sure which place she’s referring to—the Order, or the world.
What constitutes a family? What comes to mind—blood, loyalty—is tainted by my childhood. What does that look like for a woman surrounded by nothing but soldiers?
“Papa’s idea of family is obligation. Family is what you owe. Papa felt I owed him my life, and therefore my life was his to control.”
“Sounds familiar,” she says mildly.
The light of the Piccolo Bridge catches my attention, its glitzy blue and white lights strung like garland across the sky.
“She didn’t think like him. My mother…she wanted me to be good, to be myself.
She knew I didn’t have a choice in being the region leader, but at least I could be me while doing it.
But that’s foolish, isn’t it? Thinking that, somehow, I could make a difference alone. ”
“No, it is not foolish. One match burns the forest.” Taylor’s eyes linger on me, but I can’t look back at her. Her words have dredged up memories of my mother and the complex emotions that come up with her. Taylor asks gently, “Do you miss her?”
I snap back angrily, “Of course I do.”
Taylor blinks, clearly surprised. “Sorry.” Her eyes meet mine and she looks like she’s scrutinizing me for something.
Or maybe she’s really drunk and lost her focus.
Again, she digs into the concrete with her fingernails.
“Theia found me in the forest when I was a newborn, dying, alone.” An inebriated slur creeps into her natural rasp.
“So, I do not know much about family. I do not know what it is like to lose a parent.”
“It sucks. I look forward to reliving it when you kill my father.”
Her attention follows mine toward the bridge.
There are only two ways to get into New York City by land—the Katherine Piccolo Bridge, and the Hudson Train Tunnel.
Every other artery into the island was destroyed, flooded, or left to rot.
Coming in by air is uncommon except for rich people or high-ranking Force members, so it’s not as regulated as the bridge or tunnel.
A mistake, clearly, as the Order has taken advantage of Papa’s cockiness in assuming no one else could source a copter.
Taylor takes another swig from the bottle. “I mean…I don’t know much about family, but I know about obligation.”
She is trying. I don’t want her to try. I want her to be easy to hate like she should be. Instead, her loneliness pulls me in and I find her enigmatic stoicism alluring. Though the more she pushes me away, the more I want to be closer, I see before me the opportunity to get to know her better.
So, what have I learned? She’s an orphan. Theia saved her life, shedding an incredible amount of light on the dynamic between them. Theia isn’t her mother, she’s more. She’s her savior. Their family is settling debts too.
“You’re an orphan. Well, a foundling, if you’re not sure whether your parents are alive or dead,” I correct absentmindedly. “That’s why you consider yourself lucky. That’s why you robbed that house for those kids.”
“Among other reasons, but yes. I would be one of those kids if not for the Order. Or, more likely, I would be dead.” She peers over the edge of the building.
“Theia has given me every advantage. Whoever my parents were, they never could have given me a life like this. I am fortunate they cared about their offspring so little to abandon me.”
“People get desperate. That doesn’t mean they didn’t love you.”
She vehemently shakes her head. “You never abandon someone you love.”
I glance up at her but she’s fixed her stare elsewhere.
Everything I want to say sounds like vague platitudes and hollow sympathy, so I keep quiet.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be summarily rejected by the people whose biological imperative is to love you.
My mother’s death felt like abandonment, but it’s not the same.
She wanted me and loved me until the day she died, a fact I can acknowledge when I feel less selfish.
“Is Mason an orphan too?”
“Yes, his parents died when he was a boy.”
“Disease?” It’s horribly common for the Underclass to die of curable illnesses. Those that didn’t die in the Great Sickness probably had a natural immunity, but strains of the virus still circulate among the poor, since they can’t afford vaccinations.
“No.” Taylor lies flat on the barrier, clasping her hands over her stomach. “Not my story to tell. You will have to ask him.”
“And Theia? What’s her story? Did she eat everyone else in power?”
Taylor snorts and lifts herself halfway up.
“I know she may seem draconian to you, but Theia is the best commander the Order has ever had.” I level a look of disbelief.
“She is. As a leader’s child, you have seen firsthand the tough decisions that must be made when you are in charge.
As a woman, she must be twice as ruthless, yet also somehow twice as kind.
Fair, and decisive. Accessible, but untouchable. ”
“I’ve also seen firsthand how power changes people. It leaks inside their souls and rots them from the inside out. People like Silas McGovern, like my father? They are not born, they’re made.”
Like an inquisitive dog, Taylor perks up. “Would you let power poison who you are?”
My deepest fear, the kind you tuck away in a shoebox under a floorboard in a closet, is that I wouldn’t have a choice. Like spring with rain, the poison comes with the power.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s genetics. Maybe the choice has already been made. What does it matter?” I ask in short tones. “I’ll never be a region leader anyway.”
“You sound disappointed.”
It only now occurs to me that I am mourning my loss of status. Could be because the power and the burden were so deeply entwined with who I am and who I thought I’d be that without them, I am no one at all. Far too intimate to divulge with my kidnapper.
“It doesn’t upset me as much as the murder, but yeah.” I study Taylor’s dismissive expression, trying to find the fissures of humanity beneath. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Murder and assassination. Killing people. War.”
Taylor is a flawless slab of marble. Blank and furiously cold. “No, it does not. Nothing in the world means more to me than the cause.”
“Huh. I guess I never believed in war.”
She looks about to laugh, like I’m a precocious child speaking out of turn. “War is not something you choose to believe in, like a god or the tooth fairy.”
I roll my eyes, irritated. “You know what I mean. War creates more problems than it solves. And killing people…” I can’t suppress the shudder tingling my spine. “Lives aren’t there for you to take.”
“That is na?ve.”
Heat rises up my neck. “Being a pacifist isn’t na?ve.”
“Only the privileged consider themselves above the violence that is a part of everyday life for the rest of us.”
“Right, because I have no idea what goes on, up in my white tower.”
Taylor sighs, shoulders sagging. “It is not about knowledge or empathy. I am aware you have both. But what you do not have is the bone-deep desperation of the Underclass. The crushing weight of poverty and what it does to a person, to a family.” She runs her fingers through her hair.
“The Order relies on their desperation. That they want to fight for something better than this.”
Swallowing thickly, I divert my eyes to the ground. “I’ve never been much of a fighter.”
Taylor abandons her whiskey bottle and heads to the roof access. “Now that is a bold-faced lie. You are tirelessly contrary.”
“You’re mean when you’re drunk,” I grumble as I follow her back down the stairwell.
“I am neither mean nor drunk. Just honest.”
“You can be all three, you know.”