CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What in the world was that all about back there?” Inspector Viridian asked once they were well down the street, heading for Otherside.
Keen was flustered and mortified to the core at his actions and wanted to get as far away from the more privileged part of town as fast as possible.
What had gotten into him? It was as if some other hand had thrown that pint glass.
A child’s hand.
He was too keyed up to go home, too angry and ashamed and embarrassed. Viridian was a tall, odd presence beside him, so alien and strange it was almost comforting. Another outcast, just as he had been. As he still was.
“I’ll explain over another pint,” he said stiffly. “I am not nearly drunk enough.”
She eyed him, her tinted glasses firmly in place, thankfully. He could just make out the swirl of her damned irises. “This is a good night to drink,” she said, nodding, then twirled her cane, matching his long strides. “I assume you have a better place in mind?”
“Yes. I want to go to my side of town.”
Otherside. The name said it all: the other side of Havenside.
The wrong side. Separated by iron rails from the more well-heeled districts with their broad avenues and tree-lined streets, their neat brick sidewalks, their beautifully painted houses with stained-glass windows and wide porches.
The tracks cut through town, leaving beauty and privilege on one side and ugliness and want – rundown houses in dire need of fresh paint, tattered brick streets full of weeds and potholes, stringy trees struggling through broken concrete – on the other.
The kids living in Otherside didn’t attend Clementine Prep, they went to the Realm-sponsored school by the train yard with its overcrowded classrooms, tired and disillusioned teachers, books with missing pages, pencils sharpened down to nubs.
Oleander had started there, but his stellar coursework, discipline and determination had led him to Clem.
The neighborhood church had raised the money for him, given it to him as a scholarship. He’d been their chosen charity.
Charity.
As soon as they crossed the tracks, he felt personally to blame for the state of Otherside.
He gave Hero a surreptitious look. Would she judge him for where he’d grown up?
Her pale, narrow face was hard to read. He steeled himself, telling himself it didn’t matter.
This was his home; he belonged here. He almost steered them toward his house, guilt taking hold of him.
His mother would be up until he was safely home, waiting, worrying.
He blew out a breath. He wasn’t ready to go home yet.
The night was young, and it had been a long, strange day.
“There are a few taverns in Otherside,” he said, leading Hero down a narrow street once they’d cleared the tracks and a ramble of empty lots.
Apartments lined the street, small flats occupied mostly by longshoremen and brakemen, a transient lot who followed their work up and down the coast. They were vital workers to the Realm, but not exactly welcomed in wealthier areas.
He took Hero to a tavern on the corner of East and Hawthorn, the Jenny Wren.
His father had gone there often, even took his little boy a time or two, put him up on a tall stool and let him eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor.
While the elder Keen enjoyed a freshly drawn pint, little Ollie would suck the foam from his root beer and kick his feet, feeling grown up and decidedly special.
His ma hadn’t been too thrilled with their visits there, but Oleander had loved them.
It was one of his best memories of his father.
The door was weatherbeaten, a window made to look like a porthole adorning it.
The establishment had been named either for a ship or a woman, or both; Keen wasn’t sure and had never bothered to find out.
He hadn’t set foot in the place for over a decade, but memories flooded back the minute he stepped inside, the inspector on his heels.
A narrow place with a tin ceiling painted red, a few tables in the back, a couple of wooden booths and dark alcoves.
Bones and simple stars adorned the walls, along with images of the Goddess naked and drenched in blood (forbidden by the Church, but common among less-educated worshippers.) A long bar dominated the narrow space, a tarnished mirror behind it, with liquor bottles lined up in front in an array of shapes and colors that had captivated him as a boy.
Now, he knew they were cheap and common brands and felt a strange sort of embarrassment at the display, as if he were the cheap and common one just by entering the front door.
The bar itself was stained and cracked, the edge wrapped in maroon leather worn rough by myriad elbows and spilled drinks.
The barstools, rickety and backless, appeared to be the same ones from his childhood.
The floor, sticky and badly in need of a sanding and a fresh coat of varnish, creaked as they made their way to the bar.
If Viridian felt the place was beneath her, or unappealing, she gave no sign of it.
She tipped her hat to the rough-looking patrons and gave them her best smile, which sent not a few of them further into their dark corners.
They must have recognized her. How many other half-demon women dressed like a parody of a nun were wandering about town?
And he, of course, was a dead giveaway in his uniform.
He cursed himself for his shortsightedness.
PKs weren’t exactly popular in Otherside, even rare demonhunters.
He took off his cap and loosened his jacket, hoping they understood he was here as a patron.
Humming to herself, Hero perched on a barstool and rapped the bar top to get the barkeep’s attention, though not quite as rudely as she had at Grantham House.
The barkeep, a surprisingly young man with a well-groomed beard and neat haircut, sauntered over while cleaning a mug with a bar rag.
His brow was furrowed and his dark eyes bounced between the two of them.
Oleander took a seat next to his partner, nodding to him, trying to seem as unthreatening as possible.
He’d wanted to come home, to a place he knew, but he’d forgotten that he was an outsider now.
And this had never been his place. Not really.
Suddenly those dark eyes widened and a smile spread across the man’s bearded face. “Ander?” he said. “Is that you?”
Oleander stared at the barkeep, trying to place him. They were of a similar age, he realized, and that smile and the bright twinkle in the man’s brown eyes tweaked his memory. He recalled a much younger face, smooth-cheeked, mouth sticky from candy, eyes sparkling with mischief.
“ Braun? ” he exclaimed, inordinately pleased to see a face he recognized from somewhere other than Clementine Prep. He thrust out his hand and his friend tucked his rag away to grasp it. “Jerry Braun, you old devil! I haven’t seen you in a lifetime. By the Goddess, how have you been?”
Jerry grinned, pumping his hand. “Good as you could expect.” He shook his head.
“Ander fucking Keen, as I live and breathe. Never expected you to set foot on our side of the tracks again, I have to say. Thought you shook the dust off your heels back in school, never to be seen again.” His smile faded and the friendly clasp of his hand became rougher.
“Goddess knows I haven’t seen you since then, right? ”
Keen retrieved his hand from Jerry’s grip, uncomfortable at the sudden turn.
It had been a long time since he’d been back home, other than brief, obligatory visits to his mother.
Even when he’d lived at home, once he’d started at Clem, he’d kept himself separate from his old chums. He could have blamed his mother for it – she’d encouraged him to find new friends among his “betters” – but that wasn’t entirely fair. He’d thought the same himself.
“Yes, I know.” He smiled sheepishly, his cheeks warm. “I was so busy back then, but… it’s not an excuse. I was…” There was no explanation to give. Not a worthy one. Keen faced his old friend. “I was an ass. A complete and utter ass. I’m sorry, Jerry, truly I am.”
His old friend, the boy he’d chased through the woods, daring him to jump off stone walls, climb trees and dive into deep, cool ponds, relaxed, his face softening with good humor.
“Ah, it’s the past, Ander. The distant past. I was a little shit back then, too.
Used to lob rocks at you when you wore your fancy uniform. ”
Keen jerked. He’d forgotten all about that. “I suppose so.”
“Here, have a pint on me, all right? You and your… friend.”
“Oh, excuse my rudeness. Jerry Braun, this is Inspector Hero Viridian. Sent all the way from New Savage to help on a case.”
Jerry eyed her as they shook hands, looking only somewhat unsettled. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said, showing her teeth. “Always nice to meet my partner’s old friends. You seem a better lot than the last one we encountered.”
Jerry’s brows dipped toward his nose.
“Hollander,” Keen offered as explanation – which was enough, given Jerry’s expression. The barkeep moved away and began pulling two pints for them.
“Looks like no one likes the Hollanders,” Hero observed blandly.
“No one likes him,” Keen said. “He’s been a jackass since birth, far as I can tell. Biggest bully on campus, and I was his biggest target. Adding alcohol to his personality has done nothing to improve it, either.”
“Is it going to be a problem?” she asked, turning to him, leaning an elbow on the cracked leather curb. “This case is getting to be a mess. I don’t want personal issues gumming it up even more.”
Keen ground his teeth. “I promise not to let my personal issues get in the way of our investigation. If you can promise the same.”