Chapter 9 #3
I wandered alone for a year after that. A year of being no one with no purpose.
Stealing to survive. Then stealing because it felt good.
One day, a girl with a crooked smile and a stolen wallet sat down across from me in a bar in Marseille.
I couldn’t ditch her. She followed me to the edge of every city, forcing friendship on me.
And for four years, Dani made sure I wasn’t alone.
Until I put a bullet in her.
“Fuck,” I wheeze at the sharp pain. Distracted by the memories, my hand relaxed giving the scorpion an opportunity to strike.
The sting lands like a hot bright punch of pain in the meat of my thumb, the needle going in clean, the venom after it.
My whole body goes rigid from the unexpected shock, that ancient animal alarm.
You have been marked, poisoned, and you are going to die.
But as the Romani clan taught me, I breathe through the burn.
I focus forward, flexing my free hand, reminding me I’m not a victim. Not to this.
A few more deep breaths, or at least that’s how it feels, for all I know I could’ve been standing here for hours, still holding this angry little writhing creature… The point is, it dissipates into nothing.
No paralysis creeping up my arm. No fire in my chest. No lungs closing. My magic trick, taught by the people who loved me the way a whetstone loves a knife.
I set the pregnant female back in her terrarium, latch the lid, and shake the sting out of my hand like it’s a paper cut. It’ll swell. There’s no stopping that, but ice and arnica will have me right as rain in a few days.
I look up to see the owner has stopped breathing. He’s still flat against his shelving, eyes enormous, and when he finally gets a word out it comes on a whisper, in Spanish, half a prayer.
“Bruja.”
I blink at him. “I’m not a witch,” I tell him. “I’m probably something a lot worse than that now.” I pick up the terrarium, both females bracing as their entire world gets lifted and swayed.
He doesn’t move off the shelf. “What—” His voice fails; he tries again. “What are you gonna do with them?”
“None of your business.” I meet his eyes and let him see the flat nothing behind mine, the thing the desert put there. “And I’d think very hard before you ask me another question about myself, or about what walked out of your shop today. Curiosity’s a fast way to get fitted for a toe tag.”
He nods his head fast. He’s found religion. He will forget my face by dinner if he’s smart, and he looks, for all his twitching, smart enough to heed my warning.
My other phone buzzes.
Not the one Salisbrie gave me, the other one I use for Callen.
His name flashing across the screen does something tickly to my chest that I’m still getting used to.
I’m a contract killer standing in a poison shop with a fresh sting in my thumb and I go soft as a teenager because a man texted me.
It would be funny if it weren’t so ridiculous.
I balance the terrarium in the crook of my arm and thumb it open.
Callen
Would you like to go on a real date? Meet some of my friends Friday night? We have a family thing. I’d like to bring you.
I revisit the other night we were together in my mind. It’ll stay with me forever. Not the orgasm, though God knows that was its own kind of religious experience, the best anyone’s ever given me. That’s not the part that’s been looping in my head at three in the morning.
It’s after. It’s the towel.
The way he got up without a word, warmed a cloth, came back, and cleaned me off.
Careful. Sweet. Like I was delicate. For once, I was something worth the care and not something to be finished with.
He wiped me down and kissed my hip and I lay there on his coffee table completely undone, not by the sex.
It was the small, unremarkable tenderness.
A man tending to me after, gently, expecting nothing back.
No one has ever done that for me. Not once, in twenty-six years.
The Romani revived me but they never once were gentle about it.
Dani, all sharp edges, loved me until it was inconvenient.
Every hand that’s ever touched me tried to shape me, or use me, or end me.
Callen touched me with no purpose other than to make me feel good.
This is already too far gone.
How can I even think about him, cold to the touch, eyes closed, body limp. Salisbrie’s instincts are spot-on because the mission is already getting hazy and I’m trying to figure out how I can have my cake, and kill him too. It’s not possible.
I need…
Fuck, I don’t know what I need. No more surprises, that’s for sure.
But I respond to him before the smart part of me can stop the wanting part.
I’d love to. What are you doing right now? I want to see you. Want to grab a late lunch?
Callen
Sounds good to me. I’m downtown. Do you have anything in mind?
I want whatever you want. Tell me where, and I’ll meet you in thirty. Just need to take care of a pest situation first.
Then I tuck both phones away, resecure my scorpions, and walk out of Reptile World into the sunny afternoon, past the shuttered garage and the storage lot, carrying enough poison to kill a town and absolutely no idea who I’m loyal to.