Hwa’s mouth opened. She hadn’t counted on that question. “Because I failed. I fucked up. Not only did I leave you behind, I failed to eliminate the threat. You could have gotten really hurt. You could’ve died.”
Unbidden, she saw the ghost that had followed her under the sprinklers. It hovered there for a moment in her vision, like a migraine aura. She blinked and then it was gone, but seeing it helped her remember why exactly she had to do this. Master control room, she reminded herself. Then she could meet Joel’s eyes.
“And because, whoever’s after you, whoever sent those messages … I don’t know if I can fight them.”
“But you can fight anybody!” His voice cracked, and they both looked away, their embarrassment as mutual as it was deep.
“Not this,” Hwa said, finally. “This is something—someone—I have no idea how to handle. And whoever else your dad picks for the job will probably be better. Better equipped. You won’t have to worry about me having seizures, or going blind, or any of that shit. You’ll be safer without me.”
Joel started packing up his lunch things. “Please excuse me,” he said. “I’m not very hungry any longer.”
*
Hwa picked up her vodka and soda. The rain had driven early drinkers into the Crow’s Nest for a rib-sticking dinner. Some of them were USWC. The others were all hanging up dripping slickers and peeling off damp sweaters and shaking out their hair and ordering the first dark ale of the autumn. It was still hot out, but the damp made Hwa feel the first chill of fall breathing down her neck. Her arm ached. Outside, the pressure was changing.
“So that’s why I’d like my old job back,” she told Rusty. “Will you show Mistress Séverine this conversation?”
“Of course,” Rusty said. Hwa looked at Nail. Nail nodded.
“Good of you.” Hwa lifted her glass. “Ta.”
“She regrets not being able to meet you in person. She has been in demand.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She sipped. “Can I try apologizing again? For losing you in the crowd that day?”
“No. We have been informed that you are not allowed.” He smiled. “But there is no stipulation regarding the appreciation of the gesture.”
Hwa translated. “Well. Good.”
Rusty looked over her shoulder. He frowned. “You’re about to be attacked.”
Hwa twisted in her chair just in time to get a wash of beer in the face. The cup fell to the floor and clattered harmlessly across it. New Arcadia had a rule about glasses in bars. Something about the way they could be shattered and made into a weapon.
“You selfish little bitch.”
Andrea Davis was skinny where her wife Calliope wasn’t. She was a tiny twig of a woman with a cluster of rusty red straw where hair should have been. It trembled on her head. She vibrated rage.
“Andrea—”
“Shut up!” Andrea directed a sharp kick at Hwa’s shin. “Stand up! Stand up and face me!”
The guy on the karaoke stage now sounded a little less certain about seeing a million faces and rocking them all.
Master control room, Hwa reminded herself, as she rose to her feet. She was taller than Andrea, but not by much. She kept her hands at her sides. Master control room. Press the big buttons. Hear the doors locking behind you.
“What’s happening, Andrea?”
Andrea slapped her in the face. She’d obviously not done it very much, if ever. Her fingernails scraped awkwardly across Hwa’s nose and mouth. Hwa mentally gave her mother points for at least developing some proper technique over the past twenty-three years. Even with half her body held together with polymer and prayer, Sunny could have broken Andrea in half by now.
“I don’t think there’s any call for that kind of behaviour, Mrs. Davis.” Rusty sidled around the table. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable—”
“She killed my wife!”
Andrea pointed a shaking finger at Hwa. Hwa breathed through the adrenaline. Calliope? Killed? When? How?
“I was just talking to the police,” Andrea whispered. “And they said you were supposed to be on Calliope’s detail. She had a date. And she had to go out there alone. Because you quit. You quit, so you could work for them.”
Andrea pointed out the window at the rig. There was a shiny new Lynch logo on the biggest smokestack, now. That fat L winding around a pool of black like a lazy serpent slowly choking its latest victim. Hwa turned to the other women in the bar. Half of them she’d worked with in the past. They were all looking at her very differently, right now. As though they’d suspended their visual subscriptions and were seeing her true face for the first time. As though they finally knew how ugly she really was.
“Calliope’s dead?”
Andrea’s knobby fingers pushed hard at Hwa’s shoulders. She was stronger than she looked. Rage could do that. She kept pushing, trying to knock Hwa over. Hwa’s stomach muscles lined up against her spine; she stood straight and still and let Andrea punctuate her words with her fingers. “Yes! She’s! Fucking! Dead! She’s! In! Fucking! Pieces!”
Hwa shook her head. “Andrea, I didn’t know—”