The three turn a corner and take the stairs, and gracefully as a Koga ninja I make a mad dash to the door and manage to jam my pinky finger in it just before it closes and locks me out.
“Banana shitcake!” I whisper loudly and nurse the tip of my finger in my mouth as I take the stairs. “What does a lady have to do to get a warm reception around here?”
“Stop her stalking habit, perhaps?”
I whirl around to see Jack leaning against the railing behind me. I look downstairs to my escape door, back to his calm yet irritated face, and then I peek over the railing.
“How many stories does it take before you break your knees? Medically? Asking for a friend.”
“Don’t you dare jump.”
Jump. Sophia jumped. I flinch, but Jack is a tower of ice, murky and rigid and unreadable. I draw myself up to my full intimidating five feet five inches of height.
“I am out,” I say with great dignity. “For a stroll. I wasn’t stalking you.”
“You were following Charlie and I. I saw your car.”
“Oh. In that case, yes, I was stalking you.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says without missing a beat. “Nameless might be here.”
I grit my teeth, but manage words. “So? I don’t care about him. I want to know what you’re doing in Tweed’s company, and why. Is it dangerous? You said you wouldn’t join them, you said –”
“I said a lot of things,” Jack sighs and rubs his eyes. “- before Sophia died that I ended up regretting.”
My stomach churns. Was saying he liked me one of them? I shake my head – selfish. Stop being so f*cking selfish and focus.
“Since when is going to a barbeque work?” I hiss.
“Since the one throwing the party is our target.”
“Uh, hello? Earth to Zabadoobian Jack? This is reality, not Call of Duty. There are no ‘targets’.”
“In my line of work, there are,” he answers.
“And what, pray tell, is your line of work?”
Jack’s frigid eyes harden, becoming clear and sharp as he answers. “I’m a freelance intelligence agent.”
I quirk a brow and look suitably confused.
“Spy,” he translates. “Now go back to your dorm, and leave this to me.”
I bluster about for ten seconds, squirreling my hands together. I say ‘sp’ a lot, but never quite manage to get the ‘y’ out. Jack, ever sensitive to my plight, turns and leaves. I follow.
“S-Spy?” I choke. “What blind idiot died and made you a spy? You’re like…you’re…what’s the word for the opposite of ‘subtle’?”
“Isis Blake,” Jack offers.
“Jack Hunter!” I correct. “Jack Hunter isn’t subtle.”
“I’m very subtle when a girl shouting ‘spy’ isn’t following me,” He argues.
“You’re a mobile, permafrost glacier with killer eyebrows and rapiers for eyes. People don’t forget Jack Hunter so easily.”
“I wish they would,” Jack murmurs. It sounds so hollow and weak, so unlike him. I slap him on the back.
“Nonsense! You can never be forgotten. If you were, the last major glacier on planet Earth would fade from existence, and global warming would become a very scary reality. Scarier than it already is. And closer. And hotter. In the temperature sense, not the let’s sex it up sense.”
Jack stops walking and stares at me. I stare back. There’s a profound quiet. Bikini girl chooses that moment to run into the stairwell and give Jack a very drunk kiss on the cheek, accompanied by an extremely subtle drop of a pink condom wrapper as she runs back out. I pick it up and hand it to him.
“Wrap your willy before you get silly,” I remind. Jack facepalms spectacularly and I count at it as a victory because at least he is not sad-looking, he is something-else-looking and it’s not much, but it’s better than sad. He comes up with the barest smile on his lips, but he quashes it quickly.
“Look, you can stay. But when Nameless gets here, you should leave.”
“Yes, thank you for giving me permission to continue what I’ve been doing for the last five years.”
Jack stops, hand against the stairwell door. “I apologize.”
“Don’t. It makes you seem nice.”
“He’s wanted by some very powerful people for doing some very bad things.”
“Good. Before you arrest him with your spy-goggles or whatever, let me punch him.”
“Isis –”
“Just one punch. In the eyeball. With a spoon.”
Jack considers it, then smirks. “Fine. On one condition.”
“Name it, dork.”
“I get the other eye.”
I mull it over, and nod. “I’m a generous god.”
I’m more grateful than he knows. Or maybe he does know, because his eyes are soft and warm with the knife of his quiet blazing anger. I’d seen it pointed at me enough times to know that this time, it’s not me it’s pointed at.
It’s Nameless.
I’m not the only one who knows. Jack might not know details, but he knows enough. He guessed enough. And he didn’t pry. His eyes have no pity, or guilt. They are clear and they see me, and my secret isn’t a secret, anymore. The weight is shared and divided and I try to say thank you, but all that comes out is a wry smile.
I am half as dark as I used to be.
Jack turns and opens the door. We walk out of the stairwell and my jaw pops like my old Beatle’s shitty trunk. The apartment building is all white stone and marble; massive, patio-style walkways intertwining between mounds of purple hydrangeas and autumn roses. People mill about, walking their dogs or sitting in fancy patio chairs near the covered glass fire pit, wood crackling and embers dancing. A hot-tub and an enormous lit pool are surrounded by umbrella covered tables and grills, drunk college students flinging burgers and nasty jokes like they’re going out of style. Charlie is talking to the black-bikini girl, looking grumpy and munching on chips. People shove each other in the pool and shriek with laughter in the hot tub. Jack touches my forearm lightly and leans in to whisper.
“I’m going to socialize. I need information. Stay where I can see you.”
“I don’t need you to babysit me,” I say. “Do your job. I’ll just be over here, you know, having fun. You should try it sometime.”
I grab a hot dog and sit on a lawn chair, near the hot tub. A blonde guy with svelte abs and a friendly smile glances at me.
“Hey,”
“Hi,” I spew meat delicately on the patio tile.
“No swimsuit?” He asks.
“Left mine back home. On Mars.”
“Is that why you stand out like a sore thumb? Because you’re an alien?”
“Or, or, and this is a crazy theory – I’m just hotter than everyone else here,” I offer.
The guy laughs. “It’s true. Your hair’s awesome.”
“So is yours. In that beachy I’m-definitely-from-California-and-spend-five-days-a-week-in-the-gym kind of way.”
He laughs again, louder, and gets out of the hot tub to sit by me, dripping wet.
“Three days, thank you very much. I’m not that much of a swole broski.”
“Coulda fooled me,” I nod at his stomach. He pats it like Santa after eating too many cookies.
“It’s my one pride and joy. I’ve got no brains and no future, but I’ve got these babies.”
“That’s all you need,” I say. “Take a picture and send it to Kim Kardashian. Marry her.”