‘You OK?’ She’s asking him but watching me. I hiss again. Reflex from the scare as I step from the fusty sacking with a sneeze. I have no reason to love humans, nor they me. But this girl deserves the best from me, and so I sit and wash my face as I consider our next step.
‘No, Tick, I don’t think we can go back to the old man’s place.’ With a glance back at the shop, its stained brick blackened further by the billowing smoke, the girl urges the boy forward, away from the fire. Away from the crowd. We are heading toward the river. I can smell it. Despite a gentle rain, we are not returning to the upstairs room. ‘Not till Bushwick has found what he wanted or given up.’
The boy is sniffling, shaken by the fire. Care has her arm around him, but that’s poor shelter. We walk a few more blocks, until the boy begins to stumble, and then turn into another alley. This is a good one: a tunnel of brick, with openings at both ends and the ruins of a doorway that keep us above the puddles. But the door behind us is bricked over as well, its ancient outline impervious to Care’s picks. And the overhang that should have shielded us has begun to drip. The wet is slowly soaking, permeating my fur, and I feel the toll of the day. For Care, though, it’s the quiet whimpering that makes her turn; makes her draw the boy close and share her warmth.
‘I don’t think they knew we were there,’ she says. It’s not comfort. She knows, as do we all, that our presence would not have deterred them. Knows as well that Tick has failed in his errand and worse awaits him if he returns. ‘Though I do wonder what they were looking for.’
She fishes around in a pocket, coming up with the scrap. She’s slouched against the wall and so it is easy for me, now, to put my nose leather up to the paper. Too late. I get smoke and ash, the tang of the accelerant. Anything else is gone.
‘It’s probably nothing. A scrap that got lost.’ She turns the slip of paper over in her hands. ‘Unless it isn’t.’
The light is fading and she squints. ‘Hey, Tick. You spent time at Fat Peter’s. Did you learn anything about his system?’
‘What?’ The distraction does him good, but as he reaches for the ticket, I feel her hesitate. He is a child and may be careless, I see her tell herself. She does not want to think more.
‘Here, look at this.’ Keeping hold of the paper, she stretches it open for him to see. Tick blinks at the symbols printed there. They make no more sense to him than they do to me, I suspect, but he tries, biting his lip as he strives to find a meaning in the marks.
‘Tick.’ Her voice has gone soft. ‘Have you forgotten everything I taught you?’
‘No.’ The boy is annoyed. ‘It’s just – shouldn’t there be something next to those … you know …’ He points.
‘Where it just says “M”?’ Her voice is soft. She isn’t looking at the ticket any longer. Instead, she reaches over and lifts the boy’s chin. ‘Tick, what exactly did AD have you doing?’
He shrugs. Pulls away and tucks his hands under his thighs. I do not think it is a response to the cold.
‘Tick.’ I trust she has noticed, as she had spied the burn marks days before.
‘Messages,’ he says at last, when the wait grows too long. ‘Errands. You know. I’m small and nobody notices me, AD says.’
‘Is that all, Tick?’ She hears what I do: the boy is not telling her the entire truth. ‘I know Fat Peter didn’t like girls much, but—’
‘No.’ The boy pulls away, embarrassed rather than angry. ‘You think that’s the only reason anyone would want me. You think that ’cause you’re a girl, and if the old man hadn’t picked you, AD would’ve had you on the block. But I’ve got skills, too, you know. I’m fast and I know my way around. That’s why Brian wanted me.’
The girl flinches at the casual reference to the thug. She hides it from the boy, though. He’s wiping his eyes, wiping his face of the rain and mucus that make tracks through the soot and grime.
‘So Brian knew you from Fat Peter’s?’ She’s careful in her use of the name, but she manages. ‘You’ve worked for him before.’ She’s slowly piecing this together. I could have told her about their commingled scents back at the pawn shop.
The boy’s eyes dart up to her face and down again. She sees it, too, but her interpretation differs from mine. ‘I’m not sending you back there, Tick. Don’t worry. But doesn’t it seem odd to you that someone like Diamond Jim should be connected to Fat Peter?’
The boy shrugs his thin shoulders. ‘The old man worked for them both.’
‘The old man didn’t work for Fat Peter. Fat Peter was a source.’ I hear pride in her voice. ‘Like AD.’