I swallowed, pushing down the memory.
“How are you not breaking out in hipster hives?” I muttered as we picked up our drinks.
“Blythe inoculates me.”
“Ouch.”
Laney gave me a small, mysterious smile. “It’s what I like about her.”
“That she’s no bullshit and total bullshit at the same time?”
“Exactly.”
We took a table and people-watched for a while. I kept my face low, shaded. Laney sipped serenely at her chai latte.
“Why are we here?”
“Following up on a case.”
Black Iris maintained two sets of case files: actionable and closed.
Actionable cases were ones Laney deemed legit. They came from friends, friends of friends, an expanding network of people—mostly girls—who’d been wronged. Blythe tracked certain hashtags on social media. If he hurt you, girls said, use this tag and they’ll be in touch. My abusive ex lost his job. My cheating boyfriend got his Tinder account hacked. Use this tag; they’ll take care of the rest.
We vetted them thoroughly. Background checks, anonymous observation. Tests of resolve. We mocked up all the contingencies. Your Honor, I’ve never heard of Black Iris. I have no knowledge of those events. If a client seemed off we’d drop them flat. Sometimes Laney dropped them on gut feelings. Not her, she’d say, and close the file.
Didn’t make much difference. There was always another girl who’d been hurt.
Closed cases included our successes, too.
My job was all on the front end. My fists in a man’s face, my voice snarling in his ear. I’d never seen the aftermath—what happened to the girls we’d avenged.
Till today.
I knew her the moment I saw her. We hadn’t met IRL, but I remembered that face—it had been in a hundred pics taped to candles in the shrine her stalker ex-boyfriend built. He burned one every night as he chanted words like “slut,” “liar,” “cunt.” When he started following her to work and chanting those same words, she flashed our bat signal: #HeWontLeaveMeAlone.
So I taught him a lesson, in twenty-nine bruises.
She took a table in the corner so no one could get behind her. Rail-thin torso swallowed in a chunky sweater, nervous bird hands fluttering, bony. Girl, deconstructed. When someone called out her name and waved, she jerked like she’d been stabbed. Then it was all smiles, hugs. The two friends sat and fell into conversation.
“How long has it been?” I murmured to Laney.
“Three months.”
“Is she getting better?”
“Does it look like it?”
From this far I couldn’t discern tone, but the girl’s eyes held a dull, feverish luster. They kept slipping away from her friend, scanning the shop. They met mine and I stared back for a second.
I knew that look.
Five years ago I walked out of a police station without pressing charges. Got on a bus and rode it from one end of the line to the other. Too scared to go home till Ingrid was there. That night we sat on the couch with our biggest kitchen knife, a chair wedged against the front door. She listened to me cry and scream and held me when I curled up in her arms, exhausted. I woke to her stroking my hair in the darkness. Her eyes had that fever glaze. That dull luster, like being drunk, but on hate. When dawn came we huddled over my laptop, and Ingrid typed: how to buy a gun in Illinois.
I looked away from the girl. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Laney dipped a fingertip into her scalding tea. No flinch. “She’s pregnant.”
So she was trapped in her body, too.
“He’ll find out.” Laney swirled the foam idly. “He’ll fight for custody to stay near her. He’ll warp that kid and drive her insane.”
“Why doesn’t she just . . . terminate?”
“It’s part of her. She loves it.”
Nausea fumed in my throat.
“This is what we do.” Laney looked up at me intently. “We help those society fails. Girls who slip through the cracks.”
“She can go to the police. She can fight him.”
“She tried. It went about as well for her as it did for you.”
I didn’t flinch, either. “Then you know how important it is to me, making him disappear. There’s no way to make it right—I just want him gone.”
“That’s how I used to think. An eye for an eye. I’d blind the whole world if I had to.” She peered at her fingertip. “It doesn’t work. The world makes monsters faster than I can dispose of them.”
“But if there were more of us—”
“If we kill every monster we find, it won’t be enough. Some will still get through. We can’t win that way.”
“So what’s the point of vengeance?”
“It feels good.” She wrapped both hands around the hot mug, her eyes gleaming. “But it doesn’t help those girls. It doesn’t make their fear stop. There’s only one thing that can cure fear.”
“What?”