The entire debacle at Chester’s did.
I simply pretended it hadn’t happened and went about my day. People waste so much time mulling over things they’ve done when all the mulling in the world neither undoes nor changes one iota of what you did. The only thing that alters the unsatisfying state in which you’ve left things is future action.
Either never see the person again, or see them and do something to set the record straight. Like, lie. Claim you were possessed by a Gripper. Backpedal hard and fast.
I had no doubt I’d see the bastard again and, since I hadn’t wasted all that time in the interim annoying myself, I’d be cool, composed, and capable of redressing the facts. Somehow.
I spent several hours visiting the homes on my list and was pleased to be able to clear both of them to place children. When I called Rainey, she was delighted I’d found her choices acceptable. To date, she’d never picked a home I’d deemed lacking, her record was impeccable, and I was beginning to develop a pleasant degree of trust in our working relationship.
I also popped into the annoyingly bright, annoyingly modern Bane’s bookstore (I refused to give it three B’s, it didn’t deserve them) and left with a bag of books: Ireland’s Legends; A Concise Summary of the Book of Invasions; When Druids Walked the Earth; Giants and Kings of Ireland; An Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology, plus two of my favorite iconic graphic novels in pristine condition: Batman’s Arkham Asylum, and Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
I was headed back to my flat to hunt for Shazam, as I’d grown increasingly concerned about his recent, long absences, when my back pocket vibrated with a text alert.
I swear to God my ass knew who it was from.
I’d received multiple texts today, from Rainey, Kat, a few of my friends and “birds” checking in. But this one was different. It practically bit my ass through my jeans.
Ryodan.
His words in my back pocket.
Even those had fangs.
Scowling, I whipped it out, tidily boxed recent events threatening to erupt in my skull.
PICK YOU UP AT EIGHT. WEAR A DRESS.
My eyebrows climbed my forehead and vanished into my scalp.
Seriously? Furious thumbs flew over the keys as I typed Barrons’s words from a few years ago. He’d been right.
All caps make it look like you’re shouting at me.
His reply came so swiftly, I swear he’d already had it typed and ready.
I was. You never listen otherwise.
“Wear. A. Dress,” I fumed, steam building in my head. I know Ryodan and he knows me. Which meant he knew telling me to wear a dress would pretty much guarantee I’d choose anything but a dress.
But…you have to take things a little further with that man because that’s how he thinks, always looking ahead. Since he knew telling me to wear a dress would make me choose something else—and he also knew I was fully aware of how his manipulative brain worked—he knew I’d ultimately decide to wear the bloody dress just to prove I wasn’t being manipulated by him. So, he’d get me in a dress either way.
This was a complete clusterfuck. How did I win? By wearing a dress or not?
I now fully and completely understood why That Woman had gone into battle with Sherlock naked.
The only way I could win was by not being there to be picked up at eight. My screen flashed at that precise instant with a new text from him.
This isn’t about us. Our city is in trouble. Be there.
“Oh, screw you,” I growled. Right, provoke my innate, highly dysmorphic sense of personal responsibility.
I shoved my phone back in my pocket, resisting the urge to mute further texts. I wouldn’t let him make me let my city down by not being there if someone in need texted me.
I was storming back to my flat to demand Shazam’s presence (and counsel!) when I saw one of them: a bird with a broken wing, maybe two.
I sighed, and circled back to a food vendor, placed my order, rearranging priorities, watching her from the corner of my eye where she huddled on a bench outside a pub, trembling and pale, badly bruised.
I didn’t know her story and didn’t need to. I knew the look. This was a pervasive problem: the disenfranchised could be found on nearly every corner of every street in every city in our world.
Their stories were some version of this: their families/children/lover got killed when the walls fell and they lost their job; they watched their siblings/friends/parents get seduced and destroyed by Seelie or Unseelie; the worst of humans had preyed on them.
Glassy-eyed, sludge-brained, terrorized, once victimized, they were prey magnets.
Not everyone was as lucky as me. Not everyone had a hard life, so when the going gets tough, they don’t know how to get going.
“Here. Eat.” I offered the woman the sandwich I’d just bought. She was young, too pretty to go unnoticed, thin.
Trembling, she raised her head and looked at me. Shock glazed her eyes, fear blanched her skin to snow. She made no move for the wax-paper-wrapped food, and if she didn’t take it soon I might fall on it myself. It was one of my favorites, a hot, breaded fresh-caught fish and tartar sauce delight nestled in a sesame bun, with chips, dripping grease.
“I’m Dani,” I said, settling on the far end of her bench, keeping the bulk of it between us so she wouldn’t feel cornered. “I help the folks that need it. Take the sandwich and eat it. I don’t want anything from you. But if you stay here, some bastard is going to hurt you worse than you’ve already been hurt. Do you understand?”
She flinched. Someone had beaten her. Recently. Her lower lip was split and one eye freshly swollen shut. I know bruises, her eye and half her cheek would be black before nightfall. She knew she was vulnerable but whatever happened had left her fractured, unable to make decisions. She was here because she had no ground to go to, no one to take care of her while she regained—or learned to have for the first time—fighting strength. That’s where I come in.
“Seriously. You’ll feel better after you eat. Here’s a soda. Drink it. Sugar makes everything look better.” I placed the can gently on the bench in the expanse between us.
After a moment she snatched the sandwich from my hand and took the soda. When she fumbled, trying to pop the flip-top, I reached for it to help and she flinched again.
“Easy, I’m just going to open the can,” I said. The backs of her hands were scraped nearly raw, bloodstained nails broken to the quick.
She took her first bite of the sandwich with seeming revulsion, chewed automatically, swallowed hard. The second went down the same way.
Then I saw what I always hope to see but don’t always get: she fell on the food ravenously, tearing off big chunks, cramming them in her mouth, shoving chips in alongside, smearing tartar sauce and grease on her chin. Her body was hungry and, despite its trauma, wanted to live. Now I just had to get her mind back in line with it.