Her hand swoops for a second strike, then stops midair. I can read the lines in her palm. They say she’s going to hit me.
Except she doesn’t. Someone’s grabbed her wrist. A larger hand, a guy’s hand. The one from upstairs?
“Here’s a bet for you.” He has a cheerful voice, not loud or angry. He maneuvers Dee back without exactly pushing, and plants himself firmly between her and me. Lots of dark hair, bare shoulders, and neck. “How long will you last when your opponent fights back?”
Dee doesn’t miss a beat, her words for me alone. “Taking after Mom, are we? Got yourself a new toy?”
“Don’t.” I slide past the guy and almost fall over. Almost. “Don’t even.”
Mrs. Divs appears in the doorway, waving her cane like a damn laserblade. “Be gone, wretch! If you think I tolerate this kind of behavior on my doorstep—”
Dee reaches to yank it from her hand, but I’m there first and all she gets is my hair. I plant myself in the doorway.
“Don’t you get in the middle of my altercation!” Mrs. Divs thumps me in the back, for all the good it does her.
I’ve found my feet and I don’t budge.
The guy moves closer to retake the role of buffer, but I hold up my hand. This isn’t his fight or Mrs. Divs’s.
“I’m the oldest!” Dee yells. “Me! That suite belongs to me. Not you, and sure as hell not Ricky.”
Her spit flecks my cheek and lips. Sticky little slugs I’ll lose face by wiping off.
As if she, of all people, has a right.
I meet her eyes, search for a soul to eviscerate. “You want to talk about why you got cut out? Because trust me, Dee, I’m game.”
She steps back, almost jerks. Some things we don’t talk about. Ever. The agreement so tactile it could be written in blood.
Dee might consider screwing Yonni over fair game, but Greg stopping by Missa’s sick room? When Missa was dying and Yonni held her hand through every treatment, sleeping in the Medicenter then later at Missa’s cloudsuite when there was nothing left to do? When Greg came over to “offer support” and then disappeared with Missa’s last med pack so she died in pain? Because by the time I realized and tracked his sorry ass down and got some of them back, it was already too late.
One of those things.
Missa was a lordling. Nobody steals from lordlings, not even the pawn dealers of East 5th. Enactors have priorities, and lordlings are it.
Dee doesn’t blink, lips curving a rebuttal.
My fists squeeze so hard they hurt and I commit familial suicide.
“Mrs. Divs,” I say. “Why don’t you go ahead and call those Enactors. We can have a nice, long conversation.”
Dee freezes. Takes a beat for her mouth to work. “You wouldn’t.”
I smile. “Watch me.”
“Kit?” asks Mrs. Divs, uncertain.
“No.” Dee shakes her head. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t dare.”
“Really? Whose daughter am I?”
All her light drains, her fight, her assurance.
There’s no arguing that.
I jerk my head for her to leave, and she does. No argument, no threat, shoulders almost hunched.
If the Enactors ever discovered Greg stole from a lordling—not to mention what he stole, highly regulated and otherwise illegal pain meds—that’d be it. The end of Greg.
Dee doesn’t look back as she walks down the street. She doesn’t run, but every stuttered step says she wants to.
Dee never runs from anything.
Whose daughter am I?
Mom’s.
I hug my arms and stare at nothing.
“Kit?” A soft touch on my shoulder. It’s the guy. He has thick mop-like hair, wide lips, and narrow, relaxed eyes that arc. At least, what I can see of them under his bangs.
The guy from the market, yesterday, lunch, who stares into fans and upturns tables.
“You?” I ask.
His mouth promises way more smile then it gives, a soft tug followed by a wink. “Always a pleasure.”
What the hell?
I shrug him off. “How do you know my name?”
“You mean, apart from the screaming?” he asks. “That feed special.”
Was there anyone in this city who was away from their screens that day?
“Yes. Right.” I dig my fingers into the bridge of my nose and call up to whatever windows are still open, “Okay, show’s over. Back to your regular newscasts.”
A tissuey hand slips around my arm. Mrs. Divs. “You poor dear, what awful relatives you have. Come in and sit.” She tugs me into the lobby, toward the hall and her suite. Mop-head follows, closing the main door behind us.
“Thanks, Mrs. Divs, but I should get home.”
“Why? Your father’s up there.”
Hell. She’s right.
“I thought your gran didn’t want him in her place. Didn’t she make a will or something?” Mrs. Divs’s cane thuds heavy on the carpet, though she leans mostly on me.
One call to the Records Office and Mrs. Divs could get me evicted.
“Or something,” I say.
The guy sidles close, listening in. As if I need anyone else having power over me and my place. Not that Yonni said Dad couldn’t enter the suite, but she did state he couldn’t stay overnight.
With any luck, no one heard him come in yesterday.
Yeah, and the sun revolves around the moon.