My heart jabs the terror button. “Cleansed.”
“The bloodlings,” says Skinny, “we don’t know who they are anymore. They don’t exist.”
“No, they just haven’t been found,” I say.
Abs presses close enough that he could eat my noodles for me. “Don’t worry, we’re on your side.”
Oh, good. I have a side.
“Can you reach your mother?” the girl whispers, her elbows on the table, too. “Without them noticing?”
Them?
“We need her,” says Abs.
“She can save us,” the skinny one chimes in. The kid can’t be that old. His voice sounds like he’s six, but his eyes look fifty.
“The Brink needs her,” Skin-tight adds.
The girl’s elbow brushes mine, her breath licking my hair. “Can you get her a message?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “Find me a spirit talker, I’ll slit my wrist, and we can open a death channel.”
The girl growls, and I can almost feel her teeth grind. “This isn’t a game.”
“What, really?” I face her head-on, and our noses brush. Perfect kissing distance. She flinches, unprepared. Apparently, she is the only one who gets to breathe down people’s necks. I lean that much closer. “Mom’s a murderer and you’re calling her a god, so tell me—what exactly is this, then?”
She shifts, straightens. Something flashes silver in my peripheral, though her eyes never leave mine. Something that hums like a spark blade.
That was fast. Impressive. She could give Greg a run for his money.
She’s assuming I have something left to lose.
A massive clatter rocks the pavilion. Everyone jumps, turns—the girl, too, twisting around. I lean sideways for a better view.
Three tables over, an overturned chair barricades an upended tray, which rattles against the courtyard’s interlocked stone tile. A guy, the mop-headed guy who was watching the fans, stands amid the mess, swearing. A couple seated nearby pull their shoes away from the pool of his drink, while he apologizes profusely and grabs napkins—knocking over another chair in the process. Boy is definitely blissed out. He tosses his bangs and glances up across the dining pavilion, straight at me.
Our eyes lock.
Strike that, the boy is stone sober and knows exactly what he’s about. He glances behind me, then back. Two seconds. Then he’s yelling for more napkins and trying to pat down the closest couple’s shoes.
Everyone at my table is riveted, the girl’s eyes narrowing as her knife hand dangles at her side under the table. Forgotten.
Gutted in the Market by crazy people probably isn’t a prime way to go.
I slide from my chair and bolt.
I swing into an alley off a side street, press into the wall, and peer around the corner like I’m in some feed-network show. The thoroughfare races with street-hovers, low-level flightwing traffic, and a suited group of striding people with their flipcoms out.
No guys flashing abs or girls in topknots. No mop-heads, either.
I sink into the alley wall. The stone burns.
Everyone is crazy.
“You set that up?” I ask the tower-cluttered sky. “Seeing as you’re a god and all, want to tell me which contingent was yours?”
Mom doesn’t answer, but my money’s on the Brinkers. Mom would probably get a kick out of being considered divine. She had the looks for it—dark hair, dark eyes, and power. Sharp chin, sharp shoulders, sharp suit. She’d sat at her desk when I walked in, her Archive office twice the size of Yonni’s suite. She didn’t stand or fidget or cross her arms. Didn’t even register surprise, as if I was still the bawling nine-year-old she’d abandoned eight years before.
I see you found me, she said.
Yeah. I’d marched right up and flattened both palms on her desk. And you’re going to wish I hadn’t.
She’d smiled. A beautiful, lovely thing. Very knowing, as if I’d be the one to regret.
A godlike smile to match the skinny kid’s eyes.
I rub my shoulders, sweat-soaked and sticky, and turn deeper into the alley. Head north toward home.
A man sits on the steps of my suitetower. Head bowed, elbows on knees, flask hanging between loose fingers. Sandy hair to match his sandy skin. Broad shoulders framed by the wide steps’ rusting rail.
If he doesn’t look up, maybe I won’t know him.
If I’m not here, he’ll go away.
I step back. He looks up, head lulling, eyes red and puffy.
My father grins. “There’s my girl.”
“Dad,” I say.
He beckons me closer. I don’t move.
He’s thinner than he was three years ago. Smaller. Or maybe I’m the one who has grown. His bones protrude from the wrists beneath his sleeves, knuckles bright under tight skin.
Last I’d heard, he was two planets over, with Melodie or Amalie or some other -ie with hair as dark as Mom’s. But that was long before Yonni died.
I tried to find him when Yonni got sick, when the money ran out and her meds were almost gone. I tracked him to a place he’d been six months ago, even got a flipcom number some past lover swore still worked. It didn’t.
Either that or he didn’t answer.
Dad holds out his arms.