“Okay! Okay! Here’s your stupid alphie. I want you to know you’ve crushed my dreams.” They inch toward each other and make the prisoner exchange. “I hope you’re happy.”
The alphie rings, and an unfamiliar number pops up on the display. Muzi pats his hair back, trying to regain some semblance of tidiness, then answers.
“Hello?”
A well-dressed fellow appears on the other end, sharp eyes and a hooked nose that mean business. “Hi, may I speak with . . .” He looks down, glancing at a sheet of paper. “Moozeekai . . . um, a Mr. McCarthy?”
“Muzi’s fine,” Muzi says. “Who’s this?”
“Oh, hello, Muzi. My name is Adam Patel. You have an uncle named Benjamin Wells, right?”
Muzi lifts a suspicious brow. “Yes.”
“Who got you tickets to see Riya Natrajan in concert?”
“Yeah. What’s this about?”
“Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been trying to track you down for weeks. I’ve got a pair of VIP passes for you for tomorrow’s concert. Backstage access, the works, including a semiprivate autograph session with Riya Natrajan herself.”
Muzi blinks a few times. He tunes out Elkin, who’s busy cussing every cuss word he knows in the background, doing flips on his bed. “Yeah, okay. That sounds great.”
“Wonderful. The tickets will be held for you at Will Call. I hope you enjoy the evening.”
“Thank you,” Muzi manages, though his mind is racing so fast now, he doesn’t know what else to do, so he says “Thank you” again, before disconnecting.
“Holy fuck!” Elkin screams. “Holy fucking fuck! VIP passes. Did you hear that? We get to meet her!”
Muzi grins. “Who’s this we? They’re my tickets.” He ducks as Elkin flings a pillow at his face. “Did you do this?”
“No. Didn’t even get close to cracking their encryption. What about you? Did you mind munch somebody or something?”
Muzi shakes his head, then plops down onto the floor and draws his knees to his chest. He wants to laugh, to yell, to trade obscenities with Elkin, but those dark memories, they linger, always there, suffocating him. Death, anger, rage, hopelessness. They surge through his heart, overwhelm him with emotion, and steal away this moment of bliss. He doesn’t fight the tears this time.
“Pussy alert!” Elkin screams, then punches him in the shoulder.
“Leave me alone.” Muzi buries his face into his knees. His insides ache so bad, not one big pain, but a million little cuts, each enough to make him sick to his stomach.
But Elkin, he doesn’t know when to quit. He gets right up close, not even a breath away. “Oh, I get it. It’s that time of the month? You want me to go steal some tampons from my mom?”
The cuts swarm in Muzi’s stomach, a tornado of rage. All at once they surge forth, the tremor inside him flashing through his bones, anchoring down and through the floor. The whole room trembles, framed rugby posters come crashing down from the walls, a lamp overturns, a crack rises up from the floorboard and continues until it reaches the ceiling. “I said leave me the fuck alone!” Muzi’s voice booms. Elkin scrambles backward, cowering in the empty corner where his alphie used to dock.
“Okay,” Elkin says in a voice so tiny and pathetic.
Muzi exhales, then lets his head drift to his knees. He needs to grieve—for a hamster crushed by carelessness, for a young life lost in a bathtub, for the secret past of a poacher thought left forever behind, for another fifty-some odd incidences of cruelty and misfortune that befell teammates and strangers. And for his friend, who he keeps hurting, huddled in the corner.
He grieves for each one, hoping to forget, knowing he will not.
Chapter 30
Stoker
Stoker wakes with the mother of all headaches, like someone had jammed an electric mixer up his nostrils and had given his brain a good frappe. He sits up slowly, brings his hands to his face, and sighs as he tries to piece his memories back together. Damn. That terrorist attack. He must have worn himself out worrying about the ramifications. Stoker’s got meetings to schedule, people’s minds to calm. No rest for the weary.
He crosses his fingers, cracks his knuckles, then . . . what the?
His nails are all chewed down, ragged. Ugly. But Stoker doesn’t chew his nails. Filthy habit, not to mention all the money he spends on mani/pedis. Oh, hell no. He’s not going to leave the house looking like this, not even if there is a national emergency.
Stoker slips out of bed, gives himself a good head-to-toe stretch, then pads quietly across the cool tiles of his bathroom floor. He pulls out his leather toiletry case, digs around for nail clippers or a file, but they’re missing. Curious. It’s not like him to misplace anything. But he’s got another case that he keeps hidden from prying eyes. He goes to the back of his closet, and from an inconspicuous black trunk, he pulls out his makeup kit, sets it on top of his vanity, then opens it up.
Stoker has a panic attack when he sees that it’s nearly empty. There are just a couple eye shadows and lipsticks, and five nail polishes . . . horrible shades, nothing he’d ever be caught dead in. He lines them up, labels facing out.
The nail polish:
All for Naught,?a chalky, nearly transparent mauve, vaguely reminiscent of the color of his great-grandmother’s skin
Remember,?a bright neon orange that’s so awful, it gives him an itch in the back of his brain
Concert Tee,?a smoky black a brooder would love
Just a Rehearsal,?a sickening pink that tests his gag reflex
Bring the Funk,?a purple that couldn’t possibly exist in nature
The eye shadows:
Out to Get You,?cherry red with silver glitter
Mother of Pearl,?a classic, but no less tacky
The lipsticks:
Sunday Drive,?an offensive shade of mauve
Like a Bat Out of Hell,?which is actually not that bad, maybe a little more on the neutral side than he’d like, but pretty enough
Stoker bites his lip as he looks them over. There’s also a receipt in the makeup box, time-stamped from yesterday. Only he doesn’t remember buying this stuff yesterday. Actually, he doesn’t remember much from yesterday at all. But it’s his signature at the bottom for sure—well, Felicity Lyons’s signature, anyway, with big swirling atrocious cursive letters. Only he’d paid in cash. Strange. Perhaps this is some sort of game—a secret message meant for his eyes only. What else could have been so important that he’d junk all his favorite makeup for this crap?
Stoker looks at the lipsticks again, then reads the labels together. Sunday Drive Like a Bat Out of Hell . . . okay, so Sunday he’s supposed to drive like a bat out of hell? Sunday. That’s today. But where? And why?