He spun his chair around, his back to me.
I waited, hoping he just needed a moment to digest all of this, but no, I’d been dismissed. Out in the corridor, I pressed my forehead into the cool plaster, wondering if I’d just made a horrible mistake.
5
“What a dump.” I rubbed gum off the bottom of my shoe, standing in the doorway to the empty back room in the run-down diner that Elliot had sworn was the only place he’d ever met up with Aida.
As we stepped into the main part of the restaurant, my stomach lurched at the smell of rancid frying oil. Two guys in blue mechanic’s overalls sat in one of the booths, but the rest of the ten tables were unoccupied. Faded B-movie posters hung on beige walls in need of repainting.
The grizzled cook flipped pancakes. “Help you?”
Rohan marched up to the counter. “We’re supposed to meet Aida.”
“She’s not here.”
“When’s she back?” I asked.
He shrugged, scraping some black grease off the edge of his metal spatula, and not bothering to look at me.
I rapped on the laminate counter. “I asked you a question.”
It wasn’t so much the tone of my voice when I spoke as the fact that he saw the crescent-shaped birthmark on my cheek that made him jump to attention. Painted-on, but he didn’t know that. If wreta didn’t enthrall you with their secretion, they enjoyed a good intimidation. I was counting on him having experienced the latter firsthand.
“She’s not coming back. Told me last night she was wrapping things up and leaving.”
“Where to?” Rohan said.
“No clue.” He wiped his hands on his grimy apron.
I strode around the counter and the cook shrank back against the grill. “Got a home address for her?”
One of the men glanced our way but the customers were more interested in shoveling food into their mouths than being good Samaritans.
The cook held the spatula out against me like a shield and shook his head. “No clue. I swear.”
We patrolled bustling downtown thoroughfares, sketchy alleyways reeking of urine with men and women shooting up next to dumpsters, upscale clubs with ESL students from the numerous schools in the downtown core dancing in large groups, and those bars you only went to when you were already really drunk and couldn’t get in anywhere else. There was no sign of Aida.
Or any other demon.
“I refuse to believe that every demon in the city simultaneously took the night off.” The scarcity of evil spawn was troubling. There hadn’t even been any sign of those demons that flew at your face in a blur in the summer twilight that most people mistook for asshole wasps, who sucked seconds off your life as they zipped past. I seriously hated demons.
I plodded along like the walking dead, my head woozy and my shoulders weighted down like a lead jacket, passing two dudes in Henleys, ripped jeans, and distressed buckle boots, who’d probably spent way too many hours playing Guitar Hero. They screamed drunken obscenities at each other, their faces inches apart, spittle flying, as a group of girls in miniskirts, arms thrown around their crying, raccoon-eyed friend, weighed in on the relative assholery of one of the men.
Watching the heartbroken girl, sobs wracking her slender frame, was physically painful. I reached for Rohan’s hand.
The guy on the right stumbled back, his hands outstretched to the crying girl, his expression pleading as he told he loved her.
She dashed away her tears with short angry jabs. “You love the idea of me.”
Rohan squeezed my fingers; I’d let go of him.
The couple held a look that bore no sign of recrimination from either of them, just tragic acknowledgment of an ending. My heart twisted; a black-and-white bad guy would have made this easier.
He half-raised his hand in a wave. The girl nodded, and her friends sprung into motion, ushering her away and leaving him alone in the middle of the street.
Rohan pulled me tight against him as we turned off the bright lights and noisy crush of the Granville strip. “Let’s not ever be them, okay?” He blinked too slowly, bleary-eyed and unshaven. “Nava?”
I slid my arm around his waist matching my strides to his. “Of course not.” I looked up at him. “Want to call it a night?”
“Yeah.”
We blasted the A/C and I made Ro sing along to my dad’s favorite shitty soft rock station to prove he was still awake while driving. After the third 70s power ballad about imploding love, I changed it to talk radio and feigned a deep interest in the state of toll bridges here in the Lower Mainland.
Back at the mansion, I flung my clothes off and collapsed into Rohan’s bed. This was my second night of a lack of sleep and I hadn’t had the energy to climb my stairs. The boyfriend had refused my reasonable request to carry me, so his bed it was.
I stared up at the ceiling, hating this entire day. “You think Rabbi Abrams still likes me?”
“Yes.” Rohan turned off the lamp, moonlight streaming in through his blinds. He motioned for me to turn on to my side, then spooned me. “He won’t sic the Brotherhood on you.”
Ro shifted to let me stuff my feet between his legs and I twisted my hair up tight so it didn’t attack him.
I pulled his arm across me. “I know none of what’s happened is my fault, but it’s all blowing open because of me.” I sighed. “He’s not answering my calls.”
“Mine either. But he needed to know.”
“And if he didn’t, it’s too late now.” I rubbed my eyes, taking the edge off the curl of fatigue that clawed behind my eyeballs. Tossing and turning, I sank into a sweaty sleep.
I woke up an hour later by myself in a cold bed. The thin red file folder on Rohan’s dresser with the little bit of information he’d amassed on Ferdinand Alves was gone. I threw my “Karma is like 69. You get what you give.” T-shirt on over boyshorts and crept through the house towards the voices filtering out from the library.
I peered in at Kane and Rohan from the safety of the shadows by the door. Through Kane’s pink mesh tank top, I glimpsed the black wings tattooed on his back, though not their flame-licked tips or the scorched feathers fallen to the base of his spine.
Rohan twisted the folder. “His print was on that damn spine. There’s got to be something we can follow up. Look again.”
I winced. Wrong tone, Snowflake. Ro knew better. He was a performer; he could read his audience no problem.
Kane planted his hands on his denim-clad hips. “I have looked. Date of birth and current status listed as deceased. There was a list of his missions and all the chapter houses Alves was assigned to, with Los Angeles as the one on record for the past year. Standard info. That’s it.”
“Impossible. I’ve never heard of him. It’s a lie.”
“Then it’s a lie. Look, I’m sweaty, tired, and this pink body glitter itches. So–”
“Sure. Wash off. Sleep. Don’t let some Rasha’s betrayal interfere with you fucking your way through every guy in Vancouver.”