‘‘Sixteen dollar. This is the end.’’
And wow, that sounded really ominous, like if my life were a movie, this would be the part where the cabbie turned into a serial killer, pulled out the knife and hockey mask he kept in his glove compartment, and did me in. But not, of course, before he collected on his fare.
I giggled at that, and a small part of my mind, perhaps my common sense, started to worry. I was not thinking so straight. That was a bad thing to do anywhere in the city, and really bad—the dead kind of bad—in this neighborhood.
‘‘Here.’’ I put my money in my jacket pocket and gave the driver a twenty. He watched me from the rearview mirror. ‘‘No round trip,’’ he said.
‘‘Right. Thanks.’’ I opened the door, got out into the rain. I tugged my neon backpack onto my shoulder, but didn’t do it very well, because it made me really dizzy.
I staggered and caught myself on the edge of a trash can.
Lovely. I probably looked like a drunk just waiting for someone to roll me.
Come on, Allie,
I thought.
Suck it up. It’s not that far. Just a couple blocks.
I needed a bed in the worst way. Maybe I should have just put up with the stink back in the apartment. It was no worse than the stink coming out of the trash can I was holding on to. Too late to go back to my apartment now. There was no way I’d make it that far without passing out. But if I had anything to say about it, I wasn’t going to sleep in the trash can either.
I lifted my head and held still as vertigo rocked the street beneath my feet like a hammock in a strong wind.
Just a couple blocks. I could do that.
I pushed away from the trash can, pulled my shoulders back, and took a deep breath. Even though my vision was spotty at best, my nose was still working. I caught the fish-and-salt stink off the river, the rust and oil from the train track and river traffic, and the pungent barf smell coming from, oh, I don’t know—everywhere. The sweet smell of tobacco and charcoal, hinting of a wood fire down on the shoreline, wafted through the air. Along with all that, I could also smell the acrid tang of magic being used behind me, from the city proper. To get to Mama’s all I had to do was walk toward the smell of old wood and hot grease and something kind of dirty, like wet dog and barf. Those smells.
I knew better than to show how bad I was feeling. So I set a confident stride, kept my head up, and looked around enough to signal to any circling predators that whatever they wanted from me, they were going to have to fight me for it.
I made it to Mama’s without having to risk my life over my crummy backpack, walked up the three wooden stairs, and was winded like I’d just done a few record-breaking laps through quicksand.
Boy, behind the counter, watched me walk in. He frowned, glanced over my shoulder, then brought his hand up empty from where it had just been on the gun he kept there.
‘‘Is Mama in?’’ I asked.
He nodded, but didn’t do anything else for me.
Nice.
I walked the rest of the way into the restaurant. I eyed the spindly wood tables to the right and left and considered sitting down. But I knew, once I stopped standing I wouldn’t be doing it for at least twenty-four hours.
‘‘Listen,’’ I said as I leaned my elbow, carefully, on the counter in front of Boy. Leaning felt good. Felt real good. Maybe I could just put my head down on the counter and let Boy figure out the rest of it. Surely I couldn’t be the first woman who’d passed out on this counter. Probably wasn’t even the first woman to do so this week.
I blinked, my chin dipped, and it took effort to fight my way up out of the quicksand that was dragging me down, especially since I was pretty sure I was still wearing my lucky lead coat.
Boy had a funny look on his face. Something between amusement and disgust.
Oh, good loves. I knew what he was thinking.
‘‘I’m not drunk,’’ I slurred.
Fabo. That sounded convincing. ‘‘I’m . . . I’m hurt.’’ And I hated saying it, hated admitting it, hated hurting in front of him, in front of anyone. ‘‘I need a place to stay. Does Mama have a cot I could rent for the night? I have cash.’’
He raised his eyebrows and a wicked glint lit his eyes.
Oh, good going, Allie. Tell a man who is never three inches away from a gun that you have cash in your pocket.
‘‘Not much,’’ I amended, ‘‘but I could pay something.’’ He just stared at me. Said nothing. I tried to remember if this Boy was mute. ‘‘Is Mama here?’’ I asked.
‘‘I’m here,’’ Mama’s voice said from somewhere to my left.
Oh, it was going to take a lot to actually move my head. I weighed my options, and decided to go for broke. I turned my head and the room blurred. Little silver sparks wriggled like tadpoles around the edges of my vision moving in closer and closer until Mama and the whole wide world were far, far away at the end of a tunnel. Wow. Who needed drugs?
‘‘Allie girl. Who does this to you?’’ Mama strode over to me. She reached up and gripped my face, her small, cool fingers on either side of my jaw. ‘‘This bad. A hit? Someone hit you?’’
‘‘It’s my fault,’’ I said. ‘‘I need a place to sleep. I can’t go home.’’
She gave me a long, steady stare. I wondered what she was looking for in my eyes. Didn’t know if it was there. Didn’t much care. The room was going black, the tadpoles well on their way to full frogdom, and the pain in my head and bones sort of rattled through me in waves.
Mama’s touch was like a cool rag on a fever. Like Zayvion’s fingers. No, not like that, more like what I’d always hoped my own mother would do for me—be caring and soft and make the pain go away when I hurt. Mama’s hands created a wall between me and the pain, and I wondered if the pain wouldn’t mind staying away for a while so I could get a little shut-eye.
Before I actually dozed off, Mama got tired of looking in my eyes. She lifted her hands from my face and nodded. ‘‘You hurt. Stay here. Upstairs. You think you can go upstairs, Allie girl?’’
‘‘Sure,’’ I said. It came out a little slurred and slow, but true to my word, I pushed off the counter and let Mama, and her strong hand on my elbow, then her strong arm around my waist, lead me across the room and through the door to a narrow hallway where a zag of wooden stairs laddered up.
I remember taking the first step. The rest of the climb got fuzzy after that, and the next thing I saw was Boy—the one with the beard and ponytail who is usually in the kitchen—looking down at me. I was apparently flat on my back, and I hoped I was in a bed.
‘‘What?’’ I said. Then Boy moved back and Mama was there. For reasons I didn’t really want to analyze, I was really glad she was around right now.
She looked down toward my feet, which I thought rather odd; then she was back in my line of vision and something thick and soft was pulled up over me. A quilt. Oh, loves. It was almost enough to make a distrustful, jaded girl like me weep. Almost.
‘‘You sleep now, Allie girl,’’ Mama said firmly. ‘‘You sleep. Mama’s here.’’
I had never been so happy in all my life to do exactly what someone told me to do.
Happy Birthday to me.
Chapter Five
C
ody used to like rocking best of all, but now he liked sitting very still and watching Kitten play. Kitten wasn’t very good at walking yet, but she could find the plate of water Cody put on the floor for her, and could stay quiet when the guard came by to look inside his room every day and night. She slept under his chin, and he liked that. She was warm, and good, and fun. She was the best friend ever.
Cody didn’t know how long he and Kitten had been friends, but the cut on his stomach still hurt and, if he moved the wrong way, it felt hot and stiff like maybe it would bleed again. It didn’t feel like it was getting better, and that worried him. But he was shy, so the guard didn’t care that he undressed all by himself before taking a shower, and the guard didn’t mind when he took a little extra meat from lunch or dinner and hid it in his pocket for Kitten.
Except that he still missed the sun and sky and his friends back at the home, things were really good.
Kitten was sniffing at the bottom of the door that would not open while Cody sat in the middle of the floor, holding very still, watching her. She mewed and ran across the floor to Cody. She still wasn’t very good at running, and she tripped and slid.
Cody laughed.
Then he stopped laughing. The lock on the door that would not open clicked, and the doorknob moved. Someone was coming. Not a guard. Not a friend.
The Snake man, the older, smarter part of him said. Hide Kitten. Hold still.
Cody scooped Kitten off the floor and put her inside his shirt. She wriggled and poked him with her claws, but Cody bit his lip and did not move.
The Snake man was coming. Coming to get him.
The door opened and the Snake man walked in. He smiled and his dark snake eyes were shiny. He looked happy on the outside, but inside he was excited. Excited to kill.
Cody wanted to cry.
Oh, the older, smarter part of him said. Go away, Cody. Fast. Think about the sunshine. Think about the sky.
And Cody tried to. He tried to think about how nice the sunshine was, how warm and pretty. He thought about how it was yellow sometimes, and orange, and red, and white. He thought about the sky, but couldn’t remember if it was blue or white or gray. He was scared. Really scared. He held his arm over Kitten, who was under his shirt. She stopped squirming.
The Snake man didn’t say anything. He didn’t lock the door behind him. Cody knew why. Someone was in the doorway. A big man, bigger than Cody had ever seen.
Death, the older, smarter part of him said.
And Cody knew he was right. That man, that big man was death. And in his pocket were bones, little children’s bones full of bad magic. Bones like the one Snake man had used to hurt him.
Cody whimpered.
The big man walked into the room. Just one step. Just one. He looked at Cody for so long that Cody started crying. The big man did not come any closer, but Cody could feel the big man’s hands move over his skin, squeezing him to see if he was ripe.
‘‘Well?’’ Snake man asked without looking away from Cody.
‘‘No,’’ the big man said. ‘‘Broken as a shattered jug. Won’t be nothing left in him to use. That’s a shame. A damn shame. You were someone once, boy. Someone.’’ Then the big man turned and walked away.
But the Snake man did not turn. The Snake man did not walk away. He came closer. And he was smiling.
He pulled a coin out of his pocket—a magic coin—and a little bone. He had something shiny in his other hand too, but it was not a coin. It was a knife.
The Snake man smiled more. ‘‘Good-bye, Cody. It’s been nice doing business with you.’’
Cody didn’t know which thing would hurt him more, the knife or the magic in the coin or the magic in the bone.
All of it, the older, smarter part of him said. Reach for me.