Fallen (5 page)

She peers up at me with those dark, deep eyes. “There are still two of them with guns. And Valac’s more powerful than me now. But… maybe not more powerful than both of us together.” She arches one eyebrow.

Definitely in love with her.

I hold her cheek with one hand and kiss her gently. “I love it when you talk like that.”

She frowns and shakes her head. “It’s still risky.”

“We’ll wait until after the payout, on the way out, through the bar.”

“Nico will shoot straight through a roomful of junkies to get to you, Lirium,” she says, her voice grave. “Don’t forget that.”

“Then we’ll have to take Nico first.”

She nods. “I can stick close to him.” She looks at her palm, hand flexed out. “I guess I can handle having one scar.”

I take her hand and press her palm to my lips. “I’ll heal it for you.”

She smiles. “So, I take Nico…”

“And I’ll take Two-Pints.”

She frowns. “You’ll take what?”

I give a short laugh. “The other thug.”

“Larry.”

“What? His name is Larry?”

She grins.

I think of shotglass-Larry and his disgusted frown. “That’s so wrong. Okay, once we’re on the floor, we take out Larry and Nico. If we’re fast enough, by the time Valac figures out what’s happening, we should be ready to face him.”

“Or we could use Nico’s gun.”

My stomach turns inside out. “I… I don’t want to kill Valac.” Words I honestly never thought would come out of my mouth. “Maybe he’ll come with us?”

Ophelia gives me a look like I just proposed turning Valac into a hamster.

“It’s possible,” I say. “He
might
be willing.”

“Or he might kill us both for asking. You don’t know him like I do. That ship sailed a long, long time ago for Valac.”

I nod, but I’m not sure I agree. “Well, if we have a gun, he can’t really stop us, can he? And that’s all we need. We can fade into the street and be gone. We’re already out of the east side. We could just go straight from here to—”

Someone pounds on the door, making us both jump. There’s a muffled sound outside, probably Valac yelling at us through the door.

“Time’s up,” I say softly. Then I take both her cheeks in my hands and kiss her thoroughly. I take care to smear her bright red lipstick and dig my hands through her hair, mussing it.

She’s a little breathless when I release her. “Was that really necessary?” she asks.

I grin and wipe the lipstick from my face with the back of my hand. “Completely.”

Valac pounds on the door again, harder this time.

“Coming!” I gently pull Ophelia toward the door. I look at her for a moment before I open it. I want to tell her how I feel. How I want things to be once we’re out. But it’s not the right time.

I kiss her lightly instead and open the door.

I drop Ophelia’s hand as we emerge from the back bedroom. In the office area, a man in a high-end suit stands next to a girl who’s painfully thin: I can count her ribs through her painted-on clothes. She looks like she belongs in a hospital, not caked with skeet-junkie makeup and club-hopping in West Hollywood.

Her hands have a slight tremor, and her wide blue eyes plead with the man, her head shaking slightly, just like her hands. He’s too slick, and I don’t like the way he’s massaging her shoulder: more like he’s holding her captive than comforting her. His skin is unnaturally smooth, and he reminds me of the high potentials at the LifeLong medical complex: CEO-type, used to being in control, getting his life hits between high-powered meetings. Why is he sneaking into a West Hollywood skeet den to get his hits? And why bother dragging the girl along?

Valac introduces us, his voice raised slightly to be heard over the thumping downstairs. “Lirium and Ophelia, this is Anna and her manager, Pete. Lirium will be doing the transfer today, Anna, but Ophelia will be assisting him the entire time.” Valac directs that last part to the man, and it takes me a beat to realize that the girl is our payout.

“That will work fine,” Pete says. Anna’s head shaking goes to a whole different level of tremor. I take a closer look at her fine-featured face, buried under the makeup. The perfectly rounded nose. The long, silky blonde hair that falls to the middle of her back. Her lower lip slides into a pout, and I suddenly recognize her: she’s one of those actors perpetually splashed across the tabloid ezines. I kept seeing her on my screen while I was trapped in my room, recovering from the beating courtesy of Nico and Two-Pints. She was in some kind of trouble. Rehab or paparazzi fights or something that was tarnishing her image. The jackals in the gossip columns were laying odds on how many minutes were left in her career, another Hollywood child actor washing out before she even reached eighteen.

Pete whispers something in her ear, and suddenly she bolts. Her skinny legs make serious time down the hallway, darting through the open door of the bedroom and slamming it shut.

He gives us an oily smile. “Just give us a minute,” he says, then hurries after her.

Once he’s inside the bedroom, I turn to Valac. “That’s… what’s her name?”

“Anna,” he says, staring down the hall. His arms wrap around each other, and he taps his foot, like he’s nervous they won’t come back.

“No shit,” I say, which causes him to look at me. There’s a tiny smile back in his eyes. “But what’s a kid like that need with a life hit?”

“I don’t ask questions like that, little bird.”

I frown. The only thing I can imagine is somehow the hit will enhance her beauty, and this girl thinks being more beautiful will salvage her career. Or maybe she’s an addict. But this elaborate meetup in the skeet den seems like an awful lot of trouble for a hit. Then again, she’s got the one-foot-in-the-grave look that Madam A’s kids have.

“Maybe she’s sick,” I say. “Maybe she needs it.”

Valac frowns, and Ophelia pipes up. “I’m sure she needs it, baby. For whatever her reasons are.”

I nod, and ask Valac, “How much am I paying out?”

“Three years.”

I choke. “Three years?” I peer down the hall. “She’s in no shape to take a three year hit!” Not to mention that paying out three years sounds like a good way to kill me. The most I’ve done at one time was at the socialite hit party, and that payout was only about six months total.

“I’ll help you, baby,” Ophelia says. “It’ll take a while, but it will be fine.” She’s sending me looks that are supposed to calm me, but it’s not working. My heart races.

“You can do it, Lirium,” Valac says, and he actually sounds sympathetic. “Take it nice and slow, let Ophelia help, and you’ll make it through.”

“Three years isn’t going to help her if she’s sick!” I say, still trying to make sense of this. “It’s too much. Even if I go slow, she’ll be flying higher than a kite. It’ll just stress out her system—”

“She’s not sick, Lirium,” Valac says, like I’m incredibly naïve. “Her manager is trying to rescue her career. He’s got some big audition lined up, and he wants her at her peak—”

He stops because the bedroom door has opened. Pete and Anna step out, his arm again trapping her shoulder, but she’s lost the wild-eyed look of fear from before. In fact, as she gets closer, I can see her blue eyes have lost all their gleam. She doesn’t even look at us. Or anything. She’s a zombie that doesn’t see or care that she’s surrounded by debt collectors.

Shit.

I turn to Valac. “Can I have a word with you?” My voice is harsh, and I don’t wait for a response, just shove past Pete and head back to the bedroom again. I wait, fists clenched, until Valac finally shuffles in the door. I close it, not quite a slam, but almost.

“He gave her something!” I shout at Valac, and he actually flinches.

“Obviously.” It’s a resentful snarl.

“We can’t… I can’t…” My arms are flung out with the impossibility of it. “God only knows what he’s given her! She’ll code out with even a reasonable sized hit! Not to mention
three years
. Jesus, Valac, it’ll kill her outright.”

He rubs his hand across his face. “You’re not going to kill her.”

“Damn right I’m not going to kill her. Because I’m not giving her a hit, much less a massive coronary-inducing one!” I start to pace back and forth in front of the door, fighting through my anger to find a way out of this. I need to do this payout so we can leave, and Ophelia and I can make our escape.

Valac’s two hands press to the sides of his face, the fingertips digging in and working his temples. “You just… you just need to not think about it, Lirium. Just do it. Ophelia will help.”

“It’s insane.” I stop my pacing and stand straight. I want to escape, but I’m not going to kill a drugged-up kid to get there. “I’m not going to do it, Valac.”

He closes his eyes and stills the hands on his face. When he opens them, he looks at me with a sadness I don’t understand. “Please, little bird, please just do this. You can just…” He searches the room for the words he wants.

I frown, waiting. I’m desperate for a way out of this, but I can’t imagine Valac’s going to find it in this dingy back bedroom.

His gaze works its way back to me. “You can just give her some of the hit, okay? Not the whole thing. Let Ophelia help you. Give the girl enough to get her high and convince her manager that you’ve paid out.”

My heart lifts. “Won’t he know the difference?” If I can pay out, but keep the girl alive, then Ophelia and I will still have our chance to escape. Otherwise, if I disobey an order, Kolek will go after my mom. Which means I have to make sure I escape or die trying. I’m sure Nico has instructions to shoot me if I make a run for it. He’s probably itching to do it anyway, so it shouldn’t take much to provoke him.

“The manager’s an idiot. He’ll never know.”

“But Nico—”

“He won’t… he won’t care,” Valac says, although the way he hesitates makes me wonder what the hell is going on in Valac’s head.

“I’ll just give her enough to get her high,” I check one more time.

“Stretch it out,” Valac says with a sigh. “Make it look good.”

I nod slowly, wondering when Valac went soft. And why. And if it has something to do with the boy. Maybe he just knows I won’t back down.

“I can make it look good,” I say.

The corner of his mouth lifts, and he places a hand on my shoulder. For once, I don’t mind. “I’m sure you can, little bird.” He drops his hand and gestures for me to go first through the door.

I stride out, a strange lightness filling me. The feeling of freedom, of
hope
, is back. It makes my steps strong, carrying me out to the girl I hope is my last payout for the mob.

I stretch out the hit to Anna for a full twenty minutes.

Ophelia isn’t privy to my plan to only pay out a week or two, but she gives me a knowing look as soon as I slow the life energy transfer to a trickle. I insisted that Anna lay down, so we’re back in the bedroom with the girl stretched out on the moldy bed covering. Ophelia sits next to her on one side and I’m on the other. Our hands lay on her forehead, Ophelia’s on top of mine, but I’m doing all the work, such as it is. Taking it slow has the added benefit that I won’t be exhausted when we make a run for it, especially since Ophelia is boosting me as well. She’s countering the effects of the payout, giving me a high that lifts my hopes more with every passing minute.

Any fool that cared to pay attention could tell I’m not paying out three years worth of life energy. Anna should be crawling out of her skin with the high, not lying still with a rosy blush that peeks out from her junkie makeup. I should resemble death, curling over and ready to hurl, not fighting to keep the smile off my face. But Nico and Larry are out in the front office, having grown bored after the first five minutes. The only way out is through the front door, so it’s no wonder they’re not worried.

Valac watches us from the bedroom door, where Anna’s manager is smooth-talking him into some Hollywood sleaze business he has going. Valac keeps him engaged and away from us, and the manager barely spares us a look. I think Valac wants this payout scam to work as much as I do.

When I stop transferring, I keep my palm to Anna’s forehead for a few moments more. I look at Ophelia, trying to communicate with my eyes that we’re on for the escape plan. We should get out as quickly as possible, just in case Nico does the math and figures out that twenty minutes was a hell of a short amount of time to pay out three years.