Three Days in April (19 page)

“That's really all it was, isn't it?” I ask. “You had no idea who I was.”

“No,” he says. “I did not know you until just before I called your name.”

I look away. A tickle of wetness runs from the corner of my eye, slides across my temple and disappears.

“But still,” he says softly. “There were a thousand girls in the harbor that night, and a different thousand the night before, and a different thousand the night before that. And of those thousands, yours was the face that came to me. Something made me call to you.”

I reach for him then, pull his body across mine, and bury my face in his shoulder.

I
snap awake in the full dark. Tariq sits up beside me. Someone is pounding on the front door.

“Who is it?” I ask.

“I do not know,” says Tariq. “Aaliyah does not have visitors.”

The pounding comes again, louder.

“Will Aaliyah answer?” I ask.

Tariq shakes his head.

“I think not.”

“Why?”

“Because whoever this is, they have certainly not come for her.”

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands.

“Wait,” I say. “Can't we just let them go away?”

“You know they will not, Elise. Wait here. I will deal with them.”

I reach for his arm.

“You can't keep saving me forever, Tariq.”

“I know this,” he says. “But if you will allow it, I would like to keep trying. I do have options, Elise. If they are who I fear, they will be Augmented. I can use this against them. But not, unfortunately, until I open the door.”

He steps into the hallway and starts down the stairs. I get up and follow him to the turn in the staircase. I can see him from the shoulders down as he puts his hand to the doorknob, hesitates, and then pulls the door open.

I'm not sure what I expected him to do—­leap out the door, maybe? Or more likely, drop instantly in a hail of bullets. He doesn't do either, though. He just stands there with his hands at his sides.

“Who is it?” I ask.

He turns toward me.

“It is an abomination,” he says. “It has brought your sister's friend.”

I take two steps down. I can see a man standing in the doorway now, wrapped in what looks like silver mesh. He raises a hand in greeting.

“Hi,” he says. “I'm Inchy. Mind if we come in?”

 

17. GARY

S
o as it turns out, getting tear-­gassed pretty much sucks. Your eyes burn, you can't catch your breath, and snot starts pouring out of parts of your body that you didn't even realize made snot. Charity, on the other hand, most definitely does not suck. She stands over me like an Amazon princess and punches ­people while I hack my lungs out and cry. After a while, the crowd starts to thin out, and she doesn't have to do so much punching. Eventually, the riot moves on. A light breeze carries away the last of the tear gas, and all that's left behind is the ragged panting of the puncher, and the soft moaning of the punched.

“So,” says Charity. “How ya doin', hon?”

I cough up a huge glob of something, and then spit.

“Nice,” she says.

I'm trying to blink my eyes clear, but they're still burning like crazy and I can't even see the cracks in the sidewalk. She crouches down next to me, lifts my chin in one hand and pries my right eye open with the other. She wipes it more or less clear with her thumb . . .

And spits, right in my freaking eye.

I bellow like a wounded yak and try to push her away, but her hand on my face is like a vise. She turns my head to the side, switches hands, and repeats the procedure on the other eye.

“Fuck!” I finally manage. “What are you doing, you crazy bitch?”

“Blink,” she says. So I do, and in a few seconds my eyes aren't burning anymore. Shortly after that, I can see.

“Medical nanos in your spit?” I ask.

She smiles. Coincidentally, the sun peeks through a hole in the clouds, and I'm pretty sure I hear a bluebird singing somewhere.

“Nah,” she says. “I think it's an enzyme or something. All my mods are biological.”

She stands in one smooth motion, and offers me her hand. I let her pull me to my feet. There are a few runners coming back down Thirtieth now, but other than that, we're alone. The riot is a dull roar in the distance. I blow a snot rocket out of each nostril, then wipe my nose on my sleeve. Charity just grins. She doesn't even look winded now.

“You were never in the least danger, were you?”

“What,” she says. “You mean just now?”

“No,” I say. “In the Green Goose. When Anders ‘saved' you.”

She laughs.

“Don't get too excited, Gary. I've got a few mods, but I'm not bulletproof. If Anders hadn't winged his sandwich at that guy, I'm pretty sure I'd be dead.”

“I dunno,” I say. “After what I just saw, I'm kind of thinking you'd have caught the bullet in your teeth and thrown it back at him.”

She laughs again. Lord, I do love to watch her laugh.

M
y bolt-­hole is in the basement of an abandoned rowhouse on North Charles. The front door is boarded over, but a quick tap causes the nails to disengage from the inside. I pull the plywood aside, and wave Charity into the darkened foyer. I follow her in, then pull the plywood back over the entrance and tap again. The nails snap back out of the casement and lock the plywood in place.

“Wow,” Charity says. “That's pretty slick.”

“Just wait,” I say. “It gets better.”

I lead her down the hallway, and into the parlor. I've worked pretty hard on the abandoned feeling here. There's a rotted-­out sofa with springs poking up through the cushions, a long gouge in the back wall where the wiring got pulled out—­even a pile of desiccated hobo shit in one corner. That's what catches Charity's eye.

“Is that . . .”

“Yes,” I say. “Don't ask.”

The floor is three-­inch oak strips, water-­stained, warped and buckled. In one particular spot near the fireplace, a board is arched up in the center just enough for me to get my fingers around it. I grab and pull, and an irregular section of floor lifts away to reveal a ladder going down. Charity shakes her head.

“You've got to be kidding.”

“Come on,” I say. “Didn't you want a place like this when you were a kid?”

“Everyone wants a place like this when they're a kid, Gary. Not everyone goes out and builds one when they grow up. What did this cost you?”

I shrug.

“You can't put a price on peace of mind.”

Charity leans over and looks down the hole.

“You've got lights down there, right?”

I reach down and wave my arm around. The lights snap on with an audible click. The floor below is clean white tile.

“Down you go.”

She gives me an appraising look, then steps one foot into the hole and starts down the ladder. When her head reaches floor level, she stops and looks around.

“By the way, who actually owns this place? I assume you didn't register it under your own name.”

I laugh.

“Give me some credit. I've never registered anything under my own name. This lot is owned by one Gerald McMasters.”

“And is that an actual person?”

“Oh, absolutely.” I wave vaguely toward the shit pile in the corner. “He actually contributed to the decor.”

“You're a classy guy,” Charity says as her head disappears. “I like that.”

I wait until she clears the ladder, then follow her down, pulling the section of floor back into place above me. There's a manual lock on the underside of the hatch, which I turn to engage before dropping to the floor.

I built this place almost six years ago—­as soon as I had the money to do it, basically. The plans had been brewing in my head since third grade. This is only the second time I've had to use it, but I do come here from time to time just to freshen up the place, and swap out the food in the fridge. It's not exactly a bunker, but it does have a bed, a water tank, and an air filtration system, and it's shielded and reinforced well enough to serve as a fallout shelter in a pinch. Charity is walking around slowly, poking her head into the fridge, turning the wallscreen on and off.

“I'm impressed,” she says. “I kind of figured we'd be hiding under an overpass somewhere. You really put some effort into this place.”

“Thanks.” I sit down on the bed, and then lie back and close my eyes. After a minute or so, I feel the mattress sag as Charity sits down next to me.

“Poor baby,” she says. “Had a rough day?”

I open one eye to look up at her.

“You could say that. Do you want to explain why you're still conscious?”

She lays back next to me, our shoulders almost, but not quite, touching.

“Well, you know. My jobs keep me on my feet all day. I guess I'm in pretty good shape.”

“Right,” I say. “Morning shift at the diner, night shift at the Green Goose. You're a busy girl. When do you find time for the whole ninja assassin thing?”

“It's not easy. But when something's important to you, you make time.”

I laugh.

“That is so true. That's exactly how I feel about my coin collection.”

She reaches over, ruffles my dreads and sighs.

“You know what, Gary? You're all right.”

I kick off my shoes and scoot the rest of the way onto the bed, reach for the dimmer switch and turn the overheads down to a soft yellow glow. Charity scoots up next to me. Our shoulders are touching now.

“You know,” I say. “Aside from my house getting blown up, and the tear gas, and my roommate getting swept away in a riot and possibly killed, this has turned out to be a pretty good day.”

She giggles. I might have mentioned how I feel about her giggle. I yawn, and fold my hands over my stomach.

“I think you need a nap.” She sits up. “Do you have a shower down here?”

I wave toward the only door in the room, on the far wall. The bed creaks as she rolls away and gets to her feet. I hear her pad across the floor, and then the door opening and closing. I'm just drifting off as the water starts to run.

I don't usually remember my dreams, but this one sticks with me. The bathroom door opens, and Charity comes out, wet and naked. She drifts across the room toward me, and as she reaches the bed I realize that I'm naked too. She climbs up beside me, straddles me, and there's this crazy heat radiating off of her as I slide my hands up her thighs. I try to pull her down onto me and I feel like I'm about to explode—­but before I do, she laughs and punches her hand into my chest. I can feel her fingers wrapping around my heart and squeezing . . .

Angry Irish Inch:

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I
snap awake, squinting into the light over the bed. Was that real? I blink to my chat buffer. It's empty. So, yeah—­not real. Unless Inchy can get into my personal buffers, in which case I really, really need to take another look at my security setup.

I lift my head to look around, and the first thing I see is a breast. It's kind of tough to pull my eyes away from that to take in the rest of the scene, but eventually I pull back far enough to see that Charity is sprawled on her back beside me, asleep. And naked. I lift up onto one elbow.

“Feeling better?”

She doesn't open her eyes when she speaks, but a feline sort of stretch ripples through her, starting with a slight arching of her neck, and ending with her toes curling and flexing.

“A bit,” I say. “How about yourself?”

“I'm good.”

“So, uh . . . you're naked, huh?”

She opens one eye.

“Nothing gets past you, does it?”

“No ma'am. It does not.”

I try to look away, but there's honestly not much to look at down here, and my eyes keep wandering back. After an awkward twenty seconds of this, she sighs and closes her eyes again.

“You know,” she says. “I really don't mind if you stare. Go nuts.”

Weirdly, that breaks the spell. I roll over, sit up, and swing my feet to the floor.

“You're enjoying this, aren't you?” I ask.

“Kind of. Anders says I'm a succubus.”

Well, that would explain a lot.

“But you're not . . .”

“No, Gary. I am not really a succubus. I'm actually naked at the moment because the only clothes I have here are saturated with tear gas.”