| |
If you thought I’d hightailed it out of there the next morning, you’d be smart, but you’d be wrong. After Erik left the room, I had drifted back to sleep despite the caffeine in the coffee he had given me. Being half-killed by an undead giant took a lot out of a girl.
When I awoke later to an empty chamber, I scooted out of bed, went exploring, and discovered Erik’s room was actually a subway car. It had been abandoned in a short warren the transit authority had probably intended to use as a garage. A steel door squatted at the head of the tunnel, separating us from the track outside. The heavy door was locked tight and made the perfect undead barricade. It also made a great prison.
“How can you be sure you won’t run into any Rotters down here?” I asked when Erik reappeared from the gloom and found me inspecting the door. He snatched my lantern and marched to his subway car, leaving me in shadows.
“Hey!” I scurried after him, following him to his posh compartment. “I’m talking to you.”
“Who else would you be talking to?” He hung the lantern on a hook affixed to the exterior near the train car’s entrance.
I huffed, blowing stray hairs out of my eyes. “How long have you been on your own? Your manners are a bit rusty.”
Once again, he didn’t answer but climbed a few short steps and pushed aside the tapestry he used for a door. After following him inside, I plopped on the foot of the bed and watched him fuss over a pot sitting on a brazier in the room’s rear. It glowed warmly and put off an amazing amount of heat for such a small stove. He wrapped a tea towel around the pot’s handle and poured hot water into the same two mugs we’d used the day before.
“You take sugar with your tea?” he asked, still keeping his back to me. Always his back, never his face. Could he not bear to look at me, or was he hiding something?
“Of course. As much as you can spare.”
He dumped in two heaping spoonfuls and glanced over his shoulder at me. “Was that polite enough for you?”
Gritting my teeth, I glared at him. He chuckled and turned back to the brazier. “What are you hiding?” I asked.
He paused, but still, he wouldn’t face me. “What do you mean?”
“What’s all the mystery about? The appearing and disappearing, the way you won’t answer a question straight. I mean, you won’t even let me get a good look at you.”
He fiddled with the tea things, clinking mugs, pouring sugar—nervous gestures, in my opinion. “Do you know what the word ‘melodramatic’ means, Sera? You’ve gotten me confused with some kind of dime-novel character.”
I did, in fact, know the meaning of “melodramatic.” I also knew the meaning of “rhetorical question.”
“That’s what Bloom says too.”
He chuckled. “I think I might like your sister.”
“Maybe you two can be best friends.” I narrowed my eyes. “Just as soon as I find her.”
Still keeping his back mostly to me, he passed me a mug of tea. “And how do you plan to do that?”
The tea’s sweetness reminded me of the question I had never asked him the night before. If he could change the subject, why couldn’t I? “You ever been to Clawson’s Mercantile?”
He shook his head, and light flickered on the dark strands as they swished about. “Why?”
“It had a good stash of coffee and sugar up until a couple months ago. Someone got away with the whole lot.”
“Maybe you should have taken it all when you found it.”
“We hadn’t seen human action in our part of the city in ages.” I shrugged and shifted my weight, trying to keep the bed’s lush mattress from sucking me down like quicksand. “But we should’ve known better than to assume it was safe.”
“You know what they say about those who assume.”
“No.” I frowned as I tried to work out the subtext of his question. “What do they say?”
He shook his head again. “Never mind.”
I harrumphed and considered slinging my hot tea at him, something to get his attention, make him react, lose his annoying cool. Fed up with his meaningless conversation, I was ready to get back up to the streets, but first, I had to put in the last word. I always did. “See?” I swiped my hand through the air, gesturing broadly. “There you go, proving my point. I ask you a simple question, and you won’t answer it.”
“What’s your question again?” A tinge of laughter seasoned his words.
As cool and capable as he seemed, I never thought I could get one over on him. But when I flew to my feet, indignant and ready to demand his cooperation, he didn’t see it coming. His fault for keeping only one eye on me. I grabbed his shoulder and jerked. He came around, off-balance and stumbling, spilling hot tea everywhere. Only then did I get a good look at what he’d been trying so hard to hide.
It stunned me to silence.
Frozen in place, he let me study him, but anger rolled off him in waves as hot as the nearby brazier. “Is this what you wanted to see?” He sneered and jerked free from my grasp, turning his back. He held his shoulders stiff, his spine straight.
When I found my voice again, I fought to keep it steady and light. “What happened? Were you burned?”
He shook his head and answered in a growl. “No.”
Gathering my courage, I stepped closer, approaching him like I would approach a wild animal. He must have sensed my nearness and tensed as if to run—or fight. If I had fallen in with a feral animal, a lion, then I was now trapped in his cage, but instead of trying to escape, I was going to ask the lion to let me put my head in his mouth. “Show me.”
He’ll tell me to get lost. He’ll tell me to go to hell. Instead, Erik turned in slow increments, giving me time to steel myself. He swept a dark forelock over his brow, trying to hide as much of the damage as possible. I raised a hand, intending to tuck his hair behind his ear, but he backed away.
“Was it an animal?” I shoved my hands in my pockets, showing him I meant no harm.
“Not quite.” His right eye refused to meet mine. The other eye, milky and barely visible under a lid and brow twisted by scars, looked nowhere. The scarring traveled down his cheekbone but faded before it reached his top lip—a lovely, full lip that was verging on the edge of a sneer. His seeing eye, dark as straight coffee, glinted with hostility.
“A fight?” I asked. “An accident?”
His head bobbed once. A muscle worked in his jaw. “A fight.”
I sucked a breath between my teeth. “Whoever he was, he fought dirty.”
“That’s the way they all fight.”
“They?”
“The undead.”
I must have misunderstood. “The... the undead? What do you mean? Did you get hurt in a street fight?” In the early days of the Dead Wars, people fought not only with guns but with pitchforks, broken glass, rubble, homemade grease bombs, anything they could get their hands on. If you got in the way of a panicked mob, you could wind up beaten, broken, and scarred like Erik. Or worse.
“No, Sera.” His voice sounded tired and full of resignation as he shook his head in a defeated manner. “I was bitten.”