Reed slapped her back. “That’s because you carried a stovepipe clear across the Withers.”
“Think it’ll work?” Brick pointed at the dented pipe in the corner.
“I hope so. Looks like it, anyway,” Nate said. The rusted-out stovepipe in their hideout leaked, and every time they tried to cook, it made everyone cough for an hour. They’d been in this place longer than any of the others Nate had known in the year since he’d joined up with Reed’s gang. It was finally feeling worth it to make serious repairs.
“Good.” Brick tugged one of Pixel’s ponytails as she crawled into her bunk. Pixel glanced up from fussing with her rag doll’s hair and gave Brick a crooked grin.
“Brick’s been rescuing Reed from fights since they were knee-high,” Sparks had told him the first month Nate had run with Reed’s gang. She’d stayed up late, helping him organize a box of sewing needles the gang had found in a rotting attic the night before. “They grew up under their mamas’ beds in a pleasure house. No place for little ones.”
Brick wasn’t tall, but she was big—with arms the size of Reed’s thighs. A bruise or scratch always mottled the pale skin at her stubborn, boxy jaw. According to Reed, she’d never been bested in a fight.
“Don’t ever kill somebody ’cause you’re mad,” Brick had told Nate once after showing up at the hideout with her knuckles split and bloody. “The stillness is forever. You gotta mean it.”
Nate wasn’t sure if he could kill someone, even if he meant it.
Reed emptied his haul into the bucket, his backpack like a dirty animal vomiting up wires and scrap metal. “Ah, wait,” he said, mumbling to himself. Nate suppressed a laugh as he dug through the bucket, wincing at the sharp wires. “Almost forgot.”
Nate squinted at the flash of polished metal in Reed’s hand. “What is it?”
A hesitant smile dimpled Reed’s cheeks. He wrinkled his nose like it itched and shrugged. “Found it wedged between some pipes in a wall. Must have gone down a sink ages ago.”
Reed unfurled his fingers one at a time, his grin softening to something proud and secretive. A silver pendant rested in his palm. He turned it over to reveal a polished stone or shell—pearlescent gray, tinged with blues and pinks and vivid greens. “I thought she’d like it.”
A woozy heat crept through Nate. He smiled so wide his dry lips stung. “It’s perfect.”
Pixel strung necklaces of greasy bolts and buttons. She’d treasure a real piece of jewelry. Nate forced himself to stop grinning like a flying fiend before Reed thought he’d gone addled, but the warmth lingered. Reed was kind when it didn’t make sense to be.
Reed tucked the necklace into his pocket and dragged the bucket across the floor to Nate’s workstation. The handle sagged with the weight of all they’d scavenged in the night. “So how’d we do, Tinkerer?” he asked, voice deeper—as if putting the little treasure away had snapped him back to practicality.
Pretty things wouldn’t feed them.
“Not bad.” Nate reached in to fidget with the yellow wires from Brick’s haul. He held them to the bright crank-light attached to the pallet he used for a table. Colored wire would fetch the highest price. The fishermen who lined the dangerous, unstable shoreline used it for lures to angle for sludge-fish.
To sell it, he’d have to try his aborted trip to the port again. He still needed to sell the fishing line, so it would be a rewarding trip. But this time, the strange girl called Val wouldn’t be there to save him if he passed out in front of a train. He told himself he’d wait until he felt well enough to walk that far. What was one more lie?
Reed crowded close, pale-green eyes narrowed in a careful squint that made him look like he actually knew a rotting thing about tech—which he didn’t. Reed had grown up mending his mother’s lacy things. He was nimble-fingered, but didn’t know a switchpad from a sandwich. Until Nate had come along, Reed’s gang had barely gotten by scavenging tech.
It was Nate’s one source of pride. He’d helped them. They were better fed now, and they scavenged faster now that they knew what to look for.
“Is it enough to stock the pantry?” Reed asked, tweaking the springy end of the wire in Nate’s fingers.
“I said it’s not bad.” Nate’s breath stuttered as Reed bumped against him. Reed was strong and lean, muscles filling out his clothes.
Nate’s clothes hung off his angular body. And he wasn’t pretty like Reed. He hated the way his gray eyes bugged out a little too much and how often people asked him if he was ill—especially when the sun stayed behind the smog-clouds for too many days. Those were the weeks he avoided the mirrors in the marketplace, dreading a glimpse of his bronze skin gone sickly gray.
He couldn’t imagine Reed wanting to be with someone who looked half dead, someone troublesome and secretive.
But sometimes, Nate woke up disoriented and hot, skin prickling with half-remembered dreams. He’d never touched anyone the way he touched Reed in those dreams—darting his tongue out to taste the soft skin at Reed’s throat, Reed rumbling deep in his chest and clutching him closer, hot and sweet at Nate’s mouth.
Nate knocked over a stack of gutted switchpads and crouched to pick them up, focusing on the task until the warm buzz of Reed’s touch passed. He fumbled the haul out across the pallet table and glanced aside to see Reed watching him with a silent question furrowing his brow.
“I can sell most of this.” Nate cleared his throat to cover the strain. “Some I can melt down. We can eat off this for a week.”
“What about the headaches? Will you be able to get something for that?”
All the warmth slipped away.
“I’ll take care of it.” Nate shrugged, forcing his voice to remain even. “Alden will have something, and he owes me credits.”
