“If you push chem on that kid one more time,” Reed said, “I will find you where you sleep, and I will cut your heart out.”
“I sincerely doubt that, Mr. Reed.” Alden’s breath whistled. “You’re clearly a man of many scruples.”
“Stay away from July, and you won’t have to wonder one way or another.” He gave Alden another violent push and let him go.
Alden gasped for breath and massaged the reddened skin at this throat.
“Reed,” Nate said hesitantly. “If your friend, July. . .if he comes in here, where should I find you?”
Reed turned his troubled gaze to Nate. He was pretty, but muscular. There was something kind about his expression, something gentle about the shape of his mouth.
A jolt of want ran through Nate, so hot and startling he studied the speckled floor so that Reed wouldn’t see it on his face.
“Walk along Downing Street in the night,” Reed said. “And my gang will find you.”
The door closed with an angry thump. Alden turned on Nate, red-faced and shaking, hand raised like he wanted to slap him. After a harsh breath, he lowered his hand. “Go upstairs. I don’t want to see you right now.”
That night, twisted up with guilt but not sure what he’d done wrong, Nate slipped through the dark into Alden’s bed.
Alden reached for him and drew him close, his breath a gentle sigh in Nate’s hair. Nate knew what it usually meant to share a bed, but Alden never pushed him for it. Nate was grateful for Alden’s disinterest in his skinny frame and narrow face. He cared about Alden, but not that way.
When the weather dried up for a season, Alden’s supply of chem dried up too. Once the last of the tiny pills in little white boxes ran out, Alden spent days yelling at Nate and his grandmother, who lived in the bedroom behind the shop. He threw up everything he tried to eat and couldn’t think straight long enough to do the bookkeeping. He forgot to turn on the security system and lost a whole shipment to thieves. He got as thin as an insect.
On days when Alden couldn’t get out of bed, Nate fed him sips of sugar-water and wet his forehead with cool rags, the way Aunt Bernice had done for Nate when he’d been young and sick with fever.
“I wish it wasn’t like this, Alden.”
Alden looked away. “Me too, Natey.”
Nate’s left hand started trembling one winter morning. By nightfall, his whole arm tingled and every breath sliced through his chest. The next day, he passed out in the washroom after scrubbing his teeth. When he came to, shaking and sobbing with pain, Alden was there, pushing Nate’s hair out of his face with a desperate, hungry look in his eyes. Beside him, a dusty little machine blinked orange and chirped an alarming noise.
“You cut your lip,” Alden said. “You were bleeding, and it happened sudden, like they say it does, so I checked. I know—I know what you are. I know why you’re sick and how to help you, and you can help me too.”
“Are you going to sell me to the Breakers?” Nate choked on his tears. His body was trying to turn itself inside out, and his heart hurt so much.
Alden’s breath rasped out, his gaze clouded with indecision long enough for Nate to let out a frightened sob.
“No,” he finally said, still touching Nate’s cheek, his fingers icy and shaking. “I’m going to keep you.”
For the first time, Nate shrank away from him.
CHAPTER SIX
On the way back from Alden’s the next evening, Nate’s head throbbed like it was full of sludge. Alden’s medicine had worn off, but fuzziness lingered. He hadn’t been in a hurry to leave, and now that he was out on the street, guilt twisted through him like the knots in his bootlaces. He should have left the moment he could stand. There was no reason to linger at Alden’s like it was still his home.
Nate’s shoulders tightened at the lingering smell of smoke from the wreck. The street was still busy with people congregating on their stoops and in the street in the last of the light.
“The sick-dens are full,” a young woman said, holding her pregnant belly with two hands. “Not right, giving these dogs good beds.”
Her friend spit in the street, so close that Nate had to dodge it, and asked, “What choice would they have? The Old Gods wouldn’t leave them bleeding.”
“Then send them back where they came from.”
Their conversation faded. Usually, music could be heard from nearly every corner. Buskers with drums or a group singing snatches of songs remade to tell the stories of the Withers—stories of hunger and hope. But tonight it was only rapid-fire conversations and eyes darting to the smoke rising in the distance.
As he approached the secret entrance to the gang’s hideout, Nate heard a scuffle behind him and spun. He raised his hands, as ready for a fight as he’d ever be, but no one was there. A scrawny alley cat sauntered across the dark pavement. His heart jittered in his chest, and his racing blood made his hands go tingly. He waited several minutes, eyeing the shadows for signs of movement. Satisfied he wasn’t being watched, and clumsy with lingering fear, Nate climbed into the duct.
Reed made a quiet, surprised sound when he opened the hatch. He pulled Nate in, his attention focused on the stitches at Nate’s hairline, as if he didn’t want to make eye contact. “Your hands are cold. But that looks well enough.”
