“Pixel.” She wasn’t as good at keeping secrets as Nate thought.
“We had a lot of time to chat while you were off in dreamland.”
What kinds of things could Alden possibly talk about with Pixel? He never left the shop. He spent his clear-eyed time working endless figures and counting his inventory. When he was soft and sleepy with chem, he sat in Fran’s bed and listened to her stories, never flinching when she called him the wrong name. He didn’t know anything about children.
Nate couldn’t imagine Alden ever having been a child at all. “She’s a little kid. She believes in magic and—”
“Hope?” Alden lips quirked.
Nate nodded, unsettled by the look in Alden’s eyes.
“Hope’s a fragile thing in this world,” Alden said. “Her happy ending is still out there, somewhere. The rest of us, well. . .”
“Very poetic, Alden.”
Alden watched him, letting the silence drag. Another candle sputtered out, rattling with its last breath. “You could have said that you don’t love him, but you didn’t.”
“Then I guess you have your answer,” Nate said, tired. His stomach rumbled, but his limbs were heavy, and eating sounded like too much work. “It isn’t important.”
“Who’s to say what’s really important?”
“Running out of Remedy is important.” He didn’t want to fight with Alden anymore. He didn’t want to fight with anyone. “To both of us.”
Alden rolled his eyes, but his fingers were gentle as they combed through Nate’s hair. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say. I’ll keep my ear to the ground, so to speak, and you. . .well, be careful.”
“That’s our plan?Be careful?”
“Our plan?” Alden gave a cold smile. “You’ll have to come up with your own plan.Myplan is to keep the Breakers off my doorstep. They don’t take to competition.”
Nate’s bones ached. He couldn’t shake the sense that he was missing something.Why won’t he tell me the truth?
Alden collected the burned-out candles, tossing them one at a time into the basket where he kept misshaped stumps to melt them down. With his back to Nate, he murmured, “There’s nothing I can do for you.”
Brick arrived at Alden’s shop the next day. She lingered in the front room, peering into containers full of stinky incense. When Nate walked through the curtain door, he startled her, and she nearly toppled a glass jar off the shelf. Nate squinted in the glaring light. Alden had kept him in a windowless room far in the back, where guests weren’t allowed.
“Reed thought maybe you would need help walking,” she said. “I told him there was no way I was carting your skinny ass across the Withers again, and he said to come check on you anyway.”
Nate could never tell when she was joking and when she wasn’t. She had a naturally pleasant face, creased with laugh lines and sunspots, but she always managed to twist it up into a frown.
Brick shot Alden a caustic look. Alden hadn’t killed Brick’s little brother with his own hands, but he’d been part of the strung-out days and nights that ended with July’s body in an alley.
Alden didn’t look away.
“I don’t need carrying.” Nate hurt, but he could walk fine. Alden was worse off, hungering fiercely behind the counter and glaring at Brick.
Nate was far too weak to let Alden feed, even after a small dose of Remedy. Alden’s hunger lingered in every darting look, every sharp breath and unsettled step around the shop.
Fran came through the curtain from her room in the back. “My first lover was a ginger,” she said. “Fiery thing like you. Orange and pink in his intimate areas, oh, like a sunset.”
Brick’s skin went about as red as her hair.
Pixel had spent the morning playing with Fran’s jewelry box. She darted through the curtain with several strings of glass beads around her neck. “Brick! Alden has the best things.”
Brick crossed her arms. “I bet he does.”
Nate scurried to get the necklaces off of her. “Let’s get moving, Pix. Aren’t you excited to see our new hideout?”
“Should you be saying that in front of him?” Brick gestured at Alden.
