We had reservations for Italian, or as Italian as anyone could get these days, at Marconi’s Famiglia, a famous addition to Charleston’s restaurant offerings, run by old man Marconi, his four sons, and three daughters. The restaurant had dim lighting, starched white tablecloths, cloth napkins, fancy plates and utensils. The waiters wore black pants and white shirts with red-checked aprons. Soft music played in the background. Wine bottles were everywhere. Old wood floors gleamed. Candles flickered.Yes. Prewar ambiance. It all set the mood for fabulous food. And a wine list that was outrageouslyexpensive.
I ordered chicken Marsala with real made-from-wheat-and-not-potato-flour pasta and a lettuce salad big enough to choke on, and a beer. Cupcake started out asking for the same thing but changed her mind when I said she could get what she wanted. She ordered a Caprese salad, bruschetta, and chicken Carbonara with pasta. And a big bottle of wine.
I had now officially busted my entire personal budget for the year. A frisson of fear swept through me, followed by relief when I remembered again the sterling silver Cupcake had found in the scrapyard. I could buy all the ammo I needed and still afford a night out. I could call it employee bonuses and the Gov. might let me slide. I looked around Marconi’s with a less jaundiced eye. A girl could do worse for a business expense.
For the fourth time, Cupcake asked, “Do I look okay?” She smoothed her dress down her thighs. “I never wore dresses when I was riding. Me and my old man, we rode with just a backpack between us.” She held out a foot, admiring her new, sparkly shoes. They were prewar, new in the box, scavenged from somewhere, and only a little too tight. “Do I look okay? Does it make me look fat?” She stroked the dress again.
“No. Cupcake, you look . . . radiant,” I said, trying for a new word that would satisfy her more thanpretty,beautiful, andfancyhad. “That dress makes you look like a princess. All the sequins, the pearls, and the gauzy . . .” My hand flapped in the air, waiting for the Berger chip to help me think of a word. It didn’t. “. . . dress parts. And I like your hair curled like that.” It was loose, a curly bouncy blonde that swayed when she turned her head. “Marconi’s sons are practically drooling over you.”
“Not me. You. You look beautiful,” she gushed.
Unlike Cupcake, I had worn dresses all the time, up until the start of the war, when my mother died riding bitch seat behind Pops, shooting at the invading PRC. I had outgrown all my own dresses, but Little Mama’s clothes fit perfectly, and our coloration was similar enough that I could wear her entire wardrobe. My mixed-race heritage gave me golden brown skin that looked like a very,verydark tan, and my hair was dark with sun-bronzed streaks.
At Cupcake’s insistence, I was wearing one of Little Mama’s cocktail dresses in a lustrous black that picked up a dark, old-gold sheen in the right light. The skirt was loose enough that I wore a wicked six-inch blade strapped to my left thigh and a small-cal semi-automatic on the right. And because Little Mama had been no fool, the dress had bottomless pockets on both sides so I could retrieve both weapons easily. I was also wearing a pair of Little Mama’s fancy earrings and a necklace. And lace gloves to protect anyone from being transitioned accidently by my touch. The ensemble looked a little odd with the pale-blue sunglasses, but I hadn’t known what the lighting would be like in Marconi’s. It was dim enough that I put the glasses in my tiny bag, which I placed on the floor beside my strappy black heels. I’d be in trouble if I had to run, but with our bodyguard, that was unlikely.
The big bearded fellow was waiting outside with the other bodyguards, and the cats, who were patrolling the neighborhood. I could feel them in the distance, like a faint itch in my brain, though that made no sense at all. They were having a wonderful time, chasing big roaches and house mice and shadowing humans they thought were suspicious. Which was so cute.
The salads came, along with the bottle of wine, a Marconi son going through the entire cork-sniffing routine, even though the cork was plastic. It was a Carolina red, sold in black bottles to look as if they had been burned in a fire and rescued. Which sounded gross, but whatever. I didn’t drink much wine.
The waiter poured wine into Cupcake’s stemmed glass and placed a beer in a cut-crystal stein at my elbow before departing. If he leered at us a little, I let it go. Wewerepretty cute.
“Thank you. It’s been ages since I had wine.” Cupcake held her glass up to me, and I clinked my stein to it. “To friends,” she said, sipped, and made a little moan of delight.
Friends. That word knotted up inside me. It was a lot more personal thanthrall. And I had never had a friend. Except Harlan and Mateo. Harlan was dead because of me, and technically Mateo was still a thrall.
Friends. I lowered my stein and sipped. It was good beer. It tasted of . . . friendship.
For some stupid reason tears burned my eyes. I blinked them away.
I knew nothing about small talk, but for Cupcake and her dreams about being a high-class lady on a girls’ night out, I’d try. “Tell me about the gorgeous shoes and that dress. Where did you find them?”
She made a little squeak of pleasure and launched into the details of her shopping spree, which had taken place while I napped. I listened with half an ear, keeping an eye on the restaurant patrons, the Marconis, and catching sight of a cat on the outside windowsill, looking in. Staring at me.
The world spun and vertigo hit me with a green-and-silver vision of motorcycles with black and blue and green-flame paint jobs. Spy blinked at me and dropped away. I tried to ask her,What? What’s with the bikes?But she was gone. And I had no idea what she was showing me, except some really cool motorcycles. I didn’t get the sense of danger or attack, just bikes.
My balance restored itself as Cupcake nattered on. And on. She told me details about every single store she had visited. About a lending library where she sat reading old magazines. About a movie theater showing the latest Ms. Robo-Marple thriller.
Everything seemed fine, though the cats disagreed with that assessment. I ate my salad. Drank my beer. And then the main course came.
The smallest Marconi son brought out a pretty folding stand and a big tray containing four plates—our order and two others. The dishes that weren’t ours were a platter of triple-cheese-stuffed manicotti and another holding a small whole roasted chicken with fresh herbs (heavy on the rosemary) and sautéed green beans, enough to feed two starving adults. But instead of taking the extra food to another table, he arranged the plates at our table, poured a single glass of wine, and brought up one more chair. He left.
I looked at Cupcake. She went scarlet and made an honest-to-God titter.
“Cupcake?” I said, the word laden with suspicion.
“I. Well.” She twirled a pale curl around her finger. “It just seemed . . . I mean, I thought . . . I ran into—Here he is!” She jumped to her feet and waved at the door. Where Jagger stood, wearing a black suit and a perfectly starched white shirt, open at the neck.
“Bloo-dy damn,” I whispered.
Jagger, top enforcer to the vice president of the Outlaw Militia Warriors, had been bad-boy dangerous in riding gear. Gorgeous in black jeans. But standing in the inner door, wearing a black suit . . . he was devastating. A shiver shuddered through me.
Built like a brick shithouse: small waist, broad shoulders.Oh. My.
His brown hair was slicked to his skull, blacker in the dim light. His eyes were heated, his mouth in a dangerous scowl as he took in the restaurant and every person in it. He flexed his hands into fists, the rings on every finger moving like the disjointed knucks they were, glinting in the low light. He met my eyes, his containing a warning.
Liquid heat stroked through my middle and spread out as if someone had lit a flame inside me. My bio-mech nanos hadn’t forgotten the kiss—oh God, that kiss. They wanted him almost as much as I did.
In that black suit, in the rarefied glow of Marconi’s candlelight, he looked even bigger than before. Fast-looking and rangy, if rangy was also big enough to play offensive tackle in the NFL, except leaner now. Meaner.
