I do as I’m told.
Their troop leader is waving a clipboard and a phone as if she’s conducting air traffic. “Officer Alvarado! Is this your helper?”
I don’t answer. Officer Alvarado does it for me: “He is. He’s all yours.”
A girl no older than eight runs up to me, eyes wide. “You’re him! You’re Mr. Breaker!”
“That is not my name,” I say firmly.
She ignores me and grabs my arm. “Help us!”
“Help you do what…?”
Before I can finish, another girl leaps up and dumps a fistful of glitter on my shoulder.
A third tugs at my sleeve. “We ran out of helpers! They all quit. But we’re so happy you're here. Officer Alvarado said you’d be perfect!”
“Perfect for what?” I demand.
Officer Alvarado leans against her squad car, arms crossed, fighting a smile. “The Girl Scouts need a handyman to finish building their parade float.”
I stare at her.
“And the glitter?”
One girl gasps dramatically. “We need to test our makeup looks, dummy!”
I open my mouth to protest, and that’s when three tiny monsters douse me in a fresh explosion of glitter, screaming with delight. I don’t shut my mouth in time, and learn what sparkles taste like. It isn’t pleasant.
I look at Officer Alvarado with absolute betrayal.
She shrugs. “Hey, Prospect. Welcome to community service.”
Before I can run, or fight, or even process what the hell is happening to my life, a dozen small hands grab me and drag me inside the craft store.
Chapter Thirty
Riley
The Noble Fir is slammed.
It’s early in the afternoon, but for some reason half the town has decided today is the perfect day to get drunk, loud, or both. The bar is absolutely blitzed, packed, vibrating with the energy you’d expect from the tailgate party of a championship football team, not a lunch rush in a small town. My shift feels like it’s been running for twenty hours, even though the clock above the bar says it’s only been a couple. There are moments, as I’m ferrying drinks and grease-soaked orders in tight orbits around the floor, where I genuinely wonder if I died on my last lunch shift and am currently working off my karmic debt serving the thirsty damned.
I’m balancing three plates in one hand — a short stack of pancakes, a club sandwich, and a steak that, judging by weight alone, is probably most of a cow — and a tray of microbrews in the other. Someone’s fries, smothered in cheese and jalapenos, ride shotgun in the crook of my elbow. The fries smell so good I almost ditch the rest and take them for myself. But I know better. If I started eating off patrons’ orders, I’d wind up in the walk-in freezer with a knife in my back, courtesy of Molly or, more likely, Claire.
Behind the bar, Molly is a red-headed hurricane, working drink shakers with unnecessary violence, muttering curses, and filling beer glasses with a vengeance. Every other minute she’sshouting for Diesel, who has mastered the art of leaning against any fixed surface like he’s posing for a “Men of the MC” calendar and nothing else. “Stop leaning like a decorative gargoyle and help me carry something!” she hollers, smacking him on the ass with a dirty dish towel. Diesel raises his eyebrows, unimpressed, but moves — barely — to stack some clean glasses.
I power-walk past a couple making out in a booth and slide the three plates onto their respective tables, working the steps I learned from the older girls at Applebee’s back in high school. Pivot. Smile. Thank them, grab an empty basket, move on. My feet are on autopilot, muscles aching, fingers stinging from the sizzle of too-hot plates. I’m in a trance, just getting through the next hour, the next round of orders, when I hear voices behind me—Bones and Havoc, that lethal combo of gleeful gossip and utter lack of volume control.
Havoc whispers loudly, which isn’t whispering at all. “Have you heard what happened to Breaker?”
Bones grunts, shaking his head. “Tragic. I can’t believe it’s real.”
I stumble. The tray slips in my hands, and for a split second I think every glass and plate is going to shatter, but I catch it with a little hop and, somehow, no one even notices. I try to keep moving, but my breath goes tight and shallow as though someone just tied a wire around my lungs and started twisting. In the past, when something bad happened — when the ground fell out from under me — I’d just run, or hide, or try to swallow my panic and pretend I was fine. But now it’s like I have all of those instincts fighting at once, and my only anchor is that swelling, terrifying, perfect thing inside me that crackles every time I think of Breaker.
I set my trays down and grab Havoc by the cut. From the reflection I see of myself in Havoc’s pupils, my eyes might be bulging. “Where is he?!”
Havoc blinks. “You mean physically? Like, exactly?”
