Cam’s call ended. He met my gaze with a heavy sigh. “What do you know about pianos?”
* * *
More than him, it turned out. And definitely more than Willow Halliwell, if the thin rope she had tied between her exhaust pipe and a weathered upright was anything to go by.
I re-covered the old piano with the tarp that had slipped off in her struggle to stay on the road and turned my back on it, blocking out the ghost of a melody.
Cam crouched in the pouring rain, undoing the knotted rope. “This was never going to fucking work.”
“Don’t say that.” Willow sniffed, her sea-green eyes already big and wet. “I was only trying to take it home.”
“To your mum’s place?”
“No, to the new house. I thought Nash might like it to go with all the guitars he has in storage. He’s never had anywhere to keep them all before.”
Cam’s natural glare didn’t stand a chance. He went back to wrestling with the bizarre knot Willow had fashioned in her attempt to tow the piano while she hovered beside him, fraught anxiety lacing her dampened spirit.
I stayed with the piano, keeping my mouth shut. Alexei had warned me to be less Russian around anyone who didn’t sit at Cam’s table, and unless I was speaking Spanish, I had no idea how to do that.
“Are you Dodger?”
I shifted my gaze to Willow. She came closer, peering at me from beneath a hood that was doing nothing to keep her dry.You can fix that.I shrugged out of my jacket and handed it to her, but she was not so easily distracted.
“Areyou Dodger?” she asked again. “Were you with my dad when he fell off his bike last year?”
I was familiar enough with Locke’s cover story that her questions made sense. I had not heard the name Dodger before, though. “I’m Viktor.”
“I know that—you’re Ranger’s boyfriend. I saw you at the record fair. But I’d seen you before that.”
“When?”
“Ages ago. Before my dad and Folk moved clubs. Did you move clubs too?”
Cam glanced up from his work, conflict marring his face. Mild panic. He didn’t have the answers, so I went with a semblance of the truth, speaking slower, flattening my accent as much as I could without choking on my tongue, ignoring the sound of Ranger’s laughter echoing in my head.
“I never joined your dad’s old club, but he’s part of the reason I stuck around the new one.”
“Right. So youareDodger? You look like him.”
“How do you know?”
“Rubi said you were short and pretty, and you dance like you have one leg.”
Rubi Matherson. I had plans for him. “Okay then.” I resigned myself to my fate. “I suppose that makes me Dodger.”
Willow grinned and skipped back to Cam, oblivious to him rubbing his lips to hide his mirth.
I pulled out my phone, opening the short text thread I had with Ranger, every message sent from occasions when we had been inside the same building and he wanted me to bring him something ridiculous. Snacks, mainly. Or myself, naked.
Come to bed, Vik. I want you.
“Sorry about that.” Cam filled the space beside me, his voice low. “She asked a lot of questions when Locke was gone and we never got round to correcting the mess of how we answered them.”
He held out his cigarettes again to reinforce his apology.
This time I took one and lit up, shielding it from the rain with my hand as I shoved my phone in my pocket without texting Ranger. “Is fine. I have been called worse. Tell me, though, Rubi... what does he not like?”
Cam grinned and gave me a list.
