“I could ask you the same question. I live in the Shipyards. What’s your excuse?”
“You knowexactlywhy I’m here.”
“Couldn’t stop thinking of me, huh, ghoulie?” Quicker than I can anticipate, she traps my left foot, hitches her hips up hard, and forces me into a roll until now I’m the one on my back and she’s over me, grinning fiercely. “Not nearly as tough in a fight when you don’t have phasing to fall back on.”
The sound of a pistol being cocked right by her ear makes Dani freeze. Orion stands over us, the barrel of his gun pressed against the side of her head, although from my angle, looking up at him from the ground, he almost looks… amused? That bastard.
“I gotta figure you can’t be too bad of a soul or Val would’ve killed you back at the Clock Tower,” he says, his voice nonthreatening even if his pistol is the opposite. “That being said, you should probably get off them.”
Dani snorts but raises her hands, palms out in surrender, as she stands. I immediately jump back onto my feet, retracting Toothpick but keeping one hand on Wrath’s hilt. For comfort. There’s another salty comment for Dani on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t even get the chance to say it because Orion reachesover and claps a hand over my mouth without even taking his eyes off Dani.
“I see that you have a few more things on your mind, V, but hold on to them for a second,” he says. “This little reunion isn’t doing us any good all out in the open like this. We need to get inside before we sort anything else out.”
I glance at the buildings all around us, dotted with windows that anyone could be sitting behind, watching, hoping to see something important enough to tell the wardens about in exchange for paper. He’s right, of course, but…
“There’s nothing to sort out,” I snap. “I’m not going anywhere with her.”
“Fine by me if you want to act like a petulant child,” Dani says with a shrug, all casual, like she doesn’t have a gun barrel still pointed right at her face. “But I know this area and everyone in it backward and forward.”
Orion gives me a look. “Unless you’ve got someone else lining up to help us with this, I suggest we hear her out.”
I can’t respond to him because I’m clenching my teeth too hard. Ihatethat he has a point.
“Perfect,” Dani says after a beat. “My place is close by. Come on.”
She turns and starts back down the alley, and I move quickly up behind her, hissing low in her ear. “No tricks, Dani.”
Her shoulders tense, and she shoots me a disdainful look over her shoulder. “You don’t have to threaten me, Butcher. I know you better than anyone.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Y’ALL SEEM AWFUL ANXIOUS TO GET YOUR HANDS ON THIS SO-CALLED “USELESS” PUZZLE BOX. RECKON GOLD TOWN WILL KEEP IT SAFE IN OUR VAULT FOR A LITTLE BIT LONGER. AT LEAST UNTIL OUR PRESENT ISSUE IS SETTLED AND THE BUTCHER IS DEAD. THEN WE CAN DISCUSS IT FURTHER.
—TELEGRAM DISPATCH FROM ROUGH RORY RHODES TO ELDER PREACHER TILLIE HODGE (YEAR 2120)
Dani wasn’t lying—her place is only half a block from the alley we were lurking in, in a short, shabby boardinghouse where every inch of it sags and slants and threatens to collapse. She takes us to small, cramped lodgings on the second floor, the air indoors dense and warm, the building’s naphtha barely enough to combat the sunshine and heat outside. Inside, all the furnishings are old and worn, but well taken care of with not a speck of dust in sight. I spot a framed grainy photograph tucked away in a corner: a man and a woman, smiling, their arms wrapped around a young girl, not much more than a toddler, with the same clever, amber eyes as Dani’s. The sight of her makes my head reel a bit.It’s difficult to imagine Dani as a little kid, running around these streets, maybe working jobs for her family, maybe wild and getting into mischief. Everything about her makes you feel like she just appeared, fully formed, with an arched brow and a quirk to her mouth.
“It’s cozy,” Orion says approvingly. He’s already put his pistol away, like we’re all friends here. Like no one in this room has set the other person’s family up for the benefit of her own revenge plans.
I kick the front door closed and lean back against it, my hands in my pockets, scowling. “Pretty sure I paid you enough to get a better place than this.”
“Yeah, you did.” Dani pulls out a hard chair from the tiny little table in her tiny little kitchen, flips it around, and sits down on it backward, her arms folded over the back. “Just because everyone else looks down on the Shipyards, though, doesn’t mean the people who live here do. Haven’t really had an interest in trading up.”
“This was your folks’ place?” Orion asks as he drops onto a sofa that sits so low his knees are practically level with his chest. “They still around?”
Dani shakes her head. “They’re long gone. Papa got taken out by a bone sickness when I was ten. My mom was a yarder who had an accident and fell into the Crater when I was around thirteen. I ran around with a group of people for a few years after that, but… they’re gone now.”
Her eyes flick to me and then quickly away again, and I try to ignore the flash of guilt that squeezes my chest. Her story is so similar to mine, even down to the ages she lost her parents, butwith one significant difference: After I took out Big Haul and Kilpatrick routed out the rest of his followers, Dani was left with no one. Halle and Kelda… they at least still had me.
Whatever good that is.
“I’m sorry.” It says something about Orion that, even though he barely knows Dani at all, he truly sounds sorry.
Dani is less impressed. She glances at him just long enough to give him a scornful look. “Save your sympathies, Skywayman. Covenant is lousy with orphans, the Shipyards especially.”
“I’m sorry anyway,” he says. “No one should have to go through that.”
I roll my eyes at that. “Except that all of us did. It’s the most common duster backstory in the book.”
