He was halfway through his breakfast and all the way to regret when the bus pulled up and a lanky teenagershuffled off. Cal hadn’t gotten a good look the day at the graveyard, but the Slipknot hoodie was the same, and after the kid spat in the gutter and scratched himself, he headed in through the door to Loads of Locks.
Cal tossed the remnants of the breakfast kebab in the bin and wiped his hands on a napkin as he jogged over the road. He dodged the oncoming cars—one dented Nissan Mura with toomany kids packed in the back nearly ran over his booted feet—and hopped up the curb onto the pavement. The chimes hung over Maggie’s door rattled as he let himself in.
“… is she?” Maggie asked Logan as she pushed a mug of tea into his hands. Without the skull mask pulled up to his nose, Logan was a bony teenager with surprisingly good skin and heavy, blood-shot eyes. He dropped the tea when hesaw Cal. It hit the black-and-white-tiled floor and splashed milky tea everywhere.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he spluttered at Cal. Then he cut a suspicious look toward Maggie. “Did you tell him I was going to be here, Maggie? Itoldyouit was a fucking accident.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Maggie snapped. She grabbed his arm and twisted her fingers into his hoodie. “I told him to go, butof course he was going to come back. You knew that. He found out your name. He wasn’t going to shrug it off because you weren’t in when he got here.”
Cal closed the door behind him before Logan could make a break for it. He pushed his hands into the pocket of his jeans and tried to look unthreatening.
“I just want a word,” he said.
“It was anaccident,” Logan spat at him. “I was only goingto give the tall guy a scare, warn him off. Then you came out of nowhere and grabbed me. I had to defend myself, right? It wasn’t my fault you got hurt. Maybe you should stay out of things that don’t concern you, mate.”
Maggie raised her hand toward Cal. “I don’t want any trouble,” she said. “Not in my shop. Don’t—”
Cal ignored her. “Maybe you shouldn’t push people into open graves,” he said.
Whatever the kid had told Maggie, that hadn’t been part of it. She dropped her hand and gave him a disappointed look. “Logan.”
He flinched. Cal would bet there weren’t a lot of people in the kid’s life who cared enough he could disappoint them. So he’d never gotten used to it.
“You don’t get it,” he said. “I told you it was for a good reason. The guy had it fucking coming.”
He pulled away fromMaggie and left her with a handful of his shed hoodie clutched in one hand. Panic twitched over his face, and he lunged at one of the stations to grab a pair of scissors. He clutched them in his fist and jabbed the sharpened points at Cal.
“Get out of my way,” he yelled, and his voice cracked.
“What are going to do?” Cal asked him. “Give me a bad trim?”
Maggie threw the hoodie at him. “Logan.Put those down, or I’ll call the police.”
That was one pressure too many for the kid. Logan threw her a panicked look and lunged forward at Cal. The point of the scissors caught in his T-shirt and poked the skin underneath. It didn’t sting as much as the tattoo it scratched had when he’d gotten it.
Cal punched him in the face. He felt the crunch of cartilage under his knuckles, the familiarwet spit of blood over his fingers. It wasn’t enough to break Logan’s nose—probably—but he did drop the scissors as he staggered back.
“That hurt,” he whined, the back of his wrist pressed to his dripping nose.
“So does stabbing people, Logan,” one of the other hairdressers, a tiny woman with a crest of pink hair snapped. She handed Logan a towel to stem the bleeding and gave Cal a nervous look.“You okay? Look, I know he’s being a dick, but he’s harmless. He’s under a lotta pressure and….”
Cal pulled the neck of his T-shirt down. There was a red mark scraped through a line-work skull. A few drops of blood had oozed up from under the skin, but it had already dried up.
“I think I’ll live.” He glanced at Logan. The kid was at bay against one of the chairs, the towel still bunched up underhis nose and his eyes on the door at the back of the room. “You run, I’ll catch you.”
Logan dropped the towel enough to sneer at Cal. “You didn’t in the graveyard,” he said. “Old man like you, all you’ll catch if you run after me is a heart attack.”
That stung. Cal wasn’told, but he had gotten to the point where he was too old for a lot of stuff he used to do—going to prison, playing gutter-trasharm candy, not caring that he was alone. He was not ready to be too old to intimidate scrawny little toughs.
“I found you, didn’t I?” he growled. “If I have to find you again, I’ll break your fucking kneecaps when I do. Now sit the fuck down. I told you, I want a word.”
Logan stared at him, wire tight as he tried to decide what to do. It was Maggie who decided it for him. She gave him a shovetoward an empty chair.
“Sit down and stop tracking tea and blood all over my floor,” she said sharply. “Better to talk to him in here than whatever alley he runs you down in. He’s not going to do anything to you in here.”
Logan shot her a look over his bloody towel. “He punched me,” he pointed out.
“You deserved that,” she fired back at him. “Sit. Talk.”
