"What do you mean?"

"This one time I was standing downtown on the circle, I turned to my friends and was like 'Dude, I can smell Noles from here. He's on his way.' Now Noles stay down on Washington and Lynhurst, and sure enough, two and a half hours later, he came walking up. I smelled him just as he was leaving the house."

"You use the truth interesting ways." Wayne hit start on the game.

During the course of the next hour, Fathead claimed to be a trained martial artist and having died and been brought back five times in one night. What Wayne had been able to glean from the endless stream of BS that flew out of his mouth was that Fathead sold weed and hung out with a rougher set than he intended, who attacked him a few times. And trouble always followed him.

Percy, hanging a few steps away from everyone else, hid on the couch. Where the spread of light from the lamps failed to blanket. He loved many of the people in this room, Rhianna, Wayne, and Esther especially, but he sat on the fringe of them as if an invisible wedge separated him. A recurring dream troubled him in ways he didn't understand and couldn't articulate. At first he thought about how his friends all seemed beset by disturbing dreams which set them on edge. But his dream came from a different place. The images stayed with him during the day. No one noticed his odd posture, shoulders pulled in, a large man tucking his body within itself if possible.

A ruined church, a place of hope reduced to a darkened chamber. Overturned pews and a broken altar, the hall lit by the suffuse light of dimming candles. A boy came in holding a white gun a pearl-white hand grip, white shaft on a velvet pillow. He pa.s.sed in front of a fire. Two boys each carried stands of ten candles. A young girl, in his heart he wanted her to be Rhianna, came in holding a cup. The cup was pure gold inlaid with precious stones. Percy knelt before the cup, ready to drink. The liquid burned like fire and tasted of ash. Then he'd wake up.

The familiar sickness rose in Fathead's stomach and threw his game off. Eating probably wasn't the best idea, but he didn't know when he'd next have a proper meal. He hoped that something sweet would take the edge off his pain. As if she knew, Rhianna brought him a plate with two pieces of pie on it. He was struck by how sweet his fellow users were. That was, when they weren't scheming to take each other off. Unlike Rhianna, who had her baby to give her a reason, he was afraid to come off the drugs. Bad as things got, despite the terrible things he had to do to earn, the only times he truly felt worthless were when he didn't have a girlfriend. He'd go home when he ran out of options. Then it occurred to him that he had no idea what movies were out, what television shows were on or if a new war had broken out. That world didn't matter.

A coiled threat waiting to spring, Tristan waited beside Iz's bed, her knee bouncing with its own energy as she ground her teeth. The room door remained closed as she waited for a doctor to make her appearance. This was not how she wanted to spend another evening. She missed the days of sitting on the floor between Iz's too-skinny, white-girl legs, Iz's fingers sc.r.a.ping the jar of hair-braiding oil, foraging for it to give up the last of its contents. Not that Iz was all that skilled at braiding hair, but her touch was intimate and knowing, her very presence rea.s.suring.

Tristan shifted in the uncomfortable green vinyl chair, which had no give to it so she never found a sweet spot she could rest in. Her black hoodie covered her crest of mauve-dyed braids and shadowed most of her face. She filled the seat with her bigboned frame, though she didn't have a trace of fat. Amber eyes with gold flecks took in the features of her beloved while she slept.

"You about to jump out of your skin." Iz toted an IV stand behind her as she baby-stepped from the bathroom to her bed. A tattoo of a dragon on the base of her back on full display within the flimsy hospital robe. The fabric of the sheets sc.r.a.ped against her thin skin and she winced. Tristan flinched in her seat, ready to bound to help, but Iz waved her off.

"Just anxious is all."

"It'll be all right. I'll be all right."

"Look at you. A good breeze could bowl you over."

"Doctors said I'd be fitten to get out of here in a day."

"Shouldn't have been here in the first place."

"I said I was sorry."

"s.h.i.t. No, baby," Tristan slipped onto the edge of Iz's bed with a tenderness that belied her stocky frame, more built for fighting than nursing. "I wasn't blaming you. I was thinking of Mulysa. He did this to you."

He did other things, too. Maybe. It was all such a haze to Iz. Her head pounded and her vision blurred.

Though always on the scrawny side, Iz's body had shrunk down to a prisoner-of-war thinness. Her sunken cheekbones framed her face, a long nose embedded with a stud appeared more so against the hollow pits of her eyes. The dye of her black hair slowly faded revealing her natural brown hair. Picking at her skin, she caught sight of Tristan's disapproving gaze and tried to find something else to do with her hands. And not think about the terrible burrowing beneath her skin. She wondered if Tristan understood her shame, as she spent so much time in the bathroom picking pellets out of her a.s.s because her body was no longer producing stool.

The first time she smoked pot, she was nine. In the fugue state of her relapse into drug use, she accidently shot up the piece of cotton drawn into her needle. The ride felt like she'd fallen head first onto the sidewalk from five stories up. She remembered throwing up until she blacked out. And Mulysa's hands exploring her. The room spun.

Without warning, Iz sprang out of bed with no trace of recognition in her eyes, and she lunged at Tristan. The first swipe caught the meat of Tristan's cheek, the scratch drawing blood. Tristan c.o.c.ked a ready fist to defend herself, a survival reflex, but caught herself. This wasn't the first time Iz had flipped out, a kind of psychotic break. Tristan backed away, hands held out as non-threatening as possible.

"Iz, baby, this isn't you. It's me, Trys. I love you, baby."

Iz chased after her, a glare somewhere between fury and pain, biting at her and arms flailing. Tristan grabbed her arms and wrapped around her as best she could.

"Come back to me. It's okay."

Exhausting her spindly frame rapidly, Iz heard her, the light of familiarity filling her eyes again, and they collapsed onto the floor.

"What'd you do to yourself, girl?" Tristan whispered, closing her eyes to press back the tears.

Her dad had died from years of alcohol abuse when his liver gave out. Or maybe it was the pills. Iz was too little to remember, and her mother never had a good memory to share of him. Destruction was in Iz's nature. She once took a pair of scissors and tore up all the clothes in her babysitter's closet. This made it hard to find babysitters, not that it stopped her mother from going out. Her mother once abandoned her for two days. It was the first time Child Protective Services was called for her. Mother always left her to go somewhere to cop the best drugs, and she was only about the best. She strung together boyfriends based on who dealt the best stuff. When the school needed to get a hold of her, Iz gave them the cell phone number of her mother's dealer. And when she was out of money and her body was used up, she sold one of her other daughters. That was the last time CPS was called on her mother.

Iz remembered her first stint at rehab. She wasn't ready yet but the court mandated a stint at the Beacon House. When they found her, she had a spray can pressed to her face as she huffed in the janitorial closet. She ran away soon after. When Tristan found her in the alley, a prost.i.tute beaten and left for dead, but still dragging herself along the gravel by her fingers toward her dealer, then she had bottomed out. Tristan sat beside her during the worst of it then. Tristan sent her to school and kept anyone who might distract her from her dreams at bay. And it was Tristan whose anger burned so hot her embrace was like a cauldron. "Someone has to give Mulysa what he deserves."

CHAPTER SIX.

Not one for existential considerations, Lee McCarrell hated the vague ache in his chest, as if he'd been hollowed out, as he pulled into the abandoned bank parking lot. A piece of hot tail reduced him to his high school days of bad poetry and rubbing his joint by moonlight, pining away for cheerleaders who didn't notice him. Every fiber in him called him the d.a.m.ned fool, the played-out simp, obsessing over a girl. A girl. An errant piece of p.u.s.s.y had him all twisted up inside and chasing after even the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Though, truth be told, it was a fine line between being led by his heart and being led by his d.i.c.k. For the last few nights he'd made it part of his routine to pa.s.s the empty building as often as possible, no better than going by the cheerleader's locker after every cla.s.s. If a body dropped or he had a run, if he had a lunch break or simply took lost time, he drove by. Across from the Phoenix Apartments, it was a known haunt for prost.i.tutes, but there was only one working girl he was interested in.

Omarosa.

An atrophied brick husk of a building, the drivethrough an easy shelter from the rain, the alcove an easy place to ditch one's works, the overgrown bushes a place to store a change of clothes, and the front exposed to a full view of 38th Street and the Phoenix Apartments. The bank building fell into disrepair once the branch had been sold from one big-name bank to another. And the "another" decided a branch across from the Phoenix Apartments, in such a high-crime, high-risk, high-insurance area, wasn't very profitable.

A lone woman paced the sidewalk like a panther trapped in a too-confining cage. Sleek, angry, muscles coiled and ready to pounce, only the slightest lock of her head betrayed that she knew he was near. He slammed the car into park and stepped out as coolly as his anxious heart allowed. He stopped to light a cigarette to force him to wait or at least not immediately dash over like a strungout school boy. Crossing the lot with a determined stride, he marched with a rapid pace undercutting his air of cool control. His gaze looked on hers, neither flush nor anxious, oblivious to being the only white boy out walking the streets, marking him as either cop, fiend, or fool.

"Been a minute," Omarosa said with an aristocratic air despite her black halter top over a blue jean skirt, which had a set of handcuffs dangling between two loops. A blade clung to her inner thigh, a deucy deucy in her purse, and a shotgun in the bushes, all within easy reach. Lee's usefulness had about come to an end and she prepared to discard him the way this age discarded magic.

"I ain't see you around, thought I'd chance swinging by one of your spots."

"You were lucky I didn't mind being found." A nest of fine braids, not a hair out of place, lined her head. Skin the color of overcreamed coffee, she possessed high cheekbones and a long, Aquiline nose. Her eyes had a winsome slant to them. However, her pointed ears betrayed the fact that the blood of the fey ran through her veins. She brushed close to him, perfectly aware of the effect her presence had on him. Her musk intoxicated him and she stepped nearer to allow him to feel the heat of her proximity.

"What are you up to?"

"Hunting."

"Hunting what?" Lee tired of her games, though not to the point where he would risk having her leave his bed. She was his ears and eyes to the streets. All gained through whispers between his sheets. She read things and had a view not even the most seasoned cop could. Her intel and insight made him a G.o.d in the gang task force. Too onpoint, he determined, to not be mixed up in it somehow. But he pursued a "don't ask, don't tell" policy as her info led to busts which kept him too useful to fire. Still, even the best runs came to an eventual end. As she lost interest in him, reading the streets became like him fumbling over Braille. And Omarosa could easily go too far.

"Who."

"Hunting who?"

"The slayer of my brother, Colvin," Her voice was husky and feminine, sultry with a hint of threat.

"You looking for Baylon?" It was the name she uttered the last time she'd spurned his advances. "Word has it that he's holed up with Dred. Ain't left the man's side like he's a newborn after some t.i.t. Or else he knows you out here waiting for him. So why not lay low" (with me) "and wait for him to pop his head up when he thinks it's safe?"

"You don't understand our ways. My brother needed to be put down like the rabid beast he'd become. But honor demanded it be by someone whose hand was worthy."

"Like King?"

"As you say. Not the dog of a scoundrel."

"Like Dred." Lee struggled to connect the players in this puzzle. Unlike Cantrell, he wasn't that kind of cop. He needed a door to crash through or a head to bust. "I don't know why you're so worked up. It's not like you had any love for him."

"Love isn't the point. He was of the fey. That motherf.u.c.ker Baylon needs to get got. The longer I have to wait, the worse it will be for him."

"I don't give a f.u.c.k who he was of. You don't get to 'hunt' on my watch."

Omarosa's eyes narrowed. That was the only warning Lee had, not that it did any good. Gone were the moments of a cat toying with a wounded bird, which was the normal thrill of her encounters with him. Gone were the ideas of using him to misdirect police attentions or gleaning information about police investigations. Gone was any of the cool numbness which pa.s.sed for affection from her. All she had was rage. She stabbed her elbow into the side of his neck, then administered a double-palm heel blow to both ears. His arms lashed about, stunned and grabbing the air for purchase. Omarosa grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt and drew him near.

"Who are you to judge the ways of the fey? You do not realize your place in the scheme of things. Should you or your brethren get between me and Baylon, you will learn what Baylon will suffer firsthand, what true fey rage is capable of."

At the release of his shirt, he dropped to the ground. His instinct was to grab for his weapon and haul her a.s.s in. But he knew two things: 1) he'd have a h.e.l.l of a time explaining the nature of their relationship; and 2) if his hand had touched a weapon, she'd have killed him three different ways before he had the chance to draw it.

Merle poured enough ketchup next to his cheeseburger to make his makeshift plate of cardboard look like a congealed crime scene. He dipped his cheeseburger into the red pool then took loud, wet bites. Reaching for a nearby straw, he dragged it through his ketchup pool. Something in the blood-like smear drew his attention. He poured more ketchup on his plate and plunged his straw into the mess. His eyes glazed over with sights privy only to him. Tracing patterns into the sludge, spreading the goo like a Neanderthal along a cave wall, his hands sped up in a manic fashion. Part of him dreaded this meet, being caught up in things beyond his (no, their) control. Tormented by unwanted persistent thoughts of her. Of them. He marveled at his ability to hold two sets of contradictory thoughts at once.

"Hold on, hold on," he muttered, both non-committed and diffident. "Think of it as the principles of geomancy mixed with automatic writing. Ketchup-mancy."

Merle didn't have the heart to tell King the truth, not the complete truth anyway. The complete truth was too large to handle, like staring into time, past, present, and future at the same time, seeing all of the possibilities and connections and not going a little bit mad in the explanations of it all. So a simple-sounding question like "How could they do this?" asked by King might have gotten the response "you mean 'again' or 'why not avoid it next time'?" Would that have been any better an answer than "They are bound by the echoes of the story. Just as you are."

Merle tore pieces of bread and scattered it on the ground before him. A brown and black squirrel with a gray streak along its back scampered back and forth between lobbed pieces.

"What say you, Sir Rupert? How do you say he was chosen? Chosen by the story. There was once a man like any other man. At times brave. At times selfish. At times bold. At times troubled. He had a call, but often ignored it. Fought it. Even ran from it. Sorrow without top, sorrow without bottom."

The squirrel reared up on its hind legs and chewed in greedy rapid bites.

"Yes, yes. He stirred something in them and they dared to hope. They lived for a dream long denied. King's uncertainty broke the circle. His doubt. Once again, it's all at risk. What had been a place, a community, was now separate houses threatening to be razed."

The squirrel froze. Its nose twitched. Once. Twice.

"Sir Rupert! That's no way for a gentleman to speak of a lady."

It scurried up a nearby tree across a limb and onto the roof top.

"You're back," Merle said to the figure emerging from the shadows.

"Did you think I wouldn't return?" Nine circled him.

"No, I feared you would. I know who you are." It was as if he poured himself into her or her into him. Like using the dragon's breath, giving herself to him, yet holding part of herself back. She refused him her person, letting his unrequited pa.s.sion bind him to her. The most ancient of magics: l.u.s.t. A silly girl's power to besot foolish old men. His heart longed for her and doted on her.

"Didn't I fool you for a minute?" Her confidence working up to where she wanted to go, slithering in the dark. She traced the letter "M" in the air, green iridescent sparkles shimmered in her wake.

Yes, he knew who she was. She unnerved him. His mouth ran dry. "You're acquainted with my mother, Mab, the queen of the fairies? They are the oldest of all. Like all creatures of old, they came to this new world and slept. Or blended into the background when it wasn't their time. They know things. Their kind was particularly fond of glamours. Some were necromancers and wielded death magic. Some used the power of both and could a.s.sume any shape. Recreate themselves. A useful skill when one needed to bide their time. Or was driven underground."

"Does this form please you, mage?" Nine danced near and ran her finger along Merle's chest. The flattering attention from youth to fill an old man's sails. She delighted in bending men to her will. Beauty and enchantment. Hers was the weapon of jealousy. Trapped, she was doubly dangerous.

"Does it come with a story?"

"It does. I was home-schooled for my entire childhood. Cloistered away in a familial nunnery of sorts. My parents were afraid of outside influences. But while they clung to one image of their little girl, other people could sense my dark side. Other home-school families shunned us and encouraged their kids to do the same. They hated me. The other women didn't trust me around their husbands even as a young teenager. Made sure to read me the story of the adulterous woman whenever they had a Sunday School lesson to impart. They constantly harped on my clothing: my skirts too short, my tops too revealing. Always striving to make me insecure about how I looked. Do you think my top is too revealing?" Nine leaned over to allow a full, teasing view.

"That's a good story."

"I thought so. Enough to make you feel rather sympathetic toward me."

Nine was a clever story but a simple one. There was another story Nine could have told. About a little girl long ago, overlooked in her family. Their little girl, all but ignored by the brighter lights in her family. Older siblings. Cousins. No one noticed her or her gifts. Except for an uncle. He crept into her bed late at night. His breath on her neck, light kisses on her back, lost in her dreams. Next thing she knew, a weight pressed on her chest. Some folks called it witch riding: when you think you're awake but can't move anything. You wanted to move and you know something bad was going to happen. If you could move anything, wiggle a finger or something, you snapped out of it. But it wasn't a witch sitting on her chest. She awoke to him on top of her. Then he was in her and her virginity was taken from her. That was the last time anything was taken from her. The world taught her that it was out to f.u.c.k her so she had made up her mind that she was going to f.u.c.k it first. The next night, he had the nerve to once again crawl into bed with her as if he had done her a pleasurable service the night before. She slit his throat from ear to ear and was sent away.

"You have not perfected your faults. Does your son know who you are?"

"He'd kill me if he knew. He's already tried once."

"You nestled the serpent too close to that poisoned sac you call your bosom for too long. You need to punch him in the throat like a s.p.a.ce ninja."

"Oh, mad mage. You know who I am, yet you wanted to see me again."

"Because you are my end," Merle said.

"And you come willingly into my arms?"

"That's the story that has been written."

"Show me your magic. Teach me the ways of the dragon."

"My final lesson?"

"Yes."

"When King needs me at his side most?"

"That's the story that has been written." At the mention of King's name, she stepped back in pause. The final battle loomed and those too near were liable to fall.

"And what do I get in return?"

"I offer you the pain you inflict on others."

"I fear Sir Rupert will never let me hear the end of this."

La Payasa had no time for foolishness.

Black wanted his power to be felt, his name to ring out. He'd fought too hard to reach his spot for him to be pushed aside. He wouldn't be punked. The streets would know his rage and acknowledge his presence. For La Payasa, it meant making sure his own house was in order.

Black's mother's home was holy ground. No one neared it without facing La Payasa. Not any chavalas. Not the police. Not even broken down old men repairing cars in the parking lot. She approached with a lilting step, at first glance no one to take notice of. Her yellow hair had black roots. Black and gold, the colors of her crew, and her way of proudly displaying their colors.

"You go to move this s.h.i.t." Menace filled her eyes.

"I got to earn, too. You ain't the only one who needs to get over," said an old man with a head too small for his body, from beneath the hood of a car. Revealing a teak complexion, and gray goatee, when he fully stepped from behind the car, he fumbled inside his shirt pocket for a pair of thick, black-framed gla.s.ses as if double-checking a vision.

"I said you gots to go, old man." La Payasa repeated. She hated repeating herself as it lowered her in the eyes of her men. And she'd worked d.a.m.n hard to rise to her rank.

"That's some bulls.h.i.t, girl," the old man said in front of her men. "It ain't fair."

"You just don't listen, do you? Got to make this harder on yourself. I got something for you."

A wall of vatos in white wife beaters and baggy shorts crowded around, blocking the scene from prying eyes. La Payasa couldn't let challenge to her authority go unanswered. Especially openly. The five-point crown was peace. Violent only when necessary. She raised the cross that dangled from her neck, kissed it, then tucked it into her shirt. She went to a different place when she had to put in work. A place of raised voices, when a raised voice meant violence soon followed like lightning to the storm's thunder. The place of the lie. When the words "Hija de la gran puta, desgraciada no sirves para nada!" may as well have been her name. To be condemned as a disgraceful daughter of a b.i.t.c.h, good for nothing, then beaten with whatever she could get her hands on. Extension cords. Brooms. Belts. Shoes. All were fair game. All were layers of gasoline and timber, ready fuel for the fire she would have to unleash. Even on herself. Fed up, one day she s.n.a.t.c.hed the belt from mother's hands. "This is how you spank someone," she shouted, then beat herself so bad she bled. Her mother left her alone after that. She no longer lived in the flinch, that state of readiness, of expectation of the raised voice. She was the raised voice.