“Hey there, who are you here to see?” He asks.
“Um,” My brain scrabbles for a reason, and like all good brains, makes me blurt the first thing that comes to mind instead. “Jesus….? Christ.”
He squints, and just when I’m convinced he’ll launch a row of spikes under my car and into my tires, he smiles.
“Ah, yeah, you must be here for the North Presbyterian dinner.”
“Yeah! That’s right. Praise the lord!”
He nods. “Go on in, visitor parking is on the left.”
Either the rest of the world is exceedingly dumb today, or I’ve gotten smarter. Thanks, college. Wait, who am I kidding? College hasn’t taught me anything yet except how to have panic attacks and not pay attention to professors at all. Correction: thanks, National Geographic.
I park and walk slowly behind Jack and Charlie, who are waiting outside a fenced door that leads to the elevators. After minutes of silent agony in which I almost twist my ankle trying to hide behind a pillar when Charlie looked behind him, a red-head with a black bikini on opens the door for them. She bats her eyelashes at Jack and I pretend I did not see, the same way I pretended not to see the end of the Titanic. Then again she has titties up to her eyes and she has a wonderful smile and if Jack’s taste in women has changed then he should by all means bed her, because she looks fairly fun and also cute and who am I to get in the way of true love? Nobody. Nobody should get in the way of true love. Not even well-meaning Italian arch-nemesis families.
The three turn a corner and take the stairs, and gracefully as a Koga ninja I make a mad dash to the door and manage to jam my pinky finger in it just before it closes and locks me out.
“Banana shitcake!” I whisper loudly and nurse the tip of my finger in my mouth as I take the stairs. “What does a lady have to do to get a warm reception around here?”
“Stop her stalking habit, perhaps?”
I whirl around to see Jack leaning against the railing behind me. I look downstairs to my escape door, back to his calm yet irritated face, and then I peek over the railing.
“How many stories does it take before you break your knees? Medically? Asking for a friend.”
“Don’t you dare jump.”
Jump. Sophia jumped. I flinch, but Jack is a tower of ice, murky and rigid and unreadable. I draw myself up to my full intimidating five feet five inches of height.
“I am out,” I say with great dignity. “For a stroll. I wasn’t stalking you.”
“You were following Charlie and I. I saw your car.”
“Oh. In that case, yes, I was stalking you.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says without missing a beat. “Nameless might be here.”
I grit my teeth, but manage words. “So? I don’t care about him. I want to know what you’re doing in Tweed’s company, and why. Is it dangerous? You said you wouldn’t join them, you said –”
“I said a lot of things,” Jack sighs and rubs his eyes. “- before Sophia died that I ended up regretting.”
My stomach churns. Was saying he liked me one of them? I shake my head – selfish. Stop being so fucking selfish and focus.
“Since when is going to a barbeque work?” I hiss.
“Since the one throwing the party is our target.”
“Uh, hello? Earth to Zabadoobian Jack? This is reality, not Call of Duty. There are no ‘targets’.”
“In my line of work, there are,” he answers.
“And what, pray tell, is your line of work?”
Jack’s frigid eyes harden, becoming clear and sharp as he answers. “I’m a freelance intelligence agent.”
I quirk a brow and look suitably confused.
“Spy,” he translates. “Now go back to your dorm, and leave this to me.”
I bluster about for ten seconds, squirreling my hands together. I say ‘sp’ a lot, but never quite manage to get the ‘y’ out. Jack, ever sensitive to my plight, turns and leaves. I follow.
“S-Spy?” I choke. “What blind idiot died and made you a spy? You’re like…you’re…what’s the word for the opposite of ‘subtle’?”
“Isis Blake,” Jack offers.
“Jack Hunter!” I correct. “Jack Hunter isn’t subtle.”
“I’m very subtle when a girl shouting ‘spy’ isn’t following me,” He argues.
“You’re a mobile, permafrost glacier with killer eyebrows and rapiers for eyes. People don’t forget Jack Hunter so easily.”
“I wish they would,” Jack murmurs. It sounds so hollow and weak, so unlike him. I slap him on the back.
“Nonsense! You can never be forgotten. If you were, the last major glacier on planet Earth would fade from existence, and global warming would become a very scary reality. Scarier than it already is. And closer. And hotter. In the temperature sense, not the let’s sex it up sense.”
Jack stops walking and stares at me. I stare back. There’s a profound quiet. Bikini girl chooses that moment to run into the stairwell and give Jack a very drunk kiss on the cheek, accompanied by an extremely subtle drop of a pink condom wrapper as she runs back out. I pick it up and hand it to him.
“Wrap your willy before you get silly,” I remind. Jack facepalms spectacularly and I count at it as a victory because at least he is not sad-looking, he is something-else-looking and it’s not much, but it’s better than sad. He comes up with the barest smile on his lips, but he quashes it quickly.
“Look, you can stay. But when Nameless gets here, you should leave.”
“Yes, thank you for giving me permission to continue what I’ve been doing for the last five years.”
Jack stops, hand against the stairwell door. “I apologize.”
“Don’t. It makes you seem nice.”
“He’s wanted by some very powerful people for doing some very bad things.”
“Good. Before you arrest him with your spy-goggles or whatever, let me punch him.”
“Isis –”
“Just one punch. In the eyeball. With a spoon.”
Jack considers it, then smirks. “Fine. On one condition.”
“Name it, dork.”
“I get the other eye.”
I mull it over, and nod. “I’m a generous god.”
I’m more grateful than he knows. Or maybe he does know, because his eyes are soft and warm with the knife of his quiet blazing anger. I’d seen it pointed at me enough times to know that this time, it’s not me it’s pointed at.
It’s Nameless.
I’m not the only one who knows. Jack might not know details, but he knows enough. He guessed enough. And he didn’t pry. His eyes have no pity, or guilt. They are clear and they see me, and my secret isn’t a secret, anymore. The weight is shared and divided and I try to say thank you, but all that comes out is a wry smile.
I am half as dark as I used to be.
Jack turns and opens the door. We walk out of the stairwell and my jaw pops like my old Beatle’s shitty trunk. The apartment building is all white stone and marble; massive, patio-style walkways intertwining between mounds of purple hydrangeas and autumn roses. People mill about, walking their dogs or sitting in fancy patio chairs near the covered glass fire pit, wood crackling and embers dancing. A hot-tub and an enormous lit pool are surrounded by umbrella covered tables and grills, drunk college students flinging burgers and nasty jokes like they’re going out of style. Charlie is talking to the black-bikini girl, looking grumpy and munching on chips. People shove each other in the pool and shriek with laughter in the hot tub. Jack touches my forearm lightly and leans in to whisper.
“I’m going to socialize. I need information. Stay where I can see you.”
“I don’t need you to babysit me,” I say. “Do your job. I’ll just be over here, you know, having fun. You should try it sometime.”
I grab a hot dog and sit on a lawn chair, near the hot tub. A blonde guy with svelte abs and a friendly smile glances at me.
“Hey,”
“Hi,” I spew meat deli
cately on the patio tile.
“No swimsuit?” He asks.
“Left mine back home. On Mars.”
“Is that why you stand out like a sore thumb? Because you’re an alien?”
“Or, or, and this is a crazy theory – I’m just hotter than everyone else here,” I offer.
The guy laughs. “It’s true. Your hair’s awesome.”
“So is yours. In that beachy I’m-definitely-from-California-and-spend-five-days-a-week-in-the-gym kind of way.”
He laughs again, louder, and gets out of the hot tub to sit by me, dripping wet.
“Three days, thank you very much. I’m not that much of a swole broski.”
“Coulda fooled me,” I nod at his stomach. He pats it like Santa after eating too many cookies.
“It’s my one pride and joy. I’ve got no brains and no future, but I’ve got these babies.”
“That’s all you need,” I say. “Take a picture and send it to Kim Kardashian. Marry her.”
“I’d have to fight Kanye,” he laments.
“Eh,” I wave my hand. “Just tell him his sunglasses suck. He’ll keel over and die.”
The guy sniggers. “I’m Kyle Morris. Nice to meet you.”
“Isis,” I say automatically. “Destroyer of Hearts and Dreams. And Any Cakes In A Two-Mile Vicinity.”
“Ravenclaw,” he offers his hand to shake. I grab it with my greasy one.
“Hufflepuff,” I say. He quirks a brow.
“Really? You don’t seem all that nice.”
“Oh,” I point what’s left of my hot dog bun at him. “Just wait until you see my friends. I practically run a charity show.”
“The guy you came in with?” He nods to Jack, who’s currently being exceedingly merciful and letting black bikini girl cling to his arm and jabber at him, and she has a pierced belly button and probably a pierced vagina and her name is Hemorrhoid, by the way. The girls in the hot tub Kyle came from are slowly starting to notice just how good looking Jack is, and they get out in a group, strutting past Jack and diving into the nearby pool with aching sexiness. The boys follow like hungry hounds.
“Yeah, the goober being goobed on,” I say. “He’s my friend.”
“Just a friend?”
“Is that like, some subtle cue slash question I’m supposed to confirm so you know whether or not you’ve got a chance to sleep with me? Because if so it’s very not-subtle and lacking finesse, really, next time maybe try a neon sign taped to your forehead that says LOSER LOOKING TO GET LAID. With the numeral two replacing to, obviously, to save time, because that seems to be all guys really care about – getting laid as fast as possible.”
Kyle takes it in stride, looking mock-wounded. “Hey, at least I’m being honest.”
I roll my eyes and wander over to the pool, trying my darndest and failing my darndest to not glance at the way black-bikini is grinding her hip into Jack’s as she leans on him. Charlie’s off in the deep end of the pool with a bunch of girls, even his grin somehow grumpy as they splash him. Last time I checked, spying involved a lot more grappling guns and poison dart pens and a lot less giggling. I stand at the edge of the pool and watch the moon reflecting on the water in a wiggly silver medallion. Kyle stands beside me.
“So, what’s your major?”
“I’m a freshmen. Undecided. Nuclear Thermophysics. Culinary Arts. Depends on how I feel when I wake up that day.” I hold two hands out and balance them like scales. “Destroy the world, or make a cake to celebrate destroying the world. The choice is so gosh darn difficult.”
Kyle laughs. “God, you’re cool.”
“It’s been said,” I agree. “Screamed, really. By my enemies. Just before I decapitate them.”
Suddenly there’s a sharp pressure on my ass, a squeeze. I jump, my squeal entirely ugly and entirely necessary as I look to Kyle, horrified. My first grope ever. He smirks and shrugs. I ball my fist into two bigger fists, but I never get the chance to throw them. Kyle goes flying, splashing into the pool with an embarrassing flailing motion. Jack stands at the place he used to be, expression cool.
“Oops,” He drones. Hemorrhoid laughs, and the other girls starts laughing, and so when Kyle comes up sputtering he has no choice but to laugh nervously with the rest of them.
“Haha, nice one bro!”
Jack quirks a disdainful brow at him. Charlie comes wading over and gets out, pulling Jack aside. Charlie’s words are rapid and low and hissy, and Jack’s are monotone. Hemorrhoid stands with me, sighing.
“He’s so dreamy, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I agree. “ - if we are in opposite world, and dreams are actually nightmares.”
She ignores me and latches back on to Jack the second he separates from Charlie, steering him towards the pool. Jack goes along with it, grimace obvious. Why is he doing it if he doesn’t like it?
“You,” A voice hisses in my ear. I turn to see Charlie, anger etching his mouth.
“Me,” I say. “Now that the introductions are over, we can finally move on to tea.”
“You’re distracting him,” Charlie says. “You’re a goddamn distraction he doesn’t need right now.”
“Exqueeze me?”
“You heard me,” Charlie insists. “You see that red-head in the bikini? That’s an important source of info we need on our side. Jack’s gonna wind her around his pinkie, and he would’ve already, but you’re here, and for some fucking reason he likes your dumb ass and is putting it off.”
“You’re mistaken. We hate each other. Platonically.”
“You’re cockblocking him,” Charlie snarls. “Now get the fuck out of here, before I throw you out myself.”
“My, are you always this polite with the ladies, or am I the exception? Or perhaps it’s the dudes you reserve your politeness for? Understandable. Dude-asses are polite-worthy as hell.”
“Get. Out.”
Over his tanned shoulder, I see Hemorrhoid lean in and graze Jack’s cheek with her lips. Jack doesn’t recoil, taking it like a frozen statue, inclining his head only slightly in response. I get the message. I always get the message, because I’m Isis Blake and I’m last choice for teams in gym, always, and whatever we had has been swallowed up by the void of Sophia, by the pain, by the ice-cold shield against it all he calls ‘work’. The little ball-light of hope I held in the darkness flickers, weakening irrevocably.
“I was already leaving,” I say. Charlie watches me the whole way to the garage. My fury is the dull, aching kind, lingering even as I park and trudge up the stairs into the dorms. Yvette is, mercifully, not there. Her text from four hours ago reads; ‘staying at a friend’s, don’t worry’. Another booty call, maybe. I don’t care. It’s her life, and as long as she’s safe and happy, I’m fine with it. I’m curious, but the throbbing hurt from the night beats louder against my skull as I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, hot moisture clouding my eyes.
I can’t sleep. Not until I say something. I grab my phone and text.
‘Do you know how many times you’ve made me fucking cry?’
His answer comes later, much later. It wakes me in two hours. I imagine him in her bed, sitting over the side of it, naked and with her naked and sleeping opposite him. I imagine his tousled hair, his lean muscles, his blue eyes made silver by the moonlight.
‘Too many.’ He says. Thirty minutes pass, and then; ‘Find someone who doesn’t make you cry. Find someone better.’
***
‘Do you know how many times you’ve made me fucking cry?’
I stare at the text, the sickly electronic light boring into my eyes like spears. Spears of guilt. Spears of regret. I shouldn’t be here, and what’s left of my heart knows that the second I read the words. I should be there, with her. I should be a normal college student, not playing at one while trying to catch a criminal.
Not fucking the criminal’s girlfriend so she’ll give me dirt on them.
It had been boring and routine, the steps ingrained in me from my time at
the Rose Club. I’d added every trick I could to satisfy her – satiate her so fully she’d be crawling on her knees for more in the morning, and next week, and the week after that. Her mouth is the only useful part of her – spilling the secrets of Kyle, and consequently, his partner Will.
It’d been the first fuck since spending the night with Isis at the hotel. Isis’ smell surrounded me, vanilla and cinnamon, even when I hadn’t touched her for very long. The hurt in her brown eyes haunted me as I came in the nameless girl, the silent name on my lips spilling from a place of heart-torn, guilt-laced pleasure, and if I shut my eyes I could pretend, if only for the briefest second, that it was Isis beneath me.
But the illusion faded quickly.
‘Use everything you can to your advantage,’ Gregory’s voice resonates from training. ‘And that means your damn pretty face. Women will love it. Use them.’
The evidence we need is one step closer.
Redemption is one step closer. Redemption for Sophia. Redemption for Isis. Catching Nameless, putting him away for life so that she never has to see him again, is the one good thing I can do for her. The one good thing I can do, period. The one thing that could put a dent in redeeming the hurt I’ve inflicted.
I pull on my shirt and button my jeans, leaving the posh apartment quietly so as not to wake her roommates. I pause at the door, looking back into the shadowed apartment that holds the evidence of my sordid manipulations.
I thought I was done with it, with this. But I got it backwards - it was never truly done with me.
“Redemption,” I murmur, and leave. The guilt sears me, gnawing at my insides. I need relief. I need distraction. I need something other than Isis’ text, my phone burning up in my pocket with her sadness and disappointment.
What does she want from me?