Page 8 of Angel’s Doll

“You’re supposed to knock,” she says.

“And you could have locked the door. Anyway, bathroom’s across the hall. Nobody in this building will touch you or ask you anything, and if anyone forgets, they answer to me.” I put a bottle of water on the dresser. “You rest, tomorrow we talk.”

I pull the door shut, stand in the hallway, and let the day total itself up. A deferred sentence hanging off my patch. My Prez’s order I ignored. A professional somewhere in this city reporting my colors to who knows who.

I brought Victor Hale’s niece home.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

5

DOLL

Igive the bed an honest try, since resting is what I was told to do.

Shoes off, knees up, eyes on the ceiling while the water bottle sweats on the dresser. My body is wrung out enough to sleep for a week. My head won’t stop. It keeps standing me in the conference room at the exact second Victor looked at his printouts instead of at me, and it plays his two words on a loop. A week.

For years, I ran his life. He traded mine without looking up.

I sit up. If I stay in this room, I’ll wear a path in the floor, so I put my shoes on and open the door.

The hallway is plank floors and old rock posters, gray afternoon light through a window at the far end. A young man in a leather vest sits on a folding chair at the end of the hallway, a paperback western in one hand, a knife on his belt. Nineteen, maybe. He stands when he sees me, polite as a hotel porter.

“Ma’am. Kitchen’s this way if you’re hungry. Phoenix will fix you up.”

“Is there a rule about me walking around?”

He considers it. “Rule’s for them, not you. Nobody bothers you. Inside the fence, you go where you like.”

Downstairs, the clubhouse opens into one long room. A bar runs the far wall under a row of license plates from states I’ve never been to. Pool table. Couches with no two cushions matching. A jukebox with a cracked face and a hand-lettered sign taped to it. DO NOT FIX. A dozen men scattered around, boots on tables, low talk. Everyone clocks me on the first step.

Here’s what I know about rooms full of dangerous men. Somebody always wants what you’ve got, and he shows himself fast.

Nobody moves. A big blond one lifts two fingers off his beer. A card game keeps going, the low talk doesn’t stop, and I come into a room that has decided, all together, to leave me alone. I have no idea what to do with it.

“It’s past four and I’d bet you haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

Red hair, full tattooed sleeves, a rag over one shoulder, watching me from behind the bar. She has a burner lit before I answer.

“Phoenix,” she says.

“I remember.” I met her an hour ago.

“Good, then sit.”

I take a place at the very long table and a couple of minutes later, I get a plate in front of me. It could feed the card game. Eggs, toast, bacon stacked in a dare. She leans on the bar with her arms crossed while I eat, and she doesn’t ask who I am or how I got here. She tells me about the jukebox instead. A prospect at the mother chapter electrocuted himself half to death trying to fix one exactly like it, and now no Thunder Bastard on this earth is allowed near a jukebox with tools.

I laugh with my mouth full. It surprises us both.

“There it is,” she says, and takes the empty plate.

“You’re not going to ask me anything.”

“Angel set a rule. You tell it once, when you tell it.” She wipes a slow circle into the bar. “Anybody asks you so much as your middle name before then, I introduce him to the bat, and Angel handles whatever the bat leaves.”

At Halcyon, kindness came with a hook in it. Every favor grew interest. Every warm word had a hand out behind it, and I learned to spot the hand before the word finished landing. I keep waiting for the hook here. It doesn’t come. I’ve had years of practice with bought, none at all with free, and the waiting sits in me like a swallowed stone.

Somewhere across the city, my uncle knows I’m gone. The driver woke up with a headache, Durey must have had his fit, and Victor is pacing the glass office. Not worried about me. Worried about what happens to him now that his collateral walked.