SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (22 page)

Alice’s face turns apologetic, and the childish tone returns. “You know I get cravings right before I start waving the red flag.”

That sobers Silver up.

“You ate four pounds of meat?!”

“Don’t be mad. You have work, right? No need to panic.”

No meat.

No money.

Silver watches any choice she might have had disintegrate right before her eyes, and she knows she’ll have to bite the bullet.

Or fire it.

Whatever.

Three more Enforcers have come and gone since Maydevine last offered her the position, and without knowing it consciously, she’s spent the last month mentally preparing herself for this moment. He’s going to ask again.

By the time she reaches the Crumb Shack in North Town, Maydevine is swirling the last dregs of some cold, badly brewed coffee in the bottom of his cup, searching for a reason to stay put just a minute or two longer.

And he’s glad he did.

Silver strolls in at the thirty-five minute mark, the brisk jog from the theatre having worked up an appetite and worked off the alcohol somewhat. Her cheeks flushed from the exertion, Maydevine pushes his glass of water across the table toward her.

“Rehydrate, before you collapse.”

Silver downs the entire half pint without stopping for breath.

Maydevine signals the waitress for a refill before the empty glass even hits the table, though calling it a ‘table’ requires some imagination. It’s a piece of corrugated metal with the ridges beaten out of it, tied to an old set of legs, complete with wheels, from a broken hospital gurney.

More water arrives and Silver quenches her thirst under Maydevine’s watchful eye. He can see she’s lost weight, and that she’s exhausted. Not just from the recent exertion, but she’s run down. Her hair is limp and lifeless, and her usually fierce eyes are butter knife dull.

Being the type of man who shines his shoes fastidiously every day and never leaves the house without straightening his tie, Maydevine casts a rather disapproving eye over Silver’s dirty clothes. It’s not such a big leap for him to imagine that her bedraggled appearance is a symptom of a really shitty past couple of weeks, and he hopes she’s had enough time to learn a lesson from the experience.

“Been enjoying your little jaunt into emancipation?”

His tone sets Silver on edge, instantly.

“I came here to be told off, did I?”   

“I don’t deserve the silent treatment, Ellie. You’re avoiding me. Why?”

“Luka told you what happened?”

“More than I wanted to know. In my eyes, you’re the Virgin fucking Mary. The last thing I need to hear about is you blue balling him and leaving him stranded in the Fringe District like you did.”

Angry, Silver feels her cheeks flush red. “Okay, first of all, I was referring to the slightly more important matter of my killing a man. What happened between Luka and I is nobody’s business. Second of all, he wasn’t stranded. He’s exaggerating.”

“You slashed his tire.”

Silver rolls her eyes. “He had a spare in the trunk. I just didn’t want him following me. He’s lucky I didn’t steal it.”

“Wow, that came fast.”

“What?”

“The snap.”

Silence drops over them like a ton weight.

“The minute you start talking like that, it’s all over,” Maydevine reminds her. “My daughter’s not a Fringer.”

“Your daughter killed a man.”

“I’ve killed many.”

Part of Silver wants him to define ‘many’. A bigger part of her doesn’t. Silver’s only seen it once: an act of vengeance against a banished Hunter. Maydevine is big on vengeance. She learned that when she was only five years old, and he made her take the life of the Chimera that killed her birth father.

“Murder
can
be justified.” He lights up a cigarette. “And enforcement’s not even murder—it’s justice.”

A knot forms in Silver’s stomach as Maydevine gets to the inevitable root of their meeting. Picking at a divot in the tabletop, trying to extract an embedded 9mm bullet with her fingernails, she begins to half regret showing up here.

Mumbling, “There are other people you could ask.”

“Sure, I could bribe another Dodger with a clean warrant card in exchange for the quietus act, but we all know how well that works out in the end.”

Suicide, Silver thinks.

“Bonanza for you, then,” she sighs.

“How’s that?”

“Buy one, get one free.”

“You think that’s what makes me happy?”

Silver shrugs, not really in the mood to hear the specifics of how Maydevine plans to run the Division. Her apparent nonchalance incenses him, though, and he won’t sit back and allow her to think he’s become apathetic to the loss of human life.

“I’m not interested in taking out petty thieves and whores. That gives me no pleasure. I want to clear the streets of the degenerate little shits who prey on the vulnerable and the weak, and leave a trail of death and destruction behind them.

“Trouble is, the only people who can stomach death in this place are the very people who are out there
causing
it, and I’m not going to grant scum like that a carte blanche. That’d lead to absolute chaos.”

Silver knows he’s right; he’s trapped in a catch-22. She hadn’t given it much thought before, but the people with the most aptitude for enrollment in the enforcement program are the same people at the very top of Maydevine’s hit list of Dodgers. Unwilling to reward their subversive behavior by placing them on the Division payroll, Maydevine is forced to corral the less well-qualified Dodgers who couldn’t even begin to know how to handle the emotional burden of execution.

Needless to say, they don’t last long. Nobody’s ever retired from the position, and nobody’s ever resigned. Instead, they just opt out of the system. Sometimes they turn up right away, having offed themselves rather conveniently in the enforcement bay. Other times, they simply go missing. Only to turn up later in the food chain, their tags recycled into the ripper trade.

Contemplating this, Silver begins to understand why Maydevine’s been so persistent with her on the topic of enforcement, and she starts to read between the lines. He’s not trying to do her a favor. This isn’t about her financial security, it’s about his sense of public duty. When it comes right down to it, he’s asking for her help.

Still trying to sell her on the position, Maydevine bolsters his sales pitch with the best evidence he has that she’s a perfect fit for the job. “The most solid Enforcer we had on the payroll was ex Hunter Division, too. Banished for aggravated assault.”

Silver remembers Maydevine mentioning a death, not too long ago.

“What happened to him?”

“Some puke shot him in the back in a bar fight.”

“Classy.”

“All the way.”

They pause to order, hoping the burgers come out smelling like Chimera, not human. The texture is different, too, and you can tell right away. Chimera meat is tougher, with more muscle and sinew.

Hardly cooked to order, the food is already waiting on a hot plate in the kitchen, and the waitress brings it immediately. In under a minute-and-a-half, most of Silver’s burger is already devoured.   

“If I do agree,” she says at last, her mouth full, “when would I have to start?”

Maydevine reaches to the seat beside him and tosses an Omega watermarked file onto the table between them. “It’s the perfect entry level job.”

Silver’s throat, along with every other muscle in her body, tenses at the thought of it, and she can feel the last bite of her burger sliding slowly all the way down into her belly. Rather tentatively, she opens the file and glances down at the first page of the enforcement order, at the Dodger’s name and photograph.

It’s a sixty-two year old woman, frail and blind in one eye.

Silver’s burger threatens to reappear on her empty plate.

“Are you joking?”

“I wanted to start you off easy.”

“Easy?!” Silver snorts, taking a quick sip of water to suppress her reflex to barf. “Easy would be a serial rapist, or a kiddy killer—not this.” She closes the file and pushes it back toward Maydevine. “What’s the worst thing she’s guilty of? Being old?”

Maydevine ignores the sarcasm. “Originally? Theft.”

“That’s it?” Silver rolls her eyes. “Gosh, off with her head, pronto, she’s a danger to society.” She pokes at the file with a ketchupy finger. “Doesn’t she exemplify the very sort of Dodger you supposedly have no interest in catching?”

“There’s more to it than that. A helluva lot more. Besides, consider the repercussions of her actions all those years ago when she was banished. She left her only son on the other side, to be raised in the foster program. He grew up under the stigma of his parents’ banishment and never knew what it was like to have a mother and father who loved him.” Maydevine can see that he has her now, even before he adds: “He never knew what it was like to be cared for.”

A tear comes to Silver’s eye. “He knows that now, doesn’t he?”

Maydevine nods. “But that’s no thanks to her. Imagine how much easier that kid’s life could have been.”

“You’re manipulating my emotions. This isn’t fair.”

“You’ll thank me later.”

“I hope you’re not counting on that.”

“Think of the son, and do it for him.”

“You think he’d want that? His own mother dead?”

“He killed his father two years ago.”

Wow.

Maydevine drops that into their conversation like a cannonball, and Silver almost chokes on the empty air in her throat.

“What?!”

“With a crow bar, in the back room of a butcher shop.” Matter-of-fact.

“Are you serious?”

“Some people deserve what they deserve.”

“Murder, though?”

“I’ve already told you, justice isn’t murder. His father was on the warrant list for sexually assaulting a minor.”

That shuts Silver’s protest right up. “His dad was a pervert?”

“I’d like to think that, in the boy’s position, you’d have done the same. I’ve no patience for anyone who fiddles with children, and he’s lucky I didn’t get to him first. I’d have made the swine suffer.”

Silver’s mind is stuck on one point. “He didn’t … I mean … not with his own kid?”

Maydevine shakes his head. “Small mercies, eh?”

Silver does feel a small swell of relief, even though it’s ridiculously misplaced. Sure, he didn’t meddle with his own child, but big deal. He meddled with others, and their scars are just as relevant.

Maydevine checks his watch. “Are you almost ready?”

Silver wishes some food would magically reappear on her plate.

“What? Now? No.”

“What’s the matter?

“It’s too soon.”