The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy) (7 page)

“Not now, kid,” I muttered to her. “Not now.”

SIX

The cut went from the highest point of my ear down and backward, maybe an inch long. It had sliced right through the width of my ear. If it was much longer they’d be calling me the Half-Eared Tunneler. I wiggled the outer bit back and forth in front of the bathroom mirror with sick satisfaction, bracing myself against the pain.

Son of a bitch.

It had stopped bleeding, but now it oozed clear fluid. I carefully dabbed at it with a washcloth soaked in antiseptic, cleaning away the dried blood. Maybe going to the doctor wasn’t such a dumb idea after all. The slice seemed to naturally want to spring open, leaving an empty wedge in the top of my ear.

I took a long draw from the bottle of whiskey I’d stashed under the kitchen sink and made a face at myself in the mirror.

I should have known this would happen. Well, maybe not the ear-slicing, exactly, but getting into trouble was something of a specialty. Des was right. This was no place for a guy who let his hallucinations control him. Vivian was good police; she didn’t need some fool bumbling around. Look where that had got me last winter.

At the top of my bathroom cabinet I found a set of bandages from a first aid kit I’d bought a few years back. I’d got good use out of them, and now there were barely any left. Maybe that was a sign of something.

I rolled up some gauze, pressed it against my ear, and tried to bind the slice closed with an adhesive bandage. It wasn’t pretty, but maybe it’d keep until I could find a doctor who didn’t mind working for free.

I grabbed the whiskey bottle by the neck and went to my bedroom. Unwashed clothes lay scattered across my bed, so I shoved them onto the floor. I took another slug of whiskey, letting the bitter taste burn all the way down. It didn’t help. Claudia still watched me, and I still felt like shit.

I wondered what Tania would say if she caught me here, sucking on a bottle of booze with half my ear sliced off. I’d never hear the end of it.

In an instant, self-hate spilled out of some dark corner of my soul. Look at me, a sorry excuse for a human being. Too busy blaming Tania for Tunneling on her own to consider that maybe, just maybe, I should have been doing what I promised her. She wouldn’t have to do it herself if I wasn’t so goddamn drunk all the time.

I sneered at the bottle in my hand, but it didn’t react. Why should it? It was just booze. I used to drink a bit when I was a teenager, but I was never an alcoholic, not like a couple of my foster fathers.

What the hell was I doing?

It’s just to get through the worst of it,
a little voice inside me insisted.
Just to make the nightmares go away.

Well, I was having nightmares during the day, now. Yeah, I’d killed those gangsters, and it hadn’t been pretty. But I still saw them, drunk or sober. I couldn’t hide from what I’d done. Hell, the damn TV seemed to insist on that, showing photos of the devastation I’d caused every time they talked about the Chroma Wars.

But I’d done what I had to do. People I cared about were in danger. Fuck the law, fuck doing the right thing, whatever that was. I never had a family, except the one I made myself. And if I had to sell my soul to protect them, well, it was a damn good deal.

Only, where was I now? Too sloshed to exchange more than a handful of civil words with them. Too goddamn drunk to talk to Claudia when she called. When she needed me.

My knuckles were white around the whiskey bottle. I glanced up at Claudia’s ghost.

“Whaddya reckon?” I asked.

She slowly nodded.

I went to the window, opened it. The sounds of the city washed in, a constant hubbub of noise, sirens, the chatter of humans and Vei. For better or worse, I’d changed Bluegate.

Maybe I could stand to change a little too.

“To you,” I said, holding the bottle up in Claudia’s direction. I brought the bottle to my lips, took one last swig. Then I turned back to the window and upended the bottle. The whiskey splashed through the slits in the fire escape platform and trickled down to the alley below. In a few seconds, it was done. I tossed the empty bottle onto the fire escape and breathed deep.

I was too drunk to help Claudia once. Not again. I needed a clear head for this. Well, as clear a head as a hallucinating madman can manage, I guess.

A small smile crossed Claudia’s face as I got on my knees to dig my trumpet out from under my bed. It was old and heavy with memory. I put it to my lips and started to play.

I hadn’t maintained the instrument in the last few months, not since before the Chroma Wars. I was rusty too. But the music still appeared.

I closed my eyes and let my fingers dance on the valves. It was one of the few songs we’d written ourselves. We called it “Destiny Is No Excuse”. Well, I say we wrote it, but that’s not true. Claudia was always the one with the talent.

In my head, Claudia was singing, as clear as if she’d never left. Her voice always made me shiver.

I brought the song to as clean an end as I could manage, leaving the last note hanging in the air. I opened my eyes, and Claudia was gone. Not for good, I didn’t think.

“Don’t worry, kid,” I said to the air. “I’m too dumb to give up on you.”

“Who are you talking to?” said a voice behind me.

I whirled on the spot and found Tania standing in my bedroom doorway, wearing a black-and-white summer dress and clutching a black trash bag. She frowned, staring at the trumpet in my hands.

“Uh…no one,” I said, shoving the trumpet back into its case. “I mean, you. I was talking to you. Jesus, girl, you ever give knocking a shot? It’s easy, I’ll show you how.”

“I heard you playing,” she said. She chewed on her lip. “It sounded sad.”

“Yeah, I guess it was.”

She frowned and dragged the bag across the floor toward me. “What happened to your ear?”

“Cut myself shaving.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Look, kid, about last night, I…well…you know.”

She quirked an eyebrow.

I sighed. Goddamn apologies. It’d be easier to drag my gallbladder out through my nose. “I’ll try and do better now.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” she said, shrugging.

“Hell I don’t, after the trouble I got you into.”

“I can get myself into trouble just fine, Miles.”

“Yeah? Tell that to your mother.” I scratched my head, sighed again, and stuck out my hand. “Pals?”

She grinned and took my hand. “I think you’re finally growing up.”

“Ah, knock it off. What’s in the bag?”

She tossed the bag down and pulled it open. “I have some things for you to try on.”

She pulled out three men’s shirt—pale blue, white, and gray stripes—then delved in again for some sharp-looking trousers and a pinstriped suit jacket.

“They’re my dad’s,” she said. She considered the shirts for a moment before tossing me the blue one. “He left them when Mom kicked him out. I just washed them. I thought maybe you could wear something clean tonight.”

“Tonight? What’s so special about tonight?”

She stared at me like I was an idiot. She always was a good judge of character. “The mayor’s fundraiser?”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. I don’t think I’m in a party mood, kid.”

“You’re going,” she said. “Think of all the big shots you’ll be able to rub elbows with.”

“They can go rub my—” I glanced at Tania and shut my mouth quickly. “I’m not their class of people,” I said instead.

She didn’t seem to have heard me. She clutched the socks she was inspecting to her chest. “I had a look at the organizer’s blog—”

“What the hell’s a blog?”

She rode right over the top of me. “There’s going to be some big names in the Tunneling world there. The deputy chairman of Immigration, the lead Tunneling scientist for the Bore, some people from AISOR—”

“AISOR? The Tunneling company?”

This fundraiser suddenly sounded a lot more interesting. Couldn’t hurt to stick my nose around and see what I could turn up. It wasn’t a big deal if they cut that part of me off as well; I was already a walking carving board. And for Claudia, it was the least I could do. It might even be fun.

Tania reconsidered her choice of shirt and gave me the white one. “There. Classic, and it suits you.” She rummaged through the bag. “I’ve got some ties in here somewhere.”

“I have a tie.”

“I mean one that isn’t ugly.”

I frowned and inspected my tie. What the hell was wrong with it?

“Oh, don’t pout,” she said. “I’ll tell you what. Once we’ve found the right clothes, you can spend the afternoon teaching me. I want to practice directing pre-made probability-skewing Pin Holes.”

“You drive a hard bargain, kid.” I held the shirt against myself and glanced at the mirror. “A hard bargain indeed.”

SEVEN

The mayor sent a car to pick me up at eight. That was something I never thought I’d have cause to say. The silver Audi stood out in my neighborhood like a clown at a funeral. Inside it smelled like leather cleaner. The driver, a bored-looking Vei man, had to direct me to the back seat after I tried to get in the front. I tried not to look embarrassed.

Tania’s dad’s suit was a little loose, but a belt sorted out the pants and it was warm enough for me to ditch the jacket. I had to admit, they were nice digs. The shirt was ironed and everything.

The fundraiser was something about inner-city education, as far as I could tell from the website Tania showed me on her laptop. The car dropped me off outside the Bluegate Grand Hotel, about as far from the inner-city as you could get. By the looks of the pruned and polished folks that swaggered through the front doors, not a one of them had even been within a mile of a public school, let alone attended one.

The driver passed me a slip of thick cream paper through the window. “Your invitation,” he said. I thanked him, shoved it in my pocket, and left the parking bay, careful not to make eye contact with any of the fancy people.

One look at the hotel lobby’s stained wood and vaulted ceilings was enough to make me regret my decision to come. I gave more than a few seconds to thinking of turning and bolting before someone realized I didn’t belong and had me thrown out. Unfortunately, Tania would undoubtedly hear me if I came home early; the girl could hear you thinking if you weren’t careful. But I could always go wander the streets for a few hours. Hell, maybe I could scrounge up enough cash to get a taxi to the Mercy of the Eight Hospital and pick up my bike. It’d be a more productive use of my time.

I cast a look back outside, then screwed up my hands and turned away from the door. I promised the girl I’d go. Both of the girls. A silvered old man strode past me with a woman half his age hanging off his arm. I balled up my courage and fell into step behind them.

They seemed to know where they were going. Some guy in a pompous uniform checked my invitation then pulled open a door with golden handles. I found myself in a ballroom big enough to fit my apartment building laid on its side. The floors were polished wood, the ceiling white and dangling with chandeliers. A hundred circular tables sat arranged in rows throughout the room, and between them were enough penguin suits and colored gowns to fill an Academy Awards ceremony.

All right, this was definitely not my kind of party.

The fashionable crowd was clustered into groups of eight or nine, all staring adoringly at the most useful and prestigious person in the group. Every now and then a penguin would make a break from a huddle, snag a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, and integrate himself into another collection of politely chortling suits. String music drifted from a tuxedo-clad band up on the stage. No one paid them any attention.

I stood dumbly in the doorway for a minute or two, fighting a rising panic. I didn’t count on finding any friends here. If I recalled all my general knowledge, I could pick out a couple of faces that I’d seen on the news. The chubby guy with the red bow tie was some local politician, and the lady with the bird’s nest for a hairstyle was always in the news for owning a chain of banks or something.

I gave careful consideration to each of the groups I could see, trying to find the friendliest face, and then I made my decision.

I went for the bar.

The girl behind the bar was all smiles. “What can I get you, sir?”

Sir. That was rich. Maybe it was because I was at least a good decade older than her. I scratched my head. “Gimme a Coke.”

“Are you sure, sir? It’s an open bar.”

“Nah, Coke’s fine.” I wanted a clear head for once.

I snatched a few tiny sandwiches and pastries from a waiter and shoved them in my mouth while I waited for the girl to pour my drink. Some people sneer at the tiny portions they serve at these places, but not me. Small things are easier to sneak into your pockets.

“Miles Franco,” a voice boomed from behind a group of rich white people.

I choked down a pastry, took my Coke for courage while wishing I’d ordered something stronger after all, and turned to face the oversized woman striding through the crowd toward me.

“Miss Mayor,” I said, putting on a smile. “Nice party, isn’t it?”

Mayor Juliet White could command the room’s presence with her sheer physical dimensions as much as her voice. She was pushing obese, but in the sort of way that made you think of a Mafia Don rather than a couch potato. Her platinum blond hair was pulled into a severe bun tonight. She wore a suit jacket with ’80s-style shoulder pads. The crowd made way for her—mainly because they didn’t have any choice—while a few hangers-on trailed in her wake.

She brought her bulk to a halt in front of me and stuck out her hand. “Good to see you, Franco. I wasn’t sure you’d make it. Thought you might be too jittery, eh?” She slapped me on the shoulder, spilling Coke across my hand. My muscles started aching again. “Good God, man. What happened to your ear?”

“Barber got a bit too eager,” I said.

“I’d get a new one if I were you. I heard the police have been hassling you again.”

“Ain’t nothing,” I said. “They just wanted to see if I could help them with another case.”