Flawless//Broken (13 page)

I walk in, but Lake lingers, staring over his shoulder at something.

“Uh, Lake?”

My voice shakes him out of it. He smiles at me and walks in. “Sorry. Zoned out.”

I can tell something is wrong, but I don’t press it. The ladies working behind the tables are pleasant, if tired-looking. Volunteers stuff my bag with oatmeal, canned beans, soups, and spaghetti. As we leave, I mentally calculate my funds - I’ve put most of what Silveria gave me into an emergency savings account, just in case I need to get out of town quick. With the remaining money, I can buy three weeks worth of meat and vegetables and still manage next month’s rent - if I’m careful. I pull out my stack of coupons I’d been clipping. I feel Lake’s head looming over my shoulder, and whirl around to see him staring at the stack.

“Goddamn, Mia.” He whistles. “You gonna use all of those?”

“Every single one,” I nod, picking up the first one, and pointing towards the correlating store in the distance. “Look! Eggs are on sale. This way!” I stride down the sidewalk, and Lake struggles to keep up.

“Jesus, Princess! Didn’t know you’d get this excited about eggs.”

“Everybody’s gottta have a hobby,” I pant as we scale the hill towards the store. “Mine is saving money.”

“The best hobby,” Lake agrees. “The most middle-aged hobby.”

I flip him off and he laughs. I load the rest of my shopping bag with eggs and vegetables, and a bit of meat. Lake helps me carry the bags back to the apartment. About halfway there, Lake freezes. His green eyes go wide, and his head rivets behind us.

“Is something wrong?”

Lake puts the shopping bags down, his voice suddenly serious. “Stay here.”

He runs down the hill and disappears down an alley.

“H-Hey!” I shout after him. “What’s wrong?” I gather the heavy bags and waddle down the hill as fast as my extra weight will let me. I know I should stay put, but he seemed genuinely disturbed. I peek around the alleyway, and freeze.

Lake’s back is to me, and he’s facing down two people - one woman, and one man. They both wear sharp, perfectly-tailored suits. Between them, the homeless man whose wallet I gave back is kneeling, his face swollen and bloody. The woman clutches a silver baton, sharp and serrated with tiny blades, and
bloodstained
. Fury starts to broil in my veins, but Lake speaks first.

“Let him go.”

The woman laughs, full and warm. “I don’t think so, Reaper. I saw him speak with our savior. He could be useful.”

“I know more about her than he does,” Lake says. “I’ll tell you about her, if you let him go.”

The woman laughs again, louder this time. Her dark hair breaks free from her sleek bun a little. “What makes you think I’ll trust you, Reaper? You’ve killed hundreds of my children, and hundreds more of my family.” She looks to the suited man, then to the homeless man. “Kill him, Vorlan.”

The suited man bares his teeth, the incisors of them unnaturally pointed - a homunculus. He reaches towards the homeless man, and I drop the bags and lunge forward.

“Stop it!”

The homunculus freezes and looks my, hunger clouding his feral gaze. The woman turns her eyes on me. She narrows them, a smile growing on her face. But before she can say anything, Lake moves like a blur from the corner of my eye. He’s in front of the homunculus in a second, a silver switchblade in his hand. The homunculus blinks, but Lake is faster - he drives the dagger into the homunculus’ forehead. He explodes in a cloud of sandy dust. The woman shrieks with rage, and brings out her bladed baton. She murmurs something through gritted teeth, and it begins to glow.

Lake looks to me, as if in slow motion. “Mia, run!”

I run, but not the way he wants me to. I grab the homeless man’s hand to yank him to safety, but he shakes his head and shoves me away. I stumble out of the alley just in time to see the homeless man shove Lake out of the alley, too. The light from the woman’s baton grows blinding in a split-second, and then explodes in a soundless shockwave that throws Lake and I to the ground. The ringing in my ears fades slowly, Lake pulling me to my feet. We both look to the alley.

The homeless man and the woman are gone. No - not gone. They’re very much there, but they’re covering the walls. A fine reddish-pink mist coats the alley walls and ground. My heart sinks into my stomach, burning like acid.

“N-No,” I whimper. “He’s -”

“Dead,” Lake finishes for me. “The Mutus woman killed him.”

“Did she…?”

“No. That was a Movematter alchemy. It teleports the user in the very center, but obliterates any organic matter around it.”

My hands are shaking. Lake grabs them.

“Mia, look at me.”

I look up at him, and he smiles grimly. “He saved you, and me. I owe him. I won’t let that be in vain. C’mon, lets get you home, before more of them come.”

***

I put the groceries away slowly, like I’m made of wood instead of flesh. Lake checks and double checks the beetle sensors around the house, and leans against the kitchen doorway when he’s done.

“How’re you holding up?” He asks.

“That man was…that man was innocent,” I pause putting away the tomato sauce. “He didn’t do anything except talk to me, and that woman killed him for it.”

Lake is quiet. I clench my fist around the can, and slam it on the counter.

“Goddamnit! Why me? Why is all this shit because of me?”

My shoulders heave with dry sobs. My tears won’t come out. Nothing but anger pours from me, even as Lake puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” I snap. He backs off quickly, and I slam the rest of the drawers and cupboards as I put things away. I slip and drop some broccoli, and somehow that tiny falter is the last straw - something in me breaks. I slide to my knees, clutching the empty plastic bag and crying.

“W-Why? Why me?”

I feel a soft, fuzzy something wind around my knee. I look up from my hands to see an orange tabby cat nuzzling me, his eyes huge and a very familiar shade of green. I look around for Lake, but all I can find of him are his clothes on the floor in a puddle, covered by his leather jacket. My heart stutters as I look back at the cat.

“L-Lake? Is that…you?”

The cat meows and rubs against my knee harder, jumping into my lap and purring with all the force of a small jetplane. I pet him, my mind racing to keep up. A person turning into a cat? It’s insane. Yet here he is, with eyes just like Lake, and Lake’s nowhere to be seen. My chest crumples with pain again, the homeless man’s expression just before he died lingering like a tattoo. I hug the cat - whether it’s Lake or not - close, and cry into his fur. I’m confused. I’m devastated. And I just want someone to tell me it’s going to be alright, but no one will. The guilt is eating me alive - a man died because of me. I stew in it, until the anger starts to emerge. Anger at the Mutus.

I didn’t kill him. They did.

I manage to pull myself together before Ellie comes home. I put Lake’s clothes in my room, and shut the cat in. He meows plaintively, and I talk to him through the door.

“You should get out of here before Ellie gets home,” I say. There’s a silence, and then Lake’s voice comes from the other side of the door.

“You sure you’re okay? Don’t need a fuzzy butt to hug anymore?”

“I’ll live,” I say.

“Alright,” I hear Lake shuffle clothes around, zippers snipping up and down. “I’m gonna report to Darius. You guys are safe from the Mutus with the beetles up, okay? So don’t stress about that.”

“Thanks, Lake.”

“Hey, no problem. It’s my job.”

“Before you go, are you really -” I swallow. “Did you really turn into a cat?”

He laughs, full and throaty. “It’s called an Alt. Short for Alternation. Real old alchemy - invented by the Egyptians. Every Reaper’s gotta do it. Trade half your soul, and you get to be whatever animal suits the rest of your soul, whenever you want. Only downside is you lose your clothes if you’re a big animal. They get shredded right up and you’re butt-ass naked unless you take ‘em off or got a spare.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, though.”

“Damn straight. I’ll talk to you later, yeah? Text me if anything’s up.”

I hear the window in my room open, then close. Ellie’s keys jingle in the doorknob a half-second after, and she comes rushing in with an armful of textbooks and a half-drunk latte.

“Hey!” Her smile is bright as she heaves the pile of books onto the kitchen counter. “How was your day?”

It was awful. Someone died in front of me, because of me.

But it’s not the first time. I’m used to pretending like everything’s okay.

I force a smile. “It was fine. I put some more resumes in at the mall. We’ll see if anyone calls me back.”

“Seriously, you should totally enroll for a class or two at USF with me! The professors are so nice, the campus is huge -”

“Hello? Earth to El? I flunked out of college once. I’m really not all that eager to do it again.”

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, I know I can’t convince you with just words. You should come see the campus, at least! Orientation is tomorrow, and I’d feel so much better with someone I know there. C’mon, please?”

She turns her huge, beautiful eyes on me, and it’s all I can do to not give in instantly. She knows how to manipulate me - she’s an expert at it after nearly nine years of being best friends. I have zero desire to try my hand at school again, but an orientation isn’t all that bad. And I could do with the distraction, after what happened today.

“Alright, fineeee.” I point at Ellie. “But no promises I’m signing up for anything, okay?”

Ellie hugs me, and hums happily as she fixes herself a salad. I, on the other hand, eat a leftover cheeseburger. I don’t have the energy to cook, or do much besides talk with Ellie about school, shower, and then collapse in bed. I’d cry more, but there’s not a single tear left in me. I’m dried up.

I stare out the window at the twinkling streetlamp, and spot an orange tabby sitting on a dumpster, staring up at my window with bright green eyes.

“Goodnight, Lake,” I whisper. I roll over and hug my pillow, sleep hitting me like a sledgehammer over my skull.

PART TEN

TEN

Chapter 10

TEN

I can barely keep up with Ellie as she zooms around USF’s campus, fueled by two espresso shots and a danish we grabbed on the way here. I follow her up and down grand flights of white stairs flanked by date palms and perfectly trimmed hedges. The crow of new and old students mixes, making me anxious. It’s been a year since I’ve been around this many people my age. I try to keep my head down, irrationally nervous some of them will recognize me as the drop-out I am.

“C’mon!” Ellie grabs my hand, leading me towards a sleek glass building laced by iron beams, the sun slanting through the glass and throwing off a blinding glare. People clutch books and bags to their chests, shuffling between classes with half-wary, half-weary looks. The smell of pencils and heavy carpet cleaner fills my nose as Ellie opens the building door for me. She shoves a brochure in my hand and looks up at the second floor.

“I really wanna catch the end of Applied Computer Science. I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes, okay?”

“I could come with you?” I offer, nerves cracking my voice as I step out of a tall, green-haired woman’s way.

“Applied. Computer. Science.” Ellie repeats. I wrinkle my nose and she laughs, patting my shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Promise. Find a bench or something.”

I flop on said bench and watch her leave. When she’s gone, my last tether to sanity leaves too, and I’m left with all my old insecurities. These kids are younger than me, smarter than me. If they aren’t younger they’re the same age, and leagues ahead of me in terms of intelligence - after all, they stayed in school. I don’t belong here. I look at the trees outside, instead. They’re lovely and huge. I forgot how dignified college campuses look - and how well-cared for they are by the groundskeepers. It’s like a work of art.

I spot an orange blur in that work of art - a tabby cat being cooed over by a group of girls under a tree, their studying completely forgotten as they pet the cat and scratch his smug little chin. I snort. I texted Lake that we’d be here today, just so he’d know. Turns out he’s still a pervert, even in cat form.

In the corner of my eye I see a flash of white-gold hair, and my every nerve goes on point. There’s no way - that can’t be who I think it was. I stand, and follow the long hall it disappeared down. People jostle me on their way to class, but I duck around them just in time to see the hair vanish into room 115.

I stand on my tiptoes to look through the door’s small window, but all I can see is a auditorium of sleepy faces as people sit in their desks, waiting for the orientation to begin. I open the door and slink into a seat behind everyone else. The teacher isn’t here yet. Was I hallucinating the hair? Darius definitely isn’t sitting with the students. A girl next to me is looking at the same brochure I have, but it’s turned to a specific page; Chemistry of the Ancients - Medieval Applications of the Chemical Process - Room 115. The professor’s name and picture are on the lower bottom. White blonde hair. Amber eyes so piercing and deep they’re like an owl’s. A face regal and handsome and deadly all at once, like a disinterested lion.

“Good morning, class,” A deep voice rumbles, and people perk up as a man in a soft, tailored brown suit walks up to the front desk.

Professor Darius Monteclaire.

“As you may know, today is orientation,” He continues. “The purpose of this is to give you a taste of each class you may or may not find interesting.”