Sugar Skulls (4 page)

“I can’t tell if that’s him or not,” I manage to say before things start to go black around the edges, paper held over an open flame. Sweat gathers along my forehead.

No need to set me on fire, I’m already burning.
I always think in poetry right before keeling over.
This is it. I’m going to glitch out on my own fucking couch.

Damon gestures to one of the bodyguards to turn down the lights as he reaches out to steady me. His cool hand finds the hot spot at the base of my skull. “Hold on.”

The pressure in my head builds, and I’m already shaking. “Hurry.”

“Try to breathe through it,” he suggests, still supporting my neck, trying to keep the broken flower on its stem. With the other hand, he reaches into his breast pocket for a sleek, black case. Inside, elastic loops hold glass cylinders in place, a pharmaceutical cocktail bar on the go. Keeping one hand on me at all times, he loads up something to take the edge off.

I barely feel the injection. Barely notice as Damon picks me up and carries me upstairs to the master suite. Over his shoulder, I catch a final glimpse of Jax’s scowl, of Sasha’s enormous eyes peering over her laptop.

“Get some rest. We’ll speak again in the morning,” Damon says to me. An order, not a request. I hear him moving about the room. The sound of the dresser opening, then closing.

The bed is a soft little nest for his songbird, and I drift off into the darkness with one last thought:

This face paint is really going to fuck up the sheets.

M

I scale the last few feet of scaffolding to my cozy nook beneath the Arkcell Bridge and collapse gratefully to the floor, banged up, bloodied, and all sorts of exhausted.

My eyes immediately lock on to the bed. It’s a two-person field cot, topped with an unzipped all-weather sleeping bag. Right now, it looks like the comfiest damn thing in the world.

I rode the truck as far as I dared, trying to shake off the worst of the tranq before hitting the streets again. The hum gradually returned as I left the blackout behind, but there were a few more squirrelly landings and confidence-shaking stumbles along the way.

They’re getting smarter, but they haven’t nabbed me yet. Going on six months now . . .

Six months. Six months under the radar. Pride morphs into disbelief as I think about the months of running and hiding, of chasing down leads and following the trail. Months of scrapes that won’t heal and scars that linger. Months since the happy highs and paradise juices.

Months since Trav and Zane and Rina and . . . us.

I drag myself over to the metal security door built into the wall—a modified tool cage left over from the bridge’s construction—and unlock it, swinging the door open. Pushing aside a half-stocked tool chest, I reach for the small safe nestled in the corner of the vault. I slide my thumb over the reader and hear the two-beep confirmation. There’s a click, and I pull the handle, checking my stash of prepaids before adding Maggie’s latest contribution to the stack.

A few hundred credits. Enough to keep me going. For a little while longer.

Closing up the safe, I bust out my well-stocked first-aid kit and tend to my wounds. My shin is pretty mangled; I pick bits of filthy denim out of the gash and give it a splash of disinfectant before stitching it up and slapping on a bandage. I rewrap my hand with clean gauze, and stash the kit in its usual spot.

Crawling into bed, I close my eyes and pull Lara into my arms. Curling up with her, her body close to mine, my hands caress her, finding my favorite familiar places. My fingers instinctively brush along her neck, before stopping at just the right spot and strumming a few comforting chords. In my muzzy state, I play “Bryn’s Lullaby” for the first time in what feels like forever. For the first time since the last time. Between velvet-curtain memories and tranq-dart haziness, past and present overlap in my thoughts.

But I don’t sleep. I lie there all night with Lara cradled close, listening to the hum and dreaming of stolen moments in an alcove with that very strange girl with the deadly pipes.

CHAPTER THREE

V

When I wake up, the master suite is casket-dark. Damon must have closed all the blinds and pulled the curtains across the length of the room.

That or I’m dead.

Except I can still feel my pulse, thumping away without mercy. After that, the inventory list reads like a postbender highlight reel. If it was just a hangover, my nanotech would have taken care of it. This . . . This is residual blah from the heavy-duty tranq Damon used to keep me on-grid. Dry-mouth that tastes like something crawled in there to die. Eyelids scraping like sandpaper over eyes that roll loose in their sockets. It’s hard to breathe, but that’s just Little Dead Thing sitting on my chest. I move him to one side and reach out to flick a finger over the window controls, opening the curtains half an inch.

Uuuugh. Even that tiny amount of light is too much.

I take a minute before sitting up, only to discover I didn’t sleep in my stage gear. Damon traded the corset and beaded dress for one of the plain cotton T-shirts from the dresser. They’re V-necked and three sizes too big for me, because they’re not usually
for
me. At a glance, you expect them to smell like aftershave, except they don’t, because the ones that get borrowed go straight down the garbage chute.

Turning ever so carefully, I slide my legs out of the twisted sheet to let them dangle off the side of the bed. My legs are bare. He went through the effort of taking off my fishnets. Panties are also missing, but he’s nothing if not thorough.

Glancing at the mirrored side of the room, I see the faintest reflection of my own face. The real me, not the glammed-up stage-ready vixen. Damon must have wiped off my makeup, too. My mask stripped away, you wouldn’t recognize me on the street, which makes it easy to go out without being mobbed. Sure, the hair is pretty crazy, especially now, matted up in the back and in a wild tangle on one side, but it’s nothing a hat can’t hide. My eyes, without the black-light contacts, are darker than I remember. Brown? Hazel? I’d have to look closer, but I have no desire to get up.

In quiet moments like these, without the rest of the band, without the lights and the fans and the neon trappings, I try to remember who I am.

Except this morning, I’m just a shadow on the sheets.

I reach for the glass of water on the nightstand and hazard a sip. There’s a small pile of pills in a silver dish; I manage not to choke when I swallow them in one go. The glass makes a
clink!
when I set it back down, and that’s immediately followed by a knock at the door.

It opens a second later.

So much for the new keycode I programmed.

“You’re awake.” Damon stands in the doorway, framed by distant light. Today’s suit is gray, the shirt a soft white, the tie muted pastel stripes, like he’s trying to be considerate of my frayed optic nerves by keeping the colors quiet. Also means he left at some point to change his clothes. “How are you feeling?”

Like asscrackers.
“Fine. I’m awake. Here, and not the medcenter. That’s a good start.”

“True.” He steps into the room and closes the door behind him. Accessing the control panel on the wall, he brings the lights up only enough to navigate the room without bumping into anything. As he crosses to me, he lifts a sturdy upholstered chair from its spot against the wall and places it next to the bed. When he sits down, at least a foot or so separates us, but authority rolls off him. “Are you well enough to discuss last night?”

So we’re sticking to formality this morning. Good to know.

I fold my legs underneath me and tug at the hem of my T-shirt, thankful I don’t have to reach for the blankets just to cover up my thighs. It’s hard to swallow, so I take another sip of water. “Yeah.”

He glances back at the door. “Would you like me to ring for some tea? Coffee?”

“No,” I croak. “This is fine.”

His hand is already reaching inside his jacket for the med case. “Hair of the dog?”

Oblivion sounds good, but . . . “Not just yet.” I promise myself that the moment he leaves, I’ll run the hottest bath on the planet. Slip inside it and stay there until I’m the color of a cooked lobster.

“Tell me if you change your mind.” Instead of extracting the medical paraphernalia, he pulls out his phone and offers it to me. “Are any of these gentlemen the one you saw last night?”

I thumb through the photos, dismissing each with lightning speed until one particular blur trips my sensors. It’s an official Cyrene photo ID, and it’s definitely the guy from the club. Sure, his hair is shorter, brighter. He’s actually smiling. Blue eyes, the sort of blue that’s easier to describe as what it’s
not
than what it
is
: not an electric blue, not like the ocean, not tempered in any way by green or gray. His face is clean shaven where it had promised stubble last night. This shirt is black, too, but off-the-rack new. There’s a silver chain visible at his throat, with interlocking metal rings that are solid enough to look masculine without veering into heavy metal territory. The name at the bottom of the screen reads—

Micah.

“That’s him,” I say with a nod.

Damon doesn’t reveal any flavor of surprise as he takes his phone back. When I think about it, emotions like that aren’t really part of his range. No room, what with all the research and prep work and nonstop PR spin and damage control.

Especially that last one.

“You’re certain,” he says. It’s not a question. “Where was he?”

“Leaning against the bar.”

“Was he dealing? Circulating through the crowd, maybe taking advantage of all the new faces to pass along a few little green tabs?”

“He wasn’t doing
anything
. Just stood there, staring at me.”
With those fucking too-blue eyes of his.

“Makes sense. We didn’t find anything at Maggie’s, and none of the recruits who needed medical attention tested positive for anything illicit.” Damon doesn’t sound happy, though, and I get why when he takes the questioning in a different direction. “Was he holding something? A device maybe? Thrum-detector? Anything that struck you as odd?”

I give a shake of my head that I instantly regret. “No, nothing. Why?”

After a long moment, Damon finally answers. “Corporate’s concerned. There are certain parties that would be more than happy to see the new thrum-collectors tank and the entire project declared a failure. Everything we’ve worked for, flushed away. All of the people in that file are suspect because they’ve left Cyrene and can’t be tracked down out-of-city.”

“Spies?” It’s hard not to laugh, but his expression strongly suggests that I suppress my amusement. “You think people are sneaking into Cyrene to steal . . . what, exactly? Technology? Like scientific espionage?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says, deadly serious. “So tell me anything else you remember about him.”

“Just that I knew something was wrong the minute we launched into the first song and he didn’t move.” I twitch with the memory of Micah’s stillness. “I pushed it as hard as I could, trying to get a response from him—”

“And overloaded the grid.” Damon leans back in the chair, steepling his fingers, looking merely contemplative as though we’re discussing something far less worrisome than an energy malfunction of holy-fuck proportions.

A malfunction I triggered by acting like a grade-A diva. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Vee,” Damon says as he stands up. It’s the first time he’s used my name in a month. “Could’ve been just the reaction he was hoping for. But it was an excellent test of our emergency response teams, plus Sasha copied the recording for me last night. It’s already available for download and racking up some serious sales numbers.”

After another long moment that I don’t even attempt to fill with a response, he adds, “Just don’t do it again.”

M

My little slice of privacy shudders under the onslaught of the morning commute. Horns become the roars of tamed beasts lumbering on the bridge overhead. I imagine great mechanical monsters stalking the city instead of the glorified go-karts and fuel-efficient delivery trucks I know are actually there.

I sit up too quickly and my body aches in protest, still pissed at me after last night’s unexpected workout. Before anything else, I slip Lara back into her case and zip her up tight and secure her in my makeshift vault. Locked away all cozy and pristine, she’s my one indulgence among prepaids, bandages, and protein bars to keep me going.

Now standing, for better or for worse, I hop from one foot to the other, testing things out. No twinges, no pain, no soreness beyond my shin.
Good. Didn’t tweak anything on the fly.
My usual runs are good exercise, but I rarely have anyone in hot pursuit.

I can hear the patter of rain against the tarp running the length of the warren, masking it from unwelcome eyes and holding the elements at bay. Without it and the safety rail that anchors it in place, there’s nothing between me and a sheer drop to the rocks below. The digital microfiber camouflage plastic is a welcome change of pace from the stone and concrete that surround me on three sides, plus above and below. Add a lamp, a few storage bins, and you’ve got yourself a certified hermit’s retreat, or a low-rent prison cell.

Closing my eyes, I try to lose myself in the percussion of the rain, but lurking behind it, the hum is back in full force. Rain or shine, day or night, it’s always there, an omnipresent sign that phantom power flows across Cyrene. The hum seems to climb in register whenever I stare at those glass-globe emitters that top every building and dot every landmark. On the Mixolydian scale, it’s an F. Not piercing, but unnerving. Your hair should stand on end when you hear it. Mine did, before I got used to it.

No one else notices it; it was one of the first things I asked Maggie about when I came back to Cyrene, but she’d never heard anyone mention it. My own personal white noise, I guess. Every waking moment alight with energy-turned-hum, as if the entire city is trying to find the perfect word, a magic word with powers beyond imagining.

I ditch my club clothes, tossing my button-down onto the heap bound for the laundromat. One leg shredded, my jeans are a no-go, so they’re relegated to the everyday-wear pile. I gear up for the day’s errands, grabbing boxers, track pants, T-shirt, and socks. Lacing up my sneakers and tossing on my hoodie, I close my eyes, listening to the staccato of the raindrops.
Rain is good. Won’t be suspicious to have my hood up.

Flipping up the fragments of canvas that cover my strategically placed peepholes—see-through black netting from an old tent—I ensure the coast is clear before climbing down and hitting the street.

Time to get moving. Lose myself in the job. Shake off thoughts of greyfaces and sugar skulls.

First stop: the drop site on Wynn Avenue, to nab any return parcels for Maggie.

I do runs for the Hellcat a few times a week as an off-the-books courier. Sometimes it’s just information, supplies, or cash runs, but most of the time, it’s thumb drives loaded up with the latest songs and classics alike, anything you can’t get in-city. Over-the-Wall music, like over-the-Wall booze, is pure. Unmodified. Everything in Cyrene is engineered to maximize thrum production, so naturally, there’s a healthy market for so-called connoisseurs, audiophiles, and anyone else looking to buck the system with minor indulgences. Maggie’s hookup ensures new tunes to complement Cyrene’s newest pharmaceutical delights. The job keeps me in essentials and gives me a convenient excuse to explore some of the darker corners of the city.

I keep my pace slow on the main streets, a casual jog, nothing that might draw attention, nothing out of place amid the bustle of business-as-usual. I kick on the afterburners along the side streets to make up some time. With that bullshit dose of tranq out of my system, I’m light as vapor and smooth like liquid mercury.

Halfway down Wynn, I stop in front of a maroon door, otherwise unmarked, and double-tap the nearby grate with my foot. One shrill buzz later, the door swings open. A small brown parcel waits patiently on the floor for me. I snap it up and tuck it under my shirt.

Normally, I’d take the long way down the Jobalign, through the business district, and loop back around to Hellcat Maggie’s, but after the near catastrophe last night, I better keep my distance and do some recon first.

Doubling back down the street, I head for Sidri’s Place. The dive bar to end all dive bars, Sidri’s is the last refuge of the jelly-kneed and frazzle-brained. Every bad trip ends here, every neon junkie booted from the clubs stumbles through these doors.

It’s a pit. They don’t even have the Cyrano network here, so you better have a prepaid on you.

It’s the only place in Cyrene dodgy enough to make me wish my nanotech still worked. It’s also the only place where you can get the sweet and lowdown in two minutes flat for the price of a single stimshot.

One of the locals, a slack-jawed tweaker named Prozzen, fills me in. “Word on the street is, the greyfaces buttoned the club up tight. Right after the blackout hit. Cleared everyone out. Hellcat Maggie’s is closed.”

Since he’s a little more awake after his stimshot, I try for more info. “Hey, have you seen Ludo around here? Elfin-looking kid with too many piercings?”

Prozzen shakes his head, harder than he intended, based on his pained reaction. “No, man. If I see him, should I let him know you’re looking for him?”

I decline his offer. “He knows I’m looking. That’s why he’s ducking me. See ya, Proz.”

With Maggie’s shuttered for the time being, my only move is to swing by her apartment and see where things stand.

On my way out of Sidri’s, a riot of color catches my eye, and I pump the brakes.

It’s her.
Her.

Front and center once again. Decked out in full Sugar Skull splendor . . . and very little else. Treble and Trouble are there, too, with tresses dressed and faces painted, and a brain-incinerating amount of flesh on display. Strategic hand-placement prevents all the secrets from showing, but the tangle of supple limbs and desperately touchable skin is more than enough. The splashes and smears of body paint, meant to evoke lingering touches by bandmates, are highlighted by colored extensions in their hair, and practically glow against the empty black background.