“He didn’t come home.”
“Was your friend expecting you?”
He wasn’t, but I didn’t want to say that. I felt my face getting red. The cop sighed. He looked like he felt sorry for me.
“Okay,” he said. “What’s your friend’s name?”
“Nico.”
“Last name?”
“Wachalowski,” I said. “Agent Nico Wachalowski.”
He raised his eyebrows, and I could tell he didn’t believe me.
“Hold on.” He leaned back into the car and I saw the computer screen light up his face. He fiddled with it for a while and said something into his radio.
I looked back at the apartment building. His window was still dark. He said if I ever needed to talk to him I could, and I just needed to talk to him. I should have left when I saw he wasn’t there, but I figured I’d wait a few minutes, and then, somewhere along the line, it turned into longer than that. I didn’t even think about the security cameras. If he saw a recording of me standing out there, he’d think I was some kind of stalker or something.
The cop leaned over again. The expression on his face was a little different.
“How do you know Agent Wachalowski?” he asked.
“I work with him sometimes.”
“Doing what?”
“It’s classified.”
He looked tired. “Lady—”
“I really do work with him sometimes. Look,” I said, fishing out my contractor’s badge. It had my picture on it. He looked between the picture and me for a minute.
“Look, ma’am, it’s late. Other people live here besides just your friend, and I can’t have you just hanging around watching the place from across the street because then I have to check it out. You get me?”
I shrugged.
“If you don’t clear out, I’m going to have to come back and ask him about it directly. Is that going to be okay with you?”
My face got even hotter. He got that pity look again.
“Ma’am, come on. It’s raining out—”
I focused on him and everything got bright around me. The raindrops looked crisp and sharp, like little pieces of ice, as they dripped off the edge of the umbrella between us. The lights came up around his head and I eased them back, smoothing them down until they were all a calm, deep blue.
“Sleep,” I told him. His eyelids drooped.
“Can you hear me?” I asked. He nodded, barely moving his head.
“Did anyone call this in or did security just see me on the camera?”
“Just the camera.”
“Go back and tell whoever sent you that you checked it out and it was nothing. It was just a woman waiting for her friend, but she got tired of waiting and left. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“You have better things to do than check out stuff like this. You should get back to doing real police work.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
The colors faded and the light dimmed back down again. The cop looked out of it for a second and then his eyes cleared. He picked up his radio and spoke into it.
“This is car seven-oh-one.”
“She checks out. It’s nothing.”
“Copy that.” He switched off.
“Be careful out there,” I told him. He nodded.
“You too, ma’am.”
The window went back up and he drove away. I watched him go until his taillights got lost with all the rest; then I figured I’d better get going. At that point, it seemed like it would be worse if Nico actually did come home and found me.
I made my way back to the subway entrance, and the closer I got, the more crowded it got. A few blocks away I saw the first dealer, or maybe prostitute. There was more and more neon until between the cars and traffic lights and signs, it was nothing but squiggles of bright color. It took the edge off the rain, but there were too many people. I found the stairs and made my way down into the tunnel.
Once I was through the turnstile I started to smell food and coffee. I followed a row of stands selling anything and everything, and headed for the platform. The whole area smelled like a mixture of meat, bread, and spices. Places like those stayed open all night.
The next row of stands sold drinks, with all the same variety: one sold beer, the next one sold absinthe, the next whiskey. One sold sake. I slowed down and stopped for a minute.
Stopping something you’ve done forever is hard, especially something like drinking. Even if you take away the shakes and the sweating and just the physical need to do it, there’s still this other part that’s almost harder to let go. It’s hard not to do what you’ve always done. I couldn’t remember a time I lived in the city when I passed by a row of those stands and didn’t have a drink. Even if I was already drunk and even if I had a bottle in my hand, I always stopped. I just always did. Now I had to just walk by, and so far I’d managed, but every time I did, I wondered how much longer I’d make it.
I wondered where he was and what he was doing. I wondered if he knew that I thought about him, or if I was just invisible to him like I was to everyone else. I wondered if he’d met someone, and if that wasn’t why he had drifted off like he had lately.
The sake stand was run by an old Asian guy who kept a little TV mounted in back of the little bar. He filled the little ceramic glasses in front of the people sitting there, steam rising off the tops of each one while the TV flickered. I could smell it from where I was standing.
The nights were too long now. I stayed in my apartment as long as I could, but I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to go down and bug Karen but she’d gotten back together with that asshole and I could hear her down there with him.
I stared at the big ceramic jug in front of the Asian man, and the steam coming out of its spout. I wanted to talk to Nico. I wanted …
A hand touched my shoulder and I jumped. When I turned, I saw a woman, about my size with straight black hair and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a red rain poncho with a wool hat, and around her neck was the tattoo of a snake. It went all the way around, until it swallowed its own tail. Its red eye stared from over her jugular.
She pinched my shoulder and my arm locked up as she turned me around so we were face-to-face. One second she wasn’t there and the next she was, right up in front of me. She was looking right at me.
Without thinking, I focused on her and everything went bright, but only for a second. In that second, I saw the colors come up around her and something else, a band of white that circled her head like a halo. As soon as I saw it, it was gone. The lights went back to normal and it was just her, standing there staring right into my eyes. Her lips curled just a little bit.
My breath caught in my throat. I’d first seen a halo like that after I got kidnapped. I’d seen it down in the cages, where there were others like me. This weird woman was like me.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I just wanted to say hello.”
Her hand moved away from my shoulder and my arm came unstuck. I looked around to see if anyone else thought what was happening was weird, but no one was paying any attention to us. When I looked back at her she was still staring at me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Penny,” she said. She had this calm, quiet voice that was a little creepy.
“What do you want?”
