We’d ridden back to the hotel in stony silence, Gretchen’s pique with me obvious just by the set of her lovely jaw. It was only after we were alone, Tai retiring to the spare bedroom for some much needed shut-eye, that the movie star deigned to speak to me again.
“Everyone dies, Gretchen.” I looked up from my place on the couch, my armor in my lap as I lightly oiled the leather straps.
“Yeah, but soon. I’m going to die soon.” On the other sofa, she sat with her feet curled beneath her, her legs bare in a pair of tiny shorts, but the rest of her almost lost in the huge sweatshirt she’d thrown on. A man’s shirt, that much was certain. Dante’s, if I had to guess. “You said it’s all going to be over by New Year’s.”
How to answer that? If Mystic Cindy was to be believed, Gretchen had just over twenty-four hours to live. New Year’s Eve was fast approaching. The thing was, I didn’t trust Cindy any more than I trusted Axel. Neither were what I’d call a reliable source. “The ancient samurai believed that death wasn’t a thing to be feared. It wasn’t the dying that was important, it was how you died.”
“Do you believe all that?” She sat forward a little, watching as I worked with my mail armor. “The whole samurai bit?”
“Yes, I do.” Since she seemed so interested, I shifted my position so she could see what I was doing, laying the piece out flat. “These are chausses. They cover my legs when I fight.”
She reached out to touch the tiny links of chain. “So if you think that dying is nothing to be feared, why do you wear armor?”
I chuckled. “Just because I’m not afraid of it doesn’t mean I wanna jump into it. Besides, there are worse things than dying.” Excruciating pain came to mind. Picking your own intestines up out of the dirt. Things like that.
Her curious hands went next to the rest of my gear, poking through the pile of supple metal. “How does this all work?”
“You want me to put it on and show you?” Honestly, giving an armor how-to was much preferable to debating mortality. When she nodded, I got up, laying all the pieces out flat so I could get them on correctly. “First, the padding. ’Cause this stuff is heavy, and the links pinch when they move.” Getting chain mail caught in leg or chest hair? Like I said. Excruciating pain.
The padding part of my armor was easy to get into. It was the rest of it that required long hours of practice. Gretchen watched me for a few moments, then got up to help with the buckles. “So you have a handler that helps you get into this stuff for a fight, right?”
That made me laugh a little. Yes, I had a companion along for most of my fights. Usually my buddy Will. But he was there mostly to put the pieces of me back together at the end, rather than dress me at the beginning. “Normally, I’m on my own for this part.” On my own save for my client, often standing in the dark in some deserted location. Waiting for the fitful scent of sulfur on the wind. “But yeah, I have buddies who help out when they can. My best friends.” Well, singular now. Just Will. It was hard to remember to remove Marty from the list.
I held my arms up parallel to the ground while Gretchen worked on the buckles down my sides. “It’s good to have friends. Sometimes, one good friend can make all the difference.”
“Like Dante?”
She smiled a little, still fumbling with the thick leather straps on my armor. “Yeah. He’s the one person in the world I trust above all else. He’s my best friend.”
“Tai said you grew up together?”
“Mhmm. His mom lived next door to us. She’d watch me and my sister sometimes, when Mom had to work. We’ve always been inseparable. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him.”
“What about all those other people? The ones at the party, the ones you waved to at the movie lot. Aren’t they your friends too?”
“They’re just…people I see sometimes. If I drop dead tomorrow, most of them will show up at my funeral just to be seen by the cameras, and then they’ll never think of me again.”
“That’s a bit grim, isn’t it? No, here…that attaches to my belt.” I could have buckled everything on myself faster, but I didn’t think this was all about her seeing me in my armor. She needed to talk, apparently, and this was her excuse.
We got the chausses settled, and I slipped my burned-out bracers back on just for the full effect. I bounced a bit on my toes, jingling as the mail settled into its proper place. Gretchen stepped back to look me up and down, lips pursed thoughtfully.
“Isn’t that stuff heavy?”
“Yup. That’s why I work out to be strong enough to carry it.”
“I can’t imagine being able to move in it, let alone fight.” A ghost of a smile flashed across her face, but it was gone in a heartbeat. “You think I’m a bad person, don’t you? Because of these.” She reached over her shoulder where her shirt had drooped to bare skin, her fingers no doubt touching the upper edges of the iridescent soul tattoos on her back.
“I…I don’t agree with it.” There, that sounded tactful. “I don’t know that I’m really in a position to judge who is ‘bad’ or not.”
“They weren’t always good people themselves, y’know. I mean, what kind of guy offers his soul up to bang a girl thirty years younger than him? A guy with a wife and kids at home…” Before I could answer her, she went on. “I know that doesn’t make it right. You were gonna say that, right?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Just…in the beginning, at first, I thought they maybe really cared for me. I used to think I was in love. But I wasn’t, and they definitely weren’t. They got bragging rights or whatever, and I got their souls.” She kept feeling over her shoulder for the tattoos, her eyes distant.
“Can you feel them? I mean, do you know they’re there?” I’d been dying to ask that since I got here.
“Sometimes. The newer they are, the more I’m aware of it. Then after a while, I just get used to it again, and I
