Well, the feeling was definitely mutual.
“Actually, before I forget, Finn said that he left his coat in the back of the restaurant,” Jo-Jo said. “He asked me to bring it to him. Gin, can you go get it for me, please?”
“Sure.”
I pushed through the double doors and went into the back.
It took me longer to find the coat than it should have, but then again, I didn’t know why it was in one of the walk-in freezers to start with. Maybe Finn had been in there making out with one of the college-age waitresses. You’d think those girls were old enough to know better, but they all giggled whenever they saw Finn. I didn’t know why.
I grabbed his coat, which was cold and crusted with ice, and headed toward the front of the restaurant— “You don’t approve of what Fletcher is doing with Gin,”
I heard Jo-Jo say.
I froze, my hand against one of the double doors. One good push, and it would swing wide open, and I could step into the storefront with the sisters. But instead, I found myself leaving it shut and peering through the small round window set into the top.
Jo-Jo and Sophia stood in the middle of the restaurant in the same position as before. Even though I knew that I didn’t have to hide from the dwarves, I remained perfectly still. An old habit from living on the streets and trying to make myself as invisible as possible to all of the big, bad people out there.
“Why don’t you like the thought of him training her?”
Jo-Jo asked, even though Sophia hadn’t answered her first question yet. “He just wants to teach her how to defend herself. The way he taught you.”
Silence.
“Too young,” Sophia finally said in her eerie, broken voice. “Too innocent. Too soft.”
Soft? Too soft? I seethed. I wasn’t soft. Not anymore. Not since my family had been murdered, and especially not since I’d been living on the streets. I’d seen things, donethings, that couldn’t be unseen or undone. Like eating garbage ona regular basis, scrounging through Dumpsters for enough newspapers to stay warm at night, and running away from the vampire pimps so they wouldn’t try to force me to be oneof their girls. So if there was one thing that I was not, it was soft.“Well, I guess we’ll see,” Jo-Jo said. “Now, where is Ginwith Finn’s jacket—”
“Right here,” I said, finally pushing through the doors tothe other side.
I handed Jo-Jo the coat.
“Thank you, darling. I’ll see you two at home.” Jo-Jo winked at me, then left.
I turned to Sophia, but she’d already disappeared back into the bathroom to finish cleaning. Of course she had. Anything would be better than having to talk to me.
I had started to go back over to the counter and eat another cookie when the bell over the door chimed again. Jo-Jo must have forgotten something.
But it wasn’t Jo-Jo. Instead, a skinny blond kid whose height suggested he was about my age hurried into the restaurant and ducked down behind one of the booths. He stayed like that for a few seconds before slowly rising, peering over the table, and staring through the windows and out into the street.
“Can I, uh, help you?” I asked.
He whirled around at the sound of my voice, and that’s when I saw all the blood on him. His face looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. Every part of it from his chin to his cheeks to his forehead was bruised and puffy. Both of his lips were split open and dripping blood all over the floor that Sophia had just mopped. A pair of glasses clung to hisnose, although the frames were bent out of shape, probably by whoever’s fist had plowed into his face so many times. But perhaps worst of all, several red, angry burns dotted his neck, as though someone had lit a whole pack of cigarettes and then stubbed them out one by one on his skin there. More cigarette burns marred his thin arms, but those looked older, since they had already scarred over.
Sophia had heard the bell too and stepped into the storefront. She saw the kid and frowned. “Sorry. Closed—”
The kid whipped his head in her direction. Sophia blinked, as surprised by his battered face as I had been.
“Please don’t kick me out!” he said, scrambling to his feet.
“You gotta help me! They’re after me!”
“Who?” she asked.
“Two giants,” the kid said, his blue eyes wide and frightened behind his glasses. “All I did was pick their pockets while they were smoking in the alley. I swear. And only because
I needed some money for food. They only had, like, twenty bucks on them, but one of the giants chased and grabbed me anyway. He would have put my eyes out with his stupid cigarettes, if I hadn’t kneed him in the balls and taken off.
He didn’t care about the money. Not really. He just wanted to hurt me. You know? They both did. Please, please, just let me hide in here a few minutes.”
Sophia stared at the kid, taking in his bruised face, the blood dribbling down his chin, and the old tattered clothes that covered his body. Her gaze lingered on the burns on his neck. Her lips flattened out into a hard, thin line, and a spark of anger burned in her black eyes.
“Okay,” she rasped.
He blinked. “Okay?”
She nodded. “You’re safe here.”
She reached out and gently put a hand on the kid’s scrawny shoulder. He was so thin that his collarbone jutted up against the top of his ratty T-shirt. The kid flinched at
Sophia’s touch, and her mouth turned down, as though she were suddenly sad for some reason.
“Gin, get a cloth. Clean up.”
I knew that it was for the kid, to wash the blood off his face, but I eyed the dwarf, wondering at the sudden change in her. I’d never seen Sophia go from being so gruff to so angry to so sad before, all in the matter of a minute.
But I went into the back, got a clean dish rag, and wet it with warm water. By the time I returned, Sophia had sat the kid down at one of the tables and had put the rest of the sugar cookies on a plate for him to eat, and he was gulping them down as fast as he could. Annoyance spurted through me, but he looked like he could use the calories more than I could, so I shrugged it off. Besides, I knew exactly what it felt like to be that hungry.
I handed Sophia the rag, and she managed to get the kid to stop eating cookies long enough for her to start wiping off his face. Once again, I stared at Sophia, amazed at how tender she was being and the care she took in dealing with him. She certainly wasn’t that gentle with me whenever she picked me up and moved me out of her way. Then again, I didn’t look like I’d just had my face run through the bottom of a blender either.
“More,” she said a minute later, holding the dirty rag to me.
The kid used the lull to stuff another cookie into his mouth.
I rolled my eyes at her command, but I took the dirty rag, went into the back, exchanged it for a new, clean one, and soaked it with warm water. I had started to push through the double doors to step back out into the storefront when the bell over the front door chimed—and two giants burst into the restaurant.
“There he is!” one of the men screamed, stabbing his finger at the boy. “You dirty little thief!”
Sophia surged up onto her feet, stepping in front of the kid and trying to protect him, but the first giant was in a rage, and he rammed right into her, driving her all the way across the restaurant and back up against the counter.
