“So that was you being noble?” Anna said. “That was you taking a hit for us? Laytham, you are so full of shit. I have never met anyone as afraid of letting someone inside them, of pain, of loss. You are selfish, and you’re scared, and that’s why you invent ways to keep everyone who loves you away. It wasn’t about us, it was about you. It’s always about you. You hide from everyone, and you lie to everyone, yourself most of all.” I raised my lighter and prepared to flick it. “You light up that cigarette in here,” she said, “and I will put it out in your eye.” I put the lighter and the cigarette away.
“Where’s Lauren, Anna?” I asked. Anna sighed and shook her head.
“Do you know how long it took her to get over you?” she said. “Her kind feel everything more intensely; they don’t have the bullshit filters we humans build up from birth. Every day for her is the first day: every emotion is the first emotion, the only emotion. She defended you when everyone else thought you had lost your mind, had gone dirty, she never once considered that. And you never even had the courage, the decency, to say good-bye.”
“Where, Anna? Please, I’m trying to—”
“I’m sure whatever it is it will sound terribly noble,” she interrupted. “But that’s not you anymore. That hasn’t been you in a very long time.” I waited, and I took it, every word, let them burn me like brands, let them unchain every ugly monster in my head, because I deserved it, I deserved a lot worse. Finally, she said, “The roof, she’s on the roof.”
“Thank you, Anna,” I said. “You may not remember this, but I did try to warn you, both of you. I told you what I am from the beginning. I’m sorry I hurt you and Lauren, I truly am.”
“I believe you, Laytham,” Anna said, walking past me, reaching for the door back to her sub. “I just didn’t believe you back then. I had faith in you. Please don’t hurt her again.” She walked through the door and closed it behind her.
The cargo elevator to the roof had been refurbished like the rest of the Hard Limit, so now it was more like a moving parlor with a love seat and shaded lamps in the elevator. They hadn’t changed my code from the days when I lived here with Anna and Dragon. I punched it into the keypad, and the elevator obeyed and carried me past the private living quarters and up to the observation deck on the roof. I stepped out of the cool interior into the heat of the L.A. night. The darkness was sticky, like hot tar, and all the dying animal noises of the city shouted at me as I left the womb of the elevator. Dragon was there, one hand and one booted foot propped on the observation deck’s rail. She didn’t turn; she just kept looking out into the gray haze of the counterfeit day the city brandished to keep shadows at bay.
“You’re getting old,” Dragon said. “I could hear the dust creaking in your joints as you came up in the elevator, and you reek of those cigarettes, that poison you enjoy so much. I could smell you coming from a mile away.”
“You, of all people, are not going to jump my ass about smoking,” I said, sliding my cigarette from earlier back to my lips.
That dry noise in the back of her throat, which passed for a chuckle. “Still have your sense of humor, I see,” she said. A jet of brilliant orange flame lanced out from the shadows that clung to Dragon and lit the tip of my smoke.
“Thanks,” I said.
Lauren Hawthorne regarded me as ash-gray smoke trailed from her thin lips and nostrils. She exhaled it, but she had no cigarette in hand. She was five-ten and had a light build that had always made me think of tumblers or jugglers and Robert Plant in the seventies with no shirt, strutting across the stage. Rock and cock, baby, rock and cock. She always had been thin, as long as I had known her, which was over thirty years.
Her hair was dark brown with some gray, thick and straight, falling to the middle of her back and covering her trim breasts. She had a scar on her upper lip, which made her look like she had perhaps been born with a cleft palate. That was the usual story Lauren gave for the scar, but the truth was, as best as Lauren could recollect, it was a memento of a tussle back in the tenth century with an enchanted blade that almost took her face off.
Her eyes were brown and could be warm, overflowing with love and compassion, or darken when full of wrath and fury. Few got to see past those eyes to the secret country that existed within, and fewer still had ever seen those brown eyes suddenly vein with burning gold, as Lauren shook off her mortal guise. She wore a faded T-shirt with the logo of the band Clutch, a well-worn pair of jeans, slightly flared at the feet, and Dr. Martens boots. On the streets, in the Life, they called her Dragon, and she had a fearsome rep, every bit as dangerous as mine. We had been a deadly pairing, she and I. She had been my partner, my lover, and my best friend. Now I was given access to none of it; the brown eyes were a wall, the wall reserved for strangers and skells.
“I figured you’d turn up when you heard,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I played it straight. Never give anyone a solid idea of what you know or don’t know. “Have you seen Anna?” she asked, walking away from the edge of the roof, striding toward me. “You
