Lila slowly turned and walked back to her nonbulance, like a girl in the 1950s trying to fix her posture by walking around with a book on her head. She tried not to think about the sharp, hooked beak that could have her ear off quicker than a straight razor. Or the talons that could slash through skin and muscle with next to no effort.
“Is there a plan besides ‘make a distraction and then get the hell out of the way’?”
The bird screamed what Lila took to be “No.”
“Right in my ear? That struck you as a good idea?”
She got another shriek for her pains.
* * *
Crashing through the huge windows of the Reflections Dance Academy was so easy she couldn’t believe it. TV told the truth for a change! Truly a wondrous day.
She unbuckled her seat belt (thank you, George Cayley!) and hopped out of her nonbulance, fully prepared to—well, she didn’t know what she was prepared to do, that depended on what was happening, and what was happening was that Garsea and Berne and Oz were whaling the fuck out of three men she’d never seen before. One of them was punching Berne and yelling about how his shirt was ruined, and Berne was acting like he couldn’t even feel the hits, like he was being assaulted by a jar of marshmallow fluff. Uptight marshmallow fluff. Like he was waiting for the other guy to just knock it off already, so he could really go to work.
She heard gunfire and instinctively flinched, saw that Annette’s guy had gotten one off but missed her, tried to step back to get a better shot (not a great close-up weapon…that’s why God made knives), only to have the raptor swoop in and rake her talons across his face, blinding him in a slash and a flurry of feathers. Lila hadn’t known men could shriek so high.
And then there were people everywhere, pouring in from where she’d driven through the front of the building like they’d been waiting for a signal—was she the signal?—and more coming from behind—the back entrance?—and she had no idea what to do because she could no longer see Oz, much less rescue him, and that was the point, that he was in trouble and needed her, except maybe he didn’t, so this was now a piss-poor place to be and she had just decided to take cover in her nonbulance when a man in a turtleneck spotted her and just went crazy, spotted her and started toward her and screamed at her
“Who brought a fucking Stable into this?”
and then his gun was coming up but so was hers and she shot him and then she threw up.
Chapter 55
“Lila!” Oz stopped rearranging Mock’s facial bone structure and ran to her. He didn’t spare a glance at Turtleneck, who was on his back and clutching his chest and being the least aggravating he’d been all day. “What the hell are you doing here, Jesus, are you okay?”
She was leaning against her nonbulance, wiped her mouth, and took a couple of shaky steps forward. He caught her, steadied her, hugged her. She pulled back to look at him and he’d never seen a sweeter sight, not ever.
“I never shot anybody before. Just targets and pop cans and mailboxes I was mad at.”
“You did it like a champ.”
“Any other week,” she said tearfully, “this would have seemed super weird.”
“What are you doing here? For all you knew, you were driving right into danger!” He heard himself and rephrased. “You did drive right into danger.”
She blinked, surprised by his tone. “Well, yeah. I mean, I assumed I was in danger. And acted accordingly.”
“What?”
“Sure. That’s my default. You haven’t noticed this? House fires, gun-toting racists, shopping on Black Friday…always in danger means always prepared.”
“How the hell did you even— Nadia.”
“Yeah. After I shot Harry Harriss—”
“What?”
“—she called and I suggested she use my help.”
(Nadia later relayed Lila’s exact words with no small amount of glee: “Faulkner, let me help or I’ll make a fucking nuisance of myself the likes of which you’ve never seen. Also I didn’t send you all of the footage of Garsea’s B&E. You missed the part with the sprinklers. If you want it, you know what you must do.”)
“I fucking love you.”
She sniffled into his shoulder. “You don’t know me. But we can fix that. We just need to go on at least fifteen more not-dates. Sixteen, if you don’t count Meritage. No,” she said as he put a finger under her chin, tipped her head up so he could look into the lovely eyes she hid behind plain glass frames because she was weird and sneaky. “Don’t you dare try to kiss me. I just threw up.”
“Later,” he promised.
“Agreed. Who are all these people?”
“Reinforcements.”
“And who’d I shoot?”
“Someone who’s fine with killing every Stable he sees.”
“And who’s that?”
“Judge Gomph.” He understood her astonishment. The judge was in his early sixties, went about three hundred pounds, and was well over six feet tall. He was standing clear of the skirmishes, observing like a benevolent/merciless god (depending on whose side you were on), and it was impossible not to look at him, even in the midst of the mess.
Gomph had dark brown skin and small, bright brown eyes. His wide, kind face was creased with wrinkles; his hands were catcher’s mitts. Nadia had once observed that he was so broad, he looked like someone had thrown a judge’s robe over a mahogany table. Like most juvie judges, he was overworked, underpaid, adored cubs, and ate too much fast food. When Annette had stumbled onto the Sindicate, his first concern had been Caro and Dev’s safety, then Annette’s, and he’d backed everything she did—even the stuff he didn’t find out about until later.
Judge Gomph was the reason Annette hadn’t been arrested for manslaughter, never mind tried. Even now, Oz wasn’t sure how far his influence reached; he was simply grateful for it, given that he’d done some manslaughtering himself when he
