Dollars (Dollar #2)(60)

Walking away was the only thing to do but f*ck it pissed me off.

Selix kept up closer than before, his gaze hopping over the gathered crowd. Men in tatty work clothes, women with blinking children. The public’s disapproval was readable, trying to conclude if I was the bad guy or if the man on his knees was.

Who to stop, who to question?

Luckily, deliberation was our friend, and after a few glowers, the welldoers decided to leave well alone.

We continued down the road with no harassment.

Pim trotted beside me as my stride lengthened.

My thoughts were on home—of getting on the water regardless if we weren’t due to leave for another night. I wanted the empty horizon. I wanted freedom from the slime inhabiting the earth.

Ducking through a pop-up market selling bright fabrics and pungent curries, Pim stumbled on a crumpled water bottle. Her weight landed squarely in my hand where I held her, reminding me she wasn’t physically fit to tear through the streets with no pause.

Letting her go, I jerked both hands through my hair. “Sorry.” The shakes began—the energy my body conjured to pummel that bastard into smithereens had no violent outlet so it hijacked my nervous system.

If we weren’t so close to the port, I’d order Selix to run back and grab the car, but the welcoming sight of water glittered up ahead. The urge to sprint consumed me.

Pim’s gaze fell on a shopping cart full of bronze figurines and touristy paraphernalia.

The haunted look was back in her eyes. The memory of what she’d been and what could happen again hounding her.

Screw lunch and mingling with likeminded diners. My appetite was nil. I was sure Pim felt the same.

Her fingers hovered over a small bronze lantern the size of her thumb.

The wrinkled shopkeeper smiled with capped teeth and a teal veil over her head. “It’s the genie lamp. Touch it. Rub it. Tell it your secrets.”

Pim gave me a hesitant look as if she’d been caught breaking a rule. She snatched her hand away, backing from the stall.

The shopkeeper, sensing a losing sale, held up the figurine, plucking a small wooden bound notebook below it. “This is the wishing book that comes with it. You write in your wishes and rub the lamp, and it comes true.” She leaned across her wares. “Here, take it. All your dreams for only ten dollars.”

Pimlico stepped away, keeping her head down and body wrapped low. The straightness of her spine from the past week or so together rolled, curving down and down into the question mark of her existence. I’d somehow managed to give her answers enough to trust life and not seek death. And that f*cking cocksucker had undone my hard work. I hated that she’d come face-to-face with a man who would pay an exuberant amount of money to do exactly what Alrik had done. That her faith in humanity was once again shattered because where good lived evil did too, and sometimes, it cast a shadow over everything.

I couldn’t let that bastard undo everything I’d achieved.

She was mine.

She owed me.

Her time was almost up on repaying.

Pulling out a fifty US dollar, I shoved it at the shopkeeper then scooped up the notebook and genie lamp. “Keep the change.”

The bronze token was surprisingly heavy as I strode to Pim and captured her elbow. Taking a deep breath, I ignored the heat between us, banked like a small furnace waiting for more fuel.

“Whatever happened today doesn’t matter. It’s your choice to relive or forget. I can’t do that for you.” Pressing the gift into her hands, I added, “However, perhaps I’ll be your genie. Write down your wishes, silent one. Tell me what I can do to make it right.

“Who knows what will come true.”





LIFE DIDN’T SUDDENLY change, even though my heart had.

It’d slammed back the steel lock, flooded the moat, and cranked up the drawbridge after tentatively tiptoeing into the world Elder promised I would be safe in.

For a moment, I was able to notice what others did—the sun, the wind, the shopping, the scents of a bustling city.

But then I’d been slapped in the face by rancid cruelty once again.

He wanted to buy me.

He wanted to hurt me like Alrik, Tony, and Monty.

He has tickets to the same auction I was sold at.

Bastard!

Would I never be free to just be me? To be a girl walking down a street without worry of being kidnapped and sold?

Clutching the bronze genie lamp, I glanced at the wooden book that accompanied it. A wishing book.

Don’t I already write wishes to No One?

I sat cross-legged on my bed (even though it hurt my hips) and stroked the notepad to my imaginary friend while eyeing up the wood-bound gift Elder had purchased.

You don’t write wishes, you write confessions.

There’s a difference.

Ever since the awful incident where Elder almost killed yet another man to keep me safe, then brushed off the confrontation and bought me this innocuous figurine, we hadn’t spoken. He’d marched me back to the Phantom with both him and Selix glowering at every shopper and peering into every shadow.

By the time we boarded, my nerves resembled chewed up spaghetti and Elder was no better. A grunted goodbye was all I earned before he vanished to his quarters, leaving me to dwindle off to mine.

For the past hour, I’d sat clicking my pen’s nib open and closed, open and closed, trying to decide if I should write a secret to No One or indulge in a wish to Elder.