Sign Here(34)

PEYOTE





“THIS’LL BE FUN!” CAL said through the last bite of her vending machine sandwich.

Even with my steel stomach, her file had been hard to read. I had to skim some of the details about the barracks in New Mexico, the only place she ever called home. About the General, her father, and what he did to build his army of God. Her childhood had nothing of the usual variety: no sleepovers, no team sports, no school. Every day was spent with a rotating cast of stolen or susceptible boys, training for combat, for survival, for the Almighty End. Her old man watched every fight from the sidelines, fingers steepled. He never moved, never grinned or grimaced. Never reached for her, in victory or the bloody otherwise.

As I watched her eat, I thought of the time she crawled on hands and knees to pluck her teeth from the dirt of the arena. She tossed the two front ones over the barrack’s barbed-wire fence— their permanent replacements would grow in soon enough. But she kept the molar, burying it deep in the pocket of her coveralls. For the next week, she spent hours after lights out jamming that molar back into place, rolled-up slivers of grip tape refusing the wet socket of her jaw, until she gave up and began swallowing her stewed meat whole.

“I’m glad one of us is excited.”

Cal crushed her plastic sandwich wrapper into a ball, trapping crumbs and stringy edges of sliced ham, and launched it into the trash.

“Pey, you need to get the fuck over yourself. This whole wound-licking routine is boring. We’re going to be working together; that much is clear. And I want to learn. So can we please just make the best of it?”

I sighed.

She was right. I was being pathetic, holding my hurt feelings like baby field mice, blind and velvet soft. If working with Cal could get me to the Sixth Floor, to the Looking Glass, it was worth it. I didn’t have to like her, and I certainly didn’t have to trust her, but I did have to get the fuck over myself. Calamity Ganon belonged in Hell. That wasn’t debatable. But at one time, she had her own feelings, her own field mice, exposed and thumbtack-small. And when she held them out, they were crushed in her palms.

“Yeah, okay. You’re right. Let’s do this. But we’re just working together. No beers or hanging out or anything.”

“You’re such a prude.”

“First lesson: don’t talk shit to your teacher.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Not to mention, now I had the upper hand. I had information on her. Even worse than that, I had pity.

That, I knew, would crush her.

“So, tell me about your marks. Who are you looking at?” I asked, pulling out my pencil case. She opened her notebook.

“After the incident in Illinois, I was thinking it would be good to track events like that, see if I could catch some Spec Ones. So I set an alert for any kind of gun violence. But that was way too much; my computer almost crashed. So I scaled it back to mass shootings of ten or more, and added natural disasters. I got a few hits after a fire got out of control in California, but I haven’t seen much else.” She clicked through her pens as she spoke, putting the useless ones in a pile.

“You should expand that search to include anticipated natural disasters. After a disaster, a lot of people are too focused on meeting immediate needs to think of making a deal. Most folks will reach out right before the thing happens. Anxiety about the future is excellent for our line of work.”

Cal clicked the sixth pen and started writing.

“That’s great. You’re already helping!”

“Have you tracked any Spec Threes? You would be good at Threes.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re good at telling people what they want to hear.”

Cal flashed a bright smile. “Thanks, Pey! You’re good at things too.”

“The best place to get Threes is in big cities,” I continued. “Look for high-powered jobs, or people with ridiculous amounts of money. Especially those who come from it. You want to find the people who confuse deserving a good life with being handed one.”

Cal pulled a sheet of paper from her notebook.

“How about this guy? He’s a politician somewhere in Asia—I’ve always been shit at geography. He was supposed to use the taxes he demanded on the schools and roads, but he funneled them into his own accounts. The people are starting to revolt, and he’s out of options. He’s almost ready to make the call.”

I fingered the edge of the page as I glanced over it.

“Cal, think about it. Why would this guy be a waste of your time?”

She stuffed the sheet back in her notebook, her face flushing all the way to her ears.

I could get used to this teaching thing.

“Look at all the fucked-up things he’s done,” I said. “We don’t make deals for souls that are already ours.”

“But what about redemption?”

I laughed.

“Are you seriously telling me one wrong step and we’re all fucked?”

“This guy is about six thousand wrong steps beyond one, Cal.”

She pulled a strand of hair loose from her ponytail and threaded it through her fingers.

“I guess the romantic in me just wants to believe people can always turn it around, you know? If they want to.”

I had gotten cocky in my understanding of Calamity Ganon. I looked at her now and couldn’t find the seam in her sincerity. I couldn’t prove it false, even though it must’ve been. There was nothing romantic about her.