Sign Here(57)

“Comes with the territory.”

She groaned and rolled her own bottle across her forehead.

“It’s so fucking hot!”

She was right; the weather had been warmer than usual. My T-shirt clung to the damp gutter of my spine.

“We’ll go on some deals up north tomorrow,” I said. “I’ve got my eye on some Twos in Iceland.”

“It’s hard to even breathe.”

Cal twisted her hair on top of her head and pressed the bottle to the back of her neck.

“What’s wrong with you today?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s always miserably hot, except for when it’s miserably cold. I’ve never heard you complain before.”

But when I caught her eye, I was the one who burned.

“Did you know that I can fieldstrip an automatic rifle in thirty seconds?”

I shook my head. I didn’t, not exactly.

“Well, I can. I’ve never met anyone faster; my dad hadn’t either. Not back then, at least. I can do it blindfolded. I can do it with two doses of Tuinal in my system. I can do it with three dozen trained soldiers bearing down on my position in my fucking sleep.”

“That’s . . . impressive.”

“I’m also fluent in Russian, German, and French. Did you know that?”

She started pacing, her hair coming loose down her back.

“That doesn’t matter much here.”

“Well, it mattered on Earth,” she spat. “It mattered a whole lot. I was making weapon deals for my dad by the time I was nine.”

“What’s your point?”

“What’s my point?”

She turned to face me with enough force that I felt drops of sweat hit my lips. There was something ferocious in the way she held her shoulders. Like her body was regressing into its original, animal state.

“My point is that even with all of that knowledge, all of those accomplishments, here I am, twirling my hair because I still need some dick-dripping idiot to help me. You’d think the afterlife would be past all that sexist bullshit. And yet, here we are. Even in Hell, legitimate skills pale against the power of tits.”

She leaned against the wall next to me, her forehead and forearms pressed into the drywall as if she were in upright, rapturous prayer. I thought about reaching out to touch her, but I didn’t want to prove her point. As it was, I didn’t know which side of her argument I landed on.

“At least you have the power of tits.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hey, I—”

“No, seriously,” she growled, grabbing my face with one pinched hand. “Fuck you if you mean that. I would trade in everything about being a woman if it meant I could be taken seriously. If I looked like Trey—horror, even if I looked like you—I would be running this fucking place. I am so much smarter and stronger than any man I have ever met, and yet still, if I want to get what I want, I have to act like a baby deer in the woods. Do you know what I used to do to baby deer in the woods, Pey?”

Her grip was so tight, there was a good chance I would fail if I tried to yank free. But if I didn’t, it could be considered a joke we had going together. A bit.

I stayed still.

“I’m sure nothing good.”

“It’s so fucking insulting,” she said, letting me go. “I am so many steps ahead of you—all of you. I’m at the end of the maze; I have been forever. And yet I can’t get out without your goddamn key. A key you didn’t do jack shit to earn, a key you were just handed by chance. So I have to go back and take your slimy-ass hand—not yours, Pey; I’m talking about men in general—but it’s bullshit.”

Cal put her head in her hands, and I regretted the sarcasm, because she was right. I had been around long enough to see what she was saying, but I had never really thought about it. I had seen a lot of terrible people over the millennia, but I didn’t know anyone like Cal. I was lucky to have her on my team. And it had nothing at all to do with her tits.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning to face her. “Truly. Men are assholes.”

“And then with the platitudes,” she said, pushing her hands through her hair.

“Seriously. You’re way smarter than me. I don’t even know what that word means, ‘platitudes.’ Some kind of animal?”

Cal laughed, whether in pity or actual amusement I couldn’t tell.

“You’re not the worst,” she said, her hand landing briefly on my arm.

“You are, for implying Trey is better looking than me.”

She shrugged and stood up. “I just wish—when I hear men like you, like Trey, complaining about life in Hell, I just wish you’d realize that, just like above ground, Hell is not the same for you as it is for me. Even here, you have it better than you think.”

I swallowed and said nothing. There was nothing for me to say.

That was when she made her second big mistake.

She held the silence.

I imagine she purposely let it go on, to give my shame more time to sink in. But she underestimated me. Or, perhaps, overestimated. Because shame didn’t really interest me, but something she’d said did. And when she stayed silent, I had time to notice.

“Why do you remember that?”