All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(82)

Had I done it, after all? Had I broken him? Had I, to use Becca’s words, fried him?

“Dad?”

His breath still rattled in his lungs. His eyes, glassy with tears pooling in the corner, still flicked open and shut.

I stumbled to the bathroom and vomited. My hands shook as I washed them and as I brushed my teeth and as I scrubbed at my face. For a moment, that last vision lingered with me: the man and woman in the hospital, bending over something the woman cradled in her arms. If I focused on the details, if I thought about it, I knew I could make sense of it. But I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think. Because he was still out there. He was always going to be out there, lying on the floor, breathing that horrible breath, and I did that to him. I hit him with—

—the belt—

—with some psychic shit that nobody is supposed to have, that nobody is supposed to be able to do, and I’d used it on him. Jesus Christ, what kind of monster was I?

The knocks at the door were so sharp that, for half a moment, I thought they were gunshots. Then they came again, not wavering in their rhythm, and I blew water from my lips and dried my face. Using the sofa to keep me on my feet, I dragged myself to the door and opened it an inch, blocking any view of the apartment with my body.

The same sense of disorientation that had made me mistake the knocks for gunshots overwhelmed me again, and I was sure that I was looking at Becca, her head turned away from me, and only the lit tip of a cigarette showing in profile. Except this Becca had sprayed her blond hair into a perfect helmet, and this Becca wore a silk driving jacket, and this Becca wore shoes that probably cost more than everything on the block. The neon Slippers sign splashed red waves along the glossy hair, and when she turned at the sound of the door opening, the red waves rippled, and I thought of a river, and a bridge, and a—

When her eyes met mine, the connection was instant and immediate. I was deep in one of her memories, one of her worst memories. I could feel her pain, I could feel her shame, I could feel the weals rising on her back where the whip had struck over and over again. And in the memory, when her eyes came up, I recognized the man sitting on her bed, naked except for a pair of wool hiking socks that came up to his knees. This memory must have been from some time before, because the man’s hair was shorter now, although it was still dark and curly. He hadn’t acquired as many hard edges, either, but the cruelty in his face was still there. Then the memory broke, and I was back facing the girl.

“Good,” she said, taking a final drag on her cigarette. The end glowed so brightly that it rivaled the Slippers sign, and then she flicked the cigarette from her mouth and that glowing end tumbled like a falling star. “I’m tired of talking to your shit-for-brains father. You know who I am?”

How could she not hear him? How could she not hear those wheezing, rattling breaths? How could she not know, just looking at me, what had happened here? No, that was letting me off easy. How could she not know what I had done?

“Jesus, you high?” she asked.

“I know who you are.” My voice sounded like it had been dragged a hundred miles down the highway. “You work for—you worked for Lawayne.”

“Still do. You going to let me in? We need to talk.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No, you can’t—” I grabbed the denim jacket from the floor, slipped outside, and hauled the door shut. “What do you want?”

“Kid, I’m not freezing my ass off just for the pleasure of your company.” She sighed. “Fine, let’s get in the car.”

Still dazed from what had happened with Dad, overwhelmed by exhaustion and guilt, I didn’t think about what that might mean, getting in a car with a woman who worked for Lawayne. I just trailed her to the black town car and got in. She started the car and cranked up the heater.

“You aren’t cold?” she asked, when I made no movement to get comfortable.

I wasn’t. It was a strange thought. I knew I was cold, but I didn’t really feel it. Everything felt outside. Everything felt like it was floating on my skin. Everything felt like it was far off, on the other side of—

—a river—

—the world. But I chafed my hands and leaned into the vents because it was easier than answering her question.

“Lawayne got—”

“Shot,” the girl answered. “Twice.” She fixed me with a look. Before, I had always seen her from a distance, and so for the first time I got a good look at her face. She wasn’t pretty: her face was too thin, her eyes packed together at the center of her head, her nose swelling towards bulbous at the tip. She’d ditched the massive sunglasses I’d seen her wearing last time, and both eyes were surrounded by rainbow bruises. When she shifted, the cuff of her jacket rode up, and the end of what looked like a jagged cut showed. This girl had been through some kind of hell recently, but it hadn’t slowed her. Every inch of her, from her head to those pricey shoes, said she thought she was ten degrees better than you in ten different ways, and somehow, the confidence worked.

“You drove him to the hospital when Salerno went after me?”

“When Salerno went after you,” she said. “How about that?”

“What?”

“I had a few of the guys look around. After I got Lawayne safe. I figured they’d have to scrub you off the walls and then I’d send them looking for Sal. I mean, it doesn’t matter how mad the Biondi are, Lawayne can’t let Sal shoot him and get away with it. But they didn’t find your pretty blond ass splattered all over downtown. Instead, they called me and said they had Salerno looking like he’d tried to go necking with a fucking cougar. How about that, kid?”