Ember boys, p.13
Ember Boys, page 13
part #1 of Flint and Tinder Series
Waving for Emmett to go, I said, “Yes, I’d like to report a missing person.”
“One moment, please.”
A soft, jazzy version of a familiar tune I couldn’t name began to play, and I cradled the phone against my shoulder as I grabbed my keys off the nightstand. It wasn’t exactly that I didn’t trust Emmett, but he was an addict, and he had played fast and loose with the truth before. My car keys were accounted for, though, and I dropped them in a pocket as I paced. Somewhere in the motel lot, a car engine started. I padded to the door and glanced over the railing. My Impala sat in a stall below us. The doors were closed. No sign of Emmett. I checked the stairs. No sign of him there, either. And then I leaned out over the rail, checking where the lot exited onto the street. Chloe’s car was pulling out into traffic, and I recognized the spoiled son of a bitch driving the car.
Swearing, I ran back inside for socks and shoes. As I disconnected the call, I recognized the song.
Tom Petty. “Fooled Again.”
19 | EMMETT
I drove toward San Francisco; it took a hell of a lot longer than it should have. I had grown up in southern California, before my parents moved to Wyoming. I knew what traffic was like, although I was willing to admit that the years in Wyoming had made me forget just how bad it could be. But I was used to LA traffic: packed and aggressive and sometimes barely moving a mile an hour. The traffic outside San Francisco was different, a mixture of junker VW vans and high-end Teslas and every car in between. Some of the drivers wore hemp and tie-dye; some of them wore Prada. Some of them waved other cars into their lane; some of them jammed on the accelerator. After about fifteen minutes, a headache started behind the back of my eyes. I was hot and starting to sweat, and my stomach flipped and gurgled as traffic crept along. The November day was cold but not freezing, and when I finally rolled down the window, weed skunk floated into the car. In the car next to me, a woman with snow-white hair in Pippi Longstocking braids was smoking a fat one.
On my lap lay the registration for Chloe’s car. I didn’t have my phone, and I didn’t have GPS, but the address was clearly marked as San Francisco. It was the only lead I had. I crossed the bay on the 84, and then I cut north on the 101. I checked the speedometer; for some reason, Vie thought I had a lead foot, but Chloe’s beat-to-shit Camry wasn’t really a temptation. And while I didn’t think Jim had spotted the license plate, I was still worried he might call in the car as stolen, just to get me hung up. He did a lot of stupid things because of some overdeveloped protective instinct.
Ahead, San Francisco came together in swatches of color: the haze of the marine layer, the orange of the bridge, the jumbled white and gray and muted pastels. The glitter of glass on skyscrapers was sharp and clear in contrast. That glitter was a constellation of migraines waiting to happen; the sweats and headache were worse, and I knew why. I’d been gone for too long. I hadn’t gotten a fix, not even a legal one, and I needed one bad. I was not going to get high. I was past that part of my life. I didn’t do that anymore, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. This, what I was doing now, this was purely out of necessity. If I didn’t do something soon, I’d be shitting myself, literally, and I wouldn’t be able to help Chloe. That’s what this was about: helping Chloe. And I needed a fix to do it. Fortunately, I’d spent enough time around dirtbags to know how to find one.
When I got close to the city limits, I saw a sign for a 7-11. I pulled off, parked, and broke one of the hundreds—the clerk, Darrell, gave me the stink eye. I used the change to call one particular dirtbag back in Wyoming.
“Sup?”
“Ralph, it’s Emmett. I need you to find me a place to score.”
The pause that followed crackled on the cheap receiver. Then, “Bruh. I thought you, like, cut yourself up with a butcher knife and died.”
“Yeah, I’m calling from hell.”
“Sick.”
“Ralph, get a fan going, put down the bong, and pay the fuck attention. I’m in San Francisco. Find me a place to score. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”
“Homeboy.”
I groaned. I didn’t even know people still said homeboy.
“Homeboy, I went to your funeral.”
“How was it?”
“I think I cried, bruh.”
“Ten minutes, homeboy. If you don’t have a name for me, I’m going to pass the phone to the prince of darkness.”
“Not funny, homie—”
I hung up.
When I called ten minutes later, Ralph answered with, “It was Dickie Kaser’s funeral. He got hit by a tractor trailer when he was trying to pee exactly on the yellow line of I-80.”
“Ralph, my friend, you are not the criminal mastermind I remembered.”
“Fuck, man. It’s not my fault. I got these edibles in from Canada, and they’re totally blowing my mind.”
“Name, please.”
“I called a guy, and he knows a guy who knew a guy, and—”
“Ralph, I know how it works. Just give me the name.”
“Homeboy.” The tone was severe disappointment. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“I’m sorry, ok? I’m just . . . it’s bad, and I need a hit.”
“Yeah, man. Ok. That’s rough. You want Goat.”
“Come on.”
“Greatest of all time. He’s a clerk at a 76. Hold on, they gave me the address.” He read it off. “If he’s gone, though, call me back. I bet I can find somebody else.”
“Thanks, Ralph. I owe you.”
“Man, a bunch of people are asking about you. After your funeral—”
I hung up and drove to the 76. I parked in the lot, peeled off a few more hundred-dollar bills from one of the bundles I’d lifted from the banker’s box in Jim’s car, and went inside. I hadn’t eaten in I didn’t know how long, and the inside of the convenience store smelled like boiled hot dogs and cherry syrup. I passed on the dogs, but I did find a burrito under a heat lamp. I also grabbed a bottle of water, a pack of gum, and a few bags of chips. When I dumped my haul on the counter, the clerk made a face. He was probably forty, with a scraggly, graying beard and six piercings in one eyebrow. His nails, long and yellow, clicked against the counter as he slid the water, the gum, the chips, and the burrito across the scanner.
“Goat?”
He tried to look cunning and wary; instead, he just looked like he was squinting into a camera flash. “Who’s asking?”
“A friend of a friend. My buddy Ralph sent me this way.”
Goat checked a pager, an honest-to-God pager, on his belt and nodded. He kept nodding. “Cool, man. Cool.”
“I glanced around the store and spotted the security camera. “When do you get a break?”
“Nah, man. We just do it here.”
“You’re kidding me.”
He tapped the bulletproof glass. “I erase the tapes myself. Don’t even worry about it.”
“For fuck’s sake, this is so fucking stupid. Fine. I just need a pack.”
“Fifty bucks.”
“Bullshit. Twenty. Twenty-five tops.”
“Hey, kid. I don’t know you. Mars tells me you’re coming, that’s fine. But it’s fifty. That’s all I’m going to say.”
“Fucking rip off,” I said. “Fine.”
Just one, I told myself. Just one.
“What about two?” I said.
“I don’t take coupons, kid. A hundred bucks.”
Just one, I told myself. Just one.
“Better make it two.” I slid a hundred-dollar bill under the glass.
He dropped down behind the counter; I heard a zipper run, and then he slid two waxed-paper packets across the counter.
I grabbed them and shoved them in a pocket. “And this stuff.”
“Thirteen seventeen,” he said.
I took out Chloe’s vehicle registration. “Can you tell me where this address is?”
“Haight-Ashbury.”
“Cool. How do I get there?”
He made a long, hocking noise, turned, and spat.
“Isn’t there a trash can back there you can use?” I asked.
Goat was looking around, trying to see if there was a trash can.
“I just need to know general directions,” I said.
“You drive that way,” he said, one of those long, yellow nails flicking out. He grabbed a counterfeit pen and dragged it across the bill. Then he held it up and studied it.
“Ok, a little more specific.”
“Hey, man, I’m like, totally toasted right now.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Hey,” the guy said, pointing at his own face. “How’d that happen?”
“I didn’t declaw my cat,” I said.
“Bitchin’,” he said, bobbing his head as he hit his vape.
I ripped open a bag of Doritos and popped one in my mouth. Then another. When he handed me my change, I shoved it in the same pocket as the packets.
“Kid, that stuff will fuck you up. Seriously. You want to do something, do X or smoke some weed. You’re still young. No point throwing your life away.”
“So, you’re a clerk at a 76, and you’re giving me advice now?” I crunched another Dorito. “Christ, you’re as bad as Jim. I’ve got all these assholes trying to give me advice, and they can’t even get their own shit together.”
“Harsh,” the clerk said. “Who’s Jim?”
“An asshole that I seem to be cosmically stuck to.” I tapped the registration. “How do I get here?”
“101 to Octavia,” he said. “Left on Fell. Hey, my cousin’s a psychic. You want to get cosmically un-stuck, I bet she can help.”
“No chance in hell.” I gathered up my purchases and headed for the door. “A psychic got me into this mess to begin with.”
“Hey,” the clerk called after me. “Did your cat really do that to your face?”
In the car, I opened one of the packets, sprinkled the junk on the back of my hand, and snorted it. I was expecting a rush—it had been months, after all—but either my tolerance was still higher than I expected, or the shit I’d just bought was ninety-percent powdered milk. Probably both. It helped with my head, though, and I didn’t feel quite as shaky, so I kept the second packet in my pocket.
After that, the drive only took twenty minutes; on the way, I finished the burrito, the chips, and the bottle of water, and I felt better. I’d feel even better, I knew, after I got around to that little packet in my front pocket. I’d heard of Haight-Ashbury, and the mixture of ramen shops and vintage clothing boutiques and sex-positive bookstores, all crammed into that quasi-Victorian San Franciscan style, was about what I’d expected. I hadn’t been prepared for the packed sidewalks, the tourists and the natives and the homeless charging through crosswalks, and the narrow streets made even narrower with cars parked on either side. I turned on Clayton, then on Waller, then on Downey, and I watched the numbers tick past me. I spotted the apartment building that matched Chloe’s registration, and I scanned it as best I could, slowing to an idle. Then an asshole in a Tesla started laying on the horn, and I had to speed up. I drove up and down the blocks, trying to find a spot. I didn’t care about getting a ticket; if I pulled Chloe’s ass out of the fire, I figured she wouldn’t mind getting her car out of an impound lot as the price she had to pay. The problem was that I couldn’t even find a decent illegal spot to park, much less a legal one. I wove back and forth along streets and side streets until finally I groaned and made a loop back to Downey.
She had a parking sticker in the corner of her windshield. With the parking spot labeled.
I tried to cut myself some slack; I’d been in a psych ward for the last few months.
When I got to her building the second time, I pulled into the underground lot, drove down a level, and found her spot. I parked and headed for the elevator. Chloe’s keys had a fob that made the call button work, and inside the elevator I had to wave the fob again to press the button for the sixth floor, where Chloe had her apartment. I hadn’t been sure that the address was still valid; Chloe might have moved after registering the car, or she might have abandoned her apartment when she went into hiding. But the parking space had been empty, and the fob still worked. This was still her place. If I wanted to find Chloe, I needed to get my next bread crumb here. I figured I had decent odds of discovering something that might take me to the Shadow Nest, but I didn’t really need that. What I needed was information on the Solar Court. They were the ones who had taken Chloe; they were the ones I had to find.
Just thinking about it made me want to close my eyes. I sagged against the stainless-steel wall of the elevator and let my head rock back. I’d slept for shit the night before, between the fight with Jim and taking care of Jim and spending the last few hours contorted in the armchair so I wouldn’t keep touching Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim, with the freckles on his ears. Jim, who, when he wore vee necks, exposed a dusting of strawberry-blond hair high on his chest. Jim, strong enough to pick me up. Jim, gentle enough not to hurt me, not even when I made him really, really mad.
The doors dinged; I stepped off the elevator. On the wall opposite the elevator, someone had painted a halo and wings onto a mirror, so that they framed the viewer, and at the top of the glass, the words, YOU ARE THE ANGEL OF LOVE. BE LOVE. DO LOVE. GIVE LOVE. I figured I’d appreciate it more after I did a hit from that little waxed-paper packet. This floor smelled like roasting beets, an earthy, mineral smell that was like iron. I turned left and almost ran into a girl with a nose ring and a spread of piercings across the top of her chest—a row of tiny bars that made me think of playing the xylophone. She glared at me, and I slid out of her way. I kept going, and behind me, I heard the elevator doors ding again.
601 on the right. 602 on the left. 603, 605, 607. The hallway turned, and I followed it. 609. I shook out Chloe’s keys and started trying them one by one. I was on my third try when I heard a voice inside the apartment: low and angry, snapping out something I couldn’t understand. Chloe had never mentioned a boyfriend or a roommate, but then, I’d never asked. Footsteps came toward the door, and I shoved the keys in my pocket and turned to run.
Xylophone girl was standing there, a gun pointed at me. She was still glaring, and then, without letting the gun waver, she raised one foot to examine the heel of her boot.
“Hey,” I said, “whatever you think is happening here—”
The door opened behind me. I put my back to the wall so I could keep Xylophone girl in sight, but my attention went to the huge guy filling the doorway to Chloe’s apartment. He had olive-colored skin, and his head was shaved, but his most important trait was that he was built like a fucking mountain.
“What the fuck is going on?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just—”
“He has her keys,” Xylophone said.
Mountain angled his body toward me.
“Should I shoot him?” Xylophone said.
“Hold on,” I said. I made the gamble before I really had time to think about it. “I’m looking for the Shadow Nest. I’m from a Wyoming family; you may not have heard of us, but it’s true. I met Chloe, and she told me about the Nest.” The words just kept spilling out, a cobweb of spit and bullshit. “Look, she’s in trouble. I’m not trying to get in the middle of things, but I thought you needed to know. The Solars took her, and they’re going to kill her.”
The Mountain didn’t move. Xylophone set her foot back down and readied herself like she meant to take the shot.
If I gambled wrong, one part of my brain said.
If they’re Solars, another part said.
“Chloe told you about the Shadow Nest?” Mountain said.
I nodded. “I’m from a Wyoming family. That’s why she told me.”
“Bullshit,” Xylophone said.
“It’s true. We met at San Elredo, in the psych ward. We were both hiding out.” That sounded a little better than explaining that my parents had committed me there against my will. “I can tell you where the Solars caught up with her, but I don’t know where they took her after that.”
The next minute was the longest of my life. Sweat stuck the elastic band of my briefs to my back. My heart beat so fast that I felt dizzy.
Then Mountain nodded. “We’re from the Shadow Nest. I am Yiannis.” He held out a huge hand. “Come inside. Adonai will want to talk to you, and we’ll have to move fast to recover Chloe.”
My hand was greasy with sweat and burrito, but I shook with him faster than I ever had in my life. Yiannis had a crushing grip; when he released me, he took a step into the apartment and beckoned me after him. He had a huge smile—well, he had a huge everything—as he said, “I don’t know a family in Wyoming. I’m sure Adonai will be interested. Did Chloe already put you in contact with him?”
The question was strange; it took me a moment to realize why. Just a few seconds before, Yiannis had made it sound like Adonai was inside the apartment, perhaps searching for clues to where Chloe might be. Now—now the question about Adonai seemed strangely loaded.
I was tired. I was slow. I was heavy with a gas station burrito and with the outrush of adrenaline and fear. I was already shaking my head in answer to the question before I realized I’d made a mistake.
Yiannis’s eyes moved past me, and I turned to follow them. I caught a glimpse of Xylophone’s arm whipping forward a moment before the butt of the gun connected with my head.
From a distance, I heard Yiannis saying, “Make sure it looks like the Solars were here.”
20 | JIM
I drove toward San Elredo because I didn’t know what else to do. Emmett didn’t have a phone. He hadn’t told me where he was going. The whole drive back, I kept seeing it: the Camry bouncing on its suspension as he pulled out into traffic, the taillights winking, and then, just like that, gone. I kept hearing him.
You’re hurting me.
I’m in withdrawal.
I drove with my hands so tight on the wheel that the vinyl squeaked when I changed lanes. He could be scoring right now. He could be cooking in a spoon. He could have his shoelaces tied around his arm, a vein popping out. I could still see the track marks—I had counted them; he had made me count them—and right then, right at that moment, he could be sliding the needle into a vein, pressing the plunger, all the months of work and tears and trying gone.
