Page 39 of Bought for Blood

Coincidence.

A side gate opens in the yard fence ahead of me, and the kid comes out with a canvas bag over his shoulder, locking up one-handed, keys in his teeth. Twenty, twenty-two. He takes the keys out of his mouth and nods at me, easy, a workman’s courtesy at the end of a long shift.

“Evening.”

“Good evening,” I say.

He walks ahead of me toward the bridge, and everything about him filters to me on the air. The heat coming off the back of his neck. The heartbeat, slow and strong, a young heart with decades left on it. Engine oil and soap and clean sweat. Under it, the blood, healthy and full of youth.

It would be sweet.

I know exactly how sweet. I’ve drunk from a thousand of him, dockhands and footmen and soldiers on leave, and the young working ones are always the best of the ordinary run.

The street is empty. The river is thirty feet away and runs hard under the bridge this time of year. I could take him between this lamp and the next—quiet, quick—and be home before dawn. I could take all of him, if I chose, and no one would ever find enough of him to ask questions over.

I haven’t done it in a long time. That’s a choice, not a limit. It has always been in my power. It is in my power tonight. I haven’t fed in days. The thirst is there. I can feel it, dry at the back of the throat, present and accounted for.

I look at him, and I don’t want anything.

A sweet, easy, open evening’s work and I’m not interested, because he isn’t—

I stop the sentence there.

The kid reaches the bridge and goes left along the river, whistling the chorus the radio didn’t finish. I turn right.

Your standards have risen.

That’s what age does to a palate. I’ve lost interest in the ordinary. It’s the most natural thing in the world.

I walk home along the black water. Crowe can keep his month, his timeline, his ledger. Timelines belong to operations. Operations belong to the Court. My own dealings, on my own evenings, at my own price, belong to me alone.

There’s more than one way to move a single asset out of a building.

Chapter 15

Serenity

I wake up because the air in the room has changed. I’m sitting up before my eyes open, back against the headboard, the butter knife out from under the pillow and in my fist. It took a couple of days before I could sleep soundly in this bed; now I’m regretting it.

My heart slams. I pull air through my nose on instinct: radiator dust, laundered cotton, the apple core going sweet in the bin. Beneath it sits a cold, clean mineral trace.

I know that trace.

My heart bangs twice more, then starts settling before I’ve told it to.

My eyes adjust. There’s a man sitting in the chair by the window.

“You’re awake,” he says from the chair.

“Get out.” My voice cracks on it. I clear my throat.

“That’s a butter knife.”

“It’ll still take an eye.”

“It would.” He stays where he is, hands in view on the arms of the chair. “I arrived ten minutes ago. You were asleep. I was deciding whether to wake you.”

“Ten minutes.” I breathe through that. “Do all of your kind let themselves into locked bedrooms, or is it a money privilege?”