Equal Parts (9 page)

“…Discovered by the Channel Eight helicopter during its traffic report flight,” said the newsreader, a picture of a word I couldn’t quite make out behind her, “and is believed to be the work of serial murderer and wanted criminal, Achilles, who escaped from the Carova Base Hospital late last week, and is yet to be identified across town.”

The photo expanded into a short video clip, starting in the news helicopter and looking down onto Carova’s inner suburbs. A few seconds into the report, a series of letters suddenly lit up the city landscape, running across at least six building rooftops. They appeared to be written in gasoline and fire, judging from the way the flame remained controlled.

Cole: 3PM Monday, our wedding chapel. Xox.

My breath caught in my throat, something between a laugh and a yelp emerging from me. Why in the world did I find that
funny
? I had to be sick. Like, psychologically sick. I’d been around Achilles for too long – his dark sense of humor was starting to sink into my bones.

“And the search is still underway for waitress Felicity Eastwood,” noted the newsreader, a photo of
me
flashing up behind her now. “The nineteen-year-old went missing from the corner of Grevillia and Taylor Street last Wednesday. The police are treating the disappearance as suspicious, and are currently asking for any information from witnesses and friends of Miss Eastwood alike. Now on to sports…”

My photo disappeared. I clutched the sofa’s arm so hard I split some of the suede with my nails. To be honest, I was surprised anyone had actually noticed I’d gone missing at all. Lucia would have, of course, and my boss probably would have called the cops when I failed to show for my shift five days in a row. Had anyone told my parents?

Achilles didn’t return after I watched my fourth film of the day, or when my dinner was delivered to me (cold pasta and another can of soda), or even after I’d climbed back into the bed, hoping he wouldn’t be back until I’d fallen asleep.

I didn’t know how long I slept, but it mustn’t have been long, because when the bedroom door burst open, I was conscious enough to grab the alarm clock beside me to use as a weapon.

Soft lighting illuminated the room as the motion-sensor lamp by the door flicked on, and I sat up, clock in hand, not quite believing what I was seeing.

A girl – she had to be around my age, with yellow hair and orange skin – stumbled towards the bed, her arms threaded around Achilles’s neck. The stench of alcohol wafted into the room behind them, and I made some kind of choking noise, alerting them to my presence.

“Who’s that?” slurred the blonde, blinking at me rather stupidly. Or maybe I was being unfair. Alcohol made everyone stupid, after all, not just her.

“Ah, shit,” groaned Achilles, alarming me even more. Was he … no … he couldn’t be …
drunk
? His face-paint was still intact, but he looked distinctly … off. 

“Are you joining in?” giggled the girl, clawing up the bed towards me.

I jumped out of there as though spiders had started flooding the sheets. An inexplicably dirty feeling washed through me, as though I’d just witnessed something I could never unsee. “Leaving, leaving. Have fun,” I said quickly, rushing for the door.

“Flick –” started Achilles, but I snapped the door shut on whatever he was about to say, and all but sprinted out onto the balcony of the apartment, dragging a blanket and pillow from the couch with me.

I’d rather sleep outside than anywhere near … whatever the hell that was. She had to be a prostitute, right? No woman in her right mind would willingly sleep with someone like Achilles. Well, maybe she
wasn’t
in her right mind – maybe he’d busted her out of an asylum, or something. Maybe she was his girlfriend. I didn’t know anything about his personal life, after all. For all I knew, he had a wife and six kids somewhere in the city.

An uneasy weight settled in my gut, and I had no idea why.

Well, she was wearing clothes three sizes too small for her, so that had to mean she’d come from a club somewhere. I’d heard rumors Achilles frequented a club on the
south side
– Firestorm – but I suppose he could’ve picked her up from anywhere. Again, an uneasiness that wasn’t at all to do with concern for the girl twinged in me.

I hated Achilles. Right?

Yeah
, I told myself hastily.
You just don’t want to see him hurt someone, even if it is a slutty, drunk girl
.

Of course. That had to be it.

Then why did I feel so …
weird
about him being in there with that girl?

“Don’t even go there,” I mumbled. Drawing the blanket tighter around me, I tried to find a comfortable position on the wooden planks of the balcony. The chill of the night air wasn’t particularly unwelcome – it had been days since I’d seen the outside world, and I was going to make the most of it while I could.

The wrought-iron bars boxing the balcony showed the hustle and bustle of the streets below, even at this hour. I briefly considered what would happen if I called down to one of the passersby. No doubt one of Achilles’s thugs would drag me back inside and I’d be cooped up indoors for the rest of my stay here, however long that would be.

Besides, what would I say? ‘Help! I’m only half-unwillingly being held hostage! I could escape if I really wanted to, but I can’t work up the courage to just do it!’? It sounded crazy enough in my mind, let alone aloud.

Sighing in defeat, I curled up closer to the iron bars, wondering how long it would be before I could go inside without risking overhearing things I didn’t really want to overhear. Was this a nightly occurrence? Should I have been prepared for this kind of thing? Achilles had never struck me as a player – mostly because thinking of him outside his villainous pastimes made me feel weird – but then, there were thousands of girls gunning for Finn Cole and his superhero friends; who was to say there weren’t similar numbers for the villains of this city?

Eventually the sky blackened out completely, not a single star in sight, and the peak hour traffic died down to an infrequent horn blast or squeal of tires. The cold began to seep into my bones. Shivers shook me, but I refused to move from my spot. If I caught pneumonia, it was Achilles’s fault.

What had to be hours later, I heard giggles fill the living room. Again, I found myself wondering how bad it would be if I simply jumped from the balcony, seeing as they’d moved their party to the room right behind me.

“But why can’t I stay?” whined the blonde girl – still drunk, by the sound of it. I hoped for her sake that wasn’t the way her normal voice sounded.

I scooted to the shadows of the balcony, watching the area through the gap between curtain and wall. Achilles looked impeccable as usual. No smudged face-paint, no bed-head, no indication that anything had occurred in that bedroom. Aside from the fact he was buttoning his shirt.

Why the hell did I suddenly blush?

“That other girl gets to stay,” added the girl, pouting rather unattractively. I winced.

“She’s the exception. Now get out,” said Achilles. It wasn’t said angrily, or even coldly. Just … matter-of-factly.

Huffing, the blonde rolled her eyes and bounced out the door, slamming it behind her. I heard the catcalls of the henchmen on duty and almost snorted. Just a friendly reminder of why sometimes it was good not to be affected by alcohol.

Achilles looked around the room as soon as the door closed, clearly searching for me. Shrugging, I turned back to the city skyline, hooking my legs over the edge of the balcony. Let him worry that I’d somehow slipped through his clutches. It was the only surge of satisfaction I’d had in a while.

“You know the sofa is a fold-out, right?” asked a familiar voice from the now-open doorway. I didn’t turn around.

“I did, actually. Don’t you think it’s a bit strange for someone like you to have a
fold-out
?” I avoided the question at hand:
why aren’t you asleep inside?
No way I was discussing my mixed up feelings, not ever.

“
Someone like me
, darling? I think I’m insulted,” he mock-gasped, and slid into the spot next to me, dangling his feet over the edge in the same fashion. “And you know the saying – a good host is always ready for guests.”

I raised my eyebrows, still not meeting his gaze. “You’re a good host now, are you?”

He shrugged, and his shoulder brushed mine. “You aren’t dead. I’d consider that good hosting.”

Well, he had a point. Another sigh, and I leaned my forehead against the cool metal bars in front of me. The city was so close, but so far. Hell, my apartment building was almost visible from here – wherever ‘here’ was. It was my own cowardice – and something I wasn’t quite able to name – that prevented me from running for it.

While the silence lingered, I slid a sly glance at the boy – guy … man … whatever he was – beside me. My cheeks instantly lit up when I saw his shirt was still unbuttoned, leaving rope after rope of cinnamon-tinted muscle on casual display.

I whipped my eyes back to front-and-center before I did something extraordinarily stupid, like drool.

Hey, ‘appreciation’ doesn’t equate to ‘personal interest’, right?

“Is this going to be a nightly routine?” asked Achilles, breaking my shameful train-of-thought.

“I don’t plan on sleeping out here every night, if that’s what you’re asking.” I finally met his eyes. Yep, still had the black contacts in. In the darkness, it almost seemed like he had no eyes at all, just hollow sockets. If anything was to put me off my drooling, that was it. “Unless you plan on doing the rough-and-tumble every night, in which case, you might as well drag the sofa out here for me now.”

“
Rough-and-tumble
?” he repeated with a definite smirk. “Are you suddenly a character from a nineteen-twenties silent film?”

I returned the smirk, hating how easy it was to be sucked into
conversation
with him. “You know what I mean.”

He didn’t respond for so long, I thought I’d never get an answer. Which was fine by me – the less detail, the better.

“I didn’t take you for a…” I hesitated. The smirk transformed into a grin.

“You can say it, Flick. You’re among friends here.”

“A manwhore,” I finished.

He clutched at his heart, as though wounded by my words. “Youch! I sleep with one girl and you’re blacklisting me for it? You know, if our roles were reversed, and I was calling
you
out, I’d be facing an hour-long tirade on the double-standards of men, feminism rules, and all that crap.”

The alcohol had definitely soaked into his system – he would never have rambled so much to me otherwise. I didn’t mind it, but the fact that I was sitting beside a half-drunken megalomaniac, alone, in the dead of night, didn’t ease my conscience.

“I saw your message for Finn on the news, by the way.” I changed the subject, deciding he wasn’t going to reveal anything about himself to me just yet. Even drunk, he was adept at keeping his personality under lock and key.

“Did you like it?” he asked with another grin, buttoning his shirt
the rest of the way
, which I was definitely
not
a tiny bit disappointed about.

“Well, it didn’t kill anyone, so I suppose that’s a start. What’s ‘our wedding chapel’?” I asked.

He grinned. “Where
Finnian and I
first met. I was naive enough to try and strike up banter with him. I think I’ve had better banter with
you
, and you’re not even my enemy.”

Then what am I?

“What do you want with Finn?”

“The usual – setting an unachievable demand in return for something he wants.  It’s fun to watch him squirm, but sometimes it’s like trying to provoke a sloth. He’s so boring. I honestly don’t know what you see in him, Flick.”

“I don’t see
anything
in him,” I said heatedly.

“Just teasing, darling. Your severe lack of escape attempts so far proves you’re not exactly eager to get back to the real world, am I right?”

He got to his feet, leaving me to blink and gape up at him, like a fish out of water. There it was – the truth, laid out in front of me in a single sentence. “Why isn’t your face-paint smudged?” I asked in a high-pitched vo
ice, hoping yet another subject
change would work in my favor.

A smirk told me he knew he was right, but he let it drop, thank God. “Why would it be smudged?”

He held out a hand and I latched onto it without so much as a second’s hesitation. I’m sure he noted that, too, as he pulled me up to his height. “Well … you were with that girl … so I just assumed…”

“First rule of living with me, darling?
Assume nothing
.” Those ebony eyes turned to the city skyline. “And as for the paint, nobody touches my face.”

“Ever?”

“Ever,” he stressed. “Do you have any idea how long this artwork takes me of a morning? The day I let a one night stand ruin it is the day I reassess my mental state.” Flicking his eyes back to me, he suddenly stepped even closer into my personal space, filling the air around me with the smoky, citrusy smell he carried with him. “Does it bother you – the paint?”