The Arrivals (20 page)

Jack shrugged.

Ajani returned his attention to Chloe. “You liked it. Everyone does. I can get it for you too, Chloe. You could have that and so much more.”

The very mention of unfettered access to Verrot made her hands curl into fists at her sides. She wondered if it was addictive, if she’d crave it, if she could enjoy it without consequences. It still coursed through her body, a longer high than anything she’d known in her life, but at the moment it was causing her to feel a lingering hum, not the all-encompassing rush she’d felt when she ran through the desert with Jack.

Her face flushed at the memory of kissing Jack. If Jack hadn’t put a stop to what was happening, she’d have been naked in the desert with him. Very carefully, she didn’t look at him or at anyone else. Let Ajani think she was flushing because they were talking about Verrot. She licked her lips before saying, “It sounds like you’re trying to bribe me.”

Ajani laughed a little, but even in this he was controlled. “No. I’m trying to entice you to choose a better life.”

“And they’re all letting you do it, although it seems pretty obvious that they don’t like you.” Chloe looked over at Edgar, who was the most murderous looking of the group; Kitty was a close second. Jack was the only one who seemed relatively calm about the whole thing.

Then Chloe added, “Here’s the thing, Ajani: I don’t know you or them or much of anything. All I can say for certain is that I’m not making any decisions today other than whether to sleep first or eat first. Later, you’re welcome to convince me or bribe me, and they’re free to spin tales of your flaws. Right now I don’t care.”

For a moment she thought he might press to continue the discussion, or that the others would. Jack tensed as Ajani looked to his servants, but despite the spike in tension, no one did more than glare.

After several seconds, Ajani stepped away and bowed. “Until another day, then, Chloe.” He looked at Kitty and bowed to her as well. “Miss Reed . . . Jackson. Cordova.”

Then he returned to his sedan chair, and Chloe watched as he and his servants left. Theirs was a strange, slow procession through the town compared to the bloedzuigers’ and cynanthropes’ impossible speeds.

Once he was several buildings away, Kitty turned to Chloe. “You don’t have to trust us, Chloe. It’s good to be suspicious, but I’ll tell you that there are a few truths you’ll learn in the Wasteland. One of the ones I figured out well over two decades ago is that trusting Ajani is deadly. He might not look like a monster, but he’s the one thing in this world I would call unredeemably evil.”

Chloe tried to weigh her answer carefully. Kitty had nursed her, and the group had been nothing but kind to her. “I’m not inclined to believe him, but like I said, right now I need to rest.”

After a terse nod, Kitty and Edgar went inside the Gulch House, leaving Chloe outside with Jack. He leaned against the wall, and she stepped a little closer to him so she didn’t have to raise her voice to be heard.

“Rest?” His tone was doubtful, and his gaze was fixed on the departing sedan chair rather than on her.

She didn’t reply.

“Verrot isn’t usually as strong as what we had last night or yesterday or whatever day that really was, but unless you’re used to it, the odds of sleep this soon after taking it aren’t good. And after taking Verrot
that
strong . . . ?” Jack turned his head and gave her a wry smile.

Chloe nodded. “I don’t know that I could sleep, but a little downtime would be good.”

“Alone or with company?”

More than a few times in her life, Chloe had made drink-influenced choices that, luckily, hadn’t resulted in anything worse than hazy memories. She was lucky that she’d avoided sexually transmitted diseases or assault. When she’d gotten sober she’d promised herself not to end up in situations where drinks influenced her decisions. She didn’t think Jack posed any kind of
physical
threat, but he had the potential to be a very bad decision of another sort.

“I don’t know you, or much about this world,” she hedged.

“True.” Jack motioned toward the tavern. “If you want some of those questions answered, I’m willing to answer them. Hector hired out a few rooms.”

Chloe glanced at Ajani’s increasingly distant figure and then at Jack. “Is that what you meant? Just talking?”

The look Jack gave her spoke more clearly than words. “You seem a lot more clearheaded now than you were in the desert.”

“Enough so that I’m not going into a room with just the two of us.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she wondered if she’d offended him. She was on the verge of clarifying that it wasn’t that she thought ill of him at all when he stepped closer to her.

“Sometimes all I want is to have a few hours when I don’t have to think about monsters, including Ajani, or wonder why we all ended up here,” Jack said in a low voice. The dangerous undertone that she’d heard in his voice earlier was nowhere to be heard now, but what was there instead—raw honesty—was even more tempting.

“I get it,” Chloe admitted. She’d lost herself in various ways over the years. Unfortunately, bottles and bodies only delayed fears; they didn’t provide answers. At the same time she couldn’t shake that sense of instinctual protectiveness she’d felt in the street. She liked Jackson Reed, trusted him more than she could explain, and she wanted to spend time with him. Maybe it was a latent cowboy fixation or just a response to the way he looked. Regardless of the reason, she wanted to find out more about him, but she wasn’t about to let herself tumble into bed that easily, so she gave him the only answer she could just then.

“Talking would be good.”

Chapter 24

S
eeing Ajani always made Kitty feel like her last reserve of goodwill was going to vanish. By nature, she wasn’t a violent woman; she took no pleasure in the things she’d had to do to survive. Sometimes, she thought that was at the core of her issues with her brother: he saw their unnatural state of undying as a call to action, a greater purpose in life. She still wanted the same life she had wanted back in California, a home and family. Unfortunately, to have that here would mean turning her back on her brother—the only family she had—so she fought at Jack’s side. None of it meant she found any joy in killing.

But she was quite certain that she
would
take joy in killing Ajani. The way he looked at her made her feel like something slimy was falling onto her skin; he brought back memories of the sort of men who walked into the Swinging Door Saloon back home. Then, she’d hoped that they wouldn’t turn their eye her way. Men like him were why she had kept a tiny pistol tucked into her corset and a pair of sheathed knives hidden under her skirts. Being alone with Ajani was one of her only personal terrors. Aside from her fear of losing Edgar or Jack, it was her single greatest fear—and Edgar knew it.

He stood beside her in the darkened tavern. “I’d kill him if there was any way that he’d actually stay dead.”

She wasn’t going to lie and say that she was okay with Ajani’s attention. As she’d stood outside, she’d thought back on Daniel’s warning, and she wondered if she
should
share it with Edgar. Something different hovered at the edges of Ajani’s standard flattery and taunts. It unsettled her.

When she and Edgar reached the tiny alcove under the steps, she paused. Quickly, before she could remind herself that it was a bad idea, she pulled Edgar to her and kissed him. She meant it to be a simple kiss, a thank-you-for-understanding-the-words-I-don’t-say kiss, but he pulled her closer. One of his hands splayed across the small of her back, holding her to him, and she realized that her arms were wrapped around his neck. She melted into the kiss with a body memory of how right this was and a sliver of desperation at the realization that it had been so long since she’d been in his arms.

When he pulled away, she wished she could retreat to the distance she’d insisted on imposing between them during the past year, but she couldn’t. She was wrapped around him, and he was staring at her like she was his universe. Even though they were in a tavern, they were sheltered from view. Half desperately, she wished they weren’t, as if a bystander could ever help her find the self-control that threatened to vanish in the next heartbeat.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she stepped out of his embrace. “I shouldn’t—”

He kissed her softly, a quick affectionate brush of lips, and then said, “Liar.”

She turned away so he couldn’t see her expression. “It was a mistake.”

Instead of answering, he kissed the back of her neck. When she didn’t tell him to stop, he began tracing the bone lines of her corset with his fingers. Both blouse and corset were between his skin and hers, but she still felt like there were lines of fire where he touched.

She leaned back, knowing that he’d close the scant gap between them. “I can’t survive you dying again,” she told him in a shaky voice.

He didn’t bother trying to argue with her, to chastise her for what they both knew was fear and foolishness. He held her still with a hand on her hip. Then he lifted the other hand to thread his fingers into her hair and tilt her head to the side. As he kissed and nipped her throat, he slid the hand on her ribs between her breasts and to the side. “I’m alive. You’re alive with me. This”—he bit lightly on her pulse—“and this”—he pressed his hand over her heart—“are racing. That’s your heart, Kit. Do you feel it?”

She pressed back against him. “I feel something.”

He half laughed, half growled. “You see? We’re both alive.”

Instead of answering, Kitty turned in his arms and kissed him again. This, the freedom of being in his arms, of his lips against her, of his body pressed to her . . . this was what made life worth living. “You don’t argue fair.”

“Wasn’t arguing.” He put an arm around her and started walking. “I love you. You love me. You’ll come around, or . . .” He let his words fade.

They ascended several steps without his completing his sentence. Kitty waited, but Edgar said nothing more.

By the time they reached the second floor, she prompted, “Or what?”

His expression as he looked at her was one of confusion, as if he had no idea what she meant.

With a little huff of irritation, she started up the next flight of stairs. Midway up, she stopped and asked, “You said I’d ‘come around or,’ but then you stopped. So what’s the ‘or’?”

“There isn’t one.” Edgar gave her a cocky grin, the sort he’d once used when he’d first arrived in the Wasteland and decided to seduce her. Back then, she’d been so determined to be able to bed down with a man with no complications that she’d deign to see Edgar only when she felt like it. She’d taken up with Daniel, both to prove that she could and to convince herself that she wasn’t in love with Edgar. In the process, she’d destroyed her friendship with Daniel, but it had still done nothing to discourage Edgar. He’d ignored every rule she’d imposed with a steadfast determination that she didn’t know how to resist, and after a couple of years, she’d stopped pretending they were casual. When she’d pushed him away a little over a year ago, she was surprised that he agreed.

After a moment of trying to ignore her curiosity, she gave in and asked, “What changed?”

“One of us has to be reasonable, Kit.”

“Reasonable?”

“Reasonable,” he repeated as they stepped onto the third-floor landing.

As they started down the narrow hallway, she didn’t reply.

Hector had dragged a woven cactus-wood chair into the hallway. He sat with the chair tipped back on two legs, one boot-clad foot propped on the railing. His arms were marked with dried blood, as were his trousers and shirt. A short-barreled shotgun rested in his lap, and one of his omnipresent knives was being tossed into the air.

“Ajani’s gone,” Edgar told him.

“Figured.” Hector nodded, catching the knife.

Kitty forced herself to focus on business for a moment rather than shove Edgar into a room and explain that she was, in fact, perfectly reasonable. She thought about her decision in regard to him, and concluded that just because she’d given in and kissed him now and again but hadn’t gone any further didn’t mean she had stopped being reasonable. Admittedly, she sometimes looked for excuses to kiss him, and she’d been watching him more and more lately. That was inevitable: they had years of history. It was only to be expected that she’d have trouble keeping her resolve. She tapped her foot impatiently, and then caught herself when Edgar and Hector both gave her a surprised look.

With a wide grin, Hector tossed the knife again and caught it before prompting, “So are you two—”

“No,” Kitty snapped.

“That explains the mood.” He shot Edgar a sympathetic look. “Sorry, man. I thought the Verrot might solve that.”

Edgar said nothing, and his expression revealed nothing. Despite her temper, Kitty was grateful for that. Sometimes she hated how little privacy any of them had.

“I figured I’d best stay here till you or the boss arrived.” Hector offered a wry smile. “Melly’s feeling the effects of the Verrot and just . . . you know how she gets. She’s in the other room. Maybe we’ll go out now that Ajani’s gone. She’s likely to pick off lizards or Wastelanders from her window if we stay up here all night.”

Edgar nodded.

Hector motioned at the next three doors, the only ones past him in the hallway. “She’s in the next room. There’s one for Jack, and another one beside it. Then”—he pointed at the door beside him—“someone can bunk with Francis. He can see out of the bloody eye a little, but it’s not healed enough that he should be alone. I can stay with Melly or with him depending on—”

“We’ll let you know,” Edgar interrupted before Hector could ask whether Kitty would room with Edgar or Chloe. Renting all four rooms seemed more extravagant than Jack usually allowed himself to be, but Chloe was still a wild card. Mary had been content to bunk with Jack, Kitty, or Francis. Edgar used to room with Kitty, but he mostly went wherever Jack told him—unless it was with Melody. They’d all accepted her into their group, but no one but Hector was ever willing to stay with her. Her particular brand of crazy didn’t bother the knife-juggling carny overmuch.