Chapter 75: Not Affiliated (Part 2: Finale)

As it was finally justified, he set the kebab down and reached into his left pocket.

Dry petals crumpled at his fingertips.

Wrong one.

From the right pocket, he drew the knife and handed it to her cupped palms.

A white page snapped open over her hands.

Ignoring it, Layla squinted at the carved band, rotating the wood and tracing where it trailed off into thin cuts.

"Milo!" She thrust it back and slid off her stool. "You should have told me before!"

"Before what? You were busy laughing at the arrow—"

"Before today, Milo! We leave tomorrow!"

While he worked the blade back into the pocket, she snatched her flask off the counter, tucked it inside her coat, and caught his sleeve by the slit Maigh had opened in it.

"I know just the place. For a piece like that, you’ll have a phone within the hour."

"What kind of place does—"

"And take that." She pointed at the kebab. "You’re not forgetting about it just because we’re getting a phone."

So it came along.

She towed him off the main street into roads where the shutters stayed down and the whir of the capsules no longer reached. Each was narrower than the one before.

An alley opened between the backs of two brick buildings, and the stench of piss and alcohol rolling out soured his next bite.

With the girl watching, Milo nibbled a piece of meat off the top anyway.

A few steps into the dark, no boots were clacking behind him.

Layla waited on the lip of the alley with her toes on the last sunlit cobble.

"What? Is it not here?"

"It is here."

"So you’re just... leaving me?"

"I don’t like going there."

"I don’t even know what is there!"

"To your left, there will be a door. You go through it and you throw the knife on the counter."

"Throw it. At whom?"

"On the counter!"

"A door in an alley that smells like this, and I’m to walk in and throw a knife at a counter. Does none of that sound sketchy to you?"

"They’ll know what to do with it."

"That’s the part that worries me."

She stayed put, arms folded.

Milo held the kebab out over the ground. Somewhere down there, he trusted, were ants.

"Then I’m not eating another bite. Either you come in, or it goes to your cousin’s friends."

"You wouldn’t."

He loosened two fingers. The foil sagged.

"Milo!"

Her boots hit the cobbles.

Whatever had kept her at the mouth of the alley did not follow.

She marched past him without a glance at the kebab she had just rescued, coils swinging, straight for the left wall, where a heap of coats lay against the only door.

A man sat slumped with his skull resting on the wood, mouth open, and the alley’s smell thickened with every step Milo took toward him.

Layla planted her boot beside his leg with a crunch of loose stones.

If he hadn’t emptied the gravel back into the park, he’d have joined the crunching himself.

"Wake up!" She stumped the ground. "Hey! WAKE UP!"

An eyelid peeled back.

The man squinted at Layla, and a crooked smile widened his lips.

"Ohoho, beauty... you little fairy. What’ve you come to wake me up for?"

"Get the fuck out."

Milo’s shoulders rose to his ears.

Standing with a half-eaten kebab between a drunk and a girl, he couldn’t tell which of the two needed backing up.

"Out of the way! That’s a door, people use it. Move!"

The man’s smile faltered.

Never would it have occurred to him that she knew how to talk like this.

But maybe it wasn’t sketchy. Maybe whoever worked behind that door simply couldn’t afford a better address. Although rooms cost practically nothing, which was how an orphan, Milo, came to have a flat of his own...

"Ugh, where are we?" he cut in.

"You know my family is in the relic consecration business. I met some people."

Considering that she and her family were stuck in Jence, and her contacts required visits to alleys like this one, business couldn’t have been too fruitful.

"Sketchy people...?"

"GET OUT!"

Her boot struck the door right next to the drunk’s ear.

Finally, he tipped sideways and crawled off to the corner of the alley. Piss, sweat, and stale alcohol surged up.

As her face softened, Layla turned to Milo and gestured at the handle.

He only eyed the grease stuck to it.

"Me?"

"You’re the one selling."

Hesitantly, he eased the door open.

From a low room of dark wood, jazz seeped out. A slow horn over brushed drums. A bar of sorts, where people chatted over glasses.

A bar? On a Sunday morning?

Still chewing, Milo shuffled clear of the door.

There weren’t many customers, but if somebody tried to kidnap them, at least there would be witnesses—unless everyone here was in on it. Perhaps consecration had become unprofitable, and the people Layla knew had branched out.

His free hand slipped into the right pocket and closed around the knife’s handle.

The door clicked shut as Layla led him to the counter.

Behind the counter, a man with an impressive beard already had his eyes on them. Pink coils like Layla’s did draw attention in dim places, bars included.

"What’ya sellin’?"

In environments like this, it was not exactly a beneficial trait. Who knew what kind of gangs lurked around here, watching newcomers for an opportunity?

"Good morning," Layla said. "This is M—"

If said gangs had a victim’s name, it was game over.

"I’m Dylan." Milo raised his voice over hers.

Under the man’s gaze, the girl turned her head to him.

"What are you doing?"

"You expect me to give up my real name?"

"Why not?"

"You do not know the dangers of the underground world!"

"And you do because you watch movies?"

With his free hand curling into a fist on the wood, Milo leaned in to her ear.

"I don’t watch movies. I read books, if anything. How does he know we’re selling?"

"I can hear you, kid." The man scowled. "Whenever I see the pink-haired kid, I know there’s gonna be business."

"Pink-haired kid," Milo went on whispering. "So he doesn’t know your name, and yet you force me to give up my own?!"

"He forgets."

"You’re setting me up!"

Layla leaned out of the huddle and straightened.

"I’m Layla, and this is Milo."

"God! Your mistake was forgiven and you committed it again!" He straightened as well, pitching his voice as deep as it would go. "This girl is not affiliated with me. I am Dylan."

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Some Phone" ... ⤵︎ [!]