King Among the Dead - Lauren Gilley Page 0,9
both obviously his, if the way the one Rose’s swallowed her was anything to go by. It smelled like him, she thought, as she tugged the hood up over her head: that woodsy, cedar, smoky smell she’d caught whiffs of last night and today in the kitchen.
Through the back door off the kitchen, they went across a brick courtyard full of puddles, and into a detached garage. She hadn’t known what to expect from him as far as cars went, but the old, green Jag with spotless tan leather seats suited Beck perfectly. He cranked the heat up once it was started, and put up the garage door with a remote. He twisted around and rested his hand on her headrest as he backed out into the alley, the scent of him stronger on his wrist, when she inhaled, more smoke up close than anything.
Rose tried to be subtle about taking a deep breath of it – and of noticing the little cut on his forearm when his sleeve rode up. From his own knife? she wondered. When he slid it in and out of its holster?
Was he carrying it now? If she gripped his arm, would she feel the hard shape of it under his coat?
“Music?” he asked, when the door was down and they were headed down the alley, lights on, wipers going steadily.
No one had ever asked for her opinion so much. “Sure.”
The car was old enough to have a CD player, and when he pressed it on, the soft strains of string music flooded through the speakers. Again: she hadn’t known what to expect, but it suited him.
It was different seeing the city from inside the warm, plush interior of a car, the rain beading down the windshield rather than down an old patched umbrella. An old patched umbrella if she was lucky. Like everyone else who lived in the Bends, Miss Tabitha had walked everywhere she needed to go. To Fisher’s Grocery, and Zelda’s salon – not that her hair had benefitted from Zelda’s efforts. To the social workers’ office where she collected her checks for housing and feeding Rose, though Rose had done most of the shopping and all of the cooking.
It was a drab city, soot- and rain-streaked, its gutters perpetually full of running water…among other things. Sad storefronts with dim lights beyond the windows. Families walking under umbrellas, and hoods, and newspapers, most of the time. Miss Tabitha had a friend, Lenny, who’d kept insisting that real, physical newspapers were going to disappear one day, but they persisted, littering sidewalks and side tables and newsstands. Digital media had been booming and replacing print media before the Rift. But a primitive way of life had returned after it. Papers, candles, oil lamps, cars that ran on gasoline, and the rain – always, always, always the rain. A sunny day was a rare thing not to be wasted. A day for hanging laundry outside, and for employees and students getting off early.
Today it rained. But Rose was warm, and comfortable, and listening to violins, with a full belly, a book waiting on her return, and a shopping trip to look forward to.
Beck piloted him through the narrow, townhouse-lined streets of his Gothic neighborhood, all of it fabulous and grungy and old and strange in the most charming of ways. Seeing something charming in this world of low, dark clouds, and gutter trash was a rare thing; she drank it in.
Then the townhouses were replaced with shops and apartment blocks. The park where she sometimes sat under her umbrella and just breathed a while, listening to the patter of drops in the sad, yellow leaves overhead.
They rode in silence, save the music, and it didn’t feel awkward or fraught. Beck hummed along occasionally, fingers drumming on the wheel, and the grubby shopping district she knew well was gradually replaced by sleek high-rises, parking garages, and swanky shopping complexes; buildings where the stains had been scrubbed off the buildings, and shade-loving, water-happy plants fitted in alongside the typical fake foliage.
“Where are we going?” she finally asked, curiosity getting the best of her, when they turned into a shockingly well-lit garage.
Beck buzzed down his window to wave a pass at a scanner, and the gate slid back to allow them up a ramp. “Steinman’s,” he said, easily. Casually. Like people just shopped at Steinman’s every day.
Well, some people did, she supposed, forcing her mouth closed.
The garage was full of sleek, well-kept cars, most of them imports, a