The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,115

to get a haircut and stop drinking and sew up the holes in my trousers before they completely fell apart.

The cuts to my face had been worse than I’d thought. The morning after my trip to the stadium, I’d asked Georgio, the owner of the cafe at the bottom of the building, to put in some stitches. Four days had passed since then. Now, I had four red-brown lines down the right side of my face and was hoping they wouldn’t scar.

I didn’t have my own bathroom. Hence the chamber pot. I picked it up and opened the door to the waiting room and almost bumped into a woman. She was standing there, caught out, like she’d just changed her mind about knocking but hadn’t gotten away fast enough.

It was Linda Rosemary.

She was wrapped up in another set of sensible clothes: red overcoat, hounds-tooth scarf and a black, woolen beret off to one side. She wore thick, black gloves that favored warmth over dexterity, and there was a flush in her cheeks that complemented the mist coming out of her mouth. Her eyes fell on the cold block of ice I was holding out between us.

“You making coffee?”

I lifted up the pot, attempting to hide the contents.

“Yesterday’s. It’d gone bad.”

She wrinkled up her nose.

“Smells like piss.”

My embarrassed smile revealed the truth in her statement. We both stood there for a second with awkward expressions stuck on our faces.

“You… want to come in?”

She took a long, painful beat. Her eyes wandered from my face to the chamber pot to the office behind me. My bed was still down from the wall, unmade. There were dirty glasses on the desk and a trail of ants passing crumbs across the floor. I’m not sure what they’d found because I hadn’t had a meal at home in weeks.

Linda stood rigid with indecision, like when you try to feed a wild animal from your fingers and it has to fight against all its natural instincts if it wants to take the food. Eventually she said “What the hell” to herself and stepped inside.

She limped a little as she entered, then wiped down the clients’ chair with a handkerchief. I ran around behind her, stuffing dirty underwear and tissues into my pockets.

“After the other night,” she said. “I asked around—”

“One moment.”

The Angel door was behind my desk. A remnant of the old days when the world was magic and a few lucky souls might arrive at your house by a set of wings instead of the stairs. I pulled it open and the wind hit me in the face like a hired goon collecting on a loan. I put the chamber pot out on the porch, wiped my hands on my coat and closed the door again. When I turned around, Linda’s face was full of regret.

“Sorry,” I said. “I rarely have guests so early.”

She pulled a pocket watch out of her overcoat.

“But it’s—”

“I’m sure it is. As I said, my apologies. Go on.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, all reservations were gone. She had relaxed into a resigned determination to deal with the idiot sitting across from her. She removed her gloves as she spoke.

“As you know, I’m a Lycum. Unlike some of the Werecat descendants, my ancestors escaped Perimoor right after they were changed. They went north and found their home in the icy hills of Weir. Over time, we evolved to have thicker coats and tougher claws than most of the Cats you would have seen around the continent. We had our own kingdom. Our own rules. Own lives. The Coda killed that, of course. Which is why I came here.”

I couldn’t stop my eyes from wandering. Her skin was smooth, and every movement she made was graceful. Her teeth, though she barely showed them, all seemed to be accounted for. Her pupils were long, and her irises were an impossible yellow-green. Other than that, she just looked like a Human woman who’d been given an unorthodox manicure.

“If you don’t mind me saying, Miss Rosemary, you came out of the Coda pretty darn well.”

It wasn’t exactly a compliment, and from her expression, she didn’t take it as one.

“I know,” she said. “My sister got stuck halfway through her transformation with her brain trying to be two different sizes at once. She died, screaming, after only a few minutes. My father’s face was almost inside out. He lived for a week, silent, fed through a straw