The other guard grunted, turning to Chandra. “And her?”
Chandra squirmed under his hungry eyes, tugging on her T-shirt. The shirt was intentionally too small, to show off her figure. This was a key part of their plan but, still, Ash’s cheeks burned as he caught a glimpse of her bare skin from the corner of his eye. He’d spent most of the afternoon pretending her body ended at her neck.
“You know what Mac says about touching the merchandise.” The first guard nodded, a hard jerk of his square jaw. “Let ’em past.”
Merchandise. Ash had never realized how many muscles there were in his face, how hard it was to focus on each of them at the same time, willing them to stay still when all they wanted to do was grimace at the ugliness of what had just been said.
Not a girl; not a human being.
Merchandise.
He didn’t think he’d ever hated anyone as much as he hated Mac at that moment. He didn’t know the man personally, but he’d heard of him. Unfortunately. Everyone in New Seattle had heard of Mac Murphy, owner of the city’s grimiest brothel. He was a toad of a human being, both in physical appearance, and in general effect on the world around him. Ash wished it were physically possible to squish him beneath his shoe. The world would be a better place if Mac Murphy were just green sludge on the sole of his boot.
There was a beat of silence, and then the second guard shuffled to the side, licking his lips. “Go on then, honey,” he said, eyes on Chandra.
“Oh God,” she said, walking steadier now. She tried, again, to tug her T-shirt lower, as though she could make it grow several more inches through sheer force of will.
Ash tipped his head as they walked past the horrible men with guns. He was careful not to move too quickly and to keep his shoulders relaxed, like this was all normal. Something he did every day.
The green sky lit up. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Not an omen, Ash told himself.
Keep walking.
Mac’s brothel crouched at the end of the dock like an animal waiting to pounce on its prey. It used to be a motel, the kind of place with a flickering vacancy light, and rooms that could be rented by the hour. It’d been horrible even before the floods had made everything horrible; now, it was hell. Only the top two floors were still above the water, a thick carpet of black mold crawling up their dingy, yellow siding. There wasn’t glass in the windows, but Mac had covered some of them with cardboard and old blankets to keep what little warmth there was left inside the building. The rest of the windows yawned open, reminding Ash of broken teeth.
Mac himself sat in a moth-eaten chair inside the first motel room off the dock, feet kicked up on his makeshift desk, which was just a moldy piece of wood balanced over two stacks of cinder blocks. The door was propped open with a brick, and Mac had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was a squat man with a barrel chest, and his face really did have a toad-like quality: eyes too far apart; big, peeling chapped lips. Ash half expected his tongue to flick out of his mouth and snap up a nearby fly.
Mac chewed on his thick bottom lip, cigarette dangling. “You got business here, son?”
His eyes lingered on Chandra’s T-shirt, and Ash felt a flash of anger deep in his gut.
“Heard you paid for girls,” Ash said, working hard to keep his voice steady.
Chandra shifted her eyes to the floor, shoulders bunched up around her ears. She sniffled in a small, pitiful way, and Ash felt a flush of pride. He knew she was scared, but this, at least, was pure performance. In fact, it reminded him of a television show about the Wild West that she’d been watching the week before. This was why he’d asked Chandra to help him out with this little mission. Zora was a crap actress.
Mac leaned back in his chair, considering her. After a moment he said, “She ain’t much to look at.”
It took every bit of willpower Ash had not to knock the cigarette from Mac’s mouth right then and there.
He caught a scowl shaping Chandra’s lips and elbowed her. She quickly transformed it into the