Her eyes flash: sympathy? Pity? Something more sinister. “Fine. Daddy.”
He lets out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Another whiff of perfume–
A little girl, brown hair a mess, squealing as Daddy bounces her on his knee, each squeal interrupted by each bounce – “Eee! Eee! EEE!” The same little girl, a little older now, crying and hiding under her bed as Mommy and Daddy scream at one another and throw lamps and then Mommy stabs Daddy with a fork and Daddy punches an old microwave into a lump of glass and metal and sparking circuitry. The little girl, not little at all now, watching out her window as Daddy goes back to the city, both of them knowing it’ll be months before they see one another again, and truth be told, even that’s being optimistic. Finally, the little girl mostly-grown-up, with a revolver in her hand, a smudge of blue at her temples, a wicked boomerang smile on her once sweet face.
Behind him, his cell phone on the bar top vibrates across the wood. Vbbbbt. Vbbbbt. Werth again. Mookie grabs it, turns it off. Wings it back onto the bar. Never once taking his eyes off Nora.
He says, “Maybe I should call you – what is it they call you?”
“Persephone.” A flicker of amusement in her face.
“Yeah.” That’s the name she’s been going by on the streets. “Why that name, exactly?”
“It’s pretty.”
“Uh-huh. At least you didn’t bring a gun this time.”
She shrugs. “Decided I didn’t need it. I know where we stand.”
“Where’s that?”
“You know.” A wink. She goes to the bar, curls the tip of a red Converse Hi-Top around a stool-leg and pulls it to her. She sits on it, slumps forward: the posture of a surly teen. And that, Mookie has to remind himself, is what she is: a surly, pouty, pissy, mean-ass, don’t-give-a-shit-about-nobody-but-herself teen.
Or is that underestimating her? A year ago she shows up, tricks Mookie into clearing out a major nest of goblins and leaving their stash of Blue untended so she can steal it, then shows up at the bar and shoots Werth in the gut? Then she sets up shop in the city, paying off players and buying up resources with money that couldn’t have come from the Blue she’d just stolen. Suddenly: Mookie’s own daughter, a new player in town. One who doesn’t play by the Organization rules. A constant thorn in everybody’s paw. Depending on who you ask, she’s either a cryptic mastermind or a talented – and lucky – amateur. Mookie’s not sure which it is.
Nobody in the Organization knows who she is to him. Nobody but Werth.
“How’d you hide from me?” he asks, standing there in the middle of the floor, feeling like a broken thumb.
She shrugs. Coy. Playful.
He takes a guess. “Snakeface trick. Gotta be.”
Nora grins a Cheshire Cat grin – as a girl he rarely saw her smile and even this one doesn’t seem all that happy. She always was a good actress.
“Got it in one, Daddy-o.”
Daddy-o. So she has been hanging out with the Get-Em-Girls. “Why are you here, Nora? Ain’t safe.” He starts to feel weird. Dizzy in her presence.
“I’m always safe with you around.” She twirls her hair. “I want to put my offer on the table one last time.”
“Not workin’ for you, Nora. I got people. I got loyalties.”
“Your ‘people’ don’t know what’s coming.”
“And you do?”
“Maybe I do. And maybe I’m giving you a chance to be on the winning side of things. Because it’s all gonna fall apart and if you don’t move from where you’re standing? You’ll be underneath it when it does.”
He snorts. “You gotta lotta nerve, little girl. Last I checked your apple had lost its shine.” That isn’t just him being cocky. Her stock has dropped in the city. She made her move and for a while it worked, but the gobbos came back, the gangs got her measure, the Boss made his own play to block her at every turn. He bought back her allies. Killed a few of her customers. Her circle of influence is growing ever tighter. Nora – Persephone – doesn’t have much left. “Go home. Go back to your mother. Quit playing like you’re a gangster. You don’t have it. We both know you just did it to piss me off.”
The smile falls away like the last leaf off an autumn tree.