Haze (13 page)

Where’s Mya?

I scan the room. She’s sitting on the cigarette machine, sipping a neon cocktail, watching.

Rafa and Jones are in the middle of the fracas. They’re not breaking up fights, just holding their ground like outcrops in a river, letting the chaos flow around them, deflecting bodies and punches.

Simon is back on his feet, a tea towel to his head. I drop down to his side of the bar.

‘What just happened?’ he says, as I check his wound.

‘Hurricane Mya.’

‘Where’s Rick?’

I scan the room, spot him helping Taya thin the crowd.

‘He’s fine.’ I press the tea towel back on his scalp. ‘You’ll probably need a stitch or two.’ A siren sounds further along the esplanade.

‘Is this what it’s going to be like from now on?’ Simon asks. ‘What do these people want?’

I breathe out heavily, still holding the cloth to his head. ‘Me.’

‘I can’t deal with this.’ Simon leans against the fridge, slides back to the floor.

‘I was trying to keep you out of it.’ I spot one of the kitchen staff hovering in the doorway and wave for her to take over with the tea towel. ‘Make sure he gets an ambulance.’

I jump back up on the bar and wait for Mya to look at me. I point to the alley. Time to end this.

She pushes herself off the cigarette machine and skirts around Taya and Rick, now wrestling a shirtless man with a hairy back. I catch Rafa’s eye and make sure he sees Mya leaving. I pick my way around the room, trying not to breathe in the heady cocktail of beer, rum and post-mix cola sloshed over the timber floor. My shoes crunch on glass.

I duck into the alley as the cops pull up; the crowd on the street scatters. The piercing siren goes on for a few more seconds before someone finally kills it. It’s quieter out here but smells even worse than the bar.

Mya steps out of the shadows. Flickering blue light from the police car washes over her.

‘I can do this every night,’ she says, still holding her drink. ‘It never gets boring.’

I turn at the sound of footsteps. Rafa and Jones.

‘I thought you fought demons?’ I say to her.

‘We hunt demons. We amuse ourselves in bars.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Jones says. ‘I came for a quiet drink.’

‘Blame Rafa. I didn’t throw a punch.’

Another police car pulls up. We move further into the shadows.

‘Come with us,’ Mya says. ‘One job. Open your eyes to what goes on in the real world.’

‘No.’

‘I’m happy to come back tomorrow night. And the one after. My calendar’s free, Gabe.’

I can feel Rafa beside me. His anger.

‘I only found out a few days ago that I can use a sword. I’m not a mercenary, Mya. I’d get in the way—or get myself killed.’

She studies me. ‘What if I told you I had something of Jude’s? Something you could have if you did this job.’ My breath hitches.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Rafa says, voice tight. ‘Don’t get sucked in.’

‘Like what?’ I ask.

‘His laptop.’

For a second, nobody speaks.

‘Bullshit,’ Rafa says. ‘He had it with him.’

‘No, he didn’t. And I took it.’

‘You what?’

‘I took it. Come on, we all knew something was going on when he started talking to Gabe again. When he left that last time, I
borrowed
it. And when he didn’t come back’—she pauses—‘I kept it.’

‘You’ve had it this whole time?’ Rafa’s words are measured, loaded.

‘I’ll give it to you and Gabe if you do this job.’

I swallow. Find my voice again. ‘What’s on it?’

‘You can find that out for yourself.’

Rafa shakes his head. ‘There’s nothing on it. She wouldn’t be offering it up if there was.’

But it’s Jude’s laptop. The real Jude. Whatever’s on there will tell me something about who he was. Maybe something about where he is now. It’s another lead, another possibility.

I fold my arms, dig my nails into warm skin. ‘If we do this, will you stay away from here? No more fights? No more threats to Jason or Maggie?’

Rafa steps in front of me. ‘You seriously want to go with her?’

‘No, I want that laptop.’

He breathes into my ear. ‘We need to leave, Gaby.’ Searches my face for something he doesn’t find. ‘Fuck.’ He kicks an empty can into the wall. Walks from one side of the alley to the other and back again.

‘What is it—a lead on the Fallen or a paying job?’ Even in the shadowy alley I can see how coiled he is, how furious.

‘Paying job,’ Mya says. ‘A big one.’

‘Where?’

She finishes her drink, puts the glass on a ledge. ‘I’m only giving the briefing once. You’ll have to turn up like everyone else.’

‘Where?’

‘The sandbox. Pack light. You’ve got an hour.’

‘What about—’ I say, but I’m talking to an empty alley. Bloody Rephaim and their ability to always get in the last word.

Jones rubs his knuckles. ‘I’m sorry it went down like that,’ he says to Rafa. ‘But I’m not sorry you’re coming back. And you,’ he says to me. ‘It’ll make for a nice change to be fighting on the same side again.’

And then he’s gone too.

I can’t bring myself to face Rafa. I’m glad for the distraction of an ambulance pulling up in the street. Its sirens are off, but the lights are flashing, and—

‘Shit!’ I flinch. Taya is standing in the shadows inside the alley, half her face lit by the streetlight.

‘You are
not
joining that whore and her Outcasts.’ She’s breathless, a black eye already blossoming. Someone got in a lucky shot, but I bet it wasn’t so lucky for them a split-second later.

‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘I’m not. I’m doing one job.’

‘Do you even know what a job with Mya involves?’ She looks at Rafa. ‘Have you told her?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘You may as well spit in Nathaniel’s face if you do this,’ she says to me. ‘And your own. If you remembered who you were you would
never
team up with that psychopath.’

‘You saw that debacle in there. I don’t have a choice.’

‘Of course you do. I can have twenty Rephaim here tomorrow night—’

‘And turn Pan Beach into a war zone? How many innocent people do you think will get hurt?’

‘Not too many innocents in there, Gabe.’

‘Of course there are! Have you people completely lost all value for human life?’

‘What? No…’ She frowns. ‘Of course we haven’t.’

‘Then value the people who come here for a few hours to escape all the other crap they have to deal with.’

‘We can take Mya—’

I smack my palm on the bricks. ‘I don’t want you to take her. There’s been enough violence between all of you already.’

‘Since when did you care?’

‘Since she started thinking like a human,’ Rafa says, gruff. I have no idea if that’s a compliment or not.

I look from one to the other. ‘I’m not screwing anyone over. I’m not taking sides. I’m trying to keep everyone safe. And if you overheard that conversation then you know Mya has Jude’s laptop, so there’s a chance I can find out more about what was going on a year ago—’

‘If Rafa doesn’t know what Jude was doing, nobody will,’ Taya says.

‘What else am I going to do? Wait here until Nathaniel comes up with another plan to torture me?’

She turns away. I want to grab her, shake her. Why can’t she get this?

‘I am so over being pushed around by you people,’ I say. ‘All of you. I’ve been to the Sanctuary and I’m in no hurry to go there again—’

‘You can’t judge us by that.’

‘—so I’m going to find out more about Jude. And then I’m coming back, so don’t turn this into an excuse to make me public enemy number one again.’

Taya tests her swollen eye, looks back at the street where a group of girls are huddled together, lighting cigarettes near the ambulance.

‘You think I betrayed everyone,’ I say. ‘But you don’t know, not for sure. What if you’re wrong?’

‘What if I’m right?’

‘But what if you’re not?’

She fidgets, steps back. Behind her, someone is being lifted into the ambulance.

‘You owe me,’ I say.

She looks away.

‘You threw me to a hellion. I saved you from one.’

No response.

‘Give me a day.’

Taya finally meets my gaze. ‘You screw me on this—’

‘I won’t. And you have to lay off Maggie. I mean it.’

She breathes out. ‘I’m not going to touch your precious Maggie.’ She looks past me, chews on her lip. ‘You’ve got twelve hours.’

I have no idea if that’s long enough.

It’s going to have to be.

HOT AND BOTHERED

It’s warm in the ‘sandbox’. Not quite Pan-Beach-in-the-height-of-summer hot, but enough to raise a sweat almost immediately.

‘Okay, where are we?’

Rafa watched me pack but wouldn’t say where we were going. He wouldn’t say much about anything. Now we’ve arrived in a tiny room with a dirty window and unmade bunk beds jammed against the walls. Stiff towels hang from racks nailed above the upper bunks. The place stinks of fried tomato and body odour. Wherever we are, it’s the middle of the day.

‘Rafa?’

He ignores me.

The floor is covered in a layer of newspaper. Rafa steps around a gas burner with a blackened pan on top. A cheap air conditioner sits over the doorway, not running. It’s stifling in here. Rafa opens the door and we’re greeted by a blast of warm air. The view stops me in my tracks.

We’re on the balcony of an apartment block, overlooking rows of crumbling buildings peppered with satellite dishes and washing lines. Beyond them is a forest of gleaming skyscrapers, stretched out in either direction. The world’s tallest building rises from the middle of them.

Dubai.

‘Is this a labour camp?’

‘Yep.’

I have a vague memory of being in this city with Jude, but it was further along the coast at a resort in the shadow of the Burj Al Arab. And, of course, that memory’s not real.

‘Why?’

Rafa leans on the balcony railing, between threadbare t-shirts drying in the warm air. For a second I think he’s not going to answer, then he says, ‘Jude had a thing for the disenfranchised.’

‘But…’ I look around at the buildings, which are only a few years old but already sandblasted. The place is unnaturally quiet, the migrant workers long gone to their building sites for the day. ‘I thought only men lived in these camps?’

‘Would you look for us here?’

I get a flash of the Sanctuary. Aside from the blood spatter in the gymnasium, it had looked comfortable. Luxurious almost. Nothing like this.

Rafa walks along the balcony to the stairs, his weapons pack on his back. I shrug my duffel bag higher on my shoulder and follow him down two flights, into the bright daylight. Washing flaps above us along the balcony rail, but otherwise the place is a ghost town. I fall into step beside him. Feel strangely disconnected to the barren landscape around me.

‘You guys live here?’

‘It’s a rendezvous point.’

‘You don’t have a base? A home?’

The idea unsettles me. I always felt slightly adrift when Jude and I were backpacking. We had each other, but there was never a sense of permanence about our lives. Was that based on something real as well?

‘Jude and I had the place on Patmos.’ Rafa won’t look at me when he speaks.

We pass a set of battered cricket stumps jammed into the dirt. Rafa rips one out, flings it ahead of us. It hits the concrete path, bounces twice and rolls to a stop.

‘This is so fucked up.’

‘Rafa—’

‘No, don’t.’ The anger in his eyes brings me to a standstill. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here. It’s just wasting more time.’ He walks a few steps, comes back. ‘Explain to me what we’re doing.’

‘What we have to do to get Jude’s laptop.’

‘Bullshit. You’re stalling.’

I hold his gaze, my breath shortening. ‘I’m not.’

‘We should have been gone days ago looking for Jude.’

‘I needed Mags to be safer—’

‘And now she is and you find another reason not to go to Melbourne. Fuck, Gabe, when are you going to stop punishing me?’ His eyes have changed. Only a few hours ago they flared with wanting. There’s no sign of that now. He hasn’t looked at me like this for a week, not since he thought I was lying about what I remembered. It was bad enough then. Now, after everything we’ve been through, it’s worse. Way worse. The night gets back inside me a bit, hollows me out.

‘What are you talking about? Punishing you for what?’ ‘For everything. That’s what you do. That’s what you’ve done for the last ten years—’

‘Rafa, that’s not fair.’

He stares at me, unflinching. ‘Do you have any idea what a mess I’ve been, thinking Jude’s dead? He could be out there alive somewhere, and you’re finding every excuse not to look for him. For fuck’s sake, he’s your brother—what’s the problem?’

I close my eyes for a second and see Jude’s face before he jumped from the cable car, lit up, full of life.

The problem is that I love the brother I remember. I miss that Jude so much I ache. But the Jude we’re going to look for, Rafa’s best mate…that’s not him. My stomach folds in on itself. How can I explain that to Rafa?

I meet his gaze again. Force myself to not look away.

‘I thought these people were your friends.’

He scowls at my avoidance. ‘They are.’

‘Then what’s wrong with being with them for a few hours?’

‘It’s not getting us any closer to finding Jude.’

But it might get me closer to the Jude Rafa knows.

‘It’s more than that,’ I say.

‘Don’t make this about me.’

‘Why don’t you want me here?’

His lips harden. ‘Because it’s wrong, that’s why.’

‘Why?’

‘It just is.’

‘Let me guess: I’d understand if I remembered my other life?’

‘No, Gaby. Like Taya said, you wouldn’t be here if you remembered your other life.’

He cracks a knuckle and sets off again. I follow, but my steps aren’t as grounded as they need to be. It hits me then: I’m about to face the Outcasts. Rephaite soldiers who think I chose the Sanctuary over them. Who’ve hated me for the past ten years. Who loved Jude.

We cross the road to a path flanked by single-storey flats. There’s no clutter, no washing strung between these buildings. We’re halfway along when I hear ringing steel. I tilt my head towards the building on my left. ‘That’s training I can hear, right? Not a demon ambush?’