The King and the Courtesan (38 page)

Rika led me back into the dining room to wrap my arm and my leg. The older woman gave me an ice bag for the swollen bump on my head. I had never been so fussed over in my life.

The man finished wrapping my arm. “It’s not the best arrangement. I highly advise you get a cast on this, all right? Who knows if it’s even set right…”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Wes. Wes Crowley.”

“Hi.”

He smiled for the first time since we’d met. “Hi.”

The front door slammed, and a voice called from the living room. “Hey, they were all out of the Verchuka brand, so I just picked up some DuPaw. I hope that’s okay.”

My heart hiccupped. There was no mistaking that voice. Ace was back.

“We’re all in the dining room!” Rika called back.

“I don’t dare hope that Lucille or you did any cooking, because I
know
that’s the stuff of nightma—”

Ace’s mouth clapped shut the moment he stepped into the doorway and saw me sitting on the chair. He looked the same as I remembered him, too tall and skinny, with hair that he never seemed to comb. His warm brown eyes widened at the sight of me.

“Melissa?” he whispered. A part of me glowed at the fact he remembered my name. “Melissa, what are
you
doing here?”

“That is a very long story,” I said.

He fell to his knees beside me, one hand hovering over my shoulder as if he wanted to touch me, but was afraid to. “Oh my God, are you okay? You look—you look like you’ve been—”

“In a car crash?”

His eyes bulged. “You were in a
car wreck
?”

“Yeah, actually. Don’t worry. No one beat me up.”

“Holy—” Ace looked up at Rika, Wes, and the woman who had to be Juri’s infamous accomplice, Lucille. “What’s going on here?”

“You tell me, huh?” Juri asked from the door. “She came up to my door and begged for help. I don’t know anythin’.”

“Sorry for involving all of you.” I bowed my head slightly. “I just didn’t have a phone or any money, and I barely managed to crawl out of the car before the cops came. I saw the sign for Juri’s garage, and I thought of what Ace told me when we met once at the Park—about how he was friends with you, Juri—and I just had to come here.”

Juri nodded.

“Why didn’t you wait for the cops?” Wes asked.

Everyone looked at him, as if he were a moron for not understanding.

“Let me guess. Drugs?” Wes asked with a sigh.

“Actually, no.” I straightened slightly, then winced. Ace’s hand finally found my shoulder, looking concerned. “It’s complicated. The cops…well, they know who I am.” I blushed. “I’ve been taken in before. But not for drugs.” That was one thing I had managed to avoid being jailed for.

“I shouldn’t even ask,” Wes mumbled. “It’s some unspoken rule in this town.”

“You’re not on duty, remember,” Rika said with a smirk.

My spine straightened. “You’re—you’re a
cop
?”

Now everyone was looking at each other, as if
I
were the idiot for not understanding. Shit. He was a
cop
? I couldn’t be here. I hated cops. While they hadn’t touched me when they picked me up for prostitution, they sure made it known what they thought of my profession. It was one thing when a paying customer called me a whore. It was another thing when a professional locked me up in a cell just so he could sit back, touch himself, and call me a slut.

“Well, sort of.” He shrugged. “I work for the ZCPD. But I’m a detective. I’m not the one giving speeding tickets or hassling minorities.”

“He was actually out here tonight looking at some murder,” Rika clarified.

I remembered what Katelyn had said about a murder, before all of tonight’s drama took place. “I heard.” I sighed. “Then why are you here?”

Rika shrugged. “Murder cases get him down. I came out after my shift to provide him some moral support. We decided to crash at Juri’s for the night.”

“Are you
all
crashing here?”

“Nay,” Lucille said. “I live upstairs. I stay down here most of the time, though.”

“And sometimes I sleep downstairs in Juri’s car.” I turned to Ace, shocked. He shrugged. “It’s not a fancy living, but it’s all right for me.”

I looked back at Rika and Wes. “Are you two friends or siblings or…?”

“No. We’re married.”

I found that hard to believe. Rika was a ray of sunshine compared to her husband, who was about as serious as you’d expect a detective to be.

“My apartment is a hostel, ‘parently,” Juri snorted. “But I ain’t cookin’ for nobody. Ya find your own vittlins.”

Vittlins
was food.

Juri turned and returned to the living room. Lucille snickered.

“Poor old Juri gets grumpier each year.” She rolled her eyes. I almost asked if she was Juri’s partner, but then I decided it was none of my business.

Lucille sighed. “I guess I should be leavin’. Gettin’ claustrophobic in this place. See ya tomorrow, Melissa girl, eh?”

“Uh, sure.”

Lucille nodded and walked out.

“Those two…” Rika shook her head, then rounded the table to face me. “Would you like something to eat? I’m not a very good cook—”

“No, she definitely isn’t,” Wes muttered.

“Shush, you. I’m not a very good cook, but I can make grilled cheese and things.”

I shook my head. After all I’d seen tonight, who knew if I’d be able to eat in the next
year
.

“Then I guess we should make up a bed for you. Is that okay?”

I bit my lip, thinking of Ezekiel. He’d hear about this, probably before morning came. And he’d come looking for me once he found out I wasn’t dead. Did I want to involve all these kind people in that? What other option did I have? I couldn’t even call him. I didn’t know his number because it had always been on autodial in the phone. The buses weren’t running. I could always get a taxi, but I didn’t have any way of paying for it. Would Ezekiel blame me for leaving the scene and finding a safe haven? After all, I was just taking care of myself.

Then again, I’d told him I’d be staying at Mimi’s. When he learned I’d left, he’d probably get pissed. At least now he couldn’t force Noah to beat me.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “That’s okay.”

“We’ll sleep in the extra room then,” Rika said, straightening. “It’ll take some rearranging, but we’ll all fit in here.”

“I didn’t mean to upset your night…”

Rika shook her head. “Don’t go any further. Do you expect us to blame you when you show up looking like that? Don’t worry. We can adapt.” She threw me another smile, then left with Wes in tow.

Leaving Ace and me in silence.

“I don’t expect you’re going to tell me what’s going on,” Ace muttered.

“There’s not much going on anyway. My car crashed. I left the scene. That’s pretty much it.”

“How’d your car crash?”

“Uh…driver malfunction.”

Ace raised his eyebrows. I looked away.

“You want a drink?” He held up the plastic bag he was still carrying. “Lots of beer to go around.”

I chuckled, the tears suddenly rising again. “I’d
love
a bottle, thank you.”

Ace pulled one out and retrieved the bottle opener. He popped open the top and handed it to me. It was lukewarm and pretty cheap beer, but it hit the right spot. I sighed and closed my eyes.

“Better?” Ace asked, voice soft.

“So much better.”

Ace nodded. “You need anything else?”

“Well, I’ll need someone to help me to the couch in the living room.” It seemed that my well of adrenaline had run dry, leaving other emotions time to trickle in. I felt my throat close up and my chest tighten, and as Ace extended an arm to me, all I wanted to do was clutch his waist and sob into his shirt. It was such a scary world out there. People fought for money and whores—and who the hell knew what else—and in their quest, they forgot what it was like to be human.
This
was humanity, right here, in this apartment. I saw their smiles and I envied them. I wanted to be like Ace, sent out late one night for some beers because we drank it all during our four-hour conversation in a dingy little apartment. Time was a myth, and there was only
the moment
. I wish I could look forward to moments, instead of clenching my eyes shut and begging for them to end.

Where had I gone wrong? Why couldn’t I have this like they did? Was it the drugs? The prostitution? The neighborhood where I was born and raised? Was it simply
me
? Did I cause this? It wouldn’t be surprising. There was a reason Ezekiel chose me. Was it because he knew I’d never be capable of finding anything better? Did he see an ugly part of me I had avoided since forever?

“Melissa?”

“Huh?” I hadn’t tracked our shuffle toward the kitchen, Ace’s arm supporting my waist, my face practically in his shoulder. My legs didn’t work very well at the moment.

“You’re two seconds from passing out. I’ll wake you up every two hours or so to make sure there’s no critical head damage, okay? Is that all right with you?”

“Perfect.” I nodded. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad do I look?”

“What scale are we going by? The sober or drunk scale?”

I laughed. “Somewhere in between.”

“It doesn’t really matter anyway.” Ace gently put me down on the couch, which had a few pillows at one end and an old afghan lay across the cushions. “On any scale, I put you at a ten.”

I chuckled wetly. “Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

“Well, give it a few weeks, and you’ll be runway ready again, I’m sure.”

I swung my legs up onto the couch, resting my sore head on the pillows with a heavy sigh. “Ace?”

“Huh?”

“Can you wake me up early?”

“Why?”

“And can I borrow enough for a cab to Ralston?”

“
Ralston
?” Ace blinked, then looked away, biting his lip. “Uh, what’s waiting for you in Ralston?”

“My job.” I groaned as I got more comfortable. “It’s really important, Ace. Please. Make sure to wake me up.”

“Rika and Wes could drive you. I mean, Rika’s brother lives in Ralston. They could—”

“No, it should be a cab.” I didn’t want to involve them any more than I already had. Ezekiel’s entire building was rigged with a million cameras. If Ezekiel saw me getting out of a foreign car, he’d probably go on a mission to find out who it belonged to.

“Well, okay. Uh, Rika will have to give you the money cuz, uh, I don’t really have the money to—”

“I can pay her back, of course. When I can. I don’t have any money on me at the moment.”

“You wouldn’t have to pay her back. Rika’s pretty generous. How early is early?”

“Seven o’ clock.”

“Melissa, it’s three o’clock in the morning right now.”

“Your point?”

Ace sighed. “I guess I shouldn’t be nosy and ask why this is so important to you.”

“Ace.” I reached out and gently grabbed his wrist with my good hand. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I do. Which is weird, considering how I barely know you.” I gave him a weak smile. “But it isn’t that. It’s just that it’s too dangerous for you to get involved. I’m—I work for a pretty, uh, powerful person.”

Ace seemed to think about this for a moment, then cautiously asked, “Exactly what do you
do
for him?”

I stared at Ace and let him figure that one out for himself.

“Oh.” Ace turned away, looking somber. I wanted to beg him not judge me, but I had a feeling he was. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess he pays you a lot then. I mean, he was wearing a suit—”

“That wasn’t my employer. That was my bodyguard.”

Ace’s eyes grew. “He was only your
bodyguard
?”

I sighed again. “Ace, can I be really honest with you?”

“Of course.”

“You can’t tell anyone, please.”

He nodded, lowering himself onto his knees so that he was closer to me. For someone so gangly and awkward, he had pretty brown eyes. They were nothing like the calculating, cold blue that often stared at me. These were vulnerable, open. I wondered what mine were like to him. Were they guarded, or hurt? Could he read me as easily as I could read him?

“I work for Ezekiel.”

His expression was blank for a moment, then shock set in. His brow wrinkled, and his lips parted in alarm. “
Ezekiel
?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Wow.” He audibly gulped. “That’s—wow.”

“So now you know why I don’t want to involve you. I would call him, but I don’t have his number, so all I can do is try to get back to his place as soon as possible. Do you understand?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“He’s not at home right now, which is why I hope I can at least recover for a few hours before he hears about this.”

“Then I’d better let you sleep.”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“Downstairs.” He shrugged.

“In a car?”

“Well, Juri’s car is pretty roomy. It’s one of those old sedans that’s the size of a hearse, so it’s almost like a bed.”

“Don’t you have your own place?”

“I stay with friends when I can. I don’t have an official job at the moment. I’m bad with a rigid work schedule, you know? I just do things here and there, for everyone. And if there’s no other way to make money, I’ll help Juri out in the garage. And honestly, this is best for me. I’m terrible at keeping one house and one job. I get bored really easily.”

“So you’re a wanderer.”

“Kinda. As I get older, the whole ‘roaming’ thing keeps growing stale, so I’m really considering getting a real job. Maybe a place of my own.” He shrugged. “I’m flexible.”

“Aren’t you ever scared you’ll end up on the streets, starving?”

“I’ve had to sleep on the streets. That sucks. But rarely have I starved. I can usually find some old grandmother type who can’t stand to see me go hungry.” He gave me a goofy grin, and I could see why old women found it so hard to turn him away. Even though he was near thirty, he had a boyish, honest face.

“I could never do that.” I rubbed my arms softly. “I like a predictable future.”

“Most people do. That’s why everyone wants a good job and good money, right? They want to know that they’ll be taken care of the next day. I don’t blame anyone for that. But I consider my future predictable. I have friends, and I always know they’ll help me out if I’m in a bad situation. So while I may not know where I’ll be sleeping or what I’ll be eating, I know I’ll be taken care of.”