“Youwokemeup,” he grumbles. “Give me a break.” He takes another sip, then offers it back, but I wave him off. “What’s up?”
I sigh through my nose and hold out the phone. “Remember this?” I say. “The one you told Krye you were gonna hold on to and weren’t gonna lose?”
Pan jabs his tongue in his cheek, thinking. “Yeah, I guess.” He lifts a shoulder. “Although if memory serves, I think he gave it to you.” He picks up something lying flat on the mattress—a hunting knife, with a ridged black handle and a wicked sawtooth blade—and points it at me.
I scoff. “That supposed to scare me?” I ask.
Because…scaredis not exactly what I feel right now. Nope, nope, never mind.
Pan just rolls his eyes. “So the phone. What about it?”
“It’s been ringing,” I say. “Apparently a lot. Blue found it last night, said it was going off, and I just missed another call right now.”
“Okay,” Pan says, twirling the knife handle through his fingers, looking at it and not at me. “So call him back.” Then he looks up at me. “What’s the big deal?”
He spins the knife to upright, balances it in his hand, and, quick as a whip, flicks his wrist at the wall. It spirals forward and sticks, blade wedged into the cork of the target he’s got mounted.
“Hell yeah,” he says, and springs up to tug it out, glancing at me as he does. “So? Did you?”
“Well, yeah, I tried,” I say. “Number’s blocked, it doesn’t go through.”
“Stupid,” Pan mutters, jumping back on his bed with both feet and plodding toward the headboard. “Typical Krye, gets his panties in a bunch about one thing”—he lines up the target, one eye closed, extends his hand and retracts it a few times—“and then when you finally get it back to him, it’s nothing.”
Again, he snaps his arm out, letting the knife fly.Thunk.
“Probably just wants us to pick him up some Starbucks or something.”
I think of the call log. The frequency of all those calls. “Yeah, I don’t know,” I say, hedging. I don’t want to protest too much and be anxious about it, but at the same time?—
“Relax, dude.” Pan vaults off the bed, landing on his heels inches from the wall in a crouch. He straightens, pulls out the knife, and gestures at me with it. “If it’s really an emergency, he’ll call again. If not, he’ll give up. So unless we hear from him again?—”
The phone buzzes in my hand.
Pan blinks. Sucks his teeth. Folds his arms across his bare chest. “Well, shit,” he mutters. “Give me that.”
He stabs a finger at the keypad and puts it to his ear, scratching the back of his head with the same hand holding the knife, which makes his hair stick up like even more of a rooster’s comb.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says into the phone. “How can I?—”
I can’t make out the words Krye is saying, but I can hear his tone of voice.
Loud. Angry. Maybe even panicked.
“Okay,” Pan says quickly, dropping his hand, patting the air in front of him like he’s trying to physically calm someone down. “Okay, okay, okay. What—say it again?”
He closes his eyes, drops the knife to the ground, and rubs his forehead. “Her what?” His eyes open again, then screw half shut. Confused. “Who—okay, okay,” he says hurriedly, more shouting from Krye. “Never mind, Jesus. I’ll—yeah, yeah, no, I am on my way,” he says, catching my eyes and rolling his. “Yeah, as many guys as I can. I’ll—no,” he barks, his voice sharp and deeper than usual, in a way that makes something inside me sit up straight at attention. His eyes are firm on mine as he says his last words: “I won’t let anything happen to your daughter, Krye.”
Pan fliesout of his room, the door banging, his jacket flung over his shoulder as he goes.
“Fucking—Pan!” I cry after him. “Where the hell are you?—”
I skid out of his room and into the hall, barely catching him as he darts across the landing, past Wendy on the couch, tucked in a corner with a book in her hands and Nana in her lap, and thud down the stairs two at a time.
“For Christ’s—wait!” I bark-yell after him, tripping down the stair treads into the shop. “What’s going on? What happened? What did?—”
I practically smack into Pan at the base of the stairs. He turns and smirks.
“Zuzu’s in trouble.”
