Page 7 of Crow’s Shadow

He comes out last, the way he always does, sweeping the room behind him out of habit, and his eyes hit me on the stair and skid off fast, and there it is. The tell. For years I have watched this man give a room nothing, a wall, a shut door, and he gives me the same shut door every day of my life. But tonight the door has a crack in it, and behind the crack is something with my name on it.

“What did Byte find?” I ask.

“Nothing you need to know.”

“Try again.”

He stops. Crow stopping is a whole conversation on its own. The man does not waste motion, so when he plants himself in front of me and looks down, I feel it in my teeth.

“Go to bed, Shadow.”

“You keep saying that like I take orders from you.” I stand, because I hate looking up at him, hate the way it puts the want right out on my face. “I keep the book. Every body, every buyer, every hole we dig. You want me blind, you take the book off me, and we both know Loco would sooner cut off your hand than let you.”

Something moves in his jaw. “It’s not about the book.”

“Then what.”

“Leave it.”

“Crow.” And I do the stupid thing, the thing I have not let myself do in a year. I put my hand flat on his chest.

He goes to stone. Under my palm his heart is going hammering far too hard for a man this calm. For one cracked-open second we both stand there, and feel it, slam against my hand.

“Don’t,” he says, low. Wrecked. Not an order this time. Closer to begging, and Crow does not beg.

“Then tell me,” I whisper.

For half a breath I think he will. His hand comes up. It hovers at my jaw, close enough that I feel the heat come off it, close enough that years of wanting rears up in me like a live thing.

Then he steps back, and the door slams shut, and his face is the wall again.

“Nothing walks off this lot with you tonight,” he says. “You want to be useful, stay behind the fence. That’s the job.”

He is gone down the hall before I can put my hand down. I stand there like an idiot with my palm still warm, and under the warmth, under the sting of it, the wild thing in me sits up and bares its teeth.

Fine. He wants to play wall. I have been getting around walls my whole life.

Nova finds me in the chapel at dawn, which is what we call the back room off the shop where I keep the book, on account of Mercy blessed it once as a joke and the name stuck. She has two coffees and the look she gets when she is about to mother me.

“You slept in here again.”

“Didn’t sleep.” I take the coffee. “Nov. You ever get a thing off the women? Off Ariea, off Ember? A thing you can’t quite name.”

She goes still with the cup at her mouth. “What kind of thing.”

“Like last night you handed me a beer I didn’t ask for before I knew I wanted it. Like Ember reaches for the salt before Ariea’s done needing it.” I watch her. “Like sometimes I think I hear you before you talk.”

Nova’s easy face does something I don’t like. For a second it is not easy at all. Then she laughs, and it comes a half-beat late, same as Sable’s did across the bar, and my stomach drops.

“That’s just knowing each other, babe,” she says. “Live in a pile of men long enough, the women learn to move like one animal. It’s survival.”

“Sure, but that’s not what I asked,” I say, and let her have it, because she wants it, and because whatever she is not saying has the same shape as whatever Crow is not saying, and I am so goddamn tired of the shape of things nobody will say.

“No.” Her eyes meet mine over the coffee. “It isn’t.”

I open the book instead.

And there it is. Right there, waiting, like it wanted me to find it once I stopped chasing men who lie for a living.