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I was ready. Ready to throw a punch at the first person I saw and fight my way in to wherever Aurnia was, doing God knew what, the stupid girl. A part of me didn’t care what happened to me as long as I got her out, got her away.
The door inched open a crack and a wary eye blinked out at me.
I hardly recognised the voice that came from me. “Evening. I’m Aurnia Murphy’s Juvenile Liaison Officer. I believe she is here.”
The eye, bloodshot with a dilated pupil, looked me up and down. I tried to stand like Diarmuid stood. Less like a convict, stooped over and imposing. More like an officer of the law, upstanding, calm, secure behind my badge. It felt uncomfortable. Intimidation was easier.
My old leather jacket wasn’t exactly the suit jacket that Diarmuid wore over his jeans, but the eye was either too drunk or too high or too stupid to realise. The person opened the door a little further.
“That’s my daughter,” he said. “But she’s not here. She hasn’t been here for a while. Don’t know where she is. So if you don’t mind—”
The man tried to close the door. I wedged my toe in to stop him. I grabbed at the door to tug it a little further open.
“You’re Aurnia’s da?” I asked, incredulous.
I saw no resemblance in the face that was aged far past its natural years. There was none of the brightness of Aurnia’s wide eyes. None of the colour of her cheeks. His hair was grey and if it looked darker, it was only because it was dirty. Everything sagged. There were spots on his skin. He didn’t have the heart-shaped face or the lightning-coloured eyes or the lips with the perfect little Cupid’s bow. Most different of all was his hardened gaze.
I didn’t think someone so soft could be born from someone so sharp.
I had almost a solid foot on the little man. It wasn’t difficult to see over him into the squalor of the living room. What little furniture there was was stained and sagging, spotted with cigarette butts and torn in strange, vicious ways. It wreaked of weed and worse. None of the lamps had shades. The bare bulbs cast distorted shadows of the gathered group onto the peeling wall.
“Aurnia lives here?” I asked.
The little man had the audacity to raise his chest up at me. “She’s my daughter, ain’t she?” he said, his voice slurred.
No. No father who was actually a father would allow his daughter to live in such a place, to force her to call it home. No father would invite the type of people who shifted impatiently behind him anywhere near his daughter. No father would lose track of his daughter so completely that she was no more than twenty feet away from him and he swore she hadn’t been there in a week.
The only reason why I did not say all of this and more to the asshole’s face was because I knew it would not help Aurnia. I was supposed to be her JLO. JLOs don’t exactly make a habit of bashing in citizens’ faces. Or at least not on their first day.
“I was told that she was here,” I said as diplomatically as my clenched jaw would allow me. My fingernails dug into the cheap wood of the door. “Would you mind calling her for me? Check in her room…if she has one.”
The little man screwed up his eyes at me, suspicion entering them. The longer I stood there, the more questions he might have. If he asked for a badge or any paperwork, I was screwed.
“Or I can come inside and look for her myself,” I said, forcing myself into the threshold, obviously against the little man’s will.
“I told you,” he snapped, “she ain’t here.”
I shoved one foot onto the dingy linoleum of the entryway.
“If you go get Aurnia,” I said, lowering my face to the piece of shite’s so he could hear me real fucking good, “all I’ll see is her. All I’ll report is her. But if you make me take one step more inside this godforsaken dump, then there’s no telling what I’ll see, what I’ll report. Do you understand?”
Aurnia’s father had the nerve to jut his chin up at me. Even up that close his eyes couldn’t focus on mine.
“She,” he spit into my face one word at a time, “ain’t. here.”
I was about to raise my fist when a small voice hidden behind the door said, “I’m here.”
I kicked the door fully open before her father could stop me. The crowd from the living room all leapt to their feet (at least those who could). Baggies shoved under dirty cushions. Needles kicked under stained rugs. Hands disappearing into jacket pockets for God knows what.
There was Aurnia. I could only see half of her, her little fingertips were clutching the corner of a side hallway. Even from just that half I could see that she did not belong there.
The men in front of me were swaying like zombies, but she was still as stone. Their eyes darted here and there, unable to focus, but her eyes did not waver: they were fixed on me.
These bodies in front of me were incapable of feeling anything. The drugs they took had ensured total numbness. Aurnia was all emotion. I saw in her pain and fear and anger and, as she looked at me, something like hope. She was the only thing alive in that dead place.
“You need to come with me,” I said authoritatively.
Her eyes widened before darting to her side. It was then I noticed the hand on her shoulder.
