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“I heard they removed your handler. Shady times, man. Everyone is on edge.”
“People seem to be going missing a lot lately.” I nod. “I put in a request to find out what happened to her and where she is, but no one’s talking.”
“No, I don’t suppose they are…” He squeezes the lime into two glasses and then grinds the leftover fruit at the bottom.
“Have you heard anything about Marcus...Kasper...Folsom…?”
He’s quiet as he tears two paper packets of sugar into each glass. “Nah, man, why would I know anything about that?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Aries. Your sister works for the Society.”
He carries the glasses into the sitting area, handing one to me.
“Caipirinha,” he says. “It’s from my father’s country.”
I take the glass, never removing my eyes from his face.
“We’re disappearing one by one. It’s like they’re plucking us off, and you’re not worried about what’s happened to the others?”
“No, I’m not,” he says. He takes a sip of his drink, the cords in his thick neck convulsing.
Folsom wanted out, so he got out, Marc’s shit stopped working. That’s no one’s fault. And we all know that Kasper is knee deep in shit he shouldn’t be involved in. “After last time…” Aries shakes his head. “Kasper has a fucking death wish.”
“If Marcus is sterile, why haven’t they let him go? No one has seen or heard from him in months. There is currently a Region without an End Man. That’s never happened. That’s why they wanted Laticus.”
Aries sets down his drink. Resting his elbows on his knees, he leans forward until I’m at the center of his glare.
“We all knew what would happen when we signed up for this. We’d have boys and our boys would graduate from their mother’s tits and eventually replace us. If Folsom couldn’t deal with that, he should have—”
“What?” I cut him off. “Made different life decisions? Because the Society gave us an option to be here?”
Aries’ face is hard, the scar above his eye a white slash against his bronze skin. I heard he once refused to impregnate a high-profile government official and they had him tied up and beaten for two days, after which he still wouldn’t do it. They’d put him on the harvesting machine for a month as punishment.
“What the fuck do you want me to say, Jackal?”
“Talk to your sister,” I say, standing up. “See if she knows where Marc and Kasper are. It’s the least you can do. Be a fucking human for once.”
Aries’ eyes are glowing. He’s a scary motherfucker; I told the girls this.
“Sit down and drink your drink,” he says. “Don’t be a rude motherfucker.”
I grimace as I lower myself back down.
“You didn’t come all this way to ask about Kasper and Marc,” he says. “Tell me why you’re really here…”
TWENTY-FIVE
PHOENIX
The male millipede massages the female and sometimes sings to get her in the mood.
It’s all my grandpa’s fault; he taught me everything I know. If I close my eyes, I can still see his knobby fingers, the skin of his palms rough from years of farmwork. In his younger years, before they bought the farm, he was a locksmith. Teaching me the mechanics of a lock came first, and once I heard the satisfying click of a lock yielding beneath my fingers, I wanted more. The stealing came later. First my mother’s friends when they’d visit. I’d dig my skinny arm into their bags, fingers latching onto the first thing I touched. By the time I was ten, I had a collection of bric-a-brac stored in a box at the back of my closet. Guilt eventually caught up with me and I gave up my life of petty theft...for a while at least. At some point, it hit me that I could sell the things I stole and give the money to people who needed it. It was an accident—the first time I stole a watch right off of someone’s arm. I was in a restaurant with my mothers, waiting for a table. The woman in front of us was causing a scene because of the wait. She hadn’t even noticed when my tiny fingers reached out to touch the shiny metal. I’d flicked the clasp, not thinking about what would happen after, and she’d been too busy yelling at anyone who’d listen to notice. It slid right into my hand, and my hand slid directly into my pocket. By the time she noticed it was gone, we were on our way to our table. I glanced back as she frantically searched the floor around her feet.
Stealing a baby—that’s new territory for me.
Sean gently lays his hand on my knee when we take off. I tense beneath his touch. He’d been so delighted that I’d changed my mind about attending the ball with him that he’d failed to ask why.
I have too much time to think on the flight. We drink champagne, and Sean tells me about things happening in the Regions. I’m exhausted from not sleeping much; my brain won’t shut down. The plan and how it could backfire, Jackal’s kisses, nostalgia from staying at the country house with all those old memories and now the new, what my grandpa would do if he knew how I’ve lived my life with what he taught me, this new spark with my mothers...all the thoughts fail to gel into any kind of cohesion.
