Текст книги "Writing on the Wall"

Автор книги: Tracey Ward

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“That’s not how it goes.” Nats chimes in. She’s huddled in the corner beside the guy, the other girl asleep with her head in Nats’ lap.

Her pimp frowns at her. “Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“I thought the whole point was a name exchange.”

She nods. “It is, but it’s the other way around. It doesn’t make sense the way you said it. If she’s hiding her name then she would be Rumplestiltskin.”

“Who would I be?”

Nats smirks. “You’re a Queen.”

He chuckles and turns back to me. “What’s your name?”

“Joss.” I reply warily.

I’m confused by the dynamic between Nats and the guy. It’s not what I expected between a pimp and a slave. They almost seem like friends.

“Well, Joss, this is Natalie or Nats,” the guy says pointing at the woman in the corner. “Snoring in her lap is Breanne.”

“And who are you?”

Nats laughs. “He’s a Stable Boy.”

He looks at her indignantly. “I am the Stable Boy.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, scared I already know the answer.

“It means he watches out for The Hive’s women. Breanne and I included.”

“Did a piss poor job of it today.” he grumbles, fisting his hand and glaring down at it. It’s then that I notice the cuts along the back of it, all of them fresh and enflamed. He threw some punches recently.

“Knock it off, Vin.” Nats tells him harshly. He looks over at, his face dark. “You did all you could for us.”

“Then why are you in this van?”

“What’s important is that we’re not alone in this van. You could have left us, but you didn’t.”

“That’s not a victory. I should have saved you.”

“You’re here, aren’t you? Maybe you still will.”

Vin chuckles darkly as he looks at his hands again. There’s a dark metal ring on his left hand that he spins thoughtfully. Just as I’m about to doze off again he looks up at me, studying me. “Maybe Kitten here will help me.”

“You saw what happened to the last guy who called me that, right?”

The smile Vin gives me then can only be described with one word; sexy. It’s not something I’m terribly familiar with but he wears it well.

“Help you do what?” I ask.

“Escape the Colony.”

I take a deep breath, trying to focus on not falling asleep. It’s becoming a struggle. My head aches so bad I’d love nothing more than to lie down. “We haven’t even gotten there yet. How do you know you won’t love it?”

“Because I belong in the wild. So do you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know a wild thing when I see it and you, Kitten, are a wild thing. Six years on your own? You don’t want to be locked up in a cage or you would have joined willingly years ago. I’m still trying to sort out how you hid from the gangs all these years, let alone the Colonists and Risen.”

“I found ways. You said it yourself, I don’t want to be locked up in a cage.”

“Or a stable?” Nats asks wryly.

I glance at her, not sure if I’ve offended her, but her face is placid.

“Not anywhere by anyone.”

She nods in understanding but says nothing else. Vin falls silent as well and soon the only sound in the van is Breanne’s snoring along with the bump of the suspension on the rough, ruined roads. I doze off eventually. Vin lets me do it. Maybe he’s got other stuff on his mind. Maybe he figures I’m not in his stable, I’m not his problem. I don’t know how long I’m out but I wake with a start when the van slams to a halt.

“Get back here against this wall.” Vin says urgently.

I scurry across the floor of the van to the back where I squat down next to Breanne. She’s groggily sitting up, rubbing her eyes and looking more afraid with each passing second. She’s the younger of the two women though she’s still older than I am, but something in her face is almost childlike.

“So what do you say?” Vin asks me quietly.

There’s a screeching of metal against metal then a long yawning sound. We move forward again and the acoustics outside the vehicle change drastically. There’s an echo now. I imagine we’ve entered some kind of building.

“You gonna help me get us out of here?” he asks.

The yawning again, then a deafening slam. All light coming in from any cracks in the door is extinguished and we’re plunged in total darkness. I hear Breanne whimper pitifully.

“No one’s ever escaped the Colonies.” I whisper, feeling my heart leap into my throat as the silence drags out.

When Vin looks over at me the pull of his electric green eyes forces me to look back. He grins, his face fierce.

“There’s a first time for everything.” He reaches out his hand, offering it to shake. To make a deal.

There’s a screech of metal again, then another yawn, this time from the front of the van. We lurch forward. We’re passing through something. We’re entering their compound. This is real.

I hesitate only a moment before slipping my hand into his. I’m surprised to feel cold metal pressed between our palms and when I take my hand away I see that he’s slipped a small, sharpened scrap of metal into it. It’s not much, not even enough to call a knife. It won’t kill but it will hurt.

“They’re going to separate me from you girls.” Vin tells me hurriedly as we roll quickly over surprising smooth ground. “Keep them safe and I’ll work on our escape. Deal?”

The van stops. Doors are opened and slammed. Footsteps approach from both sides to meet at the back door.

“Do we have a deal?” Vin demands.

The door flies open. Bright afternoon light spills in, blinding us all. I hear footsteps thunder across the metal floor then harsh hands lift me up and pull me away. Breanne screams. I hear Vin’s deep, calm voice telling her to cool it. That it’ll be alright. More feet, more hands, then cold air.

“Kitten!” Vin calls. I can hear him struggling in the back of the van. “Do we have a deal?!”

“Couple hours with her and you’re already trying to pimp her?” a guy asks from beside me. “We don’t play that way here. You’re out of a job, buddy.”

I’ve never made a deal with a Lost Boy before, certainly not a member of The Hive. I don’t know that it’s a smart thing to do. Saving Ryan has caused me a world of trouble. It’s a mistake I really shouldn’t repeat. It’ll be easier to sneak myself out alone than try to get Vin, Breanne and Nats out with me. As far as anyone knows, no one has ever escaped the Colonies before but maybe that’s not entirely true. Maybe people like me have. Loners who found a way and slipped back into the wild with no one to tell the tale to. No one to welcome us home. No one to care if we lived or died.

“Joss!”

“Yes!” I shout back, surprising myself. My eyes are evening out, becoming adjusted to the light. I can see Vin’s face now. He’s being hauled out by three guys but he’s staring straight at me, his eyes focused hard on mine.

“Yeah, Vin.” I repeat calmly, slipping the shiv up into my sleeve as I step closer to his girls. “We have a deal.”

Chapter Eleven

I have no idea where we are other than beside the water. In front of us is a huge white building with faded blue trim. It looks like a warehouse that was once dressed up to serve a grander purpose. Kind of like a train station or library. It squats on the upper left corner of a large lot full of green space that is being used for planting. The even rows suggest fields, though any crop is far out of season at the moment. I shiver against the cold, missing my jacket and hating being this close to the water. It surrounds the lot on all sides but one; the south side where we entered. When I look back at it I can see a row of multicolored, weathered shipping containers stacked two high. The line of them runs from shore to shore. Most containers are lined up end to end except for two right in the middle. They’re running the opposite direction so that they can be opened and vehicles, like ours, are allowed to pass through. Now they stand locked up tight, an impassible barrier for zombies and Lost Boys. And us.

  They take Vin away immediately, leading him through a side door and out of sight. He goes quietly once I’ve made my promise, but I can see the tension in his shoulders. The tightness in his step. They’d be wise to keep an eye on him.

Breanne, Nats and I are left standing out in the cold surrounded by three men on guard. I don’t know what month it is but judging by the briskness in the air, I’d say it’s almost December.

Christmas time.

The thought pisses me off almost more than being taken prisoner. Almost.

“Can we go inside yet?” Nats asks a guard, glaring at him. “It’s kind of cold out here.”

The guy with the gentle hands shakes his head apologetically. “We have to wait for the women to come get you. They’ll take you to the showers.”

“Hot showers?” Breanne asks hopefully. She’s clinging to Nats’ arm the way she was clinging to Vin before and I find myself getting annoyed with her. It’d be brilliant if it was all an act, making herself look meek and afraid only to throw them off, but I’m pretty sure this is her 100%. I’m already regretting taking on the role of babysitter.

“Hot showers.” gentle guy says with a small smile.

“What then?” I ask, my voice hard. “What do you do with us then?”

“Then we’ll get you something to eat.” He smiles at Breanne again. “Something hot. After that you’ll get a tour and you’ll be assigned a bed. Then we’ll help you get acclimated, start helping you find the right job.”

“What if I don’t want a job?”

His smile fades. “We all work. You’ll need to contribute to stay here.”

“I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to contribute. So if you’ll just show me the door…”

“You’ll learn.”

“Learn what? To like prison? No thank you.”

“This is for your own good.” another guy tells me, his eyes pitying. “You can’t survive out there alone. We’re here to save you.”

I glare at him. “I’ve survived out there alone for the better part of a decade. I don’t need you or your protection.”

He shakes his head sadly. “You’ll learn.”

I’m certain I don’t want to know what they plan to teach me here.

A door swings open on creaking hinges, drawing all of our stares. Three women come out one by one in a line, all of them perfectly clean and groomed. Their soft, shining hair catches the sunlight and a small breeze, rippling like silk. They all look to be about late 20s or early 30s and they’re all beautiful. I feel especially grimy just looking at them and I realize that with the chill in the air lately I haven’t risked a full washing in almost a month. It’s too cold to have wet hair this time of year.

A blond walks up to us smiling brightly as she fakes a shiver. “Ooh, it’s cold out, isn’t it? Let’s make this quick! Ladies and—oh, I thought we had ourselves a gentleman as well?” she says, looking questioningly at the men guarding us.

“He’s already been taken in.”

She blinks once long and hard but her smile never fails. It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen and, as you can imagine, I’ve seen some seriously creepy things in my day.

“No matter. At any rate, ladies, welcome to the MOHAI!”

We all stare at her blankly.

“As you may not know,” she continues happily. “The MOHAI was, and some of us feel still is, the Seattle Museum of History and Industry. It’s a beautiful building with very exciting exhibits inside. Now, admittedly, we’ve taken a lot of them down and disposed of them due to space issues but there’s still some fun stuff to see.”

I look sideways at Nats. I’m relieved to see my confusion mirrored on her face.

What the hell is happening here?

“Now,” says Tour Guide Barbie, turning serious. “We are so excited to have you here and we can’t wait to show you just everything but first things first. We have to get you cleaned up. So, if you’ll follow me I’ll take you straight to the showers.”

As she turns her back, I look her and the other women up and down, searching for weapons. The men who have been standing guard all have utility belts on with knives, sharp screwdrivers and either a hammer or a heavy wrench. One even looks like he might have a Taser, something I’ve been eyeing since we left the van.

But the women appear to be defenseless. It has me thinking of the shiv in my pocket. As we follow them inside the door I notice how they break us up. They usher in Breanne, then one of them, then Nats, another of them, then the blond ushers me in ahead of her with that saccharine smile of hers. If I get a chance to cut anybody today, it’s going to be her.

The inside is warm and dry. And lit! There are actual light bulbs in sockets hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals. We walk down a long, narrow hallway that expands into a big open room, one wall of which is lined with showerheads. It’s been stripped down to just cement walls and floors with a big drain in the middle and I wonder what it was before. Storage? A break room?

“Alright.” the blond says, clapping her hands together sharply. The snap of skin against skin echoes through the large room sounding like a gunshot. “My name is Caroline. This is Melissa and Andrea. What we’re going to do is get you clean. All of you. Every last inch. You’ve been living in the wild for so long we have to take some precautions so this is going to be thorough. Please don’t be embarrassed, we’ve all gone through it.”

“What exactly are you going to do?” Nats asks, stepping closer to Breanne.

One of the other women, a brunette who I believe is Melissa, smiles at her reassuringly. “Nothing scary, don’t worry. We’re going to help you wash your hair with lice shampoo, use some exfoliating scrubs, use an antibacterial soap to eliminate… well.”

“Bacteria?” I ask dryly.

She looks at me, her smile slipping. “Everything undesirable.”

“So to begin we need you all to strip down, please.” Caroline says, closing the door to the hall and flipping the lock.

“Already locking us in?” I ask her.

“No, I’m locking the men out. Prying eyes are not welcome here. We want you to feel safe. Comfortable.” She smiles broadly, catching eyes with Breanne. “Pampered even.”

Breanne smiles and begins to pull her clothes off. They look clean but worn out, something unavoidable on the outside, even in the stables of the biggest gang in Seattle. Nats follows suite though she does it with much less zeal. The shiny trio smiles approvingly at them then casts their eyes on me. I can’t exactly escape right now, with or without Vin and the girls, and I’ll be honest, a hot shower with real soap sounds amazing. But I’m worried about my shiv. I’m going to lose it, there’s no two ways about that. I can’t hide it from them here and I know they’ll burn my clothes once I give them up.

Not wanting to be caught with it as that will put me under heavier watch than I’m already to be under, I walk to a bin in the corner. It’s full of towels of all different colors all folded neatly in stacks. I give the pretense of leaning against it to untie my shoe and deftly slip the shiv out of my sleeve. I let it fall inside the bin where it disappears in between the stacks of colorful cotton. I can’t help but frown as I watch it go. That’s three weapons I’ve lost today.

These women are thorough. Disturbingly, latex glove type of thorough and I feel a little violated after my shower. But I am clean. Really and truly clean for the first time in years and putting on clean clothes (clean underwear!) feels amazing. When I run my fingers through my long, newly conditioned hair it feels like cold satin against my skin.

They take us out of the washroom into another long hallway. It’s cold in here and my wet hair chills me to the bone. It’s then that I realize they’ve given us nothing substantial to wear. Nothing to keep warm in the outside for too long. Long enough to, oh I don’t know, jump in the water and swim away? Once I hit that icy water, even if I made it to another shore without them catching me, I’d be frozen before I’d make it anywhere safe. That’s not an accident on their part.

We enter into a large room with glittering silver floors, wire mesh hanging from the ceiling and stark white plastic tables with matching chairs. There’s a counter to the side made of worn old wood topped jarringly with sleek metal. The sterile beauty of it gives me whiplash and I take a step back, unable and unwilling to enter. I’m amazed at how well preserved this all is. When I catch a whiff of fresh baked bread, I regain the step I lost and then some. It calls to me, pulling me forward like a siren ready to dash me upon the rocks.

What reins me in is the fact that this room is bustling with people, all of them shiny and happy. All different ages, races, all clean, well fed, well maintained. And there are just so, so many of them.

“Vin!” Breanne shouts as she takes off running.

I spot him when she jumps into his arms like a girl in love. He hugs her loosely, nods at Nats and grins at me.

“You girls clean up well.” he says, still looking at me.

“So do you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair that short.” Nats tells him.

They’ve buzzed his hair until it’s nearly gone. It’s just a hint of darkness on his head, making his eyes seem brighter and his face look younger. He runs his hand over it, testing it out as he smiles ruefully at Nats.

“They have barber’s sheers and I haven’t had a real haircut in years. Figured why not.” He glances at me. “What do you think, Kitten? Does it suit me?”

“I lost my shiv.” I say, ignoring his question.

“Yeah, me too.” he mutters, glancing at our escorts as they approach slowly.

Caroline smiles at him happily, taking all of him in. “I’m glad you found each other again. Excellent. Why don’t you all get in line, eat some lunch and then we’ll give you the tour.”

“Sounds great, thank you.” Vin replies, smiling back at her.

She casts us each another glance then she and her minions shove off. When I look back at Vin his smile is gone.

“I don’t like her either.” I tell him.

He nods. “She’s trouble. Watch out for her.”

“Can we eat now?” Breanne asks eagerly.

“Yeah, Bree. Go ahead. I’m right behind ya.” Vin tells her, still watching Blondie as she walks away.

Getting food should be easy and fun. Walking up to a counter to pick what I want from where it sits warm and waiting for me sounds like paradise. But I’m in Hell. There are so many people here, easily 20 just in this room, and my skin is crawling. It’s loud, it’s hot, it’s too full. My breath starts coming in short, strained gasps. I worry I’ll hyperventilate. I hang back as Nats and Vin follow Breanne to the buffet line. I’m hovering in the doorway, both loving and hating the open space at my back, when Vin notices I’m missing.

“You okay?” he calls, his brow pinched in concern.

“I’m fine.” I say breathlessly, shaking my head.

He whispers something to Nats before leaving the line to approach me.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s…” I try to even my breathing but I can’t make it happen. “There are too– too many people. It’s overwh—whelming. They’re so loud and what if… what if one gets bitten? We’ll all die. There are just too many!”

“Whoa, slow down.” he says calmly, stepping into my space and making me look at him. His face blocks out most of the room as he backs me against the wall. It’s still loud and he’s crowding me but it’s only one person. After Ryan I can handle it. This I’m better with. “Breathe slowly and deeply. Don’t worry. Risen aren’t getting in here. That’s not what you need to worry about.”

“They’re always what I need to worry about.” I mumble, feeling faint. “Them and you.”

“Me as in gangs?”

“You as in ev—everyone else on the planet. Gangs, Colonists, d—dead, undead.”

He pauses, chewing on that for a minute. When he speaks his voice is hard. “How big of a problem is this going to be?”

I lift my head, blinking up at him. “What?”

“Can I count on your or is this fear going to make you useless?”

I shove him away from me. It’s a weak effort but he lets me do it. “It’s not a fear, it’s—screw you.”

“No, you get it together. You’re tougher than this, you have to be. No way you made it as long as you did alone if you can’t adapt.” He steps close again, his words rapid and low. “Those two girls I’m with, I can’t count on them. Nats is solid but she’s no fighter and Breanne is nothing but a pretty face. These people have taken a lot of guys from The Hive and I’m hoping to find some in here and get their help getting out, but who knows? Maybe they’ve gone native. Maybe they tried to escape and their dead.”

“Maybe they were in the colony that fell.”

He nods grimly. “Maybe. Right now you’re my only sure thing. I watched you fight when they tried to take you. Even when they had you and you knew it, you didn’t hesitate to put your knife in someone. So, please, tell me that girl is gonna be able to man up and handle this.”

I glare at him, surprised to find myself breathing deeply. Evenly. Angrily.

“Can you handle it?” he presses.

“I can handle it.” I growl.

He grins at my annoyance. “There it is, Kitten.”

I make it through lunch because I have to. Vin doesn’t say anything to Breanne or Nats about my problem but he sits us at a table on the outskirts of the room nearest the door. We eat in silence and though it’s just bread, fruit and vegetables it’s delicious.

After lunch we get “The Grand Tour” as Caroline laughingly calls it because she is just hilarious and I find that the Colony is everything I dreamed it would be.

Absolute. Pure. Torture.

This building is huge and we don’t even see all of it. Apparently a lot of it is used for “storage”, though storage of what we aren’t told. We also aren’t invited to ever find out. Most of the interior is broken up into work rooms though quite a bit of it is sectioned off as living space. There are bathrooms, though not all of them work so you have to be careful, the showers, a common area that looks like it used to be an exhibit with a large TV and some seating, the kitchens beside the cafeteria and a large open area that was probably once the main exhibit but is now filled with beds. An old green airplane hangs high above in the ceiling, something I imagine could easily snap and crash down on unsuspecting sleepers, but what do I know? There’s also a pink truck shaped like a foot. I don’t ask. In fact, I don’t ask anything. I don’t say anything at all because with each step I take through this building I panic a little more. People are everywhere, talking so loudly, constantly walking by, brushing past me, touching me to say hello as Caroline introduces us. I’m sweating rivers under the thin material of my prison clothes.

She shows us a large maintenance room where the electrical side of things is run and I finally get a reprieve from the crush of people. The generators are here, the solar batteries being charged by the panels on the roof and another set of batteries being charged by a small wind turbine set up outside in the yards. It all looks intricate and confusing to me but this is how they live. This is how they have hot running water, lights moderate heat and a functioning kitchen.

Outside is the small agricultural area we saw before. I also notice that they’ve taken the time to bring in high fences that run the three water sides of the property. No waiting for summer and swimming for freedom. How did they know? It’s almost like they’re as accustomed to keeping people in as they are to keeping zombies out. There are gardens and a greenhouse out here to be tended with small fruits and a lot of vegetables. There are also sections designated for various crops and they have livestock to be looked after; cows to be milked, eggs to be gathered.

Inside there are meals to be prepped, fruits and veggies to be canned and preserved, breads to be baked. The maintenance room needs bodies, the guards need people on rotation, there’s sewing to be done. And that’s all great. I’m actually in love with and on board for all of that. But what makes me want to scream in this woman’s fake Barbie face is that I don’t want to live here. I’m a butcher, not a baker or a candlestick maker, which, by the way, was on the tour as well. This entire community thing is not for me. I get it now, what Vin said about me earlier; I’m a wild thing. I belong in the wild, in the woods, in the streets. In danger.

When they showed me the giant room full of beds, I almost vomited. I can’t take this. It’s too crowded, too closed in. It’s too clean. Don’t get me wrong, I like being clean. I loved that hot shower and I will happily drink their milk until I get sick and die, but my problem with a lot of this is that it’s like they’re playing at normal. They’re trying to pretend that they can hide behind these concrete walls and the world outside isn’t dead and rotting at their doorstep. Their backyard is flooded with sewage and their solution is to draw the blinds.

People like me and Vin and Ryan, we live out there in the ugly and we look it in the eye every single day. We’re out there trying to reclaim what was lost while these people are hiding away, pulling us in and trying to make us part of the fantasy that all can be bright and beautiful again if we just close our eyes to everything that’s real.

I can see it on Vin’s face too. As we walk through the tour Breanne gets happier by the second. I watch as he distances himself from her. She’s lost to this place and he knows it. And who knows? If I was doing what she was on the outside then I might be quick to sign up too. I’m not judging her for wanting this. I’m not judging anyone who would. What I am judging is the way they go about it.

“I want to watch this place burn.” I say to myself.

Vin chuckles softly beside me. “You and me both, sister.”

“Is this like what you guys have at The Hive? Is everyone sitting pretty these days but me?”

“No, not even close.” He glances around the common room we’re standing in, his eyes landing on the 50in TV and brightly colored bean bag chairs. “This is almost grotesque.”

“It’s messed up, right?” I ask, glad he sees it the way I do. “It feels obscene somehow.”

“Kinda disrespectful.”

“Exactly. They’re delusional.”

“This one especially.” he mutters, gesturing to Caroline.

As though feeling his eyes on her, she turns to face us.

“Everything all right?” she asks sweetly, the hard set of her mouth not matching her tone.

Vin grins at her. It’s the same one he gave me in the van; all sex and charm. “It’s amazing.”

“We were just talking about how nice it is to be warm and dry.” I agree, smiling at her.

“Wonderful.” She doesn’t believe a word of it. “Well, that’s the end of the tour. Let’s move on to dinner, shall we? It’ll be a great chance for you to meet new people.”

We start to file out of the room, Breanne following the three pretties like a happy puppy, Nats following warily and Vin and I bringing up the rear.

“’New people’?” I whisper to him. “They’re going to separate us again.”

“You cold and wet a lot, Kitten?”

I frown at him, startled by the question. “What are you talking about?”

“Answer the question.”

“I don’t know. Yeah. Everyone is.”

“No,” he replies, his tone low. “Not everyone is. Nats isn’t. Breanne isn’t. I’m not.”

“You’re in The Hive, that’s completely different. That’s practically a Colony.”

He glares at me. “We’re not the Colonies.”

“You know what I mean. The size of your gang compared to the others is huge. You don’t have to hide like a lot of us do. In fact, you pretty much advertise your location. We all know where you are but none of us are dumb enough to come at you. I can’t light fires half the time because someone is bound to see the smoke and in case you haven’t noticed, this is the Pacific Northwest. It tends to rain a bit. So yeah, I’m cold and wet a lot.”

He shakes his head, looking annoyed. “You should join The Hive. You’re a beautiful girl. You’re high currency.” He looks me up and down, taking in every curve of my body. “You’re a hundred dollar bill, Kitten. An item would have to be pretty rare for The Hive to be willing to burn a Benjamin like you.”

I scowl at him. “Is that supposed to be flattering?”

“It’s supposed to be honest. And it is. I’m not stroking your ego, I’m being real. You’d hardly have to work. You’d be a trophy piece more than anything else. You’d be warm and dry, better fed.”

“Why is everyone trying to save me lately? Ryan, the Colonists, you. I can take care of myself just fine.”

“Who’s Ryan?”

“No one.” I grumble.

Vin grins wickedly. He nudges my shoulder as we walk. “You got yourself a guy, Kitten?”

“No.”

He watches me and waits.

“Maybe.” I admit grudgingly. “I don’t know. Kind of.”

He shakes his head sadly. “Giving it away for free.”

“You’re warped.”

“Is he an independent too?”

“No, he’s got a crew.”

“And they don’t know about you, do they?”

I shake my head fiercely.

“What crew does he run with?”

“I don’t actually know their name. I just know where they are.”

“Really? Where are they?”

I give him a long, blank stare. What am I? New? Ryan didn’t sell me out, I won’t sell him out. I owe him that much.

Vin chuckles. I nearly stumble forward when he suddenly slings his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close beside him.

“Good girl.” he murmurs, giving me a squeeze.