A neon cat winked in the distance, her curves a bright purple splash of light strong enough to push back the clinging shadows. The sunlamps here rarely reached full brightness, leaving the district in a steamy dusk. I found a place to park the Scout about twenty feet away from the club, angling it to get a good view of the front entrance as well as the side door leading out to a wide alley. It was now early evening, not late enough for the true nightcrawlers to come and ply their trade, but there were a few of the elfin skin jobs already standing at the front of the Kitty, smoking herbals and letting its neon lights play over their altered features.
Some had more work done than others, but they seemed to be openly touching the pieces and parts they’d changed. One kid was fully immersed, his face and hair altered to be a glittering mimicry of the Sidhe living in the upper city. His hair was a blend of metallics, silver and gold strands flashing about his lupine face. Even from where we were parked, his eyes glittered like emeralds and a rain-drenched forest, not unlike Ryder’s. Still, his movements were wrong, lacking the innate grace most elfin had, but that also could have been him. Some of the others moved with the fluidity of trained dancers, their hands dipping and gliding about as they spoke, pale sparrows dancing in the false full moonlight.
I’d seen their kind before—disaffected young men and women looking for a place they could fit into. Hell, every walk of life had them. Humans were driven to explore not only the world around them but themselves. That was the one truth I knew about the people who raised me. There was a constant, roaming quest to discover the depths or heights of humanity, and sometimes that journey took a hard left turn into a what-the-hell neighborhood.
Maybe it was because I was elfin. Hell, as a chimera, I was a blend of both Unsidhe and Sidhe, not exactly a poster child for the sane and normal, but watching the elfin-human hybrids laugh and chat under the lights of a place they gathered to be a part of a tribe, I wondered where the hell I would actually feel like I belonged.
I didn’t know what went into altering someone’s features, at least on the human side of things. Human healers like Cari’s mom couldn’t shape flesh like the elfin. I didn’t know the mechanics of magic either, just the limitations, or mostly the accepted ones. Cari knew a hell of a lot more than I did and picked at the Court’s Sidhe healers to glean whatever she could to strengthen her own magics.
I didn’t think she would ever get to the point where she could take a human ear or face and sculpt its bone and flesh to look elfin.
But I could be wrong.
“They’re not open yet, but soon. We’ll go in and hit Bennett up when they do.” I gestured toward the small groups framed in the Scout’s windshield and unclicked my seat belt. “Surgery? Or do you know healers who can do that?”
Cari studied the group, then nodded at one with elongated ears poking out through her long pink hair. “Implants. Some healers will do that. It’s just cutting stuff open and then stretching the skin out. Like gauging. Sort of. Same thing with the cheeks and chin. That one had her jaw shaved down. Not much different than getting a boob job.”
“Yeah, I don’t get that either.” Shrugging, I leaned back against the vinyl seat, listening to it squeak against my leather jacket. “But I guess it’s whatever makes you feel like you, right? That’s all that matters.”
“If someone could make you look human, would you do it?” She undid her seat belt, shifting until she faced me a little bit but keeping her eyes on the Kitty. “Take off your ears?”
I caught myself touching the notch in my ear, the triangular chunk taken out by a pair of iron-dust-laced snips Tanic liked to use on my flesh. Trying to imagine myself with round ears and a blunter face was hard, oddly enough, even though my elfin features still sometimes shocked me when I saw them in the mirror.
“Maybe before,” I confessed with a nod. “Now, probably not. It’s different now. Used to be even hearing Unsidhe made me sick to my stomach, but I broke that magic. And could be I’m just more accustomed to seeing people like me walking around. Makes me feel less… alone. Probably the same reason these kids get together. Here, they’re normal. And that’s something huge when you feel lost inside.”
“That’s all you can ask for, I guess,” Cari murmured. “I’ve got some granola bars. Want one?”
“No. And what the hell? Did you bring the whole damned kitchen?” I peered over at her backpack. “Gonna pull out a ham next?”
“Like I’d share ham with you,” she snorted. “We could be here a long time waiting for him to not show up. Hell, I don’t even know what this guy looks like.”
The side door opened, the heavy industrial lamp fixed above the frame turning on, dousing the alley with bright light. Someone stepped out, his body a stocky silhouette against the unpainted brick. The empty lot next to the Kitty was thick with weeds and surrounded by a chain-link fence that had seen better days or maybe was never new, because it sagged in places, swooping down and bulging out around the property. We could make out the guy standing under the light for a moment before he stepped out, taking himself out of the intense sheen, and the light finally hit his face when he turned to light a fat chewed-on cigar, cupping his face as if a wind were somehow going to flare up to douse the match he took to its end.
The match light brought the cigar to a bright red, and his blunt features were achingly familiar as he sucked on the cigar. He was shorter than Dempsey by a good five inches, his face a crude echo of the man who’d raised me, much like the half-done sculpting of the kids standing at the front of the building. Shaking the match out, he tossed its blackened corpse to the ground, pulling on the cigar to get a puff of smoke going. Bags tugged down on his flaccid, mottled skin, his hair a greasy curtain around his round face. He looked like hell and fidgeted, his eyes moving constantly, but the Scout seemed to be outside of his notice.
Or at least for now. I was about to take care of that for him.
“I’ll be damned. The gods are smiling or laughing at us. One or the other.” Undoing the holster straps on my Glocks, I nodded toward Kenny Dempsey and murmured to Cari, “Kenny looks exactly like that. In fact, we probably want to go shake him down for an ID and get him the hell out of here.”
“Well, this is going to be a walk in the park, then,” she said with a grin, pulling her jacket back and lighting up her badges. “We do this right, we might even be home in time for dinner.”
“Don’t count on it,” I warned. “Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never count your fire chicks before you can get them into the goddamned Nova.”
Sixteen
THE SCOUT’S doors opening must have been enough movement to catch Kenny’s attention, especially since he was probably as jumpy as a naked cat in a tattoo shop of drunk inkers. He tilted his head back, peering through the smoke first at Cari, then at me. Any hope I had of him thinking I was one of the Kitty’s skin jobs coming in for a good time was gone, because he choked on a mouthful of smoke and bolted.
Damn if the asshole wasn’t carrying a hell of a lot more weight than Dempsey did but still moved like the wind.
“Okay, not so easy,” Cari grumbled, breaking into a run. “Shit.”