He whipped a shiny business card out of his pocket and pushed it across the desk. I didn’t even look at it.
“I politely decline.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m busy.”
“You don’t even know what the job is.”
“I don’t need to. I don’t work for Humans.”
He raised an over-plucked eyebrow.
“Well, that’s quite racist. Aren’t you…?”
“Human.”
“That’s even stranger.”
“Is it?”
“At least listen to what I’m offering you.”
“Okay, but I won’t do it.”
I poured myself a shot, heavy on the critters.
“Look. My house has been taken over. These blasted Dwarves have broken into my property and are refusing to leave.”
“Where is this place?”
“East Third Street. Steel district.”
“Right.”
“I was all set to rent it out to another family and start making my investment back. Now I’m losing money and the police won’t do anything about it.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because the police are all damn Magum. That’s why I came to you.”
I poured another shot.
“Maybe it’s because they see what you are.”
“And what am I?”
“You’re a parasite.”
He snorted. “Careful. I have a lot of money, and if you want to get your hands on some of it, you’d better learn some manners.”
I picked a dead bug off the end of my tongue and wiped it on the desk.
“Let me guess what happened here. When the steel mill closed and the Dwarves lost their jobs, they couldn’t pay their mortgage. But the bank was in no rush to kick them out. What were they going to do with another empty street? They were happy to give the Dwarves some time to find new employment till you offered to snatch up the properties at a discounted price. How many did you buy?”
He stared me down. He was proud to say it.
“Fifteen.”
“Wow. Got a lot of kids?” He held my eyes and didn’t bother answering. “No. Didn’t think so. You offered a bunch of dirty cash to the bank so they decided to move on the foreclosures. Now you want to rent those houses out but the Dwarves don’t want to go and the cops won’t help you because they think you’re a crook and they’re right. Now you want to give me some of that dirty money to fix your problem but I hate you even more than the cops do.”
“I didn’t come here to be insulted.”
“Then you should have left when I told you. Get outta here before I do more than call you names.”
He stood up but didn’t want to leave.
“You think it’s charming? This drunken crusader routine? You’re a joke. That was obvious from the moment I came in. I just imagined you were in on the gag.”
He thought he’d won and I let him think it. My next answer would have come from my fist and I had a bad enough reputation without punching potential clients in the face. I listened to his footsteps on the stairs and finished the bottle, straining it through my teeth.
I tucked his business card into my wallet. There are some names you want to keep close by, in case you ever capture a wild tiger and are wondering where to send it.
Outside my window, sundown was signaling the creatures of the street to change shifts. The peddlers and pickpockets were calling it a day as the pimps and dealers took over. There was a hangover on the horizon, along with something else. Something sort of stupid.
A devil was sitting on my shoulder whispering the kinds of things that stopped working on me years ago. I was only in my thirties but I was old. You don’t measure age in years, you measure it in lessons learned and repeated mistakes and how hard it is to force a little hope into your heart. Old just means jaded and cynical and tired. And boy, was I tired.
But this whispering had heat. Young man’s heat. My jaw was so tense I could have chewed my own teeth.
Nail Gang.
Let’s find this goddamn Nail Gang.
8
Mid-autumn in Sunder is unpredictable. It’s a city that gets all four seasons but each of them works a little too hard. Winter wants to give you frostbite, spring force-feeds you hay fever, summer tries to boil you in your boots and autumn drowns you in drizzle and dried leaves.
None of them was ideal for a holiday, but all of them were useful for firing up your blood when you wanted to do some dirty business.
The smell of burning fuel covered the whole south-west of Sunder. It was named Swestum for reasons as dumb as its inhabitants, a particularly rough group of Humans. Nothing changed here when the Coda hit. The machines of steam and coal that drove the industry on these streets kept on chugging. The music kept playing. The drunks kept cheering. Some even say they cheered louder.
The noise that night came from a saloon on the corner that had once been a boxing ring. I guess it still was; they’d just fired the referee. A dozen men in leather jackets stood out front with pints of stout in their hands, in their beards, down their sleeves and all over the floor. Rowdy, rough drinkers who laughed from the back of their throats and liked to throw their empty glasses in the gutter.
I shuffled past the men outside as they scanned my body for secret signs of magic. You could tell they wanted it too. Nothing would have pleased them more than to catch a Magum weaseling its way into their Human-only bar. They each had the same devil on their shoulder that I did, and we were all spoiling for a fight.
Inside, the smell of coal got stronger, as did the sound of dry, dumb laughter. Laughter too stupid to know it shouldn’t be here. At least The Ditch had the common sense to be sad and quiet. This place wanted you to feel good. It wanted you to forget. It was an abomination.
Serving girls in tight tops were working tables for tips. A sign above the dartboard said that on Sundays they left their tops at home. If I ever started to feel sorry for myself, I’d only have to think of those poor girls, down to their skirts, dodging sweaty-fingered letches all Sunday night.
Because they delivered drinks to the tables, there were plenty of open seats at the bar. I tipped back the stool to pour off the puddle of stout and sat beside a fat Northern fellow with a bald head, white shirt and suspenders. How did you even get fat these days? Most blue-collar workers were lucky to buy the basics. Before the Coda, he must have been a monstrosity.
Often, there was an art to my job. When I wanted to, I could turn on the charm or the attitude; play the informer or the ally. I could lead a mark down the garden path and turn a few words into a tripwire. I knew how to use a little tact when the occasion called for it, but the devil on my shoulder told me it wasn’t the time.
“I’m looking for a Nail Gang,” I grunted.
The hairless blob beside me stopped picking splinters out of the bar and made the muscles behind his neck flare up like a pair of angry whoopee cushions.
“Wha’ you say?”
A million smart-ass retorts danced on my tongue but I did my best to swallow them.
“Looking for a Nail Gang,” I repeated as I pulled up my sleeve. I kept one hand over the Opus tattoo, only showing him the others. The barcode closest to my elbow was similar to his own. “I hear there’s one in town. Just wondering if they need another hammer.”