“Don’t sneak up on me,” I mutter.
“Footpath People clan,” she says absently. “Makes me sneaky. I can’t really help it.”
“Yeah, well, Footpath clan or not, I’ll put a knife in your gut if you sneak up on me again.”
Her eyes flicker my way, like she can’t believe I just threatened her and she’s not sure how to take it.
I sigh. “Just don’t push your luck. My reaction time can be . . . fast.”
“Wow,” she says, and then, “Sorry.” Not sounding all that sorry. Sounding more like a teenager who just decided I was dramatic instead of dangerous. She slides onto the barstool next to me. “That guy on the screen had me distracted. I’m bi, but I usually don’t go for boys. Too much ego, if you know what I mean, but I can appreciate the lovely wherever I see it.”
“So, is that the guy we’re trying to find? I mean, the other one. Your Kai. He’s clearly not a red.”
By “red” she must mean a Goodacre. Not sure if the twins would find that insulting, but I’ll leave it for her to find out on her own.
“That’s Kai,” I acknowledge as I hit the button and turn off the screen.
She sighs and drops her chin onto her hand, elbow propped up on the bar. “You didn’t tell me he looked like that. No wonder you agreed to this gig.”
I give her a tight smile but don’t answer her. I can tell she wants to hear more, maybe a story about Kai. How we met. What we mean to each other. Why I shot him. But I’m not offering.
I love you. Don’t follow me.
Ben’s watching me. But she doesn’t ask me what’s wrong, or why I turned the video off. Instead she spins the barstool around, surveying the All-American. “This is a cool place. Very cowboy.” She hops down and walks behind the bar.
“What are you doing?” I ask, suspicious.
“Having a drink,” she says, eyes roaming over Grace’s limited inventory. Even though the All-American is one of the more prosperous establishments of its kind, there’s really only a few options for the drinker in a post–Big Water world. Grace’s specialty is beer, something her and her kids brew themselves in vats out back in one of the garage bays. But on occasion she has other stuff. It’s really the luck of the draw, what’s coming across the Wall from New Denver or the Burque.
“You want a drink?” Ben asks me.
“Aren’t you a little young to be drinking?”
Ben rolls her eyes. “Pretty sure there’s no drinking age in the apocalypse.” She tilts her head to give me a look. “You’re not going to start mothering me, are you?”
I stare, horrified. Is that what I was doing? “Good whiskey’s down there, second shelf. Glasses behind you.”
She grins. Bends down to find the bottle of whiskey. She puts it on the bar triumphantly and reaches back to retrieve two glasses from the shelf. She’s careful to measure us each out a shot, not too generous, but not stingy either. “Where’d you learn to pour?” I ask her.
“Thirsty Boys are my uncles,” she says by way of explanation. Which I guess is pretty much all the explanation needed.
She pushes my glass over to me. I pick it up, and we briefly clink the cheap imitation crystal together in a toast. I sip mine. Watch as Ben takes a drink and immediately breaks out into a gagging cough. I raise an eyebrow and wait for her to catch her breath.
“Confession,” she chokes out hoarsely, swallowing hard to clear her throat. Her face looks pained. I don’t even crack a smile. “I’ve never drank alcohol before. My uncle would never let me. I poured for the Boys”—she waves her hand in a vague gesture—“but I never drank it. I just wanted to try it.”
I don’t say a word.
She coughs some more. Finds Grace’s jug of drinking water and fills a clean glass. Chugs it down and, with a disgusted look on her face, tips her whiskey glass and pours the rest of her shot into mine. “Take it,” she says.
Now I laugh. I figure I’ve let her keep her dignity long enough.
“Jesus,” she mutters, wiping at her mouth. “Why on earth would people choose to drink that stuff?” She disappears behind the bar again. “Especially when . . . I thought I saw . . .” Her voice drifts off as she rummages around. I sip my whiskey, waiting. Happy for the distraction Ben provides. Trying not the see Kai’s face every time I close my eyes. Hear his words. I love you. Don’t follow me.
“Found it!” she declares, holding up a brown-and-white aluminum can.
I come back from my reverie. Notice what she’s holding. “Is that . . . ?” I gasp.
“Shasta! Yes. I heard Clive mention something about soda pop to his mom, so I figured where else would you keep your rare sugary carbonated beverages but behind the bar?”
I narrow my eyes. “So you didn’t come looking for me. You came to pilfer soda.”
“Don’t take it personally,” she says. “I came to check on you too. Looks like some huge dust storm’s rolling in from the west, and Clive said we should all get together in one place to wait it out. But this.” She frames the soda can with her hands like a game show hostess. Something she’s too young to have ever seen in person, but maybe the gesture’s universal.
“You know that’s probably Grace’s secret stash.”
“I know.”
“So maybe you shouldn’t drink it.”
“Do you think she’ll care?” She looks crestfallen.
“No,” I lie, amused. Thinking of the lecture Grace would lay on Ben if she were her normal feisty self instead of what Rissa feared her mother had become. A mother heavy with the belief that she’s lost her youngest child.
Ben pops the can open with a soft hissing sound. The distinctive smell of cola, a smell I would have sworn I forgot but remember as clearly as my own name, fizzes in my nose. She pours half the soda into her glass and the rest into my recently emptied whiskey glass, then comes around and sits next to me. We toast and drink. The bubbles dance against my lips, and I can’t help but smile.
“So what’s the plan? I figure you got a plan. If that were my boyfriend, I’d have a plan.” She holds the glass to her mouth. “Even if you did shoot him.”
I ignore that. Jabs from Rissa cut deeper than I’d like to admit, but Ben’s feel more like teasing. Meant to make me laugh more than bleed.
I sigh. Back to business, and Ben needs to know anyway.
“Listen to this.” I touch the screen, bring the video back to life. Rewind to where I want it. Bring the volume back up. “Hear that singing? Isn’t that just like what we heard on the mountain?”
Her face is an open book. Horror and fascination and grief. She rolls the glass in her hands, looks up at me with big eyes. “That’s the same ones who killed my uncle?”
“I think so.”
“And that woman. That’s the same one, isn’t it? The one I killed.”
“Could be,” I say. “Maybe. Probably. Which means they came here first.”
“And then, what? Back to Lake Asááyi?”
“Or they split up. Who knows? But the timing is right.” I down the rest of my Shasta, the aftertaste of whiskey dulled by the sugary drink. “Let’s go, before the dust storm hits.”
I turn off the video feed. Slide off the bench. Take a few steps before I realize Ben isn’t following me.
“What is it?”
She’s rocking back and forth on the barstool, eyes down and hands tucked in the sleeves of her shirt. She looks young. Alone. All that teenager sass from earlier vanished like it never was.
“We’re going to kill him, aren’t we?” she says, her voice hard. “The White Locust?”
I think about what Kai said on that tape. He didn’t know, couldn’t know that Caleb’s disappearance would threaten to destroy Grace, that the White Locust’s follower would kill Hastiin, that his cheii would be desperately waiting for him. And I think about my vow to myself, that I’m not the indiscriminate killer I was before, definitely not the boogeyman Ben described me as up on the mountain. But before I can answer her, the walls of the All-American give a little shake. We stop still, listening, as the roar of a dust storm rolls over us.