“Hello.” He waved a hand in Lassiter’s face. “Anybody in there. You can’t loiter here. You’ll fuck my wait line.”
A quick glance to the left, and either Lassiter was missing a lineup of humans, or this green-and-brown goaltender of absolutely nothing was flexing for shits and giggles.
“There’s a female inside,” Lassiter heard himself explain, “that I want to see, but I shouldn’t. Nothing good’s going to come out of it. I should leave her alone.”
Man Bun did a double take for show, like he thought the world was an Instagram story. “Do I look like your therapist? What are you doing. Or am I calling for backup.”
“Who am I bothering out here?” Lassiter indicated his feet. “This is public property, right? Maintained by the city, not you.”
The guy stepped right up and jutted his chin out, in a move that he clearly thought would work for him. Too bad there was a big rate limiter to all that aggression: The guy worked at a club named after a weed and was wearing brown pants.
As Lassiter remembered with fondness the opening scene of the first Deadpool movie, Man Bun arched every brow he had and then some.
“Are we having a problem?”
Lassiter shook his head. “No.”
“Then move along or get in line.”
Shifting his eyes over the guy’s shoulder, Lassiter took note that there were no windows to look in, and he tried to imagine what Rahvyn was doing inside. Who she was with. Whether she was dancing.
None of this was his business. But he couldn’t help himself, and the fact that he had his ass in a crack over a female who should, and had to, remain a stranger, made him move quickly from mild annoyance to downright pissed off when it came to the human in front of him.
“—calling the cops. Right now—”
Lassiter locked eyes with the guy… and suddenly, shit wasn’t funny for either one of them. The human stopped in mid-sentence with his mouth open, and although it was probably because something was showing in Lassiter’s face that was terrifying, the fallen angel side of things wasn’t going to worry about it.
He’d suddenly had it with everything and everybody, from Balz and Devina’s drama, to that human woman back at the bookshop, to this hipster right here, with his little seat of influence that he was determined to wield over a sonofabitch who was in love with someone he—
Oh… shit, Lassiter thought. He wasn’t in love with Rahvyn. He didn’t even know her.
Then again, wasn’t that how bonding worked?
“It’s okay, my dude,” the bouncer backstroked with a stammer. “Like whatever—”
“No,” Lassiter snapped. “It’s not whatever. And I’m not your dude.”
When the human tried to take a step back, Lassiter mentally held the bouncer right where he was, and as he began to tremble, the tables-turned power trip did what nothing else could. It brought Lassiter some relief, a cooling to his impotent rage, a focal point to release his tension.
Killing this random man, out here on the street, in the world of humans who were so much less than Lassiter was, who weren’t on his level in any way, who were like ants under his feet… was the only thing that felt right in what seemed like forever.
The itch scratched. The burn extinguished. The ache gone.
For only a moment, sure. But like he fucking cared about duration. A moment was enough—
“Say goodnight, you sanctimonious asshole,” Lassiter growled. “See you on the morning news.”
* * *
Back in the bookshop’s storage room, Erika had to lay her head down on her outstretched arm. As she did, she realized she was lying in a pool of the suspect’s blood, and she had a thought that this vantage point, of a floor, of the kind of puddle she was in, of the body beside her… was a version of what many of her homicide victims saw right before their ends. It was what her father, her mother, and her brother had seen.
The girl in the pink bedroom. The man down by the river, too.
With her eyes fluttering and her heart beating in an irregular rhythm, her fear ebbed and was replaced with a helpless sadness that seeped into her marrow. For so long, she had been fighting to find answers in the aftermath of violent death, but she had never thought about this moment here… this acceptance… that came when a person was about to die. And knew it.
It was shockingly peaceful.
Just before she passed out, she looked at her hand under the open wound. The glow of light in her palm was diminishing, fading away like an old-fashioned kerosene lantern when you turned the—
Thump. Thump. Thump…
Footsteps. Heavy ones.
Out in the shop.
Within a brief flare of energy, she tried to retract her arm and get to her service weapon. But then she couldn’t remember where it was. Had she dropped it? She didn’t know, couldn’t guess. What did it matter, though. She didn’t have the strength to point it at anyone.