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“Well, I haven’t got many cards left to play with, thanks in part to you.” Across the cafe table, Mitzi stared Mordecai down. “You know, what you did may just have killed Viktor.”
Whatever hint of emotion had been on Mordecai’s face vanished, leaving him utterly blank. Despite herself, Mitzi shivered; the last time she’d seen that expression had been directly before—
She pushed the memory down, cloaking herself in a carefully restrained righteous fury. “After all those years working with him, Mordecai, you haven’t got anything to say?”
“He should not have been involved,” Mordecai said, nearly monotone. “I reasoned with him to retire before I left.”
“Reasoned? Are you sure it wasn’t spite? The way I remember it, you kneecapped him on your way out the door.”
“That is how one reasons with Viktor,” Mordecai countered, laying his menu on the table.
Asa chuckled. “I think you may be looking in the wrong place for heartstrings to tug on, my dear.”
Still leveled at Mordecai, Mitzi’s eyes narrowed. “Then I shouldn’t need to warn you not to bother attending the funeral.”
Mordecai’s expression didn’t falter, and Mitzi could see nothing left of the awkward, insecure lad who had briefly been like a younger brother to her.
Long into the night, unable to sleep, Mitzi found herself recalling that cold, lifeless expression, and feeling a prickling unease. Sensing—without really knowing why—that something terrible was about to happen.
It was a couple hours past midnight when she first heard them faintly on the wind: the sound of alarm bells calling the firemen from their beds.
Pulling on her nightgown, Mitzi headed to the balcony; the bells were still far away, almost on the edge of hearing. A fine mist was in the air; glancing up, she saw clouds heavy with rain, blocking out the stars. Whichever unlucky building had caught fire, it should get dealt with long before it spread enough to endanger many nearby buildings.
Even so, fire was unpredictable; she recalled with a shiver the news of the Iroquois Theatre, just around the turn of the century—the deaths of over six hundred, mainly women and children. In Illinois, all too close for comfort. And the older folk who frequented the cafe sometimes talked about the Great Fire that devastated the docks of St. Louis itself.
Such disasters were rare, of course, and the buildings in this area were constructed of brick to be less prone to conflagration. Even so, the reminder increased her unease.
Deciding that she’d rather not have to flee in her nightgown, if it came to that, she got dressed and put her shoes and coat within easy reach before crawling back into bed. And she left the balcony doors open, so as not to block out any sound of danger.
Staying alert for any stray sound, combined with the discomfort of the extra layers and the slight headache from the cold breeze, left her entirely too tense to sleep. After a couple of hours, she gave up and got up, slipping on her shoes and coat and trudging down the stairs to the unlit cafe.
There were still a few hours to go before anyone else would arrive; since they were mostly a front for the speakeasy, the cafe opened late and they didn’t bother preparing much in advance. In the early-morning twilight, with nobody else around, the silence was eerie.
Feeling oddly suffocated, Mitzi headed for the pantry, grabbing a flash light before slipping through into the limestone tunnel below. If the fire reached this far, it might cut off the power, but at least she had multiple routes by which she could leave the area, ways she could escape the flames. And she’d feel more at ease once she double-checked that each route to the surface was clear.
The speakeasy was silent as well, though far less eerie; there hadn’t been many people here, of late. As the door shut behind her, she padded along the patterned section of the floor, between the bar and the craps tables, and turned into the tunnel that led to the garage.
And gave a shriek.
Ahead of her stood a lone figure, the light dancing off him strangely as he swayed in place. Wet fur, she thought at first, but when he glanced her way and took a stumbling, off-balance step, she saw it for what it was:
Blood.
A disheveled suit absolutely covered in blood.
A chill ran down Mitzi’s spine as she raised her flash light and saw the tom’s blood-spattered face—the tuxedo fur and the odd and staring eyes. She swallowed, suppressing the urge to turn and run, aware that she wouldn’t even get to the door before she caught a bullet in the back. And yet she didn’t have any way to defend herself, not even her purse.
But he didn’t advance on her—just stood there, swaying and blinking, not meeting her gaze.
“I should have done it sooner,” Mordecai murmured, looking down and away. “I had thought that… by delaying, I could… but I hadn’t realized.”
Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and squared her shoulders, trying not to let her voice tremble. “Audacious enough, coming back here after everything you’ve done.”
“I had been trying to ascertain the true threat,” he continued, thoughtfully, as though he hadn’t even heard her. “No one else could manage it. But then I realized… while I delayed, the one at the top was still doing harm. Using them. Using me. And I was letting him.”
“What do you mean?” she asked after a moment, feeling rather off-balance in this conversation.
“I never meant,” he said, and took a couple of stumbling steps toward her, even as she backed up to keep distance between them. Stopping, he shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut. “But if I stopped them all, then he couldn’t do more harm. Or not much—not right away. So I… I took them all down. Quietly, at first, until they realized. And then with bullets… and fire.”
“Took… who… down?” Mitzi asked slowly, as her eyes lit on his lapel, a pin still holding a stem there with a few torn petals barely hanging on—the marigold itself gone.
“They won’t be a threat anymore,” Mordecai said, dropping wearily to his knees before her, and Mitzi felt another chill run down her spine. “I know it’s not enough… but it was never going to be enough, was it? It’s all I could do for him. And now Viktor…
“Tell me what to do,” he said, in an oddly plaintive monotone. “I don’t… I can’t see… a path to walk, a… next step. Tell me the next step. A direction. Please,” he added, finally looking up to meet her eyes.
In the flicker of her flash light, he looked so lost that she wondered how she had ever thought him emotionless.
But this was the tom who’d nearly gotten Viktor killed. Nearly destroyed Lackadaisy itself, and gone to bed with its enemies. Regardless of the reasoning, some things couldn’t be so easily forgiven.
Clinging to the cold ball of fury that had taken root in her heart the moment he’d turned on them, Mitzi raised her chin, staring him down. “Do you truly imagine that you could ever find a place here again?”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it—just nodded solemnly, and pulled out his pistol, then lifted it and, with no change of expression, brought the barrel up to his own temple.
“No! ” Mitzi shrieked, rushing forward to grab his arm—“no no no no no no no—”
Looking bewildered, Mordecai didn’t resist her as she pulled his arm away, and took the pistol from his paw.
Cloaking her unexpected terror in fury, Mitzi turned and flung it behind the bar, where it clattered away, out of reach. “What the devil were you thinking?!”
“Oh,” he said, glancing around as if only now recognizing where he was. “Of course. It would be… loud. Noticeable. And messy.” He cocked his head to the side. “But I could… yes, the river.” Nodding again, he tensed up enough to get wearily to his feet, and turned back toward the tunnel. “Silent and without a mess to clean up, yes. I’ll simply need to find enough stones—”
Grabbing his arm again, Mitzi pulled him hard enough to spin him around, sending him off-balance and careening to the floor. She glanced at the blood on her paw, then glared down at him where he lay frozen, staring up at her with wide eyes.
“You unbelievable coward,” she cried. “You come back here to my bar, to my home, and think you can just walk away from us all over again? You don’t get to escape so easily!”
He blinked up at her stupidly. “But I’ve made such a mess of—”
“Then you’ll damn well have to help me clean it up. Come on,” she added, extending her paw—the bloody one—and hauling him to his feet. “Let’s get you upstairs before there’s enough light to see you through the windows. I can mop up while you’re bathing.”
Following her lead without comment, Mordecai let her pull him across the room and up through the tunnel to the cafe, then up the stairs. Given that he could have broken her grip at any time, she took that as a good sign. Then again, he was still a bit unsteady on his feet, even having trouble with the stairs; as she used her elbow to turn on the light for the lavatory, she thought to ask, “Are you injured?”
“Not… significantly,” he answered. “Most of the blood isn’t mine.”
“Well, that’s something,” she said, and started washing off her paws. “So why are you having trouble walking?”
He hesitated. “It’s been a long night,” he said at last. “I had little choice but to walk all the way h—here.”
She turned to stare at him over her shoulder. “From the Maribel? That’s five miles!”
“It didn’t seem prudent to catch a trolley.”
Given that the streetcars didn’t even run in the middle of the night, Mitzi might have considered that line a joke, but she knew Mordecai’s sense of humor well enough to discard that possibility. Another sign of his disorientation, then. As she dried off her paws, she wondered if perhaps he’d gotten hit in the head.
She might check him over, once he’d cleaned up.
“That suit’s completely ruined,” she said. “Leave it in the corner, not touching the wall. I’ll go find something for you to wear.” Then, halfway through the door, she turned to glare at him again. “Don’t go and drown yourself, you hear? I’ve still got things I want to yell at you. Nitwit.”
“I could hardly deny you,” he said without much inflection—but the way he ducked his head and looked up at her reminded her so much of their first fumbling attempts at friendship that she had to flee before the waterworks started.
Plenty of shirts and trousers were still in the bottom of her dressers, suits still hanging in her closet—remnants of a past life that she couldn’t bear to cut free. Putting together a likely set, enough to make do until Mordecai could go fetch his normal clothes, she found herself smoothing over the familiar fabric and sighing.
Holding up one of the shirts, she hugged it briefly to her chest, eyes closed as she tried to remember his scent. Then she looked over at the last portrait they’d taken together, she and Atlas, and shot it a wistful smile.
“Looks like your wayward boy has come home.”