Page 7 of Looking Grimm (Marionette #4)

My world had become very small, my circle of confidence smaller still. With Holland and the Capitol cut out, and the Bitters’ End added to places now closed to me, I could think of only one safe place to hole up.

I stood outside Ripley’s hotel room door with my hands clenched at my sides while I glared at the peephole.

“No chance, Farrow,” the accented voice came through muffled but clear enough I couldn’t mistake it. “I saw the news. Consider your welcome here worn out.”

“I didn’t…” A frustrated grumble ate up my protest. “Rip, I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“You know it’s bad when Nicholas runs you out,” came the muted reply. “That man thinks you hung the moon.”

“Nash didn’t…” My throat tightened around a lump of unwanted emotion. It was all I could do to tag on pitifully, “Please let me in.”

“No.”

There were probably security cameras in this building. Odds were good I’d already been seen skulking through the lobby and, as Briggs had pointed out, I drove a flashy car. But those were problems to be dealt with later. For now, I needed somewhere to hide. Judging by Ripley’s staunch refusal, I would have to keep looking.

I was about to give up when a novel thought occurred. Spinning around, I pounded on the door again and shouted. “Maggie! You wanna play beauty parlor?”

The silence was followed by a high-pitched squeal. I heard a scuffle inside the room and Ripley’s low notes of argument before the door swung inward. Maggie stood in the frame, flapping her hands and bouncing. She lurched forward and threw her arms around me, leaving me looking over her shoulder at Ripley’s sour expression.

“You insufferable ass.” He stepped aside, then extended his arm toward the shadowy hotel room. “Get in before someone sees you.”

Maggie led me by the hand to the sitting area where I’d met with Ripley two days prior. Her pastel hair swished across her shoulders as she sat me down then looked around for what I couldn’t possibly guess. Finally, she held up a finger, then darted off to the bathroom.

Ripley wandered to the windows where the curtains were drawn. He pulled back one side and peered out into the parking lot, checking for patrol vehicles, if I were to guess.

The sound of Maggie rooting around in the bathroom cabinets was the only reprieve from an otherwise oppressive quiet until I said, “I didn’t kill that investigator, Rip.”

Tugging the curtain closed, he turned to face me. “I believe you.”

“You do?” The frog in my throat caused my voice to croak .

“Reluctantly.”

I frowned. “Then why didn’t you let me in?”

He went to the bedside table where his phone was plugged into the charging cable. Worry struck that he might turn me in, or that Holland would somehow track him, too, or any number of equally unlikely scenarios. Instead, he scrolled idly while he spoke.

“ I may believe you, but you wouldn’t be here if anyone else did. You had the sense to draw the investigators away from the Bitters’ End. I would ask why I’m not due the same courtesy, but I assume it’s because we aren’t shagging.”

His statement sounded scathing, but his accompanying expression was almost sympathetic.

It stabbed at my wounded heart, that blackened, dying thing I wondered if I would be better off without.

But, yes. I’d done what little I could to protect Nash. The reason wasn’t as simple as Ripley made it out to be. In fact, my feelings toward Nash had gotten progressively more complicated of late. It was definitely an oversimplification when I said, “I care about him.”

Ripley nodded. “I believe that, too.”

Maggie emerged from the bathroom toting a pink and purple Caboodle case. She rushed to sit on the loveseat beside me and arrange her supplies on the small, low table. Turning, she pressed her knees into mine, eliminating any hope I might have had for personal space.

From the bedside, Ripley snorted. “Better you than me, mate.”

“You’re just jealous I wear braids better,” I quipped.

Maggie tsked at me in warning, then grabbed the sides of my face and fixed my head level with hers. With no other recourse, I clasped my hands in my lap and stared at her, finding her blood-red eyes suddenly pensive.

Most of the time, the zombie girl was semi-lucid, only vaguely aware of the world around her and the people in it. Now, though, she seemed intent, pushing the mess of blond locks off my forehead while holding my face steady. The tenderness in her gaze stunned me, as did the soothing way she finger-combed my hair.

The eye contact grew uncomfortable, and I tried to pull away as tears welled up. Maggie held me firm, unblinking, and with a growing sort of sadness that fueled mine.

In the long, quiet moment, fragile tethers broke and released a wave of emotion. The sob that had been lodged in my throat shook me as tears streaked my cheeks and puddled in Maggie’s hands.

She cooed a soft sound and pulled me in, kissing the top of my head as I sagged against her. There was no warmth in her body, but I didn’t mind. I clung to her while she stroked my hair and face.

Neither of us pulled away even when Ripley said, “You can stay for a week or until you do something unfathomably stupid. Whichever comes first.”

“Okay,” I mumbled into Maggie’s shirt.

I sniffled and turned aside to wipe my nose on my sleeve. Ripley stood a few feet away, fussing with his phone again. After a few seconds, he pointed the screen at me. Through the blur, I could barely make out a text thread with a new message sent from N.N.

Have you seen Fitch?

Ripley thrust the cell toward me. “Call him,” he said. “Poor bloke’s got enough troubles without fretting over you.”

Peeling myself off of Maggie, I took the offered phone and stumbled into the bathroom. With the door closed, I slumped to the floor beside the counter and sat, cradling the cell in both hands. I stared at the message, read and reread it while my eyes filmed with fresh tears.

But I didn’t call.

One of Ripley’s conditions for my stay was that I couldn’t leave the hotel. For anything. For days. It reminded me of the rules I’d placed on Donovan, limiting him to the confines of the houseboat waiting for my infrequent visits. As easily as I’d justified myself then, being on the receiving end of house arrest was another matter entirely. And knowing my efforts had failed to save my brother in the end gave me little hope for this scheme to work any better.

The morning after I arrived, a bag of my clothes and a burner phone were left outside the hotel room door, crowned with a Post-it note that read: Call me. Please. - N

I kept the phone, an old brick of a thing with Nash’s number programmed into it, in case I’d had any doubts about who left the care package. But I didn’t call and, per Ripley’s strict instructions, didn’t stray from the chronically dark and frankly depressing hotel room for the next seventy-two hours.

Ripley was not much of a talker, and Maggie was verifiably mute, which made for the longest silent treatment of my life. The two of them were quite an odd pair, lazing about in one bed or the other, sharing earbuds and listening to music, watching television for hours on end, and bustling about in the kitchenette prepping kettle after kettle of tea.

I made conversation when I could and indulged Maggie in card games and fingernail painting. Thankfully, I didn’t cry on her again, even when she caught me awake after a nightmare staring out into the parking lot in the dead of night.

Similarly, Grimm and the gang had been quiet. No more dead investigators; no news to speak of outside of the widely-publicized manhunt with my name attached.

On the evening of the fourth day, I decided the boredom would kill me before the Hex did and told Ripley as much. He was halfway through a carton of delivery Chinese food. Noodles dangled from a pair of chopsticks inches from his mouth.

“Go, then,” he said. “Don’t come back.”

My sweet and sour chicken remained unopened on the coffee table, ignored despite my grumbling stomach. I stood from the padded chair and scowled at the sullen teen as I said, “I can’t sit around and wait for the Hex or the Capitol to turn over this particular rock, Rip. Besides, if they find me, they find you and Mags, too, and I don’t want that shit on my conscience.”

He blinked and chewed, his expression impassive. “Shall I show you the door, or can you find it on your own?”

Maggie curled up beside him, channel-surfing the TV. Color and light flashed across her and Ripley as they reposed. It made the scars on Ripley’s throat gleam silver and seemed to illuminate something else in him: fear. This was his refuge as much as it was mine. Neither he nor Maggie had strayed outside these four walls since I’d arrived. It made me wonder.

“Is this how you want to spend your life?” I gestured to the zombie girl, then the room around us. “You’re as scared as I am. Sticking your head in the goddamn sand.”

Ripley stabbed his chopsticks into the paper container. “Go on,” he mumbled. “Get it all out.”

“We were gonna take down the gang,” I countered. “What’s stopping us?”

Driving the chopsticks deep into the nest of noodles, he pushed the container onto the coffee table, then sat back and tilted his head to meet my gaze. “Lack of planning? Firepower? The Capitol papering the whole bloody city with your wanted posters?”

“Fuck them.”

He sniffed. “Eloquent as always.”

Maggie reached for her plate, which contained an uncooked slab of steak pulled from the dorm-sized fridge’s tiny freezer. She ripped off a chunk of the red meat with her bare hands, then swallowed it whole. Watery blood slicked her fingers and the remote she held. I cringed at the sight.

“So, you’re determined to kick the hornet’s nest?” Ripley asked me. “You saw what happened last time. They’re setting you up, mate, and you’re playing right into their hands.”

I nodded. “I have to find Grimm. Maybe that’s the way to do it.”

“And if the Capitol catches you first?” He crossed his arms.

That gave me pause. I couldn’t deny the possibility, even the likelihood, that I would be found, reported by some do- gooder citizen, or maybe the investigators would prove more adept at finding rogue criminals than abducted little boys. They cornered me once before, at Jacoby Thatcher’s house, but I’d gone willingly then. For Donovan and Grimm. This time, I had no such compulsions.

“I won’t let them take me alive,” I replied.

Ripley nodded slowly. “Do us both a favor and don’t go out looking like that.” He made a sweeping gesture toward me.

I was due for a shower, and I hadn’t bothered to fix my hair in days. That, combined with the fact that I only had a few articles of clothing to cycle through and hadn’t been allowed to visit the laundry facility, made for a stale, wrinkled state of being.

“You think I should dress up?” I gave the front of my thermal shirt a tug. “Save the mortician the trouble of making me a pretty corpse?”

Ripley rolled his eyes. “Dye your hair. Wear some gloves. Try anonymity for a change. You might like it.”

Knowing these two, they had bubblegum pink and inky black dye on hand, but I didn’t feel like twinning with either member of the Goth duo.

“Why be a pretty corpse when you can be an ugly one?” I offered, but my effort at humor eluded Ripley entirely.

“Why be a corpse at all?” He pushed off the couch.

Maggie whined at his departure, then licked the watery blood streaking down her forearm.

I turned my attention to Ripley as he walked over to the sliding closet door. “I’m not dyeing my hair!” I called after him.

He reached into the closet and pulled out a scrap of black fabric to fling at me.

The item struck my chest, and I shook it out into the shape of a slouchy knit beanie. I tugged it on, earning a head shake from Ripley.

“Prissy twat,” he grumbled.

Next, he pulled a charcoal-colored hoodie off a hanger and shouldered into it. Returning to the sitting area, he stepped behind the couch where Maggie focused intently on a cartoon show. Bending over the back of the sofa, he kissed the top of her head. The zombie girl chirped and patted his cheek with her bloody hand, leaving red fingerprints on his pale skin.

He pulled away and stuffed his hands in his hoodie pocket before glancing over at me.

“Well?” he asked. “Where are we going?”

“You’re not gonna like it,” I said.

“That’s a given.”

We headed toward the door, and I jingled my car keys in my pocket as though that would soften the blow of my announcement.

“The warehouse district,” I said.

Ripley halted his stride and stood for a long moment. Finally, he kicked the carpet and grunted, “Fuck.”