Page 28

Dr. Love turns the lights on in a small exam room and then shifts them to what I’ve come to realize isn’t just a standard black light.

“There it is,” she says, taking my hand and raising my arm for a closer look at the mark we can both see now. “I had read that the color presented differently when they’re from unwanted touch… but I’ve never seen it before.”

All the marks from Lochdon, even the faded ones look different from Terjen’s handprints. Those look… angry, almost toxic.

“Do you mind if I capture some images before we get rid of these?”

I want to say no… I want the reminder off my skin as fast as possible. But it might help someone else some day. “That’s fine. Please be quick?”

“Of course.”

Dr. Love is the only human doctor on the station and she works exclusively for Phantom. A little bonus perk for working here: free health care.

I had joked that it was literally universal health care when Phantom first told me about it.

Now, I’m just glad they have a “soft acid”—whatever that means—to get rid of what Terjen left behind.

She takes her pictures and brings out a bottle filled with a black liquid and with one of those oddly angled nozzles.

“Is it going to sting?”

“Nope.” She squirts a little on her own forearm. “It takes away just the very top layer of dermis cells. Makes old tattoos look brand new, too.

She sprays my whole arm down with it, rubbing it in with gloved hands before having me rinse it off.

“All done.”

“Thanks.” I try to sound happy, but this kind of grateful isn’t exactly a good feeling.

She tells me to come back if I need anything at all and then moves on to her next patient.

I take the moment to look at my arm, turning it this way and that before I put my shirt on and head back out to the floor.

Lochdon’s marks are gone too and I don’t like that one bit.

I stand in the middle of the club for a little too long. Lochdon isn’t back, and people start to stare.

I don’t know why that bothers me. It’s never bothered me before.

Maybe it’s because I know that at least a few of them can see my completely mark-free arm. More than half of them witnessed the scene.

I go to the bar and get a drink. The glass is just something for my hands to hold. The cold liquid inside it doesn’t do anything to soothe my racing nerves.

Ti’ala, one of the alien women who works the public room offers me a tentacle-fingered hand and when I take it she says, “Come be a good luck charm while you wait for him to get back.”

“How can I be a good luck charm if I don’t know what the game is?”

She doesn’t answer me. Shrugging, she releases me beside the table as she goes to an alien who may be entirely gelatinous blob.

A Lithan offers me a seat on one of his legs and I take it, because there’s nothing else for me to do right now.

After I watch one hand, I do understand the rules of the game.

They’re just playing poker. The suits are different, but everything else is the same.

And my Lithan friend just won by bluffing the hell out of a nothing-hand.

“You can be my good luck charm anytime you like,” he says, “‘specially since you might not be seein’ much of your mate for a while, Kitten.”

“He’s not my mate yet.”

“You’re marked. He thinks of you as his—enough to take offense—that’s what matters. At least, that’s what mattered today.”

“What do you mean?”

He looks away from the cards being dealt. “You know how Glantanians are about their mates and their clan members…”

“That doesn’t make anything as obvious as it feels like you think it should be.”

He tips his head to the side and his eyes roll around… like something is resetting inside of him.

“You could fuck me right here and now if you wanted to… you could make your way through the whole room and he wouldn’t mind, if that’s what you want… hell, he’d probably watch and wait for his turn. But another Glantanian? Especially one from his clan?” He snorts and touches my arm where Terjen did. “The man who touched you, if he’s lucky, he’ll only lose one body part. If he’s unlucky… I don’t know what the Glantanian laws are on murder, but on this station, he might have a hard time arguing his way out of it.”

Cold dread washes over me. “You think Lochdon’s going to kill him?”

The Lithian shrugs.

No. I don’t voice the words, but— “Excuse me.”

Walking with a feigned calm, I set my drink down on the bar and I don’t stop until I’m back in my locker room. But I don’t change. I grab a coat to keep my tits from falling out. As soon as I shrug it on any semblance of calm evaporates.

My heart beats too fast as I hurry out the front door and then… I run.