Page 11 of Refrain (Beautiful Monsters #2)

Morning in this neighborhood is usually marked by the sound of a car backfiring as the single mom across the street gets in from her nightshift.

She’ll dart into her house for about twenty minutes before rushing to her day job.

Sure enough, I hear the mechanical pop as pink light spreads along the horizon.

The growing daylight colors Yellow in shades of gray. She’s knocked her covering off again, though not on purpose this time. Even from across the room, I can see the sweat beading on her skin. She’s fighting something in her nightmares.

She’s losing.

It’s a strange thing to witness from the observing end. She claws at the air while gritting out broken bits of Russian. “Anna…Anna! ”

Someone she knows? The dream swallows her back up without any clarification, and she goes limp.

I don’t know how long I watch her. An hour maybe? Longer? I’m not sure if I intend to sketch her when my hand drifts toward a nearby pen. The shriek of a ringtone takes precedence, and I can’t smother a sigh as I grab my cell phone.

“It’s about fucking time,” I answer gruffly on purpose, disguising the sound of my voice. Not that I need to. There’s only one person with this number.

“You know that help you promised me?” a woman wonders, her words distorted by a thick accent. “I need it now.”

“Domi.” I sigh. Relief and dread battle for supremacy, though I’m not sure which one my body decides to feel in the end. “Where are you?”

The options aren’t many. If she escaped the Syndicate long enough to call, she couldn’t have gotten far.

“The downtown precinct,” she says, confirming the second-worst scenario. “For questioning. I don’t like questions. You need to get me out. Now.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” I wonder tiredly. The brush-off is just for show. I already have a plan forming. It’s not a very good one, but it’s all I’ve fucking got.

“Our…friend,” Domi says as if reading my mind. “Did you get her out? She’s okay?”

“She’s alive ,” I admit, watching the woman in question stir in her sleep.

“Good,” Domi says, a yawn in her voice. They must have kept her in a holding cell overnight. Though, ironically, even a cot in a precinct was a step up for her. “Then get her down here. Make her flash her badge and get me the hell out of here before they find me first.”

There is no use in telling her that her “cop” turned out to be merely an informant right now. Instead, I glance at the clock above the stove and sigh. “Give me an hour. ”

I get an earful of Russian in return.

“I’ll assume that all means ‘please and thank you,’” I tell her. “Sit tight. I’m on my way.”

She hangs up, and I use the resulting silence to inhale the rest of my second-to-last cig.

The damn thing’s barely gone cold when I sense Yellow watching me. I can’t tell how much of the phone call she heard, if any of it. She scans the wall behind my head while she attempts to regain control of her body.

She doesn’t look so green, at least. The sleep did her some good on that front. Not so much for her suspicion though.

“I see that you did more of your… art while I was out,” she says warily.

I find her gazing at her bandaged hand.

She inspects the sloppy job, flexing her fingers. “Thank you—”

“Don’t,” I say. “At least not until you see the nasty scar you’re gonna have.

” A result that couldn’t have been helped given the state of my kit.

I need new thread. New needles. Details I’ll just have to worry about later.

I shake my head to clear it and run my free hand through my hair. “How do you feel?”

She takes her time before answering. The tilt to her mouth could almost be described as thoughtful. Or maybe it’s a grimace. “Like shit.”

“Good,” I say, flicking a wad of ash onto a blank page in my sketchbook. It doesn’t catch fire. The paper just smokes, and the ivory is swallowed up by ebony. “Last night, you could barely say the word shit .”

“I’m sorry.” She doesn’t even seem to know why she’s apologizing. Her mouth curls into a frown, her brow furrowing. “I didn’t mean…”

“Don’t worry about it.” I can’t resist the urge to physically shrug her guilt off. “Think of it this way—You were just part of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

She cocks an eyebrow. It’s several shades darker than her hair. Either she fills them in, or she’s not a natural blonde, a suspicion I file away for later.

“A what?” she asks.

I shake my head, turning my attention back to her face. She may know English well enough to suppress her accent, but she doesn’t seem to have picked up many phrases. I take it she doesn’t socialize much.

“Nothing. Just a friend of mine told me to have fun last night. What’s more fun than stitching up a pretty girl?”

It’s only when she flinches that I infer that “pretty” isn’t a compliment where she’s from.

“I didn’t mean it like that—”

“It’s fine,” she says, but she draws her knees defensively to her chest. One of her hands feels down along her hip. She still isn’t wearing much, other than my shirt paired with that bloodstained pair of white shorts, and she bites her lip at the realization.

“Change of subject.” I clear the middle of the table with a sweep of my hand, as if the lack of clutter can reduce the tension. “Last night, you said something about money.”

“I don’t remember.” Her gaze hardens up.

“Look, I’ll give you every bit of what dear old Vlad left behind.” I mean it, despite the fact that I could certainly use every dime. “But, first, I need you to do something for me.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. So much for putting her at ease.

“Like what?” she asks.

I pinch my lower lip beneath my teeth and bite down hard. I don’t like revealing the cards in my deck so soon. But a good rat needs his birdy friends, and this one won’t keep singing if she’s locked up.

“Remember that little flying friend I told you about?”

She stirs, renewed interest washing some of the wariness away.

“Well, she went and found herself a new cage,” I continue. “I need your help to spring her. Do that, and I’ll give you double what Vlad gave me.”

“ Her .” The woman’s quicker than I gave her credit for. Recognition swells in her eyes, and she sits upright. “Her. The girl—”

“Domi,” I interject. I couldn’t hide the annoyance in my tone even if I tried. So much for protecting my birdy’s identity.

“Is she your informant?”

“She’s my friend,” I admit. “And, to be honest, she’s the one who told me to request that dance from you—”

“Oh.” She sighs, eyeing her hands. “And here I was, assuming you really were a pervert.”

“That explains the whiskey bottle,” I say. “You willing to help me or not?”

“I don’t see how.” She chews over the words, carefully spitting them out. “I told you—I’m not a cop.”

“You don’t have to be. Even an informant can get in the door. All you have to do is whisper into the right cop’s ear. Your handler would be a good start.”

Her face pales. “It’s not that simple.”

“Nothing ever is.”

“I guess so.” She sizes me up with those yellow eyes and turns away. “Do you have a bathroom?”

I point to the left, and she starts in that direction.

“Down the hall,” I tell her. “Last door. Though, if you plan on climbing out of the window, don’t.”

Her steps falter just beyond the door.

“You’ll just rip your stitches open. It’s nowhere near as dramatic, but the good old-fashioned front door is the place to leave from if you want to bail.

You should at least change first so that my neighbors don’t think I make a habit out of having bloodied woman enter and leave my house.

You can help yourself to anything in my closet. ”

When the sound of her footsteps starts again, they head for my bedroom. Not long after, the bathroom door closes and then the water runs, drowning out whatever she’s doing inside it.

I eye the used-up butts of my last few cigs and wait. Ten minutes later, the door finally opens.

She took my good jeans, I see. One of my gray shirts hangs loosely on her, and she paired it with a black hoodie. She did what she could with her tangled hair and scrubbed the blood away, but she definitely doesn’t look like a cop.

“Let’s go.” I push back from the table, slamming my sketchbook shut. I make a pit stop near the fridge for a bottle of water, which I toss in her direction. While she drinks, I grab a clean hoodie from the hook by the door and then lead the way out onto the street.

The single mom’s rushing from the house across the way, scrambling to get into her car and drive over to the diner across town. Two scrawny kids peek out from behind the screen door, expressionless, as she warns them to get to school on time.

She’s already driven off as Yellow and I clear the next block.

It takes twenty minutes to walk to the precinct.

Usually, it’s fifteen, but she’s walking slowly.

Not out of pain, either. She’s dragging her feet, looking more and more like a deer in headlights the closer we get to the station.

Just as the building comes into view, she pulls ahead of me.

“Wait here,” she says, her face hidden by the fringe of my hood, which casts a shadow all the way down to her jaw.

“Don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I tell her, remaining right on her heels.

“Do you have a better idea?”

Fair enough. I fall back and watch her. From a distance, she almost blends into the riffraff of students and homeless crawling around this part of town. Almost.

But none of them look half as haunted as she does.