Page 29 of Saint of the Shadows

“Is it working?”

She rubbed her thighs together. “Come over and find out. I’ll meet you outside.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He ended the phone call.

She scrambled to put on some more clothes, adding black jeans and combat boots to her giant t-shirt, and climbed out her window onto the fire escape. Each boot stomp rang against the grates of the escape. She figured the roof was her safest bet to meet him, unsure how she’d buzz someone in full mask regalia into her apartment.

She sent Tobias a message.You’ll know where to find me.After she tightened her mask, she flicked up the hood of her new coat and strapped her fingerless kickboxing gloves tight around her wrists. If he wanted crazy, she would give it. She wandered to the roof’s edge from the opposite sideof the escape. Would the Patron Saint arrive from that direction? The distance between her roof and the neighboring rooftop below was the equivalent of the long jump she had landed in high school track. But many years later? She surveyed the distance to the alleyway below and rubbed Abuelita’s cross pendant. The Patron Saint might handle jumping from massive heights, but she needed a risk assessment chart. And the muscles of her teenage self. She shook her head—Ow! Her head still hurt from the mugging. She backed away from the edge and headed to the fire escape.

She leaned against the guardrail and looked at the steps back to her apartment’s window. Inside warmth, safety, predictability. Outside…?

A woman screamed from the alley over. Common sense said head inside and call 911. But Marisol Novotny turned around and entered a dead sprint, the skirt of her coat whipping behind her. When she reached the edge of the roof, she jumped across the alleyway, landing on her butt on the opposite rooftop. Plumes of vapor escaped her mouth, her breathing heavy. She landed the jump, but she had become like them—a crazy person in a costume who, if she chased one more bad idea, would appear on the other side of the emergency room.

A man yelled, “Shut up!” and she heard a familiar crack—the sound of a punch meeting cartilage. Followed by a woman crying. Also familiar. Marisol recognized the breaths and pausesbetween whimpers. It was the cry of someone fighting against it, telling herself to stop. Someone who thought no one would ever hear her or care.

Marisol must save her.

She approached the roof’s edge. Across the way, a woman in a mini dress staggered down the fire escape, carrying a pair of high heels. She had a bloody nose. A pot-bellied man followed her.

Marisol darted to a ladder bolted into the building’s bricks. She slid down it, avoiding the rungs. She skipped the last story and jumped to the ground with the grace of a cat. Not really. Instead, she crashed into a group of garbage cans, thrashing loud enough to stop the woman and man midstep.

Sour rotting garbage filled her nose. She’d try mouth breathing from now on. Marisol flicked a scrap of God-knows-what out of her hair and pulled her hood back over her head.

“Hey!” Marisol called out. She jumped to grab the steps of the fire escape. “That’s not how you treat a lady.”

“Mind your own business, you freak!” the man shouted back. He pulled the woman’s hair. “See the trouble you get us in?” The woman grimaced.

“This is my business.” Marisol lifted her body up the first stair. She ran up, up, and up the stairs until she reached the landing. There, she lowered herself into a fighting stance.

The man watched her and guffawed. He loosened his hold on the woman, who dove tocower behind Marisol. The man reached to grab the woman, but Marisol met him with a left hook. He stumbled back and flipped over the railing, falling the short distance to the ground. Flat on his back, he groaned. Marisol stared at her fist, in awe that it could bruise and break bones. She was too much. And she loved it.

She turned to the bloody-nosed woman who had curled into a ball, shivering. Task one: stop the blood. Marisol ripped away some of the lining of her coat. She handed the cloth to the woman, who blotted the blood collecting over her upper lip. Task two: get her to safety. Marisol asked, “Do you want me to call the police?”

The woman shook her head. “I’m working.”

“Do you have a safe place to go to?”

The woman nodded.

“All right, go back inside. Hire a cab to take you there.”

“What about the john?” the woman looked to the ground, where the pot-bellied man struggled to stand.

Marisol stretched her neck on each side. “He won’t be your problem anymore.”

The woman ran back up the steps and crawled back inside the window.

The man rubbed his backside. Marisol raised her fists again, prepared to attack or defend.

The man pointed a stubby and hairy finger in her direction. “When I’m done with you, you’ll be shitting blood!”

“I’d like to see you try.” She jumped to the ground, finally nailing a graceful landing. The flick of her hands said, “Come at me,” and she shifted her weight, readying to fight.

He swung his doughy arms wildly and clumsily at her, which she avoided easily with a bob and weave. She could end it with a haymaker, but she drew out the fight, wanting the Patron Saint to find her. She parried and blocked, bobbed, and weaved. “You can show up anytime!” She called out to the night.

“Who are you talking to?” the man asked. He caught her by the lapels of her coat and shoved her into the ground.

Marisol scudded across the wet pavement and rolled back to standing. She hit the man with an uppercut. He wobbled back and wiped blood from his lip. Marisol stood straight with her hands on her hips.

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