Page 67 of Their Property
Munin made a series of noises that sounded like chuckling.I am bound to you for this purpose, among others.
“Others? Like what?”
He fluffed up his feathers and smoothed them down again, beak open with more of that odd laughter.What fun is going through life already knowing all of its mysteries?
“It’s gonna be like that, huh?”
I looked to the side, taking in the others who had started walking through the burn site. Kyrie stood before a pile of charred logs, hands shoved in the pockets of the oversized jacket she had borrowed, probably mine. She met my eyes, brow furrowed with concern, before looking away quickly.
The pang of rejecting her cut through me again. That was not how Bash wanted me to be, not the person he saw me as. If he were here, I could tell him all about the beautiful girl who occupied so many of my thoughts. He’d listen to me ramble without any jealousy, grinning through cigar smoke as I went on and on about how she was so vibrant and sweet and fearless. Then he’d tell me to get off my ass and go after her.
But first, I had to own up to being a dick and apologize.
I slid the photo into a pocket as I stood up, when a thought occurred to me.
“Doesshehave anything to do with these other purposes?” I asked Munin.
The raven spread his wings and flew the short distance to my shoulder, then playfully nipped my ear with his beak.
She may.
TWENTY-ONE
KYRIE
We left the burn site not long after T-Bone finished kneeling in front of a cactus. He looked to be talking to Munin for part of it while holding something in his hands, but I couldn’t be sure.
T-Bone said a quick word to Chris, then headed directly to his bike without saying anything else. He straddled the machine and started it up, while I looked confusedly to the others.
Was that it?I wondered. He had seemed so insistent about coming here, I was surprised he wanted to leave so quickly.
“We’ll be staying at a service center in friendly territory,” Chris told the rest of us. “We’ll lay low there and see if we hear anything else about Sevier.”
“Is T-Bone okay?” I asked Dyno when we all made ready to follow their president.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He squeezed my locked hands on his flat stomach and threw a smile at me over his shoulder. “After what he did to you last night, I’m surprised you’re asking.”
“Well, I still care about him.” The statement came out easily, despite still reeling from the rejection last night.
Dyno squeezed my hands once more before returning his grip to the handlebars. “He’ll be fine. We’ll make sure of it.”
We rode a couple hours south and parked in front of a sprawling building that was clearly pre-Collapse. The exterior was old with peeling paint, but was otherwise well-kept. The windows of the many rooms were clean and the surrounding landscaping was trimmed back and maintained.
T-Bone cut his engine and immediately went to the front door, the rest of us following. Chris held the door open for the rest of us while muttering about what the hell was T’s problem. We spilled into a spacious lobby with low couches in front of coffee tables and a long bar on the opposite side.
Surprisingly, the place appeared to be staffed entirely by women. From what I’d heard, it was usually pimps who ran service centers and pushed women to sell their bodies to travelers passing through. But these women didn’t look like sex workers. They were fully dressed, for one thing. And even more surprisingly, they were armed.
One woman who looked to be in her late thirties held a rifle across her body. She planted her booted feet wide at T-Bone’s approach, a clear sign for him not to go any further.
“Y’all look like trouble,” she remarked, eying each one of us. “And we don’t take kindly to trouble around here.”
“No trouble, you can relax,” T-Bone said. She didn’t look convinced until he added, “we’re friends with the Demons.”
The woman’s eyebrows lifted just a fraction. “Name one.”
“Reaper.”
The woman scoffed. “Everybody knowshim.”
