I pressed the cigarette between his lips and forced him to suck. Loving that little exhale when nothing happened.
Wolfe stepped back, stalking to the door when I retrieved it from Rinley's mouth, staring at him one final time. He didn't get to hurt Daphne anymore.
Then, without feeling, I turned the cigarette around and put it out on his tongue, watching the red consume his body from the inside like the fucking Fourth of July.
"Let's go!" Wolfe beckoned. "We do not watch traitors die."
He was right. We didn't. Rinley would fade away in the Under like all the creatures before him, a rat, a no one, nothing.
I nodded in compliance, dipping into the dusty stagnation of a world with no breath.
"Are you okay?" I asked Wolfe when we got to the ladder.
"Yeah. I just remembered my favorite knife is in Rinley's face," he said with a hollow joke, but I could tell he was lying as he climbed into the city. This exit dumped us in an alley behind some ribbon store run by an older woman who could probably kick my ass.
Buzz. Buzz.
It was Daphne.
I went to pick it up, but his hand shot out.
"Threx," Wolfe tucked a rogue strand of hair away from his face, nearly falling to his knees. His body language was jumbled, slinking to one side, and I could tell it had nothing to do with Rinley.
"Fuck," he began to gag, splattering the wall with the stench of bile and this morning's coffee.
"What the hell is going on with you?" I asked, pulling a flask of whiskey from my pocket and forcing it to his lips: a little trick to burn the nausea away.
Daphne called again, this time feeling more urgent than before.
"Threx, I am about to make our girl cry and, um," a strange bit of water filled the rims of his eyes. "I don't know how to fucking do it."
Make Daphne cry.
The sentence spun in my head over and over until finally it stopped.
Wolfe had come up with a plan, and I don't think it's one he expected.
I tilted my head but didn't utter a word. Just handed him the phone and let him answer.
thirty-five
Wolfe: Counting To Ten
Threx eyed me from the alleyway shadows. The slick of his boot pressed into the brick, while the stench of gasoline lingered on his fingers. Strange how these garbage-filled, wet streets felt more like home than anywhere else.
I froze, my throat burning as Daphne’s name pulsed on the screen.
“If at any point this becomes too much for her,” Threx warned, keeping his voice muted and his hands buried in his pockets as he turned toward me. “This conversation is over.”
I nodded and swallowed hard, the taste of vomit still clinging to my gums.
“Hey,” I answered, pulling the camera up and angling it toward my face so she could see me.
Daphne stilled for a minute, glancing down as if to check who she had called. I searched for a hint of disappointment in the lines of her face, but there was none. She only smiled at me, warm and bright like she always did. Because in this moment, she was still mine.
“Hey, right back,” she smirked, falling deep into my eyes. “Is Thay okay?”
I loved that she asked this first. Loved that she thought I’d ever cry for him.