Tell Me What My Demons Say // Kay {Blitz}

There's a rhythm to the market, a tap-tap-tap, which lulls me. I'm quite sure it would drag you under too, if you'd only stop to listen. But you don't. Instead you lift your voice, a shrill melody over the steady bass. "Why don't you move out of the way!?" It isn't that I can't speak, can't lift my voice to match the frustration and impatience in yours - it's that I don't want to mar the song and I've never been much of a singer.

The next flower vendor isn't much better, so I abandon the bear grass stalks and the vines in favor of coarse thread. You don't mind me as much, so long as I sit on the curb and don't distract the other customers. You are old and stooped and in desperate need of better glass or better eyes. Tonight, when I offer the braided twine to the vvitches, I'll pray for you.

This, I know, is no excuse for a day's work.

Wriggling my toes inside of threadbare boots, I pin the tail of the braid and watch the street, even though I know you won't be here yet. But I know you're coming; you've been on your way for years. I'm waiting for you as the day turns bitter and dark and then all of a sudden, you're there, just behind the weaver's stall. "Are you Adelaide? Cause if you are then I'll offer you a smoke. If you aren't, I was never here."

Your words don't sound right. An awkward laugh, a melody to match the fading rhythm, escapes. "Can I never be here too?" My laugh fades into drawn brows. How close I've come to not being here at all, but I am, thanks to the grace of a vvitch. "Yes, yes I'm Adelaide. I'll have that smoke now, if you don't mind, and you can tell me what it is you want."

The moment the draught of poison pressed against my lower lip, I stopped thinking of time as this massive, unknowable thing. It's not macro; it's quantum. One tiny moment connects to the one before and the one after, creating a chain - and then to the next tiny moment and to the last tiny moment. Every moment is so small it is not longer dividable. I didn't know that, until my life came down to one tiny moment of exquisite grace.

Diamond Nixton and I have already shared millions of tiny moments, but I don't think she knows that. She's paying attention to someone else's moments - a ghost's. My first instinct is to tell her to forget him; ghosts never live up to your expectations. I can tell that won't go over well, which is a shame. She's pretty enough otherwise, strange in a way I've come to admire. She's no Throes and she's no Vvitch but damn, does she roll a good cigarette.

I inhale greedily as she says, "I need you to contact someone for me. I don't know exactly what you charge but whatever it is I can provide it. Money, information, drugs, supplies, sex... Anything. Just find my Brother."

The smoke curdles in my throat, raking against raw flesh. It's never healed properly since the poison scorched it, but I quite like the gravel its added to my voice. I let the smoke out in a deflated ring. "Okay. Let's say I find him. How do I know you'll still pay me then? I don't know you and most people I don't know take off once they realize the ghost they've found isn't the person they lost."

Another drag and flick of the ash. "Convince me you'll pay."

Convince me, and she does.

First her delicate hands are at my waist and it's not until I feel the weight of something anchoring my pocket that I realize (with no small amount of disappointment) that she isn't going to feel me up. I shift to that hip, the pouch clinking against my body. The bright sound of coins clinking makes me smirk. As far as payments go, money is the most mundane, but as someone wise once said, it's always about the money. It's an impersonal way of exchanging things.

But what Diamond Nixton does next is very personal.

I go perfectly still as she orbits me, working from face to ear to cheek. She smells more pleasant than her current circumstances would let on - not of desperation, but of hope. It's the smell (well, and the tantalizing way her lips almost grace my skin) that convinces me. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes," I smile. But you shouldn't trust me. I flick the butt of the cigarette into the slushy snow and grab her hand. I put my free index finger to my lips, imploring her to silence, and then instead of dragging her, we walk. Hand in hand we traverse the town square, crossing from the dim allies to the stark office buildings. At some point along the way her grip tightens. I slow, almost pausing outside one of the most impressive buildings in District Three. "To find someone lost, we must walk in their footsteps, yes?"

I don't wait for her to answer. We're met with a blast of warm, sticky air and a receptionist who stares too long at our joined hands. "Internships?" I ask, the smoke still making my throat a little raw. She indicates the stairs and tell us to go up to the third floor, just exactly where Prism Nixton used to work, filing papers for his father. I thank her with an air kiss and turn to Diamond, who has taken on more aspects of her name. "After you."