Chapter 10

Mordechai

She’d taken care of her end of the deal in a matter of two minutes on the phone. We’d gone to her bedroom, she made a single call, and that had been it. Her father supposedly wouldn’t find out, but I personally couldn’t see him being that unaware of what happened in his own house. Then again, the fact that I stood there sort of proved that wrong.

I ended up having to watch Ellie organize her book collection of over seven hundred. The idea of that made my head hurt, but she could only look at it with love and affection. She would pick one up, flip through it, and then decide if it went back on the shelf or in a box to be given away. All the books had been organized by color, which also made my head hurt. This organization went on for hours, making me sure she’d started with the purpose of annoying me. But I showed her nothing. In fact, I went as far as to look as unbothered as I could. I bent down to pet the dog when he abandoned her for me. I loved the glare Ellie shot my way. It made my heart thud every time. Not even killing people made my heart beat faster.

“You don’t have to wear that suit,” she said to me, staring at a book she had to decide a fate for. “I don’t know who you’re trying to impress.”

“It’s not about impressing anyone,” I said. “It’s about looking professional.”

“For what? For me?”

“For the world. The world is much bigger than you, Miss Locke.”

Her bright eyes narrowed at me. “You know I hate it when you call me that.”

I did know. I knew that very well. “Does my suit offended you? What would you prefer, pajamas?”

Then that brightness in her eyes shined all the brighter when she smiled at me. “I would love that. Are you kidding? Show up in jammies.”

“Show up? I’m here literally twenty-four hours a day.”

“Oh, I thought you retreated into a coffin at night.”

I rolled my eyes. “Vampires sleep during the day, first off.”

She stuck her tongue out at me, then dropped her book into the box. I kept on watching her as she played god to her personal collection. I lost myself in a silly daydream where the books might have been cognizant in some form, eager to be held in the hands of their mother and to be told that she loved them enough to slide it back on the shelf. And then the heartbreak when they realized she didn’t lover them enough, locked in that freefall from her hands to the box.

Why am I such a fucking dumbass?

Ellie moved so freely and carelessly, acting as judge, jury, and executioner to her collection. Almost as if the books couldn’t feel anything. I wanted so badly to open my mouth. To ask her what made her reject everything she dropped. How she decided every meticulous detail in her room. And there was meticulous detail. I saw it in the methodical way she kept her nightstand, her closet, her bathroom. How she walked even. Did this kind of madness settle in when someone got locked away with another person for days on end? Had I lost my mind? She clearly didn’t have the same questions about me. How would she react if she set foot on sand? Would she try and organize the grains, or would she just close her eyes and inhale the scent of salt water and the vastness of an ocean?

“I just think it’s weird that I wake up and you’re already in a suit,” Ellie said. “Do you think I would respect you less if you dressed casually?”

“Why do you think this is about you?”

Her face reddened as she grabbed another book. “Because I’m an asshole, I guess.”

The defeat in her voice made me waver, made my stance relax, made me feel like the asshole.

“People don’t respect me,” I said. “Not you, but everyone. Why do you think I’m standing here? I’m good for being a shield. For fighting. Beating up someone who might hurt a girl who’s from an important family. I know what I’m good for.”

“I know what you’re good for,” Ellie said, almost in challenge. I braced myself for a bullet in the chest. “You got a mouth on you. One unafraid to shit talk a Locke to her face.”

“It makes me stupid,” I said, cutting her off.

She snorted. “Does it?”

“Speaking plainly in front of you could get me killed.”

“But you know it wouldn’t. You analyzed the situation and you know the lines you can and can’t cross. I think you sized me up the second you got here. I snapped at you and you snapped back. You saw how I took it and that I can bat it back. I think a stupid person would have stayed quiet and done their job. You were smart enough to know that all this is bullshit.”

I shook my head. “Dumb people speak when they shouldn’t.”

“And when have you spoken when you shouldn’t?”

I didn’t have an answer.

She dropped another book into the box. “Smart enough to have a fake phone.”

“Not smart enough to make it look real.” Not smart enough to play dumb.

A Cheshire cat smile appeared on her face. It softened her features somehow, but I saw something in that. I saw something I already knew. That she was clever enough to really win in this life of hers. If she had been a man she would have already started to climb. Even with her legs cut off at the knees, she would do amazing.

“Could have made it look like you were trying to hide something,” she said. “If you had that password.”

“Not having one tipped you off.”

She shrugged and put a book back on the shelf. It would seem her efforts to bail me out had ended with a knock on the door.

I answered it, seeing Mrs. Locke standing there. She pet Dandelion in his way out and stepped into the room. She had shoes on, a nice suit sort of thing, with her hair in a careful bun. Not a hair out of place.

“Ready?” the woman asked her daughter.

“For?”

“Oh, did I forget to tell you we’re going shopping? I think I got distracted with one of the dogs. Burger threw up on my couch.”

Ellie walked over to the bed and threw her shoes on. She had her hair down, also choosing to wrap it up before we left. Her clothes stayed casual though, in her shorts and sweater.

“Are you coming?” Ellie asked me while she walked toward the door.

“As if I have a choice.”

She shrugged, smirking. “You could always see how it goes, you staying here.”

“Tempting. I think the bullet in my head I would get for staying behind is possibly better than watching you stare at a dress for ten minutes asking yourself and any other unlucky soul around you if this shade of peach was ugly or not.”

“It was ugly, and they all lied to me!”

“Then why debate getting it! It only matters if you like it.”

“That’s not how the world works.”

“Fuckin’… okay,” I sighed.

“That’s right, suit boy. Until you saunter in here with some Spongebob jammies on, I don’t want to hear your opinion on what other people think.”

Ellie stopped at the door when she saw her mother still standing there, blocking us. The woman gestured between the two of us. “So… this is what we’re doing?”

“Huh?” Ellie asked.

“Is this normal for you to talk like that to each other?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

Mrs. Locke nodded. “All right then. Let’s go shopping.”

This had to be the punishment long since coming to me for all the wrongs I’d done in my life, but I could believe it. What else would put me in a store that smelled like roses hopped up on meth, making me sit in the corner and watch people debate clothes? Clothes. How could they walk inside, see something, and not know instantly if they liked it? Same with shoes. My father would have me sitting in the shoe store for two hours four times a year. I wanted to die.

Sitting by the dressing room, I contemplated eternity, staring at the wall and trying not to drool. Ellie slid into my vision, sporting a dress that looked like it came out of the nineteen sixties. The sleeves went down to her elbows, frilling out and dripping with an excess of like a foot of fabric. The whole thing had flower patterns.

“What do you think?” she asked me, full well knowing I wanted to bash my head into a wall.

I stared hard at her. “You don’t want to know what I think.”

“Then why would I ask?”

“To hurt me.”

“What do you think?” she asked again.

I took a deep breath, pretending I cared at all about seeming calm. “Get it. I don’t care. It all looks the same.”

“Oh? Do all suits look the same?”

“Of course.”

She looked like I popped her balloon. “Oh… well that doesn’t prove my point…”

I smiled at her, and her little scowl broke and she smiled back at me. Her smile splintered my bones. It shattered my ribcage, cranking me open and exposing all the parts of me better left hidden. Trouble lurked on my horizon.

“I think it’s cute,” Mrs. Locke said, walking up to us and putting her hands on her hips. “Maybe you should get that one that’s a little shorter and wear it with shorts.”

“How about that?” Ellie asked me.

I sighed again. “Miss Locke… I could not give a shit.”

She stuck her tongue out at me again. A hammer on my remaining bones. “You have bad taste anyway.”

“You’re lying to the both of us.”

“Keep popping off and I’m not buying you lunch.”

“Don’t buy me lunch and I’ll just eat off your plate.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Bet me.”

I pointed to the floor over by the farthest away dressing room. “Oh look, your lane. Maybe go back to it instead of posing tiny challenges to me.”

She gasped in mock offense. “I could fire you.”

“God, I wish you would.”

Ellie walked away to go get the other dress, but Mrs. Locke stayed there with me. She had an armful of clothes, sifting through them as she made her final selections.

“Are things going all right with Ellie so far?” Mrs. Locke asked me.

“Everything’s been quiet,” I lied. “Nothing suspicious.”

“That’s not what I meant. You’re getting along, right? I know Ellie can be a bit much sometimes.”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“But do you mind?”

“Mind what?”

“Handling her?”

I pushed back an aggressive and exasperated yes. The second I went to say it, I figured knew it wouldn’t be true. “I like it a little,” I stated, confused as I had ever been in my life. “I guess the annoying little punk is growing on me.”

Her mother smiled. Ellie had told me that only her mother would dress her down, and she seemed like the sort of person who would believe that I didn’t have to get along with Ellie to protect her. Mr. Locke had told me that as well. Her safety mattered above everything else. She could be happy as long as she lived.

“How much is she growing on you?” Mrs. Locke said.

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean.”

I had my assumptions, but I didn’t her to think I screwed her daughter. “It’s nothing inappropriate, I promise, Mrs. Locke.”

She shrugged, setting a shirt in the reject pile. “I wouldn’t tell if it were.”

“It’s… it’s not.”

“It could be though.”

I deeply didn’t want to be part of this conversation, so I decided I saw something fishy over by Ellie at the mirror. I excused myself and pretended to look around the area. Shockingly, I saw nothing.

“Oh look,” Ellie said, knocking her hip into my when I wasn’t looking. “You. Here. In my lane. You lost, baby?”

“Now is not the time for that joke. Your mom thinks I’m trying to fuck you.”

Ellie sucked in a breath through her teeth before laughing. “Well then.”

“Is she going to have your father kill me?”

She shook her head. “Nah, it’s fine. Even if he thought we were sleeping together… Uh, well, never mind. I don’t know what he would do. I think he would be fine as long as I knew it was a fling and it couldn’t be more.”

“Great, but your mom almost sounded like she wanted me to sleep with you. Why would she say that?”

Ellie folded up one of the shirts she didn’t want, then set it aside. “If we were fucking, then you would have more incentive to keep me alive.”

“I think money and my life are pretty good.”

Ellie smiled at me like I just didn’t get it. “Is love not the very best incentive? I think I would act quicker to save someone I loved, than to save someone just to save my own life. But that’s me.” She turned around again, back facing me as she collected the clothes she wanted to buy.

“Tell your mom I’m not going to have sex with you.”

“You can tell her,” Ellie nodded, gesturing behind me.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, turning me around. “Mort, could you help me with these clothes? I need to talk to you for a second. Ellie, go wait for us in the car.”

I cut in before she could say anything. “No, I can’t let her go outside without me. We’re in the middle of the city.”

“It’ll be fine for two minutes.”

“That sounds like exactly the kind of thing someone says before a bad thing happens.”

“Two minutes,” she repeated. “Ellie, go tell the driver where you want to have lunch. We’ll be out with the bags in a bit.”

Ellie happily left her guard, and Mrs. Locke didn’t look worried in the slightest. She gave me no choice but to follow orders, walking to the counter and doing my best to look out the glass doors and see Ellie.  I lost sight of her as she walked past the wall.

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Mrs. Locke said to me, pulling a black card from her wallet. “I know some people can be squeamish about sex.”

“I’m not squeamish,” I said.

“Good. I’ve been watching you with Ellie all morning. The two of you are constantly going back and forth. You must understand why it looks like you guys might have something going on.”

“I didn’t realize that was what it looked like when two people were interested in each other. Again, I have nothing going on with Ellie. I’m only here to protect her.” Which I should have been doing right then. I knew well enough to know that despite Ellie hating it, she needed me to stay alive. With a family like hers, constantly pissing off other people, it would have been the first thing anyone thought to do if they wanted to hurt Locke. Jonathan might have been holding off, but I knew the idea crossed his mind. Other families might have acted.

“You’re spending a lot of time with her,” Mrs. Locke said as she swiped her card. I held her six bags.

“Mrs. Locke, your daughter is very…” I smiled to myself. “She’s a pain in the ass.”

She smirked at me. “I get the feeling you don’t mind that.”

“No, I suppose I don’t.”

“She’s a good girl. Spoiled, a little out of her mind, but she’s got a good heart. A better heart that anyone in this kind of life can keep. I think she deserves something sweet. Something real. At least before her actual life kicks in and it’s all over.”

“I don’t know why you think I would provide that for her.”

Mrs. Locke looked to the glass, though I knew she couldn’t see her daughter. “There’s this look she gets in her eyes when you say something mouthy. And she doesn’t tick as much when you’re talking to her. Those little assholes she was friends with didn’t even get that from her.”

I didn’t want to call attention to the ticks. The way Ellie would always count everything, mouthing numbers constantly. How she would flutter her fingers or twitch her nose exactly three times when she loaded up something scathing into the barrel. I wondered if she counted that too.

“Wouldn’t be a good idea,” I said.

“Things happen. You like her. Don’t deny what I can see clearly with my own two eyes. It’s been what, a week? And she’s got you good.”

“I don’t do that sort of thing with my clients. Not very professional.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes in stressful situations, it’s best if we—”

A boom had half the people in the shop screaming their heads off. They ducked, most of them reaching for their phones. Mrs. Locke got behind me and the bags slipped from my hand. I knew that sound. I knew it better than I knew any sound in the world. I’d heard it more than lullabies.

A gunshot.