Her father sat her down and told her not to talk about anything she saw at home. Not the eyeballs in glass jars, not the shipments of white powder, not the small garden in the back where they composted what they couldn’t sell online.
Then her mother sat down next to her. And smiled. Even as a small child, Nita had known that bad things were going to happen. After their conversation, Nita was quite certain that if she ever spoke to anyone besides her parents about anything again, she’d be the one in glass jars.
So she simply stopped talking. If she didn’t say anything, she couldn’t say the wrong thing, right?
Nita had to admire the wisdom of her child self. Even to this day, she mostly practiced that policy—though a good chunk of that was simply because she never really knew what to say to people. She couldn’t think of anything to talk about. So she stayed silent. Life was easier, and more peaceful.
Unfortunately, her teachers hadn’t thought so. And several years later, when her mother finally grew tired of getting calls that “Nita is antisocial” and “Nita is bright but doesn’t participate in class,” she pulled Nita from school.
After that, it was only really her parents in her life.
Nita’s mother was waiting when Nita got home. Still wearing black pajamas, with bed head and no makeup, her mother regarded her from the kitchen table. Sitting on the table were the broken bolt cutters.
Nita paused, the front door still open behind her, offering a quick exit if things didn’t go the way she hoped.
She had expected her mother to fly into a rage, for her to drop her voice to that frightening hiss and do . . . something. A punishment suitable for the crime. She hadn’t thought much further than that. It was never a good idea to try to imagine what her mother would do when angry.
But her mother didn’t do anything. She just sat at the table, hands at her side, watching Nita.
“How long?” her mother asked.
“How long . . . since he left?” Nita swallowed. “Half an hour?”
Her mother looked over her shoulder at the clock, probably estimating how long it would take Fabricio to call INHUP and then give them their address, how long it would take INHUP to realize that they’d caught a fairly big fish and to petition the Peruvian police to get involved.
Then cut that time to a quarter, because someone along the chain of command was going to be bribable and there was a decent chance they’d tip off one of her mother’s rivals. Her mother had a lot of rivals—she was good at making enemies.
Her mother walked out of the room. “Pack your things. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes. We won’t be coming back.”
Nita stared at the empty space her mother had just vacated. Where was the anger? Where was the reaction? An uneasy feeling began to creep through Nita. What was going on?
Nonetheless, Nita did as she was told. She went to her bedroom, picked up her backpack, and started shoving things into it. Important things first, like the scientific magazine she was reading and her empty wallet. Then some clothes, since she wasn’t sure when they’d be stopping next. Just her favorites, a few shirts, some underwear, and a pair of jeans. She’d only just moved in and hadn’t collected much from Peru yet, so she didn’t feel any qualms about leaving things behind.
She hesitated a moment before pulling a college textbook out from under her mattress and stuffing it into her backpack too. She hoped her mother wouldn’t look in her bag.
Nita brought her bag to the kitchen and found her mother eating leftover pizza cold from the box. Nita looked over her mother’s shoulder, but there was none left. Her mother didn’t offer anything else, so Nita scrounged. She found a carrot, which she washed and ate.
Nita swung her backpack over her shoulder and moved to check for messages on her cell phone before realizing she didn’t have it anymore. Her mother, hair now combed but makeup still not applied, led them out the door and into the night.
They could’ve taken a cab, but her mother didn’t like leaving traces, and besides, taking a cab in the dark in Lima wasn’t always safe. So they walked. And walked. And walked.
Nita kept a wary eye out as they went, worried about being followed. Her mother’s caution had rubbed off on her.
Nearly an hour later, her mother checked them into a hotel in San Isidro. It wasn’t a crappy hostel, nor was it the Hilton. Livable, certainly, but not nice. The room was small, and Nita lifted the mattresses to check for bloodstains. There were none. That was a relief; Nita hated bedbugs.
Her mother put her bags down on the bed and checked her phone. She frowned, then glanced at Nita. “I need to go change some shipping addresses. I don’t want anything of ours reaching that apartment after the police arrive.”
“How are you going to change the address if it’s already been shipped?” Nita asked.
“I’ll have to find the person who delivers the mail to our building, won’t I?”
Nita didn’t respond. The cold condescension of the response made her throat close in on itself, like she was suffocating on words.
Her mother looked at Nita and then picked up her purse. “I need to take care of this now. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Okay.” Nita swallowed, not liking that her mother hadn’t addressed what happened at all. “Um . . . about what happened.”
Her mother held up a hand. “Not now, Anita.”
“But—”
“No.” Her voice dipped low and cold. “You do not want me to talk about this now.”
Nita quieted, but she couldn’t stop her hands trembling against her sides.
Her mother slammed the door behind her without looking back. The reverberation caused the crappy flower painting on the other side of the room to rattle on its hook and fall off, smacking into the hard cement floor. The frame cracked audibly.
Nita flopped down on her bed and closed her eyes. It could have gone worse.
A newspaper lay on the bed beside Nita. Her mother had taken it from the lobby, more likely out of habit than to actually read.
Nita picked it up. On the front was a picture of the zannie she’d dissected earlier that week. The government confirmed his death, and the paper listed his crimes as well as some information on zannies. Nita let her eyes skim the article, eager for the distraction.
Native to Southeast Asia, zannies were skilled torturers, notoriously amoral, and universally despised. Over the years, zannies had spread across the world, and their small population made them highly paid and in higher demand. Every dictator and genocidal maniac worth his salt had a zannie on staff. Nita heard they also made particularly good mafia enforcers.
While Nita agreed zannies were evil, she wasn’t so sure about zannies being on the list. It wasn’t that she thought zannies weren’t dangerous—she was firmly in the shoot-first, ask-questions-later camp on that. But the list contained creatures who needed to kill others for their continued survival, like unicorns, which ate the souls of virgins, or kappa, which ate human internal organs. Technically, people survived torture. Occasionally. So zannies didn’t need to kill. Just, you know, cause the kind of horrific pain only found in torture.
Technicalities like that bothered Nita. They needed to redefine the mandate of the list so that zannies fit in there properly. What if someone tried to challenge the letter of the law and a zannie walked free?