“So,” Kiki was sorting through it, “you’re stealing for someone named Jasper who is threatening to leave you homeless?”
The girl shrugged like it didn’t matter, though it so clearly did. “Yeah.”
“Then why do you take the stuff you do? It’s all crap.”
“Cheap stuff, yeah.” The girl looked back and forth between Thayne and Kiki and then leaned forward. “Look, I don’t want to do this. I was in the system. I knew I had something special, but when you’re in foster care, you want to do as much as you can to look normal. Folks don’t want special kids.”
“With good reason,” Thayne grumbled.
Kiki shot him another withering look. “Will you knock it off? Go on.”
“Well,” she picked up, “it’s not like I thought a whole lot about it. Like, in those days, I could only really do a couple of things. Anyway, I ran all the way up through the foster family thing, but when you hit eighteen?” She clicked her tongue and jerked her thumb over her shoulder.
“So that’s where Jasper came in?”
“Exactly.” The kid fired a finger gun at Kiki. “He knew about the couple of things I could do, and it was stuff I had never shown anybody. He just knew. To me, that was wild. I’d never met anybody who just ‘got me,’ you know? Most of the families I ended up with weren’t too interested in figuring me out.”
In spite of herself, Kiki felt some genuine sympathy for this girl. After as much space as the little thief had taken up in her brain, it was an odd reversal.
“You said ring.” Thayne wasn’t going in for the soft touch. “How many of you are there?”
“Jasper keeps about seven of us. I’ve seen him throw a couple of kids out because they weren’t bringing in as much stuff as he wanted. It can get pretty ugly.”
“Wait,” Kiki shook her head, “are all the thieves children?”
“Kids, yeah. Actually, I’m the oldest. I turned eighteen last month. That’s why I’ve got to keep bringing stuff in. He could ditch me any day now.”
“Let me get this straight.” Thayne put his hand up, casting himself as every hard-boiled detective ever seen on TV. “If you’re so worried Jasper is going to turn you out, why are you stealing the cheap shit? You could take tons of other things.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to, see? That’s the thing. I don’t want him to make any money out of this. And I damn sure don’t want to put out the folks I’m robbing any more than I have to. So, I take something cheap enough that it doesn’t hurt you guys so bad, but worthwhile enough that he doesn’t pull the plug.”
For the first time, Thayne was as quietly dumbstruck as Kiki had been. This girl had seemed like such an impossible nut to crack just a few minutes earlier, and now she was just some kid trying to survive. Even more, to look at her in that moment, Kiki could tell she was genuinely remorseful over the whole thing.
The young thief was in an impossible position. After a lifetime without anyone she could really depend on, she had made the mistake of trusting someone who took advantage of her. Kiki reeled at the idea that the first person this girl had ever really had faith in turned out to be a monster.
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me what your name is?”
“I don’t suppose I would.” Fair enough. The girl fixed Kiki with the stare of someone who wasn’t about to fall into the trap of giving up her trust again.
“Well, that’s fine.” Thayne was still in full bad-cop mode, and it set Kiki’s teeth on edge. “Your name isn’t important to us anyway. You can tell it to the judiciary agents when they get here.”
“Are you kidding? We’re not calling the judiciary.”
Thayne flared up and turned on Kiki. “What the—? Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“But she’s a thief. She confessed. Not only that, maybe the judiciary can get that Jasper son of a bitch.”
“We can’t just turn her over to the judiciary,” Kiki protested. “The last thing she needs is to be thrown into some jail cell.”
“Not that I would make it easy for them,” the girl smirked.
“She’s. A. Thief.” He was on the verge of genuinely losing his temper. “Hell, you were the one who wanted her caught. And now that she’s got some sad story, you just want to let her go? There’s a jackass running a ring of child thieves and this girl is the key!”
He stabbed his finger at the young woman in the chair, who sat impassively watching the whole thing unfold.
“I’m the wronged party, and I refuse to report the crime. Full stop.”
The two adults had reached an impasse, and the girl raised her hand as if she were sitting in class. “Can I ask y’all a question?”
“What,” Thayne and Kiki snapped in unison.
“Are you guys having some kind of lover’s quarrel or something? Because I can wait outside.” If the room had been small before, it seemed to shrink to half the size. All the air rushed out at once, and Kiki flushed as if she’d been caught. The girl smirked again. “Thought so.”
“You keep your mouth shut.” Thayne was apoplectic with rage. His whole body exploded with radiant heat, and Kiki stepped back from him in surprise. “I don’t know where you come up with that kind of shit, but you need to knock it the fuck off. Now.”
The last word rattled the room, and the smirking kid put her palms up in a mock surrender. “My bad. Jeez.” If anything, this only added fuel to the fire.
“The last thing anyone in their right mind would do is get involved with an Enchantress. I’d have to be a complete idiot. The only reason I’m here in the first place is to catch your ass, so now that the job is done, I don’t ever have to see that woman again.”
His vehemence stung Kiki, almost as much as his behavior the day before. If Thayne was good at anything, it was cutting her right to the bone.
“So, you’re telling me you two have never slept together? Okaaay.” She rolled her eyes again, and Thayne sputtered for a second before spinning on Kiki.
“You told her.” It was like he hit her in the chest. Kiki blinked for a second, bewildered by yet another accusation.
“What?”
“You told her. About yesterday.”
“Nailed it,” the little brat reached up as if to tick off her victory on a scoreboard.
“Will you shut up?” Thayne snarled.
“I’m sorry,” Kiki found her voice at last, “but when exactly would I have told her anything? You have been here literally the entire time I’ve been in the room. Furthermore, why in the world would I come face-to-face with the girl who has been stealing from me and just decide to tell her that you and I had sex yesterday?”
She had him there. Dead to rights. Even he couldn’t argue with the logic of that, and Kiki had learned that he was the kind of man who would argue with just about anything. For one blissful moment, he was silent.
“Hang on,” he said smoothly, a spark going off in his eyes. Turning back to the girl in the chair, there was a new kind of calm about Thayne that left Kiki oddly unsettled.