“Rambo.”
“That’s a good name for a guard dog.”
She stared at the ball of black fur a moment, and I sensed affection there. “Let’s hope he ends up deserving it. Yo, Rambo, sit. Now.”
Rambo did not lower his haunches to the ground. Instead, he stared at me as Monica dragged his little body across the patchy grass. I understood her need for a guard dog. Especially since she lived alone with her kid sister and mother, but the only way she’d get Rambo to obey was by mixing some warmth into her authority.
“Do you have treats?”
“Treats? Little girl, I barely got food enough for myself and my family. I don’t got no treats. Besides he’s done nothin’ to deserve one.”
I dug through my backpack and took out a granola bar. It was probably not the healthiest dog food, but it didn’t have chocolate inside, so I assumed it wasn’t too awful for the canine. “Can I try something?”
She eyed me and then the crinkling wrapper. And then because she wasn’t evil, just tired and eager for a quick fix, she sighed and relented. “If he shits all over the place, you’re pickin’ it up.”
“Deal. Can you unclip him?”
Monica lifted a pierced black eyebrow, but again, she conceded. The second Rambo was loose, he leaped toward me, tongue wagging.
I broke off a corner of the granola bar. “Rambo, sit.”
The dog jumped at me, trying to get the food, but I kept it high.
“Sit, Rambo, and this is yours.”
He fell back on all fours and then started licking my calves and ankles.
I started to laugh because it tickled. “Rambo, sit.”
Monica was staring at me, arms crossed in front of her navy tank top which matched a bruise she sported along her left bicep. I wasn’t sure how she’d gotten it but suspected someone had given it to her.
I crouched and pressed my index finger right above Rambo’s tail. “Sit.”
The dog sat.
“Stay.”
His tail started wagging, and he sprang up.
“Sit.” I pressed the spot again and he sat. This time, when I said, “Stay,” he stayed. I fed him the chunk of granola, which he gulped without tasting.
I made him go through these two commands several more times, and then I handed Monica the granola bar and got her to do the same thing. After an hour, with the sun beating down on our heads, Rambo was sitting and staying like a pro.
But the best part was that when he licked Monica’s bare toes, instead of scolding him, she crouched and scratched her puppy between the ears.
She’d earned one of her three sinner points for mistreating Rambo. My mission had been to remind her that kindness paid off more than cruelty. Once I’d earned my three feathers, I spent my allowance on a two-months’ supply of dog food before stepping out of her life.
I emerged from the memory like a deep-sea diver gone too long without air. Asher loomed over me, fingers cinched around my biceps.
Even though he’d saved me from faceplanting, I snarled, “Take your hands off me!”
His fingers sprang open, but he didn’t step back, just like he didn’t look away. Was he hoping the memory contained in my feather’s shaft would make me calmer, more pliant?
I pressed a trembling hand against my spasming abdomen. “Take her soul and get out.”
The bronze tips of his turquoise feathers swayed as he pivoted and rounded the bed.
I wouldn’t turn around.
Wouldn’t watch him seize Mimi’s soul and carry her away.
But as I sat back on my heels and squeezed my kneecaps, my gaze collided with the framed mirror propped against the wall.
I didn’t want to see.
But I did.
I saw everything.
I saw Asher lay his palm on Mimi’s rib cage.
I saw the golden threads of her soul rise from her lifeless husk and adhere to his hands. The delicate pull he exerted on the silken strands. The glinting orb resting calmly in his palm, whole and shimmering.
I wanted to scoop Mimi’s soul out of his hands and cocoon it between mine. Stow it away in the jewelry box she’d given me for my sixteenth birthday. The one she’d filled with sixteen rings, one for each year she’d missed. She’d laughed when I’d laid down my spoon full of crème brulée to slide each and every ring on. They were apparently meant to be worn separately. I never did. I kept them together.
If only I could’ve kept her soul and mine together, too.
Asher’s eyes met mine in the mirror.
“Go away,” I murmured.
A violent storm was battering my insides, threatening to destroy my weakening dignity.
Instead of using the door, he opened the window, snapped his wings, and sprang off the balustrade into the dawn-smudged sky.
6
Long hours later, I phoned the lawyer Mimi had instructed me to call, a Mr. Alderman. He arrived and took charge while I sat on the couch like a zombie, clutching a throw pillow to my smarting chest and staring listlessly at the slow dance of the clouds outside the bay windows.
Since she’d died at home, Mr. Alderman called the police, so they could attest she’d died of natural causes, and then the coroner came to pick up her body. When a cleaning crew disembarked, I snapped out of my trance and yelled at them to go away.
Mr. Alderman tried to calm me. “Miss Moreau, Muriel asked that her clothes be removed, so you wouldn’t have to—”
“I want nothing touched,” I gritted out. “Not the sheets, not her clothes, not her toothbrush. Nothing.”
The man was reasonable enough not to fight me. “Okay then. Once you’re ready, you just call me, and I’ll arrange everything.” He patted his thighs ensconced in fine gray wool. “One last thing. Your caregiver informed me of her desire to have her ashes interred in the Adler crypt.”
I pressed my lips together, not ready to discuss burying her because burying her would take her away from me for good. Not to mention it meant a trip to Paris, to Leigh, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.
Before leaving, Mr. Alderman made me sign sheet after sheet of paper. He said it was so I could take possession of the accounts and the deed on the apartment, but for all I knew, I was signing everything away to random people. My eyes ached too much to comb through the legalese, and deep down, I didn’t even care for material possessions. Especially the mob’s.
Sure, Mimi had explained that the money Jarod had left her was untainted, that it was earned by his uncle’s horseracing stables, that all the blood money had been distributed to charities and associations, but could I trust Jarod’s word? Even though he hadn’t been intrinsically evil, he’d still run an empire of violence and coercion. Once my thoughts and emotions untangled, I’d call Mr. Alderman to discuss the creation of new charities, because I didn’t want or need Jarod Adler’s money, clean or not.
I finished inking his papers, and he tucked them all away in his fancy leather briefcase.
“Can I get you anything before I leave, Miss Moreau? Food? A lift to your campus apartment?”
The sky beyond the penthouse windows was a periwinkle smeared in peach and gold. I was about to call out Mimi’s name—she so loved sunsets—when I remembered she was no longer here, and my heart broke into my throat.