Seelie folded her arms tight across her chest.
“Do you normally ask casual acquaintances about the state of their genitals,” she said, “or am I special?”
“Just making conversation.”
Ducky ambled out of the bedroom, toting a dirt-flecked Tupperware tub. There were loose packets of pills, lime-green and pink lozenges, a couple of vials with faded labels. A hypodermic needle, securely wrapped and sterilized. He set the Tupperware down on the wobbly-legged kitchen table, inviting Seelie to inspect the lot.
“Got your whole shopping list,” he said. “Month’s supply of the good stuff. Got your estrogen, anti-androgens—”
Seelie held up a vial and squinted at the fine print. “Cutting a little close to the expiration date here.”
“Hey, as the saying goes, beggars something choosers something. It’s all good. You know I deliver.”
“You do. Same price?”
“Same.”
Seelie had a small wad of cash, courtesy of Arthur. The last one ever. She realized she should make it last, for safety’s sake; on the other hand, these weren’t the kinds of medications you could skip taking once you started.
She peeled off almost the entire stack of bills and handed it over. She’d have to figure something out by this time next month, find another reliable source of income, but she was good for now. Ducky gave her the ultimate show of respect in his line of work: he pocketed the cash without counting it.
“So, about this guy you might have,” she said.
“You know why I like you, Seelie?”
She glanced down at her concert T-shirt. “We’re both Nightwish fans?”
“Because you’re my one and only customer who I know will never pull any stupid junkie shit. When you asked if I could get your, you know, your meds, I thought you were crazy. Not my usual line of product.”
“Worked out for both of us,” Seelie said.
“It has. And more importantly, I know you’re not gonna get strung out and show up on my doorstep with a piece, looking to rip me off. That kind of emotional stability is rare and exceptional, considering my usual clientele. So when you tell me you’re trying to crack into some stolen goods, I get a little concerned.”
“It’s not stolen,” she said.
“Just not yours.”
“It’s complicated.”
He gave her an appraising look. She responded with sad kitten eyes, batting her lashes as melodramatically as she could, until he held up his hands in surrender.
“Okay, okay. Camera shop over by First Avenue and East Sixth. Brett, the guy who runs the place, does a little fencing on the side. He’s always willing to buy electronics, no questions asked. If anybody can get into a locked phone, he can. I’ll call ahead and vouch for you.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” she said, unzipping her backpack.
She dug out a little nest in the heart of her folded clothes, making room for the medicine. Ducky nodded at the wrapped hypodermic.
“Just don’t make me regret it. You want me to do your Estradiol?”
Seelie shoved her sleeve up. She could inject herself—squeamishness had to be the first thing to go when you accepted the grim necessity of turning your body into a DIY fixer-upper project—but Ducky was better at finding a vein. He had gotten off the smack a couple of years ago, but the pinprick scars along his arms were trophies from a lifetime of practice.
One more needle pinch. One more pill. One more wave of nausea and dizziness and stomachache as her body chemistry transformed, a magic trick slowly revealing itself. One more hormonal spike, one more tidal wave of fear and anxiety crashing down, one more night spent huddled on a bathroom floor, clutching her knees to her chest, rocking from side to side like Seelie’s bones were a cradle for the woman being born.
Birth was painful. That was all right. The pain brought a bit of beauty with it, to soften the sting. With every passing day Seelie felt a little more comfortable in her own skin. The mirror was a little easier to face, and the person in the glass looked a little more like her, her outsides and her insides drifting closer to alignment for the first time in her life.
Someday she would be all-the-way-Seelie, and that would be a grand day. For now she would just keep moving forward, keep swimming, keep surviving.
Seelie wasn’t under any illusions. She wasn’t chosen for some secret mission, wasn’t special. Arthur didn’t want her to have the phone: he just wanted it kept out of the missionary’s hands and she was in the right place at the wrong time. And the missionary was out there. Hunting her.
She’d keep moving. Keep swimming. Keep surviving.
7.
Tyler was a careful man.
Careful enough to exasperate his work spouse, who would jump out of a plane if she thought she could catch a hot story in midair, but they worked together like a hand in a well-worn glove. When Nell went off on a tear, he laid methodical foundations, covered their bases, crossed every t and dotted every i. Covered bases like the off-site backup server he rented with out-of-pocket cash.
And every time he prepared to leave the Brooklyn Standard newsroom, like right now, he carefully copied every single piece of material on the Loom investigation—every email and scanned letter, every interview transcript and audio file—to the backup site. Just in case.
They’d been chasing the Loom story for months, ever since the proposal for a new citywide emergency-management system went from a tiny blip to a juggernaut overnight. The Weaver Group was a small tech start-up funded by truckloads of anonymous donations, and they opened doors like they had the key to the city. Department heads, aldermen, everybody picked up the phone when Weaver called. Barron Equity swooped in as a helpful third party to finance the expansion, and the Loom deal had jumped from a hypothetical maybe to signed, sealed, and delivered.
No bureaucracy worked that fast. Not without a helping hand to grease the wheels and a lot of dirty money involved. New York was the latest stop; the Loom had started in Texas and it spread to Wichita Falls to Amarillo to Houston, each increasingly larger city greeting their new digital protector with open arms. People who protested tended to get shouted over or frozen out.
Or worse, Tyler thought, adding his latest page of notes to the backup file and password-protecting the archive. Nell was more down-to-earth about these things; he knew she didn’t believe Arthur Wendt’s death had anything to do with his secret life as an informant, and she wasn’t prepared to blame her Houston contact’s car accident on anything but a muddy patch of road, but Tyler wasn’t so certain.
Better to play it safe.
He drifted by the editor-in-chief’s office, one of the glass-walled enclaves along the far side of the bullpen. Bill’s venetian blinds were down. Never a good sign. The door stood cracked just wide enough for Tyler to hear a voice from inside.
“I know how much you’ve got on your plate,” Bill said. His voice was tinged with the Kentucky drawl that a decade of living in Brooklyn hadn’t managed to sand down. “We’ve all got full plates. But we’re coming up on the five-year anniversary of the Red Hook shooting, and I need a retrospective. I’m not asking you to write a book. One column. Call around, get some quotes, wrap it up in a bow, done. We’ll run it on Friday.”