Page 100 of Marked by the Demigod

Miri's throat works, her porcelain skin pale, with two patches of pink high on her cheeks. "I don't think you should go there."

"Yeah, I gathered that."

They stare at each other, for a few moments, before Miri sighs, explosive. "Are you at least armed?"

Aimes pats her bag. "Bronze knife."

"I'm not going to go close. I'll...drop you off a block away." Miri starts the car, and the engine sputters to life, before she jerks the car back onto the freeway. "And if Katya's in there, get her out?"

She nods, heart pounding from the horns and the jerking of the car. "Yeah."

* * *

True to her word,Miri pulls over in front of the Tiki Bar, and refuses to budge forward. "If it was seriously on fire, we'd see the smoke by now." She points out, her face white.

Indeed, the air is as clean as you could get in Burbank. "Yeah."

Miri's eyes flicker to her, then down to her phone, flickering open the Find Friends app, and Katya's name is directly in her apartment. "Do you...do you want a gun?" Her voice is small. "Mine is at the office, we could get it."

Aimes shakes her head, opening up the rickety door and taking a big gulp of decidedly not-smoky air. "Something tells me I shouldn't delay this sort of thing."

"You could always run." Her voice is gentle, soothing. "No one would think ill of you."

She stands. "Thanks for the ride." And shuts the door behind her, catching only a glimpse of Miri's concerned face in the window, before she strides away.

Running's more of Iakov's thing, anyways.

So she walks, feeling strangely okay with pretty much everything, but her hand gripping tight at the knife in her bag.

Worst case scenario, she goes in and they try to kill her. Which, okay, is pretty bad, but considering she wanted to catch one of them anyways it can't be that off base.

Best case scenario is everything's okay. Katya's in the apartment looking for evidence, and Iakov is fuck off who knows where, just busy.

As she walks down the familiar cracked sidewalk, she keeps on expecting some sort of panic to hit her, some sort of shortness of breath, but nothing comes. It's surreal, cause the sun is shining and the cars are speeding and the air smells faintly of concrete and smog and it would be the same as any other day; if not to what she might be walking to.

Her phone dings, and she almost jumps a foot off the ground.

TRIXIE (2:45 PM): Can we do Tiki room tonight?

She stares at her phone, cause seriously how do you respond to a text when you're about to walk into a potential hostage situation? She's loathe to set plans for a bar when she might not, you know, still be alive in a few hours.

So instead of answering she shoves her phone back into her purse, resuming her grip on the knife.

Miri had spoken true, and there’s no smoke or fire trucks in front of her little complex.

The door creaks open at her touch, not even properly latched, and the first thing she sees is both her cats nestled on the couch, blinking sleepily at her. There's a rush in her chest as she dashes forward, throwing her arms around them on the couch and burying her head in their fur.

The smart one meows, soft and confused, before squirming to be not crushed, staring as if she is absolutely insane.

"Yeah, yeah," she whispers, petting their heads. "Okay, you guys are fine."

She reshoulders her purse, for the air is too still and too quiet, and steels herself to go into the bedroom and...

...It's empty. Fully empty, the bedsheets still rumpled from this morning, and the air still smelling faintly of Iakov's cologne.

"Fuck." Aimes whispers into the dead air. "Fuck."

She scrambles for her phone, before hesitating. Who the hell would she call? If Katya and Iakov are somehow compromised, and Miri wouldn't come back to her if you paid her millions...

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