Page 10 of Terror at the Gates

I dropped my gaze and laughed. “You know the problem,” I said slowly, so he could keep up. “It takes over two inches to satisfy me.”

“Bitch,” he said, his lip curling.

I drew my gun and pointed it at his crotch. “Fuck. Off.”

He jumped back, holding up his hands. No one so much as batted an eye at our exchange. It was usual for the area, especially on this street.

“You know what? Fine,” he said, stepping off the sidewalk. “Not even that fucking hot.”

“Whatever makes you feel better,” I muttered. “Bastard.”

I holstered my weapon and continued down the sidewalk, passing bars, clubs, restaurants, and antique shops. Though some were exactly what they preached, others were fronts for very different kinds of businesses, the kind that Zahariev didn’t want the commission to know about. Take Sons of Adam. It was a bar that happened to serve some of the best mozzarella sticks in Eden. I tried to eat there at least once a week. Their owner, a man named Samuel, sold weapons out of the warehouse in the back. I know because it was where I got mine.

The problem was guns were illegal in Eden but essential to protecting yourself in Nineveh.

Zoar was a dance club known for their raves. It was also where Zahariev had stored a recent shipment of jade, a street drug he’d stolen from my father before moving it to the port of Nineveh. I hadn’t told Zahariev I knew he’d taken it. I was saving that little piece of information for a rainy day.

Don’t give away your secrets, Lilith, Zahariev had advised me long ago, so I didn’t, even when they involved him.

But I wondered what he was going to do with it. It wasn’t for the profit. For as long as I’d known him, he prohibited the sale and distribution of drugs in his territory, and anyone caught doing so was punished severely. I guessed time would tell.

Next to Zoar was Raphael’s Relics.

The guy who owned it wasn’t actually named Raphael. He went by Abram. When I asked him who Raphael was, he said no one. When I asked him why his business was named after him if he was no one, he said it was because nothing rhymed with Abram.

I pointed out he could have called it Abram’s Antiques. He told meno one likes a smart-ass.

The shop name was displayed in a gilded arc across a large window, but windows were risky in Nineveh, so it was barred and blacked out from the inside. His door was rotting, the green paint peeling, and when I opened it, a bell dinged over my head.

Abram was standing behind a polished wooden counter that looked a lot like a bar, especially because a mirror served as his backdrop, but I knew he used it to keep an eye on his shop when his back was turned. Abram was an older man with white hair and a matching beard. He had a round face and a stout body. When I entered, he looked up at me over his half-moon glasses and grimaced.

“You again?”

“Don’t pretend you aren’t happy to see me,” I said.

He slipped his glasses to the top of his head. “All you do is clutter my shop with junk.”

“You pay for it.”

Abram huffed and returned the coin he’d been inspecting to a tray before moving the entire thing to the counter behind him.

“What useless thing have you brought today?”

“What have I brought you that you haven’t been able to resell?” I asked.

He paused and then bent, heaving a large, wooden crate full of random shit I’d sold him over the last two years.

“Hey, those are really nice sunglasses,” I said, reaching for them.

Abram moved the crate out of my reach.

I met his sour gaze. “You have to admit, I’ve gotten better.”

Arriving in Nineveh was a lesson in survival, and it had taken me a few months to get my feet under me. In that time, I’d had tons of my own stuff stolen. Apparently everything I had screamed Hiram, and it made me a target for a while, until Zahariev threw his credit card at me and told me to buy new clothes, which seemed counterintuitive, but in Eden, fabrics equaled status.

The clothes had helped me blend in, but nothing acclimated me like time.

I rose onto the tips of my toes for a closer look at the box.

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