"Wheah is she?" Fingers demanded without preamble.
"Heather." A blond man wrapped a beefy hand around hers and smiled greasily. Neely breathed grease. "Decide ta come home?"
Fingers yanked her hand away, not dignifying that with an answer, and headed for the back stairs. Neely held a hand firmly on her chest, stopping her. She raised a hand, but was never able to land the blow. Her arm caught in the grasp of a seven foot bouncer who seemed to have just appeared. A twin to the man took hold of her other arm at the same time. She kicked back, trying to trip, or at least bruise one of them. Bad odds - very bad odds - but she'd be d*mned if she was going to allow Grover Neely to throw her out.
"Try not ta destoib da customers, Heather, please," Neely said. "Ev'rybody's woikin'."
She should have asked Diamond to come. She should have told him she was coming; he'd have followed anyway. She just didn't like coming here and she liked him here even less.
Much as it galled her, she was helpless. Fingers Mulcahy was never helpless. It was an affront to her dignity. She spat at Neely who shook his head gravely.
"Heather, me goil, I t'ink ya oughta jus' go on yer way." Neely grinned broadly. "Or ya can stay home an' show me what ya's loined in da las' five yeahs."
Helpless, but not speechless. Fingers let loose with every obcenity ever heard on the streets of New York and a few entirely original. The near-wrenching of her arms out of her sockets stopped her. The two thugs hefted her to the door.
"Goin'?" Neely asked, following. "Well, if ya hafta. Come back soon, Heather, me goil. I'se lookin' forward to it." He gave her cheek a pat and her rear a slap before his goons flung her outside.
“Fingers?” Ruby sat up. She’d been bed-ridden for a few weeks now due to a broken leg, so she couldn’t jump up and help her friend inside when she appeared at the window bruised, scratched, and fuming.
Without replying, Fingers continued through the bunkroom to the washroom.
“Fingers?”
The sound of running water was the only answer. Ruby muttered imprecations at the bad luck that had brought that carriage by at just the wrong moment and called again. “Fingers?”
Finally, the pickpocket emerged – scowling, of course. “What?”
Ruby frowned deeply; the injuries, though not major, stood out all the more clearly for having been cleaned. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Fingers glared. “Fine.” She flopped down on her bunk, her scowl deepening as her bruised body protested the mistreatment.
“What happened?” Ruby repeated.
Couldn’t the girl take a hint? Fingers rolled her eyes at the bottom of Spider’s bunk. “Whaddaya t’ink happened?”
“Oh, dear.” Fingers almost snorted. ‘Oh, dear.’ “Are ya all right?”
“I’se fine!”
“Heya, Ruby, Fingers.” At the same moment Blue Skies strode into the room, there was a rap on the window.
“Skies,” she replied briefly, then glanced at the window and cursed vehemently. Oh, of all the timing! Fingers turned her glare back to the slats of her bunkmate’s bunk, leaving Costello to open the window for Diamond. She could tell exactly when he caught sight of her by the sharp drop in the room’s temperature.
“What da h*ll happened?!”
Ruby slid down behind a book she’d borrowed from Verity. She wanted no part of the coming fireworks. Skies edged away from them and found something vitally important to be done across the room.
She stared at Spider’s bunk until she’d burned a hole through to the mattress and then sat up. “A disagreement,” she said shortly.
Diamond stalked over and glared down at her. “Dat’s more’n a disagreement.”
Fingers met the diamond-hard expression with a glare of her own. She didn’t like losing fights; she didn’t like Grover Neely; and she didn’t like having to explain herself to this . . .
Diamond took a deep breath. “Tell me,” he said quietly, holding her gaze.
D*mn him! Fingers glanced away, if only for an instant. Shortly, she replied, “Neely hired help.”
Blue Skies started at that. Ruby blinked, forgetting her book. Both girls looked at Fingers.
Diamond froze. He’d been with her to Brooklyn twice and had had the dubious pleasure of meeting Grover Neely. He exhaled slowly and cursed under his breath. At last, gently, he spoke. “Dey won’t let ya see ‘er?”
Unable to face that look – he was so much easier to deal with when he was angry – Fingers lay back down with a mutter and turned away.
The mattress sagged slightly as he sat down. “Hey . . . at least look at me . . .”
She did – turned and stared at him until he was forced to look away.
Except that he didn’t look away. He looked back until Ruby, worn out with straining to hear, drifted off to sleep. He looked back until Skies gave up and went in search of a night’s snack. He looked back while Eponine, returning to the lodging house, sat down to sketch the two, caught the anger and the tension and the love, folded up her portfolio and left again. “What happened?” he asked softly.
“It’s her business,” she said off-handedly.
“Right.” He frowned.
Flash McAllen slid through the bunkroom window and went directly to her bunk, muttering under her breath. “Okay, I did not lose my stupid keys . . .”
“Again, McAllen?” Ruby rolled her eyes from her bed. At a rap on the window frame, she turned and waved Diamond inside. Connor was carrying a bouquet of flowers, but the charming smile on his face belied the determined light in his grey eyes.
“Evenin’.” He grinned at the girls, handing Ruby half of the flowers. “How’s yer leg?”
“I didn’t lose ‘em!” Flash protested, balancing on her bunkmate’s pillow while she sifted through the mess under her mattress. She turned a flustered face toward Diamond at his greeting. “Heya, Connor.”
Ruby smiled. “Still broken, but on the mend. Thanks love.” She gestured for him to bend down so that she could kiss his cheek.
He obeyed, though the grin was beginning to show signs of strain. “Hey, Flash. Wheah’s Fingers?”
The red-head nodded toward the washroom from where the protests of abused walls and doors could be heard clearly. “Follow the crashes.” Flash rolled her eyes at the sound, muttering a brief prayer of thanks that the lodging house had run out of breakables within its first three weeks of existence.
Diamond sighed. “Right.”
He watched her from the doorway for a few minutes. Finally, it came out, almost harshly. “Fingers . . . quit.”
She stopped, but did not turn, waiting while he crossed the room to stand behind her, barely an inch away. “Ya aw right?” he asked, from just beside her ear.
“No reason not ta be.” She didn’t turn, and he didn’t cross the remaining inch.
“Of course not. I forgot.”
Silence. Finally, he touched her shoulder gently. More silence. “Look at me.”
Because he told her to, she did.
“Say somethin’?”
So she did that, too. “Her business.”
“Her business bein’ yours because she’s your mother.” Quietly, so quietly. Gentleness was not something Fingers had been constructed for.
“Her choice.” It had never been anything Fingers had any say in. When Enid returned to Brooklyn and her old profession in May, there hadn’t been anything her daughter could do about it. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was the truth.
Diamond sighed a bit. “I’m sorry.”
That triggered emotion, at least. “No reason ta be sorry,” Fingers snapped.
Diamond controlled his frustration with a visible effort. “I’m sorry I can’t do nothin’ . . .” He studied her. “. . . ‘cause ya ain’t awright.”
Of course, she was all right. She had to be all right. She had to be just fine because there was no way on earth Fingers Mulcahy could be so terrified of Grover Neely that she woke up sweating in the middle of the night. No way. So she was all right.
Swearing, Diamond pulled her into an embrace. “I’ll help ya . . . I’d do anythin’ ta help ya . . . but I don’t know how.”
He didn’t mean to put pressure on the bruises, of course. He just couldn’t help touching them, anymore than he could help bumping the older bruises. Neely hadn’t done anything, hadn’t even said anything. It was what he’d implied. Five years ago, she’d told Grover Neely with a four inch pillow knife that she had no intention of ever working for him. A day and a half ago, he’d replied with two seven foot bouncers and his own greasy confidence, that his intentions were the only ones that mattered.
She caught Diamond studying her face and scowled. He pulled back and just watched her.
“She needs to be watched.” She could say that, that Enid needed protecting, even if she couldn’t admit that her daughter was too scared to do it. “Somebody’s gotta watch ‘er.”
Imp hopped up the stairs – quietly, of course, in case Ruby or someone else was sleeping. When she poked her head into the bunkroom, Fingers was pummelling her pillow with a fury that made one feel the hardships of life as a sack of feathers.
Imp lifted an eyebrow, debating whether or not to enter the room. It had been three days since the pickpocket had returned from Brooklyn, a three days during which she’d been very unlike herself. If anything about Fingers could be counted on, however, this was not a good mood for her friends to cross.
There was a knock at the window.
Imp glanced at it and lifted the other eyebrow at Fingers. “Ya gonna get dat ‘r am I?”
Fingers didn’t answer.
She shrugged and quickly made her way across the room.
For the first time in his life, Parakeet was questioning his leader’s wisdom. A treacherously resentful voice wondered why Spot couldn’t have delivered this message himself. Imp Harris opened the window with a shy hello.
“Hey,” he replied quietly. “Fingers heah?” He didn’t want to do this . . .
Imp glanced over her shoulder. “Um . . . yep?”
Keet followed her glanced and sighed. Fingers lay on her bunk, punching the feathers out of an innocent pillow. Rarely had Parakeet felt anything less than devotion to Spot, but at the moment he could almost have hated the Brooklyn leader.
Fingers turned her head, sat up and glared daggers at him. “What is it, Jameson?”
Keet closed his eyes for an instant. Then he glanced at Imp, who was fidgeting nervously, and edged past her. Keeping his voice low enough for only Fingers to hear, he answered, “I’m sorry. Yer – mudder-” He saw her tense even before he finished. “She had an accident.” When he got back to Brooklyn he was going to – hit something. Take a swim in the river. Wrestle Cross. Something. “She fell in da river.” Don’t draw it out! he ordered himself. “Drowned.”
Fingers went from sitting to standing in an instant. Keet caught her wrists before she could land a punch, but she struggled, glaring, cursing him incoherently. “I’m sorry,” he whispered painfully. He tried not to think about his father. He tried not to think about Sue. He tried not to think about Fingers’ face, and wished heartily that Spot had found someone else for this job. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again.
She finally managed a string of disconnected curses, blistering in their heat.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, anguished. He wanted to let her go, but didn’t know how to do so without getting punched. And holding her wrists only stopped her from hitting him. Fingers cursed, kicked and spat with full freedom. Finally, he just let go.
True to expectation, the girl punched him. “D*mn you ta @#$% h*ll!” she spat, shoving him into the wall.
“I’m sorry.”
No one had gotten a word out of Fingers all day. Imp had reported on her explosion with Keet the night before, but she didn’t know what the Brooklyn boy had said to set her off.
Ruby had been battling her friend’s silence for hours when Blind Diamond Connor finally knocked on the bunkroom window. It was a relief – if anyone could drag Fingers out of her silence it was him. She leaned back into Four Eyes’ shoulder, and he hugged her. “I’m worried about her,” she whispered in his ear.
Diamond sat beside her. “Hey?”
She didn’t answer.
“How’s . . . it goin’?” he asked with a lame attempt at nonchalance. He knew concern didn’t sit well with her.
Abruptly, Fingers stood up and climbed out the window.
He followed her out, closing the window behind himself. “Hey . . . what is it?”
Fingers stared out at the night. “When she gets like dat, she starts doin’ t’ings,” she told him conversationally, in a tone that would have been described as ‘normal’ for anyone, but Fingers Mulcahy. “Somebody needs ta watch ‘er.” That somebody had always been her.
Diamond didn’t ask who. “What happened?” he asked, instead, quietly.
“Neely can’t be boddered ta watch ‘er, or have nobody else ‘interferin’ wit ‘is property.’ ‘E can’t complain when she goes walkin’ off a’ pier.”
Diamond drew a deep breath, then very gently turned her to face him. She stared back at him, expressionlessly. With a quiet, heartfelt curse, he pulled her close. “I’se so sorry . . .”
She hit him weakly, once, twice, three times, then just clung to him, crying silently on his shoulder.
Ruby strained to sit up. “Somethin’s really wrong.”
“Don’t hoit yaself,” Four Eyes replied quietly. He agreed, but he was far from Fingers’ favorite person. If he approached her in this mood, she might well kill him.
“I’m aw right,” she said, still straining to see out the window. She could only see Diamond’s face, but that expression was not a good one. And Fingers . . . Fingers was not crying.
