Broken(6)

    The room I walked into consisted of multiple levels divided into sections by rails and booths. I could see a dance floor somewhere in the distance, but there were enough mirrors on the walls that I wasn’t entirely sure where in the building it was. I also did not care. The music blasting out of speakers overhead had way too much electronic noise in it for me to really consider it music, and the speaker system wasn’t doing it any favors either, at least not to my metahuman ears. Besides, my eyes had settled on who I was looking for as soon as I walked in; everything else was ancillary noise at this point.

    “Hey, pretty girl,” a guy said, stepping into my path as I made my way toward the bar. The alcohol on his breath said he’d had at least twelve beers. “How about we—”

    I let my left hand loose without really thinking about it, and it arced from my side in a quick motion and slapped him open-handed in the groin. All the air rushed out of him and he hit his knees. “How about we don’t,” I said as I walked past him and turned the corner to enter the section of the room that had the actual bar in it. I heard the murmured assent of voices around me, both in my head and out of it.

    I took the last few steps up to the bar and didn’t bother to take off my heavy wool coat, the one that was black and fell all the way to my knees. It was cold outside, now; the first breaths of winter infusing the air, and I didn’t even feel any desire to remove it now that I was indoors. I went to the end of the bar, to the man who sat there, drinking a beer from a glass big enough to qualify as a bucket in most jurisdictions. He watched me the whole way over, trying not to act like he cared, but he stopped watching as I turned the last corner of the bar and came to the stool next to him. “Mind if I sit down?” I asked.

    “If I say no, are you gonna do to me what you did to the last guy?” He was big, his face carried acne scars and a world of uncaring seeped out of his voice. He was chomping on a big cigar, unlit.

    “Probably worse,” I said, and took the seat next to him.

    “Have a seat, then,” he said, and pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “Welcome to my home away from home.” Kurt Hannegan stared back at me from the next barstool, his massive frame dwarfing mine. “How’d you find me?”

    I didn’t answer for a minute. “He … told me you hang out here. That … he … had been here with you before.”

    There was a splash of uncertainty on his already surly face. “Yeah. Once or twice he was, I suppose. What are you doing here?”

    I watched him as he took a long pull from his beer. “You heard?”

    He finished the mug in one long drink and made a gesture to the bartender for another. “I heard.”

    “How?”

    A new glass made its way to in front of him, and the barman asked politely if I wanted anything. I shook my head and he disappeared again. “Jackson told me,” Hannegan said. “He and a couple other guys heard from Clary. Said the big man told the story loud and boisterous all the way up til the last part. Then he got quiet and needed booze and prompting to get to the finish.” Kurt shot me a sidelong look. “So do you hear him now?” He pointed to his head. “Is he … with you … right now?

    “Not so much, no,” I said. “Kinda quiet for some reason.”

    There was the faintest look of amusement that vanished with his next gulp. “Yep,” he put the glass down, “I’d be quiet, too, if I was stuck in my wife’s head.” His face froze in a look of horror or wistfulness; I didn’t know which. As per usual lately, I didn’t care, either.

    “You haven’t asked me why I’m here.” I waited for him to turn and look at me but he stayed still on his stool. One hand stayed in front of him playing with a cardboard coaster that had been worn through with the perspiration from his beer. The other was anchored to his glass’s handle and he fingered it, knuckles twitching as though he wanted to lift it one second, then didn’t know what to do in the next. “Ask me, Kurt. Ask me why I’m here.”

    “Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know why you’re here—”

    “Which you aren’t, anyway,” I said.

    “I’m not stupid—”

    “That’s open to some debate.”