“I’m not normal.”
“That’s what I was getting at, yeah,” he said with a nod. “I just wouldn’t want you to be surprised when someone comes at you with a knife.”
I watched him with jaded eyes. “I’m never surprised anymore when someone comes at me with a knife.”
He blew air out through his lips and made a frightened and contrite face. “Oh, my. You are a feisty one, aren’t you?” He extended a hand then yanked it back away. “Sorry. Forgot for a second what you were. Name’s Breandan. Breandan Duffy.”
I extended my hand then took it back in a smooth motion that went right to my hair, like I’d seen Zack do once when he was trying to be funny. I did it with a smile on my face until I got to my hair and found it a tangled mess that caught my fingers. I looked up and knew that whatever expression I was wearing at that point wasn’t conveying the coolness I had shot for. “Sienna,” I said at last. “Sienna Nealon.”
“’Tis nice to meet you, Sienna Nealon,” Breandan said with a gesture back toward the way I’d come. “We’ll be needing to take a train this way. Would you care to follow me?”
“Sure.” I nodded. “Lay on, McDuff-y.”
He smiled and even laughed just a little bit. “Clever, but I’m Irish, not Scottish.” We crossed the stream of people heading in the opposite direction and joined the queue heading back down to the underground platforms. “I have to ask you, though—something’s been bothering me. How’d you do it?” His face was all sincerity, with just the slightest tinge of nervousness as we got on the down escalator. The de-escalator, they should call it.
“Do what?” My hand rested on the black plasti-rubber grip that moved down along with the escalator. De-escalator. That thing.
He looked around as though he expected someone to be eavesdropping, but there was no one close to us save for a couple making out two steps above us. He watched them for a few seconds before shaking his head in disgust. “Please, save it.” He looked back at me. “You know. You made luck betray me.”
“I did huh-what?” I made my best confused face. It didn’t take much, since what he said wasn’t making any sense.
“My ability,” he said in a hushed voice. “You know, where I can spin the wheels of luck, keep her on my side.”
“I didn’t know that was your ability,” I said. “How’s it work?”
He looked embarrassed. “Well, I just sorta … use it … and people don’t pay attention or notice when I nick things from their pocket, for instance. People all look a different direction at the moment when I’m perpetrating a crime. That sort of thing. You’re the first one who’s ever caught me.” He shook his head, lightly amused. “I was a little worried, you know, that my luck had run out. But it turns out you’re like me, so you musta just broke through it somehow. Thought maybe it was something your kind could do.”
“Are you sure you didn’t just have a malfunction?” I asked. “Maybe you got nervous and couldn’t pull it off without—”
“Hey hey hey!” he said, mildly outraged. “What are you trying to say? That I had some sort of performance anxiety?”
“They make a pill for that, I’ve heard.”
He frowned. “I was not nervous. It was just another day, another pocket, another bag to lift from. No big deal, nothing to get flummoxed over, and even if I were—which I wasn’t,” he said emphatically, “that has no bearing on my abilities. I can twist luck for myself however I want and twist it the opposite way for others.” We had reached the platform and waited with a crowd of people. “Here, watch this.”
He pointed his finger nonchalantly toward a man who stood a few paces away, a cup of hot coffee steaming in his hand. As if on cue, a woman walked by in high heels, each step clapping smartly against the floor of the platform. As she passed him there was a crack like a gunshot and her heel broke, sending her ankle sideways. She cried out and fell, her long blond hair swaying as she did. The man with the coffee dropped it and it spilled all down his front as he reached out and caught the woman, bracing himself to keep from being knocked over by the impact.
I looked back at Breandan and he frowned. “That was supposed to be good luck. Well, okay, it works a bit oddly for others sometimes, but not for me.”
I watched as the woman pulled herself up off him, still leaning against him and apologizing profusely. Their eyes met as she pushed her hair out of her eyes and they both stopped speaking.