She pushes her way through the revolving door in a black minidress, confident and fragile. She shouldn’t be wearing that here.
The pawn shop is stacked with virtual graffiti along the walls, neon vine leaves with fairies than run down them and dive into the waiting mouths of carnivorous plants, then blossom as vengeful goddesses carved out of flowers, and three eyed monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil that jump through the walls like bad omens.
She’s from the Upper Crust, Aman can tell that immediately, and he thumbs each of the silver skulled rings on his hand as the smiling man unjacks himself from the net, adjusting his erection. The broker is tall and dark skinned, dressed in a leopard print suit with gray and red dreadlocks, thin emancipated neck with mustard tattoos that dance jaggedly around his pockmarked face. He has implants in his eyes, having had aviators embedded after he lost his vision after a bad-tempered customer spiked him with a neural virus. There is something sad about him, but by now he is more crocodile than man.
“Greetings, sister.” he rasps.
“Hello.”
Her voice is neutral, unintimidated. She’s young and she flashes him with her thick black eyes, he gets a sting of something long lost in his chest.
She doesn’t seem to be in a hurry and he waits with his eyes invisible behind his implants as she examines his wears; stolen watches, amulets, implants, spiked heels, strange instruments from the Under City; the Aaimeen, with its lilting, sorrowful pipes, the sirens with their two sets of angelic strings like a harp split through the center. He admires her curves, her strong calves.
Neon jellyfish swim past her heart shaped face framed with a rough white pixie cut; thick puffy lips, dark makeup; silky sad eyes which reflect a rich inner life, a depth that makes her even more beautiful. There is a heavy bass thumping in the undercurrent of the room, a synthesized voice syncing with the beat. She looks… devastated and Aman is suddenly frightened that he may fall in love with her. This absurd and alien feeling disconcerts him enough to blurt something out.
“Da thief left it behind, da moon, at my window.” He doesn’t know why he quotes this ancient poem; it comes to him unbidden, as if from another tongue. It’s certainly not in his usual lexicon.
She looks at him again, more carefully this time. She is examining him, stripping his old crocodile soul down, reaching deep into his early self and he finds himself suddenly unable to talk.
“I’m looking for Weapons.” She says. It’s the first time he’s heard her speak and it’s like the fresh smell of a forest, like wild grass under his feet. He’s surprised but he’s a professional con, and his instincts are worn.
“No Weapon here maam.” He shrugs, showing off his golden teeth. He’s heard more bizarre requests, and from younger than her. In fact he’s more interested than ever to know how she has sniffed out that he traffics in black market goods. Even an accusation like that could be dangerous. “Ask da Bank!”
“Banks aren’t lending.” She says, picking a piped Aimeen off the wall. The one she’s chosen is an antique, polished wood with mermaids. A psychic had sold it to him for an improbably low price, said she didn’t want that kind of power around her.
The broker saw it now, behind her. It had been almost invisible when she walked in, slyly hiding behind his dreadlocks. Her shadow was incredibly dark, maybe the darkest he’d seen and when it moved over the ground it seemed to leave the filthy floor glistening. His grandmother had had some of the gift of the Sight; for him it was only glimpses.
But as a broker Aman has seen all kinds of pain and desperation walk in here – from the soulless junkies to the killers and the whores, the broken and the damned – but he’d not seen a shadow like that. Inside there was a monster that scared his own monster and he felt his own beast make a cowardly snicker.
Everyone in this life, from the Upper Crust to the Shades to the Under City, had a shadow and inside that shadow was something only you could see, your own personal daemon made of pain and fear and fury – your own little tragedy of sin and self destruction gifted to you by your family and circumstance. The only way you could fight it was with Weapons and the only way you could get Weapons was through the Bank and the only currency they would accept was given to you by your family, and so in conclusion Aman understood that this rich girl was doomed.
“Call Daddy.” He kept smiling.
“Daddy isn’t picking up.” She said, coming over to the counter right opposite him with her swaying walk, placing her black nailed hands on the table and staring up into him with those sinkhole eyes that sunctioned him away from every savvy conman skin he’d ever worn and opened his chest up thick and good.
And right when he was about to break, melting, his shit-eating grin fading and swimming in her gaze and actually feeling something, feeling something for the first goddamn time in years a real kindness, he saw it rear up behind her. The thing inside her was huge, multi-armed, emerging impossibly dense and intelligent, coming out her shadow and engulfing the roof behind her, drowning out the fairies and the light so that he cowered back behind the counter and grabbed the his Weapon underneath it, brandishing the tiny snub nose revolver that his mother had given him.
He fired wildly, streaks of hot light slamming into the ancient thing behind her until he was out of ammo and clicking. He cried out and threw the Weapon at it, but it disappeared and crashed into glass in the back of the shop.
The girl hardly reacted. She just watched him with her huge sad eyes, watched him shout and struggle and demand that she leave, that he had nutin’, nutin’, nutin’ that could do anything against THAT, that she was fucked, the world was fucked if those things were out there and Weapon was going to help anyone from Upper Crust the lowest sewers of the Lakes, and she needed to LEAVE, by the gods just leave. Through it all she seemed quite still, as if used to it, and before it ended she averted her face and walked out the revolving doors of the pawn shop, back into the lost world she had come from.
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