Page 97 of Fang Fatale

"Are you done?" Birdie asks.

I glance down at the blood drying across my collar.

"Almost."

"How did you find me?"

She smiles.

"You're not nearly as hard to lose as you think."

"I'll work on that."

"You won't."

She's probably right.

"You shouldn't be here."

"I know."

She steps closer anyway.

Her eyes travel over my face, then my collar, then the blood drying across my hands. She reaches up without hesitation, brushes something from my sleeve, then wipes a streak of blood from my cheek with the pad of her thumb.

The gesture catches me so thoroughly off guard that I forget to breathe.

"Are you hurt?" she asks.

For a ridiculous second, I honestly don't understand the question.

"No."

She nods once, apparently satisfied.

Only then do I realize she wasn't asking whether I'd won.

She was asking whether I was all right.

No one has asked me that in a very long time.

A wet cough drifts across the dock.

Leland.

He's somehow managed to crawl as far as the railing, clinging to it with the sort of determination only truly awful people seem capable of. His face is gray now, his confidence washing away with the tide.

He looks at Birdie.

"Birdie..."

She turns.

For a fleeting second, I wonder if she'll pity him.

Instead, she simply says,

"You should go home, Mr. Brooks."