Black City Read Free Page A

been?” he asks.
    “Out,” I say.
    “Where’s your coat?”
    “Lost it,” I say, which isn’t technically true. I know exactly where it is: under the Hazer girl’s head. Maybe I’ll swing by tomorrow and see if she left it. I loved that jacket, got it off a Darkling Legion Liberation Front freedom fighter during the war, just before he got captured by a Tracker.
    I walk past Dad toward the pokey room at the back of the church. Propped against the padlocked door leading down to the crypt is a rusty old camp bed where Dad sometimes sleeps when he’s not down in there, which isn’t very often. I don’t think he’s seen daylight in weeks, not since she came back. I turn my back to the crypt door, not wanting to look at it, not wanting to think about what’s behind it.
    The rest of the room is taken up with a small table and a few kitchen appliances. The room’s filthy, with grime on the walls and dirty dishes piled high on every surface. On the floor are several crates filled with tinned food; donations from the locals to hand out on our next charity run. Around the kitchen table are three chairs: one for Dad, one for me, and one chair that hasn’t been occupied in eight years. Slung over the back of it is a Lupine-fur coat, which Dad gave to Mom on their wedding day.
    I pick up the coat and press my nose against the silvery fur. I almost believe I can smell Calder lilies on it, the scent of a much happier time. A familiar pain bunches up in my chest, and I carefully put the coat back on the chair.
    On top of the cluttered table is a mountain of bills. I pick them up, and my mind wanders back to the Sentry girl. What had the guards called her? Natalie.
    I dolefully sift through the bills, trying to focus my mind on other things, but my mood worsens with every red letter. I’ll need to get some new clients to pay for all of this, and the idea sickens me. I hate getting the kids at my school hooked on Haze, but I have no choice. It’s that or we’re out on the streets. That’s not good in a place like Black City.
    “Are you going to tell me where you were?” Dad says as he enters the kitchen.
    “Library. I was returning some books,” I lie.
    “You risked being caught outside after curfew to return some books?”
    “What can I say? The library fines are astronomical.”
    “The library burned down last week.”
    Oh.
    “Heavens, Ash, if anyone catches you out after curfew—”
    “I know. ”
    “You have to be more careful. Trackers are crawling all over the city now that the Emissary is back in town.”
    He doesn’t need to remind me. After the Emissary was evacuated last year, only the general police force—the Sentry guard—was left behind to control the city. Now she’s back to open negotiations with the Legion to extend their territory, and the city is swarming with Trackers, a specialist military unit dedicated to hunting one thing: Darklings.
    I toss the bills on the table. “I was getting some money for us. Someone’s got to pay for all these!”
    Dad narrows his blue eyes at me. “What have you been doing?”
    I rub the back of my neck.
    “I told you not to deal Haze anymore!” Dad yells. “What if they catch you? Honestly, sometimes I think you’re trying to get yourself killed.”
    My mouth twitches.
    “Do you want to die?” Dad persists, on a rant now.
    “I already am dead.”
    “Just because your heart doesn’t beat doesn’t mean you’re not alive.”
    “You don’t understand,” I say quietly. “You have no idea what it’s like to be a freak. How can you? You’re human; you’re nothing like me.”
    Dad has a heartbeat, and Mom even has two. Yet somehow I ended up with nothing but a stone-cold lump inside my chest. No matter how many times he tries to explain it—my heart doesn’t beat because it doesn’t need to, the symbiotic protozoa in my blood feeds oxygen to my organs instead; it’s just one of the many weird and wonderful side-effects of mixing human and