Chapter 15

Chapter 15

VEE

S he had to hand it to Jayce—he’d come through for her this time. Vee looked around at the boxes stacked on the clubhouse rooftop and smiled.

“How much did this cost us?” she asked. It didn’t matter, not really. Whatever it was, it would be worth it. And if they had to arrange a special score to get some more gold, they could. With her powers, they could do anything they wanted.

“Nothing,” Jayce answered with a smile. He looked nothing like the little kid she had protected for all those years, not anymore. A growth spurt had taken care of that. Now Jayce towered over her, towered over everyone in their little gang. He brushed his dark blond hair from his eyes and grinned as he explained. “Jacques got a job as an apprentice at the printer’s office about a year ago—he went in after hours to get these all printed up for us, free of charge.”

Vee frowned. Jacques, she vaguely remembered him. But they all blended together after a while, especially the males. He was another of Jayce’s strays—one of the boys he brought into their gang to give them a better chance, to give them a little safety and consistent access to food. Jayce’s brother may have started the tradition, but since he’d taken over, Jayce had expanded their little gang almost tenfold. And it was paying off now that some of his strays were making names for themselves, getting jobs and gaining influence. They had resources all over the city, which meant they had a lot of favors they could call in at any time if need be.

Kneeling down and taking out his pocketknife, Jayce sliced through the tape on a box for her and flipped the cardboard open.

Vee grinned as she looked inside, squatting down to get a better look. Stacks and stacks of posters with the same image printed on them. Replicas of the ones someone else was putting up all over the city.

Fey’s face looked up at her from inside the box. The Witch who had taken down an empire. The Witch who brought the Crown itself to its knees.

Just as Vee intended to.

“They’re perfect!” she squealed, pulling out a stack.

“Jacques was a little confused about why you wanted them,” Jayce admitted, glancing up at her before opening another box.

Vee opened her mouth to explain but was interrupted by another of Jayce’s strays climbing up the ladder to the roof. The old metal ladder squeaked and moaned under the weight, but it held.

“Hey, Vee,” the boy called when he saw her, his head popping up over the brick lip that lined the rooftop. Vee chewed her lip, trying to remember this one’s name… he’d been around at least a year now, hovering on the sidelines.

“Hey, Seth,” Jayce called back to him, shooting Vee a significant look.

Seth. Right. All these males looked the same to her, she supposed. Big, smelly, and noisy, all of them, and it made it very hard to tell any of them apart.

“What do you need, Seth?” Vee asked, standing up and watching him. She didn’t bother hiding the posters from him. None of the strays would ever dare to question her or her business.

“I want to introduce you to someone,” Seth said, climbing up the ladder the rest of the way and stepping up onto the roof to stand amongst the boxes.

Vee waited, watching as Seth leaned over the edge to help someone up. Finally, a girl’s head emerged over the brick, no more than six or seven.

Vee forced herself to smile, but something cracked in her chest. A thousand emotions swirled inside her. Rage, pain, sadness. She kept a movie-star smile on her face, betraying nothing.

“Hey there,” she said to the girl, who scrambled up the rest of the ladder and glanced around at them suspiciously. “My name is Vee. What’s yours?”

The little girl stared at her with untrusting eyes.

“This,” Seth said, putting a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder, “is Stella.”

Vee crouched slowly, lowering herself to Stella’s level. Vee was tall, taller than a lot of the gang, so it helped the younger ones trust her more sometimes if they saw her as closer to their size. She didn’t bother to get any closer to her, though, didn’t close that gap between them. New strays needed space, after all. “Hey, Stella,” Vee said, still smiling. “Welcome to our clubhouse.”

Stella blinked at her and slowly looked around at the others. It was a busy night, tonight. A few other strays were lounging around on the roof, chatting in their usual packs. Jayce ignored them all, pulling stacks of posters from the boxes and piling them around Vee.

“Pa says I shouldn’t talk to strangers,” Stella said, finally, breaking her stare and looking down at the ground.

That rage, again, roaring in Vee’s ears, but she kept her smile. “Oh yeah? That’s a good rule, Stella, it really is. But we’re not strangers anymore, are we? You know my name, and I know yours.” She grinned at Seth. “And you know my buddy Seth, right? So, that makes us friends, doesn’t it?”

“S’pose,” Stella said, still looking at the ground.

“Where is your Pa, Stella?” Vee asked, careful to keep her voice relaxed. Casual.

She shrugged a shoulder, looking away.

“Last he was seen, he was down at the south dock,” Seth told Vee, eyes hard as slate.

The south dock. Vee clenched her teeth together. A user, then. No one hung around the docks unless they were looking for a fix, or they were selling one. And the only sellers in this city anymore were the Vampires.

Filthy leeches.

“Stella here is a Badger Shifter,” Seth announced, clasping the young girl on the shoulder.

Vee’s smile widened at the pride in Seth’s voice, at the way Stella grinned, her smile stretching from ear to ear. “Is that so?” she asked. “Wow, Stella. I’ve never met a Badger Shifter before. Have you, Jayce?”

Jayce glanced up from his stacks of paper and shook his head. “Me? Nah. Never.”

“Must be pretty rare, huh?”

“We are!” Stella said, looking at them, excited. “And we’re diggers. Better diggers than any of the other Shifters, even the Rats.”

“Wow!” Vee said, shifting back to sit on her ankles. “You know, Stella,” she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Our clubhouse could really use a good digger. We have some scores coming up soon, and you might be just what we need. What do you say? Want to help us out?”

The way Stella’s eyes lit up made her stomach twist, but Vee kept the smile on her face. They’d learned this together, her and Jayce. Strays wouldn’t accept handouts, didn’t trust that anyone would want to help them out without expecting something in return. But convince them they can pay you back, somehow? Convince them they’re necessary, that they have a skill you desperately need? Well, then they’ll accept your help, thinking the whole time that they’re pulling one over on you. Taking advantage of a good deal.

“Are you hungry, Stella?” Jayce asked suddenly. “We’ve got sandwiches downstairs left over from dinner. Seth, why don’t you take her down and get her something to eat, huh? We can’t have our new digger going hungry.”

Stella grinned, and Seth clasped her by the shoulder before leading her back down the ladder and off the roof.

Vee watched them go, the smile slipping from her face.

“They found a dead Badger Shifter by the docks earlier this week, didn’t they?” she asked Jayce, voice low .

Jayce nodded. His own smile was gone, too, and his eyes were hard. “Yeah. Overdosed. He’d be about the right age to be her father, too.”

Vee nodded. “Keep an eye on her. She’s probably been living off scraps for at least a few days now. Keep her inside just in case she had to steal her last few meals and got on a merchant’s bad side. And find something she can dig. I don’t care if it’s a score or not.”

Jayce grunted.

Vee hated this part. Hated the first few weeks of trying to keep a new stray. These poor kids were so damaged, so used to surviving moment to moment, that it was almost impossible to help them. Convince them they were necessary, give them their freedom, and let them adjust. That was the trick to it. If they could keep her safe over the next few weeks, they could find Stella a more permanent place to stay, maybe some other Shifter pack that would take her in.

And if not? Well, they had beds here, in the clubhouse. They had food. And they had Vee to keep them all safe.

Vee sighed, trying to push all those emotions boiling inside of her away, at least for the moment. Sitting back on the cold brick of the roof and grabbing a pen, she took the top poster and scrawled a message on top of it, then set it aside.

Jayce wandered over to watch after a few minutes. He knew better than to ask what she was up to; she would tell him when it was necessary. So, instead, he sat down next to her, head cocked to the side, watching her quietly as she worked.

Vee grabbed another poster, humming to herself as she wrote.