Free Soul Song by Marjorie M. Liu

planning on involving the cops,” Kit said.
    “No. Not yet. Just the Gunslingers.” That was Dela’s pet name for the men and women of the detective agency.
    M’cal’s coat collar still pressed against Kit’s cheek. She did not push it away. Inside her head, a passage from Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain pounded, keeping time with her heart. The music reminded her of M’cal’s eyes. She inhaled, tugging the coat closer.
    Crazy. You are so damn crazy to still want his scent.
    But it was a shield; better than thinking about those men, what they had done to her. What they would have done. Better to remember M’cal and his scent. His mouth. His arms. His hands.
    Hands that had broken Dutch’s neck. Hands that belonged to a man who could sing others to death, who had impaled another with a long steel pipe.
    Kit closed her eyes. “I appreciate your help, Dela. More than I can say.”
    “You’re my friend,” Dela said quietly. “I would come myself if I could, but Mahari is sick, and even if I could find someone to watch him, I shouldn’t travel right now. I shouldn’t even be at the forge.”
    “Three months left, right?” Kit smiled, feeling wistful. “I’m surprised you can walk.”
    “I think I’m having a litter,” Dela said, with so little humor Kit bit back a joke that sprang to mind. “Just you wait until it’s your turn.”
    “Never,” she replied, making her voice light, breezy. “Never going to happen.”
    Dela, thankfully, was a good enough friend not to give her the obvious lecture. Like, It won’t happen if you don’t make time for it, or, It’ll happen when you least expect it. She left it alone. Moved on.
    “It just so happens that Hari is in Seattle for the weekend,” she said. “He’s with some of the other guys. They’re, um, having a reunion of sorts.”
    Hari was Dela’s husband, a giant of a man who looked like a warrior out of a fairytale but who held his wife’s hand like it was made of snow and glass; precious, delicate. Dela had met him in China under mysterious circumstances—which she had still not shared—and dragged him home, willing that he was, like a prize from war. The two had been joined at the hip ever since.
    Kit could only imagine the trouble those other guys were getting him in. “Did the big men bring teddy bears and matching pajamas?”
    “You have no idea.”
    “Darn,” Kit said. “My world for a camera.”
    Dela snorted. “They can get to you in less than three hours, maybe two. Think you can stay put for that long?”
    “Sure.”
    “Kit.”
    “Relax,” Kit replied, fingering Alice’s business card. “Where could I possibly go?”
    She took a shower after she got off the phone with Dela. Washed away the night. Touched her neck, prodding the skin. There was no sign of any wound, not even on her scalp where she had been hit. A chill settled through her. She pretended it was her grandmother, and the cold turned warm.
    Her hair remained a soft mess—more frizz than curls—but Kit tied it back with a red scarf that draped over the collar of her denim jacket. Shades of Jazz Marie. Thinking for a moment, Kit slipped on her reading glasses with their thick tortoiseshell frames, trying to pull a fast Clark Kent. Secret Identity 101. She looked into the mirror and studied her face. She imagined her grandmother staring back; she had the old woman’s eyes.
    Uncanny, her father had once said. Uncanny and beautiful.
    Kit almost called her parents. She wanted to hear their voices; something warm, familiar. Someone to reassure her. Someone to say good-bye to, just in case.
    She checked her cell phone. It was wet, much like everything else in her green leather purse. She tried to turn it on, and nothing happened. Busted. She tossed it back into her bag, glanced at the hotel phone, and looked away. Grabbed her fiddle case and left the room.
    There was an ATM in the marble lobby. Kit withdrew as much as she could and paid for another night.