The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 613: 613 | For Rosa, Always

Ophelia snorted behind her parasol. I heard her murmur, “Plus two,” to the bear tucked under her arm.

Dralun opened the door.

The drum was full. It wasn’t full of clothes.

A heap of small objects filled the bottom of the drum. My Intelligence stat took a full second to sort the shapes, but once it did, the picture clarified instantly and sat in my chest like something cold I’d swallowed without meaning to. Rings. Dozens of them. Their bands bent or scratched, some of the gold dull where it had been rubbed thin from years of wear.

Wristwatches with cracked faces and loose clasps, a few with blood crusted around the edges where the wearer had kept them on too long or torn them off in a hurry. I saw a pair of pearl earrings tangled in a chain that had been cut with pliers instead of unclasped.

The links were still twisted from the force of it. Somebody’s military dog tags lay on top next to a baby bracelet with a name engraved on the band. The metal was worn so smooth I couldn’t read the letters, just the faint ghost of what they’d been.

On top of the pile sat a canvas bag with its drawstring untied, the fabric still folded in the specific way bags fold when someone drops them in a hurry. It was the same bag I had watched her carry up a vertical brick wall with no hands, swinging from one window ledge to the next like the laws of physics had politely agreed to look the other way.

Dralun reached in and lifted a thin gold band between two claws. He turned it toward the light, and I saw the inscription inside. It said FOR ROSA, ALWAYS in worn cursive, the letters faint from years of being touched.

“Rosa Delgado,” Dralun said. His voice had dropped to the rockslide register again, the kind of quiet that made you stop breathing so you could hear him. “Delancey and Sixth. Her husband’s ring. She pawned it in August to cover rent after the landlord doubled her lease. Went to the Delancey Gold and Loan because she’d heard they’d buy anything, no questions asked.”

Ophelia had gone very still. The parasol lowered an inch, and I saw her eyes over the lace edge. They weren’t bored anymore.

“Delancey Gold and Loan buys under value from anybody desperate,” Dralun went on. He set the ring down on the lid of the dryer with a precision that made the metal clink once, sharp and final. He picked up the dog tags, holding them up so I could see the name stamped into the steel. “Then he refuses to honor the buyback window. Says the contract was ninety days, not a hundred and twenty, even though Rosa’s got the receipt that says different. Then he sells the pieces uptown for four times what he paid, sometimes more if the metal’s good. I’ve filed on him three times in the last eighteen months, and the IHL says it’s not a Hero issue.”

“So it’s a cop issue,” I said.

He looked at me, and I felt the look land in my stomach.

“Cops don’t come east of the river for rings, Belmont.”

I looked at the pile again, and then at the green four painted on the dryer door. I thought about a girl with a lipstick card and a lisp who had told me front doors were for people with nothing to hide. I thought about how she had let herself fall off a skylight in front of the gold boy from the television, and how her legs had locked around my waist so her mouth could sit four inches from my ear.

The interface cleared its throat in text form.

〘Heroine Update: LAMIA. Temptation Gauge: 9%.〙

〘Observation: She did not slip. You are not as clever as she is.〙

I stared at the pile in the dryer and felt something tighten in my chest.

“She set this up,” I said. “She hit the pawn shop while the fire pulled you upstairs. She knew I’d follow her, so she let me catch up. Handed me the card herself.”

“She used you as a delivery boy,” Ophelia said. Her voice had dropped flat. Then it snapped back to brightness like a pulled rubber band. “Which is so funny, because you already look like one.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Minus five, for being a delivery boy.” She closed her parasol and stepped up beside Dralun. The movement brought her shoulder within inches of my arm. The fluorescent glare turned her pink curls into pale fire. She bent forward and her stockinged knee brushed against mine. Five-spice and powder scent cut through the detergent smell of the laundromat.

She was standing much closer to me than a girl at negative one twenty-five should.

“There are so many,” she said softly. “Is that a baby bracelet?”

Dralun lifted it from the pile.

It was small enough to fit around my thumb. The metal was thin, worn at the clasp, and the engraving was faint but legible in the light. MATEO.

His tail stopped moving.

I had watched this dragon walk into a burning building twice without his expression changing once. I had watched him drink coffee that smelled like regret and tasted like battery acid without blinking. Now he held a gold bracelet the size of a quarter between two claws, and his jaw locked so hard I heard his teeth grinding.

“Belmont,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“You good at talking in the city?”

He had asked me that in the office an hour ago, before the scanner went off. I hadn’t answered it then.

“I’m working on it,” I said.

He nodded once and handed me the bracelet. Then he reached into the drum and started pulling the pile out onto the lid of the dryer, piece by piece. He laid each object down beside the last one in a straight line.

“Then start working,” he said. “We have forty-one families to find before that pawn shop opens at nine.”