Inamorata

Chapter Thirty-Two - Out, Damned Spot!

Her bitter, dispassionate eye roamed to where she saw Sparkle and Glitter standing with their arms about each other, the pair of them kissing in a way that was far too ardent for the location. Even in her apathetic state, she wondered how long they had felt that way about each other. It must have been torture, being raped by others when you were so close to the one you loved...

But Nightingale was not too far gone into bitterness to forget about Rose. Turning her head, she was relieved to see the girl standing some distance off, looking terrified and lunatic but otherwise unharmed.

She still had the gun Clarence had given her, and she hadn't put it down. Rose's fingers were clenched about it so tightly that Nightingale wondered if Pierce and Nicholas, who were desperately trying to reason with her, would ever be able to pry it from her grasp.

The babble from Inamoratas, clients, and agents alike stopped when they saw Nightingale. She must have looked frightful, for she saw the eyes of every person pop wide until the whites of their eyes showed all around their irises.

"Nightingale?" she heard Mermaid, the person she least expected to speak for the Inamorata's quiet, meditative personality. "What's happened? Are you all right, Nightingale?"

Nightingale looked down at her hands. Her sisters were probably worried that it was her blood staining limbs and clothes. So she lifted her head and stared at no one in particular as she said in a clear, unwavering voice, "Clarence is dead. Bobby shot him."

The sidewalk became noisy once more, though not the tumultuous babble it had been before. The Inamoratas, who had barely known Clarence, simply muttered and stared sadly at Nightingale, their eyes wide and sympathetic. Clients whispered and cried out, most likely afraid they'd be arrested for the death of a cop, all of them trying to assure Caroline that they'd had nothing to do with it.

Caroline, meanwhile, simply hid her face in her hands.

It was Rose's siren shriek of sorrow that cut above all other sounds. She screamed loudly and took off into the bordello, waving the gun.

Nicholas and Pierce tore after her. Nightingale hoped Rose wouldn't hurt herself with the gun.

Before her sisters, some of them timidly approaching her as though she were some wild beast and not their friend, their Queen of the Bordello, could so much as touch a comforting hand to her arm, David whisked her away.

She let him pull her by the arm away from her sisters. He towed her towards a hovercraft, this one four times the size of his and a different configuration. This one opened at the back to reveal two benches of seats lining the inner walls, with a seat for the driver at the front.

David seemed about to help her into the hovercraft, so she swatted away the hands that were about her waist, lifting her body as she sprang in.

"Get off me," she told him gruffly.

He jerked back but did not glower at her as she thought he would. He simply climbed in after her and sat down on a bench.

She sank down opposite him. When, at David's word, the hovercraft lifted off into the air, Nightingale raised her eyebrows. "What, not going to stay with your team, Detective? Not going to take care of the dead one, either?"

She was surprised to see him smile sweetly. That surprise managed to touch her even through her bitterness, for she felt it like it was a short electric shock like the ones from her anklet.

"They can handle things in my absence," he told her. "You're our first priority, remember? I will stay with you."

Nightingale turned her face away. She could not find joy in the city as they soared above it. But as she saw the lights of the city float by her, suspended in blackness, she asked: