“Real men?” Mitch asks as Kali watches me with dark eyes from across the street. I can only pray her ass gets hit by an oncoming train. If only the universe were so kind. “Real men don't play games in the dark. Where. Is. Danny? Either you take us to him now or else this shit gets real.”

“Wrong,” Vic snaps, flicking his cigarette aside and pointing at Mitch with a tattooed finger. He looks like a dark god right now, commanding an army of undead delinquents. It shouldn't make him more attractive to me, but it does. I both crave his commands and despise them, all at the same time. “Real men, as you've so eloquently put it, are as at home in the dark as they are in the daylight. If we want to play games with poor little Danny, who's to stop us? Besides, there's nothing for us to take you to. We fucked around with him and he ran off into the woods. Not our fault if he fell into a cougar's jaws.”

“Goddamn it, Victor,” Mitch snarls, but before he can get another word out, Hael's mother starts screaming.

“They're coming for me!” she screams in a strange accent, digging her fingers into her hair, eyes darting wildly around the neighborhood. “They're already here; I can smell them. I can smell them. Je les sens.”

“Arrête ça, Maman,” Hael pleads, his teeth gritted, shame coloring his face. This isn't something he ever wanted anyone else to see, let alone Mitch and his crew. Things start making sense: the way Hael acts when his mother is mentioned, the way he avoids her calls, the pair of them homeless and sleeping in the shelter with me and Pen and Pamela.

Clearly, Hael's mom has some serious mental health issues.

She tries to tear away from me, and several guns swing our direction. I stand up after her, trying to keep her still and quiet, but she's fighting me, clawing at my skin with long nails, weeping and shaking and murmuring in French.

“Get that crazy cunt to calm her tits down or—” Mitch starts, but I’m just done listening to men squabble. This woman needs help. Now.

“Or you'll show us all what a real man can do?” I interrupt, reaching beneath my leather jacket and removing the revolver I pinched from Oscar. As soon as he sees me going for it, his gray eyes widen behind his glasses. He didn't expect this shit, now did he?

Glad to know I can pull one off on these boys.

I level the weapon on what's left of Mitch's El Camino. It's fucked from when Hael ran the SUV into it, and I feel my lips split into a grin as I fire a round into the rear windshield, shattering what’s left of it.

“What the fuck?!” Mitch howls, but there are too many witnesses here for anyone to actually put a bullet in another person. This is all for show, all an act. Well, I'm tired of playing my part. I want a new role. I fire off another round into one of the rear tires as chaos erupts around me.

This dark, horrible part of me cackles as fists fly and the boys spill blood, and I'm tempted to point this gun at Kali and cross her name off my own list. But I don't. I know better. Besides, Hael's mother is in full hysterics now, sobbing and clinging to me like I'm her only way out.

“They're after me,” she whispers in that unusual accent of hers. “And they'll get you, too, cher,” she sobs as I tuck the gun back beneath my jacket, catching her before she falls to her knees. While the world around me falls to violence and turmoil, I take Hael's mother by the hands and lead her up the front steps and into the house, closing the door behind us.

Nobody notices us leaving, so I take advantage of the moment and get her situated on the couch as she cries. The house smells like bleach, but underneath it, there's the acrid stink of piss and cigarettes. This woman, in her pink apron, she clearly cleans it, but there's somebody else here who messes it up, and I'd bet the very few pennies I have to my name that it isn't Hael.

“Cher, listen,” she says, taking my hands in hers as my eyes flick to the front door, wondering when or if someone might come storming in here with a gun in their hands. Or if the cops will show up. Unfortunately, the Four Corners neighborhood is technically unincorporated Springfield, meaning the city police won't show up here for shit; this is county territory, so we'd have to wait for the sheriff. Likely, none of the neighbors will bother. The people who live here are well-aware of the costs of getting involved in a gang war. “They're coming for me.”

“Who?” I ask, even though I know I probably shouldn't engage this woman without Hael around. She squeezes my hands, digging her nails into my skin. The move triggers something inside of me and I tear away, stumbling back several steps as old memories come flooding into my brain, a broken dam that rages and destroys as it overflows its banks.

“Bernadette,” Mom snaps, turning around to look at me, digging her red nails into my arm hard enough to draw blood. Her face is a mask of rage; I can't bear to look at it. Instead, I focus on the crescent marks in my skin, unsure of where my blood ends and her red nails begin. “This man is going to be your new daddy. You will show him respect, or I'll beat it into you.”

The front door flies open, the knob smashing into the wall, and Hael storms in, sweaty and shaking as he kneels down in front of his mother.

“Maman, listen to me,” he says as she fights against him, trying to tear her hands from his.

“They're coming, mon fils,” she murmurs, eyes flicking to the doorway as Vic walks in, scowling and speckled with blood. He gives me a look that says he isn't happy with my escalation of the situation, but fuck him. I'm not happy about the video; we all have to learn to live with disappointment. “They're out to get me.”

“What on earth is she muttering about now?” Oscar asks, flicking an imaginary piece of dust from the arm of his dark suit as he joins us, closing the door behind him.

“Show some goddamn compassion, would ya?” Hael snaps back at him, moving to sit on the sofa beside his mother and smoothing back her hair. He murmurs quietly to her in French until she stops fidgeting, her honey-brown eyes remarkably similar to her son's. She darts her gaze between us, finally landing her attention on me.

“Who is this?” she asks in a heavily accented voice, gesturing at me. “I'll make cookies. You want some? Of course you do,” she mutters this last part, like she really doesn’t care what Hael’s going to say; she’s making those goddamn cookies.

“We don't need any cookies, Maman,” Hael groans, closing his eyes in a way that reveals how tired he truly is. And I don't mean physically, I mean in his fucking soul. It's a weightiness, a heaviness, that sort of melancholic fatigue. It eats at you like moths at a sweater, leaving little holes, weakening the knit. You can still put it on, but it'll never keep you warm, not ever again. Eventually, the whole thing just unravels.

“All little boys like cookies,” his mother says, pushing away from him and standing up with a smile, like she didn't just see two dozen teenagers brandish illegal weapons at each other in her front yard. Hael scowls as his mother totters off, pausing to pat me on the cheek. “You Hael's girlfriend?” she asks, but before I can think up an appropriate answer, she's talking again. “You like chocolate chip? Nobody don't like chocolate chip.”

His mother disappears into the kitchen area, leaving the four of us in a bubble of awkward-as-fuck. I raise an eyebrow as Hael swallows and swipes a hand down his face.