Pocket Dungeon 2, page 11
“I did,” I said. “For a couple of years. It wasn’t my dream job after graduate school, but it was the best job I could have gotten considering the circumstances. Like I said, I was able to read in my down time, and there’s no beating the discount on books.”
“Then why’d you quit?” Someone spoke up from behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my goddamn skin.
Next to me, Iris had gone rigid, and her hand drifted to her waistline, where she had kept her dagger strapped to her side in the dungeons. I reached over to gently touch her wrist as I turned.
“Fucking Christ,” I breathed. “How do you always do that?”
Simon, my former coworker, stood in front of me with an armload of books towering against his chest. His shaved head sported a bit of regrowth since the last time I had seen him, but otherwise, he looked much the same.
Really, the only major difference was the fact he looked mildly annoyed with me for having quit the shop.
“Practice,” he said, which I should have fucking expected.
“Practice something normal, dude,” I muttered.
“Who’s this?” he asked, like we were having a totally normal conversation and he wasn’t being a weirdo. I liked Simon, but that didn’t make him less of a weirdo. He nodded in Iris’ direction and raised one of his dark eyebrows up in a silent question.
“Simon, this is Iris,” I initiated introductions. “Iris, this is Simon.”
He made a strange motion with his arms, and all the books he was holding shifted a little.
“Can’t shake your hand because of obvious reasons,” he said. “But it’s nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Iris said. Her tone was tight, however, and it was clear that she still hadn’t fully recuperated from her initial panic at Simon’s silent approach.
“Why are you here?” Simon asked me, and for some reason, he seemed less pleased to be talking to me, his friend, than to the hot woman next to me. Shocker.
“Am I not allowed to shop?” I grinned.
“No,” he deadpanned. “Not when you quit and I have to pick up your shifts. Why’d you leave anyway?”
I paused. “I got a better job offer.”
It wasn’t quite the truth, but I didn’t think it was entirely a lie, either. I felt like I could make the argument that using the crystal counted as a job, if you like, squinted and tilted your head to the side to look at it.
“I’m going to go look around,” Iris told me quietly. She placed her hand on my arm in a lingering touch before she disappeared around the corner.
As soon as she disappeared from sight, Simon dropped the massive stack of books he had been holding onto a nearby cart with a tired grunt.
“Did you seriously hold those the entire time she was over here to look strong?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“No,” he clearly lied. “Anyway, what happened to the other woman? The one with the accent. Ukrainian? No, it was Russian.”
Right, I had lied and told Simon that Yasha was Russian.
“She’s also here,” I said. “Like literally in the store right now, too.”
Simon’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked me over, like he was trying to find some reason that I, of all people, would have two objectively stunning women hanging around me.
“Don’t give me that look,” I snorted.
“I don’t know what sort of look you’re talking about.” He continued to give me the look. “I’m just… learning some new things about my good pal, Wes. Like, the fact you’ve either been hiding your multimillions of dollars from me, which would be a dick move, or your packing a serious—”
“Do not,” I cut him off and tried not to burst into laughter. “Do not finish that sentence.”
Simon grinned and shrugged. “Hey, I’m not judging.”
“This feels a little like judging, but okay then,” I said. Before I could say anything else, however, the aforementioned Ukrainian-no-Russian woman appeared from around the corner with a stack of about seven books balanced precariously in her arms.
“Wes!” she exclaimed. “I have found many more books that I wish to read!”
I reached out to take a few of them from her arms so she didn’t drop them everywhere and matched her smile. She leaned forward to give me a quick peck on the lips, and I could feel Simon’s eyes on me the whole time as he took in the scene.
“That’s great,” I said. “You remember Simon, right? He was here last time.”
Yasha turned and looked over at my former coworker. “Oh, yes. Hello, Wes’ friend: Simon.”
Simon’s lips pressed into a thin line, and I bit back a bark of laughter.
“Hello,” he sighed. “Do you want me to take those books for you? I can go ahead and get them bagged up.”
“Yes,” Yasha said and unceremoniously dumped the remaining books from her arms into Simon’s outstretched hands. She then took the books I’d saved from falling out of her grasp and deposited them with the others. “That would be very nice.”
Simon had to struggle for a moment to make sure he didn’t drop anything before he turned on his heel and made his way to the counter near the other side of the store.
I could have sworn I heard him grumbling as he went about me and my hot girlfriends.
I wasn’t going to point out to him that only one of them was technically my girlfriend, because I didn’t think it would really make him feel all that much better about the situation at hand.
“Did you see Iris while you were looking for books?” I asked.
Yasha shook her head. “I did not, but I am sure she is somewhere.”
“I’m going to go see where she wandered off to,” I said. “Do you want to keep looking around, too? Or did you find everything you want?”
“I think that I have found enough books for now,” Yasha said. “I will go assist your friend in packaging them for me.”
And with that, Yasha turned and started off in the direction Simon had disappeared in. I could only imagine how well that would go, and I watched with amusement as Yasha turned the corner.
Once she had disappeared from my line of sight, I set out to actually find Iris amongst the chaos of the shop.
I loved Page Turner, but that didn’t mean the bookstore was particularly well organized. In fact, the store was practically the opposite. The shelves were probably more akin to the minotaur’s labyrinth than they were any well-mapped store, but there was something comforting about the chaos. It reminded me of Yasha’s clothing mess in our room, in a weird way.
It had made organizing the store when I worked there a pain in the ass, but I didn’t really mind much at all. It had been nice to lose myself amongst the books.
I meandered through the shelves without much intention in where I was going. Really, my only goal was figuring out where Iris had wandered off to before Yasha could terrorize Simon into fleeing the premises.
Finally, after I made what felt like the thousandth turn, I came upon Iris. She was tucked into the farthest back corner of the store in a section where the shelves were so tightly compressed, they left barely any room at all to actually walk through.
She was crouched down near the lowest row on the shelf. Unlike Yasha, Iris didn’t have a massive armload of books. Instead, she only had three tucked into the crook of her arm. She wore a look of intense concentration as she flipped through the various dusty volumes that lined the shelf.
Iris looked up at me as soon as I took another step closer, and unlike when Simon had approached us without sound, she didn’t seem to be panicked at my arrival.
“Find anything good?” I asked her as I moved to crouch down next to her on the ground. I didn’t recognize any of the titles in her arms, but they looked like memoirs of some sort. The next book she added to the pile was some sort of history book, though I didn’t know over what specifically.
Of course. It made sense that Iris would want to learn about the new world in the easiest way possible, and in her shoes, that would be by reading, as opposed to using the internet.
“I think so,” Iris said. She looked down at the books in her arms before looking back at the shelf in front of her. “I’m not sure what to grab. I want to learn about the things I missed, but I don’t even know where to start. There’s so much that happened, and it feels like it’s going to be next to impossible to catch up.”
“You don’t have to worry about learning everything there is to know right now,” I assured her. “It’s going to take you time, no matter what, but everything you learn is better than nothing, right?”
She offered me a small smile. “You’re right, but it’s hard not to get discouraged.”
“I’m here to help you however you need,” I promised her. “Anything you need me to do, I’ll do it.”
Iris looked back down at the books in her arms and fell silent for so long that I was worried I had accidentally made a mistake and said something wrong, or that maybe I had offended her in some way.
I opened my mouth to apologize for whatever the slight might have been, but before I could say anything, I felt Iris’ intense, blue-eyed gaze on me once more. There was something about her eyes that made them impossible to look away from when they were locked onto me. In the dim light of the corner of the store, the dark fringe of her eyelashes cast long shadows down her cheeks and only served to enhance the otherworldly beauty she carried.
“You’re the first good person I think I’ve ever met,” she told me quietly. “Isn’t that fucked?”
I found myself at a loss for words, but Iris continued anyway.
“I’ve only known you a week, and already, you’re doing more for me than anybody’s ever done before, and you don’t want anything in return for it,” she said. “Maybe it was just my life, you know, the things I did and the people I was around, but I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want something from me. I spent my whole life letting myself get taken advantage of, just in case it got me where I wanted to go.”
“I’m sorry, Iris,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say to that revelation.
She shook her head. “You don’t have to be sorry. I don’t want you to be sorry. You weren’t one of those people. You’re so far from one of those people that it’s hard for me to even think about. I thought my life was over when Billy brought me into the crystal, but then you found me. Yasha found me. And for the first time, I finally feel… human, I guess. I’m sorry, this sounds stupid.”
She pressed one of her slender hands to her forehead and shook her head, as if she could shake away everything she’d just said, meanwhile I felt floored.
It was probably the most Iris had ever spoken about her emotions in tandem with her past since I had met her, and it felt like some sort of revelation.
It was hard not to gawk at Iris, but I knew that wouldn’t do much but make her feel awkward. All I could do was be there for her as she worked through her feelings.
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” I finally said. It was the only thing I thought that I could say. “Your life wasn’t easy, and then things got really fucked up there for a while.”
“It’s just… I didn’t know life could feel like this, you know? Like it’s not some sort of terrifying struggle all the time, or that people will help you without wanting you to do something for them that you might not want to do,” she continued. “I didn’t know I could feel like this.”
“I’m glad you do, though,” I said. “I’m glad you feel like a person again. Or for the first time.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Not just for saving me, but… just for being you. You’re a good person, Wes. A really good person.”
“You don’t have to thank me for stuff like that,” I said. “It’s not something that deserves thanks. Anyone would have done what I did in that situation.”
Iris looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think they would. I know they wouldn’t. So, thank you.”
I wanted to argue with her, but I knew she was right. Clearly, not everyone would help her if she had been trapped in that dungeon for fifty years without aid. Clearly, not everyone had been kind to her like they should have been.
So instead, I just nodded. “Any time.”
Iris let out a pained laugh. “I really hope it doesn’t happen again. I don’t know if I could handle it a second time.”
“Don’t worry,” I laughed to lighten the mood. “I won’t let anything like that happen to you again.”
As soon as the words had left my mouth, I paused. There was something I hadn’t told Iris yet, and given our topic of conversation, it was clear she should know.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go pay for those books, and then we have somewhere else to go.”
Iris frowned at the sudden change in my tone, but she pushed herself up to her feet and adjusted the books in her arms anyway. “Where else are we going in such a rush?”
I breathed out through my nose. “There’s something important I have to show you.”
Chapter 8
“Where are we?” Iris asked.
My two female companions stood on either side of me as we lingered on the edge of a busy Chicago sidewalk. We were only a few blocks off of the Magnificent Mile, where the majority of downtown Chicago’s tourists and shopping resided, but that didn’t mean things were any less busy over here.
A few high-rise buildings towered overhead, and the streets were jam-packed with cars, pedestrians, and god only knew what else, but they weren’t where my focus lay.
The building across the street could have been any other building. It was indistinguishable from any of the other newly built high-rise buildings in this part of the city, but I knew what set it apart.
I sucked in a deep breath. “I told you I was going to do whatever I could to keep you safe.”
“Right,” Iris said slowly. “But why are we here? I don’t understand.”
“I also do not understand,” Yasha added. “Where are we and why is that building important to you, Wes? What is it? I do not see anything strange about it.”
“That’s the building where Harper’s new record label is working out of,” I explained.
The words dropped on Iris like a bomb, and as soon as they were out of my mouth, I saw her face contort in panic.
She took a frightened, stumbling step backward, and I had to fight the urge to reach out to her. I knew that in her current state, it wouldn’t do anything other than make her more panicked, but I wanted nothing more than to calm her down.
Her eyes had gone a little glassy and had taken on the same look that they’d had while we were in the dungeon after first finding her. She reminded me of an animal that had been backed into a corner and was willing to do anything it could to escape.
“Why are we here?” Iris stammered out. Her entire posture had gone rigid, and her eyes darted from side to side, as though she was looking for an escape route.
“It is okay,” Yasha soothed her. The fox-woman stepped closer to Iris and reached out to gingerly place her hand on her arm. It was gentler than I had expected from Yasha, and the touch seemed to soothe Iris, at least a little bit.
At the very least, she no longer looked as if she was going to bolt the second she had a chance. Her breathing was coming out in ragged bursts, as if she had just run a marathon.
“I’m sorry to spring this on you,” I said slowly. “I didn’t mean to make you panic. I just thought you needed to know I wasn’t letting up on my promises to you. I told you I was going to make sure you were safe from Harper, and I meant it.”
“And this is where he is in the city?” Iris asked. She still looked as if she was preparing to make a run for it if she had to.
“I’m not sure if he’s actually in the city,” I admitted. “But I do know this is where the new branch of his record label has set up shop. I’ve kept an eye on the building for a few days whenever I’m in the area, and I haven’t seen him in person, but still. I want us to be cautious.”
“Right,” Iris said. “Right. Okay.”
It was clear to me that she had heard what I said, but she hadn’t really internalized it. If anything, she was just trying to keep herself from panicking again. Not that I could really blame her. This was sort of a panic-inducing scenario. I couldn’t imagine what it felt like in her shoes.
Yasha continued to hold her arm in a reassuring gesture, so I felt at least confident enough that she wouldn’t flee, and that I could look back at the building again.
No one else on the street around us seemed to notice or care about what was happening, and I was grateful for that small blessing.
The building itself looked innocuous, but I noticed a strange amount of traffic moving in and out of the large revolving door at the front of the building.
Well. I guess I didn’t really know if it was a strange amount of traffic, because it could have been a perfectly normal amount for all I knew, but it certainly felt like too much traffic for this time of day.
I heard Yasha saying something to Iris next to me, but I was too focused on observing the building to really take in what the two of them were saying.
A set of men had just left the building through the revolving door, but there was something about the way they carried themselves that seemed off to me.
I took a step closer to the edge of the sidewalk to try and get a better look without throwing myself into traffic in the process. I wasn’t an expert on stuff like this, but to my novice eyes, the two guys seemed to move like they were soldiers or police. It was a gait that seemed to occur because of the added weight of a weapon.
Interesting.
I followed the two mens’ path with my eyes until they turned to head down a side street. I nearly looked away, but I was glad I kept following their progress for a second longer, because just before one of them turned, the dark jacket he wore fluttered in a gust of wind and I saw it.
He had a gun strapped to his back, and it wasn’t a small gun. I mentally flipped through all of the firearms I could recognize, and eventually placed the weapon holstered to the man’s back as some type of short-barreled rifle. That wasn’t the sort of thing I expected a security guard to carry.
