“Yeah. Yeah, fine. I’ll tell them.”

“Tell them all. And let them know I’ll be in touch.”

Skint lifts the coffee cup as if to toast. “To the future, then.”

Wila’s.

Counter on the left. Register. Seats at the counter and a bunch of rickety tables and ratty booths. Everything cast in a color like old lemon meringue pie.

No hostess here. Just a tired-looking waitress with hound-dog eyes and hair dyed so red it’s almost purple. She shows off a set of nicotine teeth, tells Mookie he can sit anywhere. He shakes his head. Points upstairs.

“Oh,” she says. Then she gives him a sad smile. “You look like a growing boy. You want something to take up? Pierogie?”

He does. He wants a pierogie. Or a link of kielbasa. But no time. He feels his mouth water like a dog staring at a steak.

The waitress leads the way upstairs.

The smells of the kitchen are strong here. Paprika and vinegar. Sharp bite of fennel. Garlic, too. Mookie wants to pause here on the steps, take it all in.

But–

The Boss awaits.

At the top of the steps is a door with peeling blue paint. Mookie walks through.

Nora stands across the street. Under the awning of a little café, pigeons dancing around her feet.

She watches her father go into the Polish joint. Dumb monkey. The old man looks rougher than usual. Her poison did a number on him, but here he is, anyway. She knew it wouldn’t kill him; that was never a question. The Snakeface that sold it to her made sure it wasn’t the deadly stuff – just the “go the fuck to sleep” stuff. (She’s not sure how they know to milk different venoms from their nasty little… fang glands or whatever, they just do. And she’s content with that answer.)

It’s in this moment that she realizes she has a lot of power.

Right now, she’s privy to a secret meeting of lieutenants and higher-ups in the Organization. All gathered under a single, ill-defended roof.

I could call the gangs.

I could leak it to Smiley.

I could stir up a pack of pissed-off gobbos looking for a chance to get back at the group of humans who have helped keep them bottled up and kept below.

I could call up some hobo with a shotgun to kick down the door and blast all those a-holes into bloody bits.

But she just stands there. Eating a Luna bar.

She could do a lot of things. Instead, she does nothing. Just stands there. Eating a Luna bar.

It’s all going to shake out the right way no matter what. Patience will win the day. She has her way in. The old man is going bye-bye. The house of cards will fall and she will be the one to help rebuild it.

She tells herself it has nothing to do with the fact her father’s inside. Instead of sleeping off the Snakeface venom on the floor of his Podunk bar. That’s definitely not it. Because she hates him. That’s what she tells herself.