Emilio was waiting at my truck when school finally got out. I’d high tailed it to the parking lot as quick as I could. His backpack lay at his feet, partially open, revealing his sketchbook. There was no way I wouldn’t have beaten him here unless he’d planned ahead.

That meant… “Ah, hell,” I said. “Don’t you have a date with Hope tonight?”

They’d been planning to go out to some special event that would be showing some of Miyazaki’s films tonight. He’d worn a red sort of hoodie thing specifically for their date. The hoodie was comprised of too many layers and zippers and it kind of made him look like he’d jumped out of one of those manga books they were always reading. Or maybe a videogame. I’d never tell him how cool I thought the thing was. Cooler still was how he’d gotten it.

While Hope liked to write fanfiction, Emilio was an artist. A smart artist. He’d done a trade with a fan online who had their own Etsy shop, doing some art for them in exchange for the custom hoodie. Since then, he’d actually started selling some of his art online. Made decent money at it too.

Emilio shrugged and offered me a smile. “She saw your phone at lunch. She gets why I’m here.”

“Why are you here?” I asked, crossing my arms. Belligerent? Who me?

“Griffin, you’re my best friend,” he said. “You pushed me to put my art online and start selling it. You helped me figure out how to save up for art school. You’ve always had my back. If you think for a second that I’m letting you run off to meet Damien by yourself, you’ve got another thing coming.

Emilio was my best friend too. He got me on a very real level and we’d both done our best to support each other. Apart from Hope, I was probably the only one he’d confided in about his interest in art school and his parent’s disapproval. They wanted him to go to a “real college” and get a “real job,” whatever that was supposed to be. On the flipside, he was the only friend I’d told about my desire to go to culinary school. Dad approved. He also couldn’t help me. The only reason he was able to keep his big old piece of land out in Kerrville was a couple of tax exemptions he got from being a veteran and for letting some of his neighbors grow hay in a few pastures.

I couldn’t say how much Emilio’s support meant to me. I also couldn’t ask him to come along on something like this. Seth was my brother, and this was my problem. More importantly, I didn’t want my best friend anywhere near Damien.

“Damien’s a tool,” I said. “He’s an asshole but he’s harmless.”

“He’s a drug dealer,” Emilio said flatly.

“Only because he’s too big an asshole to keep a real job,” I replied.

Technically true. Also, not really accurate. Damien had a weird sort of charisma to him. An ability to really draw people in and make them like him. At least until they got to know him like we had. It probably made him a great dealer. It was also proof that he could get a real and legal job if he wanted. One that didn’t ruin people’s lives. He’d make a great used car salesman.

“Griffin, he’s probably on those drugs,” Emilio said, crossing his arms. “You’re not leaving me behind.”

Actually, I probably could leave him behind. It wouldn’t even be hard. From the glare he was giving me though, I knew Emilio would never forgive me if I did.

I grunted. It was about as much an open concession as I was going to give him, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to thank him. I was already way too raw from worrying about the weird texts Damien had sent me. Keeping things vague, sending me a location to meet him, but not an actual place. I’d been on the edge of my seat all afternoon and I didn’t have it in me to fight with or hurt my friend. Not when he was trying to help me.

“You think he actually knows anything about Seth?” I asked, hating how weak I sounded for asking and hating the hope I allowed to creep into my voice even more.

Emilio grimaced. “Honestly? No. I think he wants something.”

I let out a sigh. That was my fear too. It had been eating at me all day, a whispering as it chewed at the bottom of my brain that this wasn’t real. Things had gotten bad after the pair of them had gotten into drugs. Mom had kicked Seth out of the house. In retaliation, he and Damien had broken into her home and stolen the jewelry out of her closet.

I didn’t see much of Seth after that. But I had run into Damien several times at my group’s favorite game store. He’d even joined in a few of our games and I hadn’t put up much fight because he knew to dangle enough about what was going on with Seth for me to basically let him run around sabotaging my game. I’d cut him out of my life when I realized he’d been lying to me and hadn’t seen Seth in months.

My friends and I had stopped gaming at that store. Once a month now we got together at one of our houses for a weekend of dice rolling insanity where we could be sure Damien wouldn’t interrupt.

“But,” Emilio said, catching me off guard, “I’m with you to the end. If you think there’s even a chance, he might know something, I’ve got your back.”

I was quiet for a moment before I said, “Thanks,” then went around and hopped in the driver’s seat of my old two-door truck. As Emilio hopped in on the passenger side, I reached for my glove compartment and pulled out two things: my cap and my knife. Neither were allowed in the school, so they waited in my car during classes. It always felt wrong going without either.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The cap was nothing special, just a camouflage thing with an embroidered stag head colored to look like the Texas flag above the bill, but the knife was top quality. It’s part of Kershaw’s Emmerson series, as much a hunting knife as a pocket knife, with a clipped point, bowie-style blade that’s surprisingly thick and durable and a comfortable, olive-green handle with a textured grip and a slight, ergonomic curve that helped it fit better in the hand. It had a decent heft to it as well and I felt better clipping it to the inside of my pocket after fitting on my cap.

“You think you’re going to need that?” Emilio asked, looking at me sideways.

I shrugged. “Feels better having it.”

It’s a weird thing to feel. Most people who don’t spend any time around knives are uncomfortable with them. Me? I feel weird not having a one near at hand. I clean and dress my kills in the field and knives have a huge significance to chef’s and aspiring chef’s. I wasn’t about to get one tattooed on my forearm like many did, but I was more than familiar enough with knives to know that as comforting as I found my little pocketknife, it wouldn’t actually do me a lot of good in a fight. Knives are great tools. Weapons? Not so much.

One of my dad’s buddies who occasionally hunted with us was an EMT. He joked once that the idiot who won a knife fight was the second one to die on the way to the hospital. Maybe I liked the knife so much because, like my hat, it made me feel like I was back out in the woods hunting. Things were simpler there. It’s just you and the game and everything else can just fall away or be put on pause to marinate in the back of your mind.

“So, where are we going?” Emilio asked a moment later as we pulled out of the parking lot and navigated the stupidly long line of traffic wrapped around the front of the school. A moment later, after we broke free, we were on the freeway heading toward downtown Houston.

I fished my phone out of my pocket and turned on the map, getting directions to the pin drop Damien had shared. “No idea,” I answered. “He wants to meet here though.”

Downtown Houston has never been one of my favorite places to be. For one thing, finding parking was a nightmare. For another, it’s difficult as hell to navigate. It’s a ton of one-way streets that alternate, which should make for a nice and easy grid, except that Houston infrastructure was never that use-friendly. There are parks, there are ramps to freeways, there are turn offs that don’t look like turn offs. It’s a freaking madhouse.

Then there was the traffic. Houston might have one of the widest freeways in the word, but that’s because the city needed it. Rush hour is not an hour-long affair. It started when the schools got out and went on until after the sun dropped. By the time we made it downtown, found the location Damien wanted us to meet him at, navigated our way around to find somewhere with free parking, then walked back to the location on foot, the sun was just beginning to lower.

There weren’t a lot of people on the sidewalks as we headed back toward the meeting point. Even if there had been, Damien wouldn’t have been hard to spot.

Houston didn’t really do cold. It was October, and in true Texas fashion, Houston gave zero craps. It was muggy and just barely cool enough to justify Emilio’s anime-jacket-thing. Damien was leaning against a building, just outside an alleyway, wearing an ankle length trench coat. A bright white, fur-lined, thick as anything canvas trench coat. The fur on it made him look like a wannabe pimp.

He was smoking a cigarette and he’d grown out his hair since I’d last seen him. Dirty blonde, emphasis on the dirty, it hung lank down past his shoulders and was accompanied by a scruffy soul patch. There was also a bulge under his left arm. He was carrying a gun under that coat. Great.

Worse though, was the backpack laying on the sidewalk at his feet. It was full to bursting with who-knew-what, including a length of rope hanging from the side. More noticeable than the rope, was the baseball bat and freaking katana that were sticking out. The bat was wood, solid and wrapped in barbed wire with huge nails driven through it. The katana looked like something out of one of Emilio’s anime shows with a white wrapped handle and what looked like a keychain dangling from the end of the handle. It probably meant something to him and Hope.

The few pedestrians that were out gave Damien a wide berth. He seemed to enjoy scaring them as he grinned and puffed at his cigarette.

“Aren’t you hot in that?” I asked as we walked up. It was one of the first things that popped into my head. I’m not usually tactful, but it seemed more polite than “Planning to shoot up a school?”

My question was immediately followed by Emilio asking, “Is that a katana?”

Damien grinned at us. His teeth were yellower than I remembered. “Griffin! You brought Emilio. Should have brought the rest. We’d have a real adventuring party.”

“Yeah, we could LARP or something,” I said, then jerked my head his backpack with rope and weapons. They looked a little too real for a Live Action Role Play. “Is that what this is for? Got a game going out here?”

“Something like that,” Damien said, taking another drag from his cigarette. He glanced over at the setting sun, turning the sky bloody red and orange. “You were almost late.”

“Traffic,” I said. “It’s Houston. Where’s Seth? Is he going to be here?”

Damien grinned, then jerked a thumb down the alley. “Down here.”

I glanced down the alley. A trickle of water ran down the broken asphalt. There was a fire escape, a dumpster, and a back door leading into one of the side buildings.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

“Not yet, you don’t,” Damien said, then picked up his backpack in one hand and stepped into the alley. He walked deliberately through the water, making it splash over his combat boots and deliberately flapped the edge of his coat. I think in his mind it was supposed to look dramatic. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you.”

How had I ever looked up to this guy?

I followed him in, Emilio right behind me.

Damien stopped halfway down the alley, then pulled out his phone and checked it. Grinning, he turned around and pointed behind us. “See it yet?”

We turned around. The sunlight made the shadow of the alley extend almost to the sidewalk we’d stepped off of. Cars rolled past on the street beyond. The lights of the downtown skyscrapers began to turn on.

“See what?” I asked.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s there.”

He pushed us. Hard.

I really should have expected it. I didn’t. Even if I had, Damien was around six feet tall. I might be broad shouldered, but he was definitely stronger than either of us. It was one of those ugly realities high school made you realize quick when you’re on the smaller side of things.

We stumbled forward. Our feet crossed the alley’s shadow, and then we weren’t in the alley anymore.