I searched for three days with no signs of either Benny or Mary. Well almost three days, I spent the rush hours at my usual corners, earning enough to get by. Finally I hear word of Benny having been seen entering the old Saint Vincents Hospital and finish my afternoon on the corner, netting another twelve dollars, most of which I promptly spend on a toasted meatball sub, one of the few delicacies I allowed myself on the rare occasions when I am feeling confident.
Wiping marinara sauce from the corner of my mouth, I catch a glimpse out the window of Cyrus pushing a shopping trolley down the street, a middle-aged red headed woman walking beside him. She wore a red wool coat and a silver scarf and not once did she look in my direction. I watch Cyrus’s mouth move, wishing I could read lips, and she laughs politely. Quickly I gather what few possessions I have with me, mainly my gloves, a threadbare black fedora and my long brown coat, throw my trash away and dart outside. I look in the direction they had gone and do not see them, run to the corner, but they are gone.
I duck into an alley and pull my Sigil Sphere from my pocket, rotating it until the image of a spot near the hospital appears within, and I am there, the two boxcars with my initials in them painted onto the side of an old tenement building in Hell’s Kitchen. Two blocks later and I’ve pulled on my gloves, donned the hat, and am standing before the run down structure that once hosted the sick and now serves as a hotel of sorts to the poor and infamous. I bypass the front door, eyeing it’s padlock and laughing to myself. The side door is boarded over with fresh plywood, holes drilled to accommodate a small metal chain that served to hold them shut. I knock on the wood, three sharp taps followed by a pause and then a fourth and then step back. Both doors swing open like some giant walk-in freezer, the pins removed from the left hinges and the wood and chains holding everything together. A man, dressed in a tattered brown suit and grey fingerless gloves smiles a gap-toothed smile at me and says “Come in.”
I oblige, stepping past him and into the small room beyond. I ask a woman seated at… I hesitate to actually call it a desk, but it was a few crates stacked atop each other, “Have you seen Freak Beans,” and she points me to a room, after I hand her two fairly clean one dollar bills. As I walk down the hallway, I can clearly make out Mary’s voice.
“So, Charlie and the Russian have both told me that only seven Princes remain, what happened to the other five?”
I turn the corner just as Benny starts to answer. His top hat is on the bed and his scalp is peeling in places, the few remaining black curls hanging on for dear life, pressed firm against his dark skin.
“Where have you been?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm, completely drowning out Benny’s response to Mary’s question.
“I needed to think.” Mary answers, looking me directly in the eye for the first time that I can recall.
“About?” I ask, but I know the answer.
“What Jenny told me.”
“And?”
“She’s right,” She pauses and before I have a chance to prompt her, she continues. “I do know what I need to do.”
She is smiling as I ask, “And what exactly, is that?”
“I need to become one of the Underground Princes,”
Benny’s jaw hung open, and noises I hear outside of our small room seemed to grind to a halt.
“What?” I ask incredulously.
“I need to find one of the missing Princes and take their Sphere…”
“I’m not sure it works that way,” Benny says as he picks up his hat and places it, slightly crooked, upon his head with both hands. His Sigil Sphere is in his hands as she utters her next sentence.
“I could always kill one of you and take yours.” Her serious facade breaks and she laughs. At any other time, the sound would have been beautiful.
I laugh nervously along with her. I glance at Freak Beans, who is eyeing the glass orb in his hand. “Wait,” I tell him and realize how thin the walls are as the noises in the hallway resume. I lower my voice, “Benny, hold on. I just saw Cyrus again.”
“What happened?” He asks, setting the sphere in his lap.
I take a few steps further into the room, bringing myself within a few feet of him and whisper, prompting Mary to join us. “He was with some woman, a red head in a red coat, ring any bells?”
Benny’s eyebrows furrow, and he removes the top hat, scratches his head, and replaces it. “No, how long ago was this?”
“Twenty, thirty minutes ago, tops.”
“Do you think he’s found someone else to be his bride?” Mary asks, the corners of her mouth turning up.
I shake my head, “That’s not the impression she gave me.” I look at Mary and quickly add “But I did not talk to her or anything so I could be wrong,” when I saw her frown. “They walked by where I was eating.”
“Wait, did she have a tattoo of a snake coiled about her shoulders and neck?” Benny asks animatedly, using his hands to indicate the ink reptile’s position.
I close my eyes, trying to picture the woman in reds neck but all I can see is her scarf blowing in a wind I was sure I was imagining. “I… I don’t know. Who is she?”
“Her name is Samantha and she’s been trying to take over our corner of the world for a while now.
“You almost done in there?” Comes a female voice from the other side of the door, followed by a heavy knock. “You only payed for six hours, and that was up fifteen minutes ago.”
I open the door and am stiff armed aside as the woman in the red coat and silver scarf pushes her way inside.
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