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another job. I’m not sure what I’m qualified to do for the Mageri, but there’s got to be something out there for me, and I intend to find out what it is.”
    “I’m still not sure if I can believe this,” she muttered.
    “Sunny, I know a million stories about you. It may never be enough. I just want to sit and talk for a little bit.” I tore the label off the bottle and let a minute pass by. “How’s my mom doing?”
    She snorted and swallowed half her drink. “Bat crazy. She won’t talk to me anymore. She’s found Jesus.”
    “Really? Where was he hiding?” We laughed together and she ruffled her fingers through her hair. “At least she found somebody. It really tore me up wondering how you two were coping. Did she take Max?”
    “You mean that devil cat of yours? Yes, reluctantly your mother took him. I think she felt guilty.”
    “He isn’t the devil, just a little possessed.”
    “And in need of an exorcism.”
    I coughed when a trail of smoke stung my eyes from the long fingers of an elderly man lingering by the table. Sunny fanned the air with her hand, giving me a look of disgust for my choice of location. She preferred upscale and fun to mediocre and glum.
    “I wanted to believe you were alive because some weird stuff happened.”
    “What weird stuff?”
    “It’s my fault.” She submersed an ice cube in her glass with the tip of her finger.
    A rowdy group of men entered the room and one of them slammed his hands on the bar. “Three beers!” he called out.
    “There’s no way you could have known that was going to happen to me. Don’t even think about blaming yourself.”
    Her fingers wound through a curl of hair as guilt flooded her eyes. “Marco led me to believe he was the one. What a joke. Marco only wanted to know about you .”
    “ What? ” I asked in disbelief. I met the guy once .
    “Marco was involved, Zoë—uh, Silver. I can’t get used to that name.”
    “It’s fine. You’re human, so you can call me whatever you want.”
    “I went to see him that night after I dropped you off. He discarded me like some floozy. I thought it was because he was messing around, so we argued. When the phone rang, he answered it and went ballistic, yelling in Italian. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the conversation. We haven’t seen each other since that night.”
    “Is that why you came up here, because you think this is somehow your doing?”
    “Maybe it’s why I can believe all of this. Marco scared me, and I moved because of him. I loved that little apartment and hated myself for getting involved with him. None of it mattered. You were gone and my life was a mess.”
    “What are you not telling me?”
    “Well,” she began, “we never fought like that before. Most of our quarrels were minor and we always kissed and made up. I never saw that side of him, and I—”
    Two fists—one sporting a ring shaped like a knuckle-duster—planted on the table. We raised our attention to a man with a shaved head, dripping from the rain. Deep lines carved across both of his cheeks, and his eyes were small and sunken in. They were also all over Sunny. A foul stench of cheap cologne burned my nose and I angled away from him.
    “You ladies want some company?” Drops of rainwater rolled down his head and splashed across my hand.
    Sunny didn’t even look up because she knew how to handle men. “Scram. You’re leaking all over our table.”
    “Yeah, it’s crying like a bitch out there. Me and my boys would like to buy you girls a beer.”
    His fists remained on the table as if he were claiming his territory. The music switched to an old rock song, and Sunny buffed a nail on her sleeve.
    “As you can see,” she said, “we already have a drink. Try the next table.”
    He dropped his ass in the seat next to her as his two companions moved in closer. One covered in tattoos looked like he used a knife to shave his head, while the second guy was bigger, wearing a baseball hat and