Later, as she replayed the scene in her mind, Jade would blame herself for her slow reactions. Then again, who’s at their best when they wake to find some weirdo staring at them from the shadows?
She should have made a run for it straight away. Instead, she’d let the weirdo walk up the three steps leading up to the recessed entrance where she was hiding out and crouch down at the edge of her precious cardboard mattress. Not touching her, but still. Way too close for comfort, and literally backing her into a corner.
Obviously, she wasn’t going to show fear. Instead, she pretended to hold a knife in her pocket and told him to back off.
Mirko stood up slowly – a sudden move might have further spooked the girl with the imaginary blade – and picked a nice patch of wall to lean against on the other side of the doorway. He hadn’t meant to freak her out. Although, with hindsight, he couldn’t have been much scarier if he’d tried.
He’d been surprised to see a face from his past as he was out on one of his late-night walks, after a busy shift. The girl in the ratty parka looked just like the kid sister he’d had to leave behind, all those years ago when he ran. Unkempt, of course, and even skinnier, but still. The same manga eyes, the same air of defiant kitten.
In her terror, she looked even younger.
For a fleeting second, he had wondered if Milica had somehow managed to followed him, then realised that of course she’d be much older now. And yet, the resemblance was uncanny. Maybe this was Milica’s doppelgänger, the one everyone is meant to have somewhere. Many years removed, and without Milica’s signature flowers in her cascades of wheat-blonde hair.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. As if she didn’t know.
“Fuck off,” she replied.
“Do you need help?”
“Not from you, you perv.”
He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t going to leave her there, at the mercy of whatever thug happened to walk this way. Then again, he wasn’t going to kidnap her either. Once upon a time, sure. Few could hope to resist his kind’s sheer strength, and his parents had raised him to see this clout as the ultimate tool for conflict resolution. His birthright, in a way; perfectly legitimate, in their eyes.
Among his kin, he’d been one of first to question this idea. Which, among many other dire consequences, meant that he now had to argue with a stroppy teenager.
“Look. You’re clearly cold and hungry. Let me buy you a meal. Or a coffee, at least.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you, you freak.”
“You’re quite safe with me. But I know you have no reason to believe that.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
He tried to look at it from her perspective. Not a skill he’d been raised to hone; but one that he was striving to acquire now that he had renounced persuasion by brute force.
“What would make this work for you?”
She gave him a sidelong glance from behind those butterfly lashes. In her experience, most men were creeps, but this one seemed different. Maybe he was one of those who saw themselves as her saviour. They tended to be kinder, but so far every one of them had ended up bossing her around and making things worse.
But there was no hint of soppy sentiment in that hatchet face of his. Come to think of it, he wasn’t bad looking, for an old guy. He seemed about the same age as her latest stepdad, but in far better shape. That black leather jacket of his seemed even older.
Nothing about him screamed money, but he was probably good for a hot chocolate and a few euros in spare change. Who was she to argue?
“A public place, with lots of people. I choose where we go, and I’m not getting into a car with you. We walk there, on separate sides of the road. You go in first; I’ll sit facing you. Anything I drink, you will taste first.”
Good girl, he thought.
“I leave when I want to,” she pursued. “And you don’t follow me.”
“Fair enough. Where do you want to go?”
Of course he’d follow her back, but she would never know. Nobody notices a bat.