Chapter Text
Chapter 1
“Here.”
Just as she heard her friend’s voice, Poppy felt Erdene’s long nails pressing into her shoulder. The woman’s grip was like a vice that prevented Poppy from moving even a little bit in her seat at the diner where she’d snagged their favorite table despite the brunch rush. Before Poppy could turn her head to look at her friend or even open her mouth to say jeez, talons much? a shopping bag swung down from above, nearly colliding with her face.
“Well, good morning to you, too,” Poppy huffed, reaching up in an attempt to free Erdene’s sharp grip as the shopping bag swung closer to her face. Poppy swatted at it, rolling her eyes at the sight of the logo—Erdene had clearly bought her something from the designer boutique up the street. The woman had spent the last month—seemingly as soon as the leaves had begun to change colors in Narin City—begging Poppy to check out the shop’s one-of-a-kind Halloween costumes. One look through the window of the shop had been enough to convince Poppy that the lacy, revealing outfits weren’t really her style and definitely weren’t worth charging to her only credit card.
“Okay, you know, here means take it ,” Erdene prodded, squeezing Poppy’s shoulder again before dropping the bag into her friend’s lap. As she stepped out from behind Poppy to round the table, Poppy couldn’t help but gasp a laugh as she took in Erdene’s own costume, clearly from the same boutique. Under normal circumstances, the white pantsuit with the plunging neckline would have drawn Poppy’s attention, but she really couldn’t even focus on the outfit on account of the large angel wings protruding from Erdene’s back.
Momentarily distracted from the unsolicited gift, Poppy grinned at the joke as it left her mouth. “Did it hurt?”
As Erdene tucked herself carefully into the booth, she glanced up at Poppy who was struggling to control a smirk. “Hurt?”
“When you fell.” Poppy felt her smile widen as the understanding dawned in her friend’s blue eyes. “Did it h—”
“Okay, bitch. Joke all you want, but this is a fabulous costume,” Erdene said, narrowing her eyes as she leaned forward, pointing at the handles of the bag draped along the edge of the table. “Speaking of which, you now have one, too, so you don’t have to wear that shitty, shitty Old-Maid-looking getup you showed me last week.”
“Well, Little Bo-Peep is actually young, so joke’s on you…” Poppy grumbled more to herself than anyone as she pointedly ignored the bag in her lap, watching as Erdene flagged down the nearest server with a wave of a finger.
As her friend ordered a coffee, Poppy allowed herself to entertain the idea of wearing a costume like Erdene’s later tonight, but somehow she just didn’t think it’d work for her—a plunging neckline? Dress pants that were hemmed into bootie shorts? And for fuck’s sake, as a reporter she’d be trying to blend in with the crowd, not draw attention to herself. Her own costume—a puffy dress complete with bonnet and shepherd’s crook—would be unassuming enough with the added bonus that she likely wouldn’t have to worry about anyone bothering her over a less modest choice. Not that Erdene’s costume was terribly revealing—but her angel pantsuit was about as sexy as a suit could be, even with the over-the-top wings.
“Where are you off to in a costume anyway,” Poppy asked, nodding at the feathered protrusions when the server had left. She watched as Erdene checked her phone, shaking her head before placing it on the table between them. “Thought Gil had you covering the election,” Poppy took a sip of her water, watching the condensation as it ran down the sides of the stippled plastic. “From what I remember, it’s kind of an all-day thing unless they’ve changed the way polls work since he bumped me from politics to puff,” she added with a half laugh, but even she could feel that the smile hadn’t reached her eyes.
“ Promoted ,” Erdene corrected, tilting her head so that a lock of shiny lavender hair swept across her forehead resting like a droopy petal on the bridge of her long nose. With the golden halo above her head, she looked like an actress or influencer straight out of a profile in the entertainment section Poppy now wrote for regularly. “Not bumped.”
Poppy bit her tongue, swallowing hard.
Of course Erdene would skip right past her joke about the polls and straight to the depressing truth about her career. It sure didn’t feel like a promotion regardless of the title “Managing Editor, Variety and Opinion” embossed on her only business card. Erdene held Poppy’s gaze for a moment as though reading her friend’s thoughts, the golden halo above her head catching the warm glow of the diner’s dusty, old 40-watt bulbs. Poppy didn’t need a mirror to know her face mapped a year of frustration and resentment stemming from their boss.
Just as Erdene opened her mouth again, the server returned, depositing a small mug of black coffee on the table beside Erdene’s phone along with a ceramic bowl of miniature creams. Erdene waited until he’d placed a couple sugar packets on the saucer before speaking again. “You know that I’d switch places with you in a heartbeat if I could. Like, a literal fucking heartbeat.”
“Pfft, yeah right,” Poppy felt her mouth tighten on a small smile before her lips settled back into a flat line at the thought of Gil, their editor in chief at Goldfish Publishing. The way he’d repeatedly denied her requests to cover the special election despite it being an unprecedented event following the recent assassination of Prime Minister Ito.
The election was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be reporting on the ground—potentially documenting the beginnings of a revolution against corruption, against the city’s wealthy and powerful. Though she hated herself for it, Poppy couldn’t deny the twinge of envy every time Erdene talked about her own assignment covering one of the top candidates who also happened to lead one of the city’s three most infamous crime syndicates.
Gangs , Poppy corrected herself, not crime syndicates . The latter sounded so…civil. Passive. Nonviolent. And they were anything but. Thugs —all of them. And if any of the gangs acquired more power than they already had…
“I know you’re a party girl, Dene, but even you’d rather cover the polls than my bullshit train assignment.”
Erdene clicked her teeth, shaking her head as she reached for Poppy’s water glass, spinning the straw around the edge and placing her dark violet lips on the rim to take a sip. “See, you’re putting the emphasis in the wrong place—it’s not a train assignment. The story happens to be on a train, but it’s really about—”
“—a party,” Poppy cut in, reaching out to take her glass back, her fingers closing around the straw, pinching the hole closed, open, closed. Her throat tight and bitter.
“Not what I was going to say—”
“A party, Dene,” Poppy’s voice practically croaked in a plea for her friend to understand how upsetting it was. “Gil put me on a story about a freaking party on a train full of young, privileged idiots who probably won’t even vote today. And in the most important election of our generation.” She drew a breath, her nose flaring. “A haunted Halloween party train or whatever the hell their marketing department came up with.” As Poppy shook her head, the bag from the boutique slid from her lap to the floor.
For a moment, both women stared at each other, the sound of utensils on thick, diner ceramic muted around them. From the corner of her eye, Poppy could see their tense reflections in the window to the left of the table that overlooked the empty street, the sky a dark gray, thick with the promise of thunder. She took a deep breath until finally Erdene broke, rolling her eyes again and beginning to bend to reach under the table for the bag. As her wings caught along the edge of the booth, Poppy sighed, reaching for the bag instead.
“Watch your wings, I’ve got it,” she said, frowning as she picked up the bag, catching a flash of red fabric inside. Poppy narrowed her eyes. It’d be just like Erdene to get something that Poppy herself would never dare to buy—had she ever even owned something so bright? “What is this anyway?”
“We’ve been talking about this for weeks, including like two minutes ago. You know what it is.”
Poppy huffed sharply, glaring at her friend. “I told you my costume is fine.” With both hands, she balled up the bag, extending it out across the table without looking inside. “Besides, it probably costs more than I’m gonna make off this stupid assignment anyway.”
She watched as Erdene crossed her arms over her chest, attempting to sit back in the booth as though trying to get as far away from the bag in Poppy’s hands as possible, but the wings made it difficult.
The sight of her normally quite graceful friend trying to maneuver around the silly, feathery costume would be funny, Poppy thought, if she weren’t so frustrated already at the whole situation, if Gil hadn’t put her on this fucking puff piece in the first place. He knew good as anyone that she deserved to be covering politics, especially when she was in the middle of her own investigative reporting on the city’s rivaling gangs and what the implications were on the government, on the election, on the future of the fucking country. The global impacts of what could happen if any of the gangs played even a small role in the assassination, if any of them were able to sway the vote for a candidate who’d do their bidding. Even worse if one of the gang leaders actually won .
At the thought of the candidates, Poppy forgot about the bag again, her hands lowering to the table, the plastic still clutched in her fists.
“You think he’s gonna win?”
Erdene’s smile hardened on her face, her lips tight like a morning glory.
“Which one?”
Poppy let her head fall to the side as she gave Erdene a look that said, you know. Of all the gang leaders, there was one who stood above the rest.
Erdene nodded once in understanding. “You know what my source says.”
Poppy swallowed. Erdene’s source…she didn’t know who he was, but from the way Erdene talked about him, he was a man on the inside of Vincent Balthuman’s campaign—a high level staffer who also claimed to be a leading member of the candidate’s very own gang, the Balthuman Clan.
“Am I ever gonna meet this mystery source?” Poppy asked, raising an eyebrow. “It’s been, what, a month of you working with him?” She’d promised to introduce Poppy to her source, but it’d been weeks since she’d first agreed.
Erdene drew a breath, “you know he’s not comfortable around reporters. He only just admitted to me what his job really is. There’s a good chance he won’t want to meet, that he’s not interested in taking on the system, fighting the power and all that,” Erdene waved her hands in the air, her fingers curling into scare quotes. “It’s one thing to be an informant on rival gangs while boosting his boss’s image in the press. It’s a whole different thing to assume he’d flip on his own.”
But if there’s even a small chance… Poppy found herself hoping yet again. The source could be a breakthrough in her own investigation.
Half-heartedly, Poppy shrugged, a smirk on her lips as she held up the bag again. “How ‘bout I wear whatever’s in this bag and you agree to set up a meet?”
Erdene huffed a laugh. “Sly bitch,” she breathed as her phone lit up on the table—a phone call from a number Erdene had labeled with a tiger emoji.
“Speak of the devil,” Poppy smirked, knowing full well from the way Erdene always rushed to answer the calls that it was no doubt the mysterious source.
“Shit,” Erdene frowned, extricating herself from the booth as quickly as she could and grabbing the phone from the table. “Be right back.”
Poppy turned in her seat, watching as the angel wings bobbed behind her friend, catching on the doorframe on her way out of the diner. “You got some news on the—?” Poppy heard her say just before the door closed behind her.
Sighing, Poppy grabbed her messenger bag from the floor, stuffing the boutique bag inside and retrieving her notebook and pen. As she waited for Erdene to return, Poppy reviewed her notes on the rival clans, staring at the ink of her own handwriting as though she might have missed a clue or a connection in all the weeks she’d spent looking into Narin’s big three: the Balthuman, Ninedaggers, and Rose clans. As she retraced her own words, the ballpoint pen grooving deeper into the paper, she kept sneaking glances out the window where she could see the edges of Erdene’s wings as the woman paced back and forth on the sidewalk beneath the sky that had turned an almost greenish color, heavy with unshed rain.
Just as she was about to wave the server over for a refresh on her water, Erdene’s wings brushed against her shoulder.
“Sorry, Pops. My source wants to meet now since apparently he won’t be at any of the campaign events tonight and just now decided to tell me, so I gotta split.” As she spoke, she tossed a couple bills on the table, reaching over for her mug and quickly downing the coffee that Poppy hoped had cooled in her friend’s absence.
“This tiger still have a thing against texting?” Poppy asked dryly, slightly miffed that Erdene was already leaving after showing up late. But that was ridiculous—she knew she was upset because of her own jealousy that Erdene was doing actual reporting. That and she had access to a source that Poppy would do just about anything for.
“Pfft, don’t you know it,” Erdene rolled her eyes before stopping herself and sighing, “I mean, I get it—paper trail and shit, and he spooks easy…” she trailed off, staring through the window with one finger still curled around the handle of the mug.
As she waited for Erdene to snap out of it, Poppy flipped to the back of her notebook, pulling her business card from the flap and reaching out to poke her friend’s elbow with it.
“Tell him if he’s interested in doing more than giving you petty dirt on Vinnie’s rivals, he should call me.” Poppy raised her eyebrows, watching as Erdene finally looked down, her large blue eyes flicking between the business card and whatever broken expression she must have seen on her friend’s face. Swallowing hard, she nodded, taking the card and tucking it into the V of her white suit jacket, doubtless nestling it against one of her boobs. Poppy bit back a smile imagining her friend whipping out the card—sometimes she wished she had that kind of confidence in her own sexuality.
“No promises.”
“Hey, you never answered my question—where were you going as an angel?”
Erdene smiled, readjusting her wings. “Well, I’m not sure if costumes are allowed tonight. Gotta be festive while I can for the best holiday of the year.” She glanced around the table before her eyes locked on the open messenger bag. “You gonna wear that costume?” She nodded toward the boutique bag where it was still visible.
Poppy bit her lip on a laugh, “no promises.”
After saying goodbye to Erdene, Poppy ordered another water, looking over her notes again and imagining what it’d be like to break this story, to prove to Gil that she deserved to cover current events and not just puff pieces.
Not that he even knew she was still on the hunt for blood in the water. She was pretty sure she’d convinced him that he’d finally dissuaded her from the investigation.
Not so, Gil. Not so, she thought with a sense of pride at her own stubbornness.
Poppy knew she was onto something big, especially after the last lecture from her boss about the potential dangers. Fuck danger.