"Am I dead?" Anna asked.
"Yes," came the reply.
Anxious, she said, "Really?"
"Yes."
She blinked in the bright light and tried to raise a hand to shield her eyes, but her arm didn't work. She tried to tell the person – the man? the woman? – but this creature simply put a hand over her eyes and said, "Shush, now. You're dead, remember?"
x x x
"What are you wearing, Annie?"
Annie squirmed around to look at her big brother. They were sitting on the steps to the basement so Quinn could have a smoke. His mom had a thing about the smoke.
"They'll kill you!" she'd say and whack the offending cigarette out of his hand, exposing a scraggy arm bruised and potholed with burns and needle scars. Mrs Finnerty saw no irony in her hatred of cigarettes, so her children hid in the filthy basement to smoke.
"Do you like it?" she said and held out the skirt for him to see. She'd found it in a bag beside a dumpster over on Richmond Street, where the rich people lived. Well, not rich: where the normal people live. The ones with Dads that went to work and Moms that packed school lunches. Annie'd spotted a bag of clothes when she was out for one of her afternoon prowls, and the bright pattern of the cotton dress stuffed in the top had caught her eye.
"You know that's a lady's blouse?" Quinn had said, pulling on his cigarette.
"No, it's not," Annie said confidently. "It's a dress."
He rubbed his eyes wearily with a hand. "Did Mom see you wearing that? Did she say anything?"
Annie stuck out her chin. "Momma has been real tired a lot recently. She didn't say nothing."
"Anything," Quinn corrected, his voice sombre. "She didn't say anything. Did your teacher say anything?"
"She said it was real nice and asked me where I got it and I told her my mom bought it – "
"Did she? Did mom buy it?"
Annie looked away. "I found it."
"Where?"
"In this bag. Someone wanted to throw it away, Quinn!" her voice rose in a wail. "And it's real nice, like new. I didn't steal it, I swear. They wanted to throw it out in the trash!"
Quinn stubbed his cigarette out with the tip of his battered Chucks. His soles were worn thin and the canvas was threadbare over one of the toes. He put an arm around his little sister and pulled her in for a hug.
"You deserve better than this, Annie, you hear? Much better than this. There's no one looking out for you."
Annie nuzzled her forehead against his bony shoulder.
"It's okay, Quinn. You're looking out for me," she said.
He pulled her closer and said nothing.
x x x
"Anna. Anna. Miss Quinn!"
She opened her eyes. It wasn't bright any more; in fact it was so gloomy, she wasn't sure whether her eyes were fully open or not.
"Look at me, Anna. Focus, girl. She's a bit woozy, still," said the voice, "but that's hardly surprising."
"Where am I?" she asked.
"You're ..."
Anna blinked once or twice till the speaker came into focus. It was an older man, dressed in scruffy clothes. He smelled of alcohol but he had a stethoscope around his neck and a small flashlight in his hand, which he shone into her eyes without warning.
"Hey!" she yelped.
"You're somewhere safe," said a familiar voice. She turned her head – so slowly, everything was turning slowly, as though she were watching it from a carousel.
"It's you," she said to the Bowery King.
"It is I," he answered with a smile.
"Where's John?"
He shrugged. "I don't know."
Anna tried to sit up abruptly, causing the doctor to shout and push her back down roughly. She grabbed the side of the gurney to steady herself and looked around. She was in a cellar – or what looked like a sewer. There was a vaulted brick ceiling and a large incinerator at one end of the room that was burning brightly and heating the large open area filled with beds. On the gurney beside her there was a man attached to a drip. He was probably alive but he was as motionless as a corpse.
"Where's John?" she said, her voice rising in panic. "Is he okay? Is he alive? Where is he?"
"I'm gonna have to give her something," said the doctor. "She's getting all excited and she's going to pull her stitches or fall off this damn thing."
"Don't give me anything!" she shrieked and grabbed the King's sleeve. "Is John okay? What are you not telling me? Is he dead?"
She felt the jab of the needle and whipped her head around – too fast. The room turned and she fell back against the thin pillow, steadied by the doctor's rough hand.
"Is he dead?" she whispered, still grasping the King's sleeve.
"No," he said and removed her fingers with a moue of distaste. "But you are."
x x x
The first night they slept in the same bed – sent to bed by Michael Black like two children, both protesting and promising to behave better and make more of an effort to act like a couple – Anna had stripped naked in front of John in an act of defiance, tossing her clothes on to the floor and furniture while she rooted in her bag for her night clothes. Another man might've thought to make a move, take advantage of her nudity, and one part of her was secretly hoping that John might – against the odds – try it, so she'd have an excuse to beat the shit of out him. But he did what she knew he'd do: he turned away, muttered, "Anna!" in a scandalised tone, grabbing his overnight bag and disappearing into the bathroom.
She was disgusted by him. He was as far from the guys she'd grown up with as she could possibly imagine: gentle, quiet, thoughtful. Sensitive. Ugh. It made her sick. When Mr Black hired a tutor to teach them the rudiments of art appreciation, the basics of architectural studies, classical music and some world history, she could barely suppress her boredom: a lot of dead white guys doing dead-white-guy stuff. But John had been the model student, lapping it up and asking questions, taking notes with his left-hand held awkwardly, scribbling in his cramped handwriting. She'd called him a suck-up but he'd shrugged defensively and said, "There's nothing wrong with wanting to better yourself, Anna."
"Yeah, right," she'd answered and watched him flick through the book on Japanese samurai culture that the tutor had loaned him.
At first she'd been disdainful of him, she thought that a sissy like John Wick would survive approximately ten minutes on the streets of her Boston neighbourhood ... then she'd seen him fight and she'd changed her mind. From then on, she'd kept a wary eye on him: something inside him could allow him kill a man with his bare hands and she didn't particularly care to find out what it was. She still wasn't pleased that she'd been paired up with him, but she could recognise that he was really good at what they did – better than her, much as it galled her to admit it. She knew Michael Black was right, they both had better chances of surviving if they stuck together, so stuck together they were. For better or for worse. Like a real marriage, for fuck's sake.
When he came out of the bathroom, she was already feigning sleep on one side of the bed, wrapped in most of the blanket. Anna heard him sigh, felt the bed depress and a gentle tug at the blanket, which she pretended to ignore. She heard him sigh again, adjust the pillow and within minutes, he was asleep. She rolled over and examined him by the light of the street lanterns, lying on his back with the thin bed cover as a blanket. She suddenly felt a little sorry for him and threw some of the comforter over him before she turned her back to him and settled her head on her own pillow.
"Thank you," he whispered to her in the darkness.
x x x
When she woke up again, everything seemed much clearer, more in focus. She was in another room, a plain room with a small sink at one end and grey concrete walls.
Suddenly a nun loomed over her and she started in fright.
"Am I hallucinating?" she thought.
"No, you're not," the other woman said.
"Did I say that out loud?"
"No, I'm a mind reader," the nun snapped. She was an elderly woman, clad in a grey habit, her face was set in cross lines and her mouth was permanently pinched.
"You're the one who told me I was dead," Anna realised. "Why did you tell me I was dead?"
"Because you are dead," the nun said, pushing back the grey material of her veil. "You're not here, you don't exist, you're dead."
"What do you mean?" Anna said, gingerly touching her head, trying to touch the wad of cotton on the back of her skull.
"Don't touch!" the nun said and slapped her hand down. She reached into the folds of her habit and withdrew a surprisingly new iPhone. "It's me. Your dead girl's awake. Come and explain what's going on."
The nun picked up the little metal bowl beside the gurney containing bits of bloody gauze and cotton wool.
"You stay here and don't move. Himself will be down in a few minutes and he'll tell you what's what."
"One more thing," Anna said, trying to turn to see her, "was a man brought in here with me? Dark hair, beard? Umm, kind of skinny, straight nose, scar on his stomach..."
"John Wick?" the nun asked.
"Yes!"
"Nah, haven't seen him. Have never seen him in fact, but half the city's looking for him now that he's killed that bitch Margaret Bridgemont. Lord have mercy on her soul," the nun added quickly and blessed herself. "Now do what I say: lie down and shut up till someone comes along and tells you what to do."
x x x
She was sitting on the edge of the gurney, trying not to vomit. Her abdomen was sore to the touch, her head hurt so badly, it made tears prick her eyes. If she hadn't been concentrating so hard on not retching, she might've howled with pain.
The door opened and the Bowery King came in, followed by a man in a long, dark coat and a dapper black fedora.
"Hello, your majesty," she said with a weak smile. "Hello, Winston. You fucker."
"I'm so sorry, little bird, but John made me do it."
"John made you shoot me?" she asked incredulously.
The two men looked at one another. "She really doesn't know," the Bowery King said. "You tell her, then, Win."
Winston undid the top button of his coat, then looked around and thought better of it.
"Well," he said, clearing his throat. "John contacted me and told me that he'd been given the order to kill Margaret Bridgemont and told me what you'd planned to do."
"John called you up?" Anna cried, then winced as various parts of her sang out in pain.
"You surely didn't think that you could just walk into my hotel, did you?" Winston asked with a smug grin. "Tsk, tsk, silly woman."
"But what about the fire – the fire brigade? Did you know about that?"
"In fact, John promised me he'd use a smoke bomb so I'm rather vexed that you took it upon yourself to actually burn one of my rooms down, Anna."
"Sorry," she mumbled.
"But, yes, I knew the King would have some contacts in the emergency services, so I wasn't surprised to see John in my lobby in his firefighter jacket and helmet."
"But you knew it was John?"
"The pants, Anna. Amazing how many people didn't notice in the panic of the evacuation that one of the firefighters was wearing plain black pants. Of course, who notices such things on a dark winter afternoon?"
"You did," Anna pointed out.
"I did," Winston smiled. "Then he went outside, divested himself of his jacket and headgear – and shot her in the head as he passed. There was such a brouhaha that her goons initially thought it was a sniper and the ensuing panic allowed him – we presume – to get away."
"You presume?" Anna said.
The two men shrugged in unison.
"No one's seen him since," the Bowery King said. "And Dieter Römermann can't contact him. It's like he disappeared off the face of the earth."
"Did Dieter cancel our contracts?" Anna said hoarsely.
"Done and dusted and I have the markers," Winston said smoothly.
"So Dieter's head of the High Table now? He got what he wanted?"
Winston looked at the King, who grinned widely at Anna. "Not exactly," the Bowery King said. "John cleverly pointed out that Mrs Bridgemont would leave a gap in her wake and he suggested I might be the right person to fill that gap."
"There are eleven seats now?" Anna asked, confused.
Winston chuckled.
"There are twelve," the Bowery King said. "The D'Antonio family will not give up their seat that easily. Some cousin or nephew is already lined up to take Gianni's place and God help the person who thinks they will keep the D'Antonio clan from the Table."
"So you have a seat now," Anna said, shifting her weight slightly. The room started to spin but it eased after a moment or two. "What did you have to do to get it?"
"I have Winston's support," the Bowery King said and he smiled warmly at the other man. "And his endorsement. That counts for something."
"And what do you have?" Anna asked Winston.
"I have John's marker," Winston said. "He gave it back to me as a simple exchange: his majesty here gets a claim on the twelfth seat, you and John are freed from your obligations to him."
Anna looked at him. "So where's John?" she asked.
"Miss Quinn," the King said, "we really don't know."
Something was nagging her. She closed her eyes so she could focus.
"And why did you shoot me?" she murmured. Her headache was getting worse. "You never told me why."
"John told me you'd be wearing a vest. He said I should shoot you in front of witnesses so everyone would think you were dead. I was sceptical myself, but then, as you fell, you whacked your head off one of my coffee table – which I'm adding to your list of damages, please note – and there was blood everywhere and you were out cold. Very dramatic and just the thing we needed. We carried you out of there in a body bag; it was magnificent."
"So I'm dead," Anna said. "That's why people keep telling me I'm dead."
Winston perched himself on the gurney beside her and looked up at the Bowery King, who excused himself and quietly left the room.
"John wants you to go back to your old life," Winston said. "As far as everyone's concerned, I shot you – and you would be surprised how many people told me that I should've done it a long time ago. Goodness, you do rub people up the wrong way."
"Why did John do that?" she cried. "I don't want to go back to my old life. We're in this together. He needs me."
Winston squeezed her hand. "You need him, perhaps," he said. "John will be fine and you know that. He wants you to go back to your other life – you can start again in a different state. Make some excuse and leave New York, settle down and get a job in a nice elementary school in the boondocks somewhere. Meet a nice guy. Get married. Have babies."
"I don't want any of that," she said. "I want to be with John."
"He said he can't protect you," Winston said. "He wants you to go back to what you had before he came back into your life."
"Is that what he said?" Anna asked.
Winston stood up.
"He told me to say to you that this is your get-out-of-jail-free card," he said. "And he insisted you take it."
Anna stared at him. "Uh-huh," she said finally. "I'll find him. If anyone can find him, I will."
"No," Winston said. "he doesn't want to be found. Leave him, Anna."
"I'm not leaving him," Anna said and felt a sadness swell inside her. "He's leaving me."
"Little bird," Winston said, "he's already left you."