Hammers on Bone (Persons Non Grata, #1)

by Cassandra Khaw

“Get out of my head.” The images break against Sasha’s voice, the sound filled with an indisputable authority. Her memories contract to a pinpoint smear of light. I’m flung out even as she pitches back in her seat, half-rearing, a snake enraged, chair screeching. Sasha’s eyes flare wide. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” “Someone who wants to help.” “I didn’t ask for your help.” “You want him to do that again? To someone else?” Sasha shudders like a frog someone had rigged up to electrodes, limbs spasming without direction. “Don’t.” “Don’t what?” “Don’t fucking presume anything about me. You—” She swings her head, left, right, left, an animal prepared to charge. “God. You think you’re better than him? Than them? Just because you’re trying to help?” “I’m not just trying to help. I told you. I’m on a—” “Case.” She finishes for me. In her anger, her t’s disintegrate, her sentences accelerate, frenzied, halfway to local creole. “And that makes it better? Because you’re doing it for money?” “I—” “You want something, bruv? You ask. You ask me like I’m a person. When I say no, you fuck off. What you do to someone’s head and what you do to their meat, it isn’t much different, you hear? You don’t take what you’re not given. Get me?” “Yes.” Her rebuke knocks the wind from me. I remember when somebody else said that to me. You don’t take what you’re not given. I had laughed, then. But I’d asked. And he laid open every room of his mind, every chamber of his being, and it was better...