Fear Her Wrath II: Crucible of Glass

Chapter 43

Benedict, his cousin Xao, and his sister Bella were all waiting for me when I pushed through the turnstiles at North Redding station. I was surprised Bella had decided to come along, though I quickly realized it was more to keep an eye on her brother than anything else. Xao was a little shorter and pudgier than Ben, but he had the same handsome face and dark eyes. Bella was short—even for an 8th grader—with straight black hair and a haughty expression. If Ben was the family's lazy overachiever, she was the one who worked for it. She squinted at me suspiciously as Benedict gave me a very friendly hug.

"Sorry I brought the whole crew," he said. "We're a family culture."

I wasn't upset, actually. Well, I was kind of annoyed that Bella was tagging along, but Xao seemed nice enough. Not quite as muscular or good-looking, but definitely nice to look at.

"So, where to first?" I said.

"Food," said Xao. "This jerk made us wait to eat until you showed up. I'm starving."

"And who forced you to come along?" asked Ben with a smirk. I noticed that Ben's voice sounded slightly different when talking to his cousin—like he was letting the slightest hint of a Hmong accent slip through.

"Cuz, you bring a white girl to Hmong Town, I gotta check her out and report back to the family," said Xao. "You should be glad my mom didn't come along."

"I'm glad," I said, with perfect sincerity. "So, food?"

Ben nodded, and together we climbed the stairs that led us out of the subway station and up into Hmong Town.

Hmong Town wasn't that different from the rest of the Fen if all you looked at was the buildings. There were the usual crumbling tenements, dingy corner stores, coin laundries, pool halls, and all-night diners. But the neon signs were in Hmong, the corner stores stocked imports from Thailand and Laos, and the food—well, nowhere near as greasy. There were also the people. Families on every stoop. Children running up and down the asphalt. Old grandmas tending little vegetable gardens on every fire escape landing and every patch of open earth. It reminded me of what dad said Joplin Heights was like when he was a kid and it was still a mostly Irish neighborhood—an actual community, where people looked out for each other. I understood immediately why Ben spoke so fondly of his home ward.

But Hmong Town was still part of the Fen. It had its demons. Some were easy to notice. Made men and associates of the Aurelio regime could be seen swaggering down the sidewalks or cruising in their Lothian sedans like they owned the place—which, at least on paper, they usually did. Cops, on the other hands, were conspicuously absent. This was the 14th precinct—Captain Treffinger's domain—notorious for its cozy relationship with the Aurelio regime. Graffiti tags, meanwhile, proclaimed the presence of the Hmong street gangs—probably the lowest class of organized crime in Marbrose City, fighting for the scraps left by the Sicilians and Irish and Poles. And as with all ethnic enclaves, the vices of the Old World had followed them to the New. The drug of choice was opium, and gunrunning and human trafficking meant that the relative peace and safety could be fractured at any moment.

Like last time I was here.

We passed by the ruins of the Redding Credit Cooperative, still untouched after all these months. I tried not to look at the small memorial to the victims. Even if Ben had forgiven me for my failure that night, I still hadn't forgiven myself.

Xao kept a running commentary on the places around us as we strolled along, but Ben was being surprisingly quiet. I was used to him making snide remarks and teasing me, and it was weird to see him playing second fiddle to his younger cousin. And yet he was watching me—I could tell. Watching to see what I thought of his home and his family. Was it a test? I wasn't sure.