Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 41 - THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BARS

Hey y'all! Happy New Year! As always, slay those typos. It's a few days later, so I've made the chapter extra long to make up for it.

"Please don't fall off," Liam told me.

"I'm not going to fall off," I sniggered, and then hiccupped so violently that I nearly did fall off. Liam's hand on my lower back was all that saved me. I was much too drunk to be climbing a ladder, in all honesty, but I wasn't going to let that stop me.

I was more careful after that. I took it one step at a time, pausing every few seconds to hiccup, and before long I poked my head into Silver Lake's attic.

"Ooh," I said. "It's dark."

I heard Liam sigh below me. It really was dark - pitch black, in fact, and I perched on the hatch, not daring to venture any further. Once he'd climbed up behind me, he reached over to find a light-switch with practised ease.

And then it was light. I could see the sloping walls, the mountains of boxes, and the cobwebs. Or I would have been able to see all of those things, if I hadn't been too busy blinking.

Liam tried to stand up. He did it much too fast and smacked his head on the ceiling. I giggled even as he swore. I was too short to have the same problem when I clambered onto my feet alongside him.

"That's lower than it used to be," he muttered.

"I think you've grown just a tiny bit," I told him. "Did you come up here a lot? It's ... um ... it's really spooky. No offence."

I wasn't lying. The attic ran the whole length of the pack house, so it stretched as far as I could see, fading into gloom. The whole thing was stuffed with so many boxes and other random shit that there could be someone sitting three feet away and you'd never know it.

Liam shrugged. "It's out of the way. If anyone wanted to clout me, they had to come looking."

I wanted to hug him. I really did. But I'd already had one tonight, and I didn't want to push my luck. Instead, I started wandering down the aisle between the boxes. It quickly became obvious that I wasn't walking in a straight line, and I clipped my knee on a box of paper and started giggling.

"What did you want to show me?" I called over my shoulder. The box lid was half-open, and since it had given me a decent sized bruise, I decided to start rummaging. I wanted to know what was making it so damned heavy.

"It's further down," he said. "What's that?"

It was full of paper. I pulled out the top sheet and let my eyebrows fly upwards. "It's a wanted poster."

And not just any wanted poster. It was for my grandfather. I recognised that likeness anywhere, because he looked like Rhodri. A lot like Rhodri. In fact, when my cousin went a few days without shaving, the older rogues started blinking at him. Our parents included.

"Rhodric Llewellyn, Eira Llewellyn, Nia Llewellyn," I said, leafing through. "Holy shit. This doesn't look like her at all. Mam's in here, too. Rhodri's dad. Emmett Byer, Aaron Morris, Syd Jacobs, Ollie Jenkins, Lee Jenkins, Mortimer Morris, Ian Brooks, Jaz Walker, Dafydd Powell... You really got everyone, huh?"

Half of them were dead now, but I knew all those names. If they were famous enough that the flockies had heard of them, you could bet they'd featured in my bedtime stories once or twice. I kept leafing through. The deeper I got, the fewer I recognised, until I was sure we were going back sixty years or more.

Liam shrugged. "All the raiding leaders and anyone with a reputation. This must be an old print run. They update them every few years."

I'd reached the bottom of the box. And there was one last face in here, printed on a piece of paper that was yellowed and crumbling.