DeDe's on a mission. A job, if you will.
She's following a path that was laid out before her so long ago. She's got a dark dog and a black gun and silver shoes. And she's got courage and a brain, and isn't that all a girl really needs?
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EXCERPT:The Emerald City isn’t emerald anymore. It’s black as apple-bark.
DeDe doesn’t want anything to do with the place—too many creatures skittering at the near-blind corners of her memory’s eyes—but what’s done is done, and what’s paid to get done doesn’t get paid until she’s done. So, here she is.
And here is her gun, brought with her from the other big city. And here at her side is the big and brindled, half-Rottweiler dog pulling on a black collar studded with silver. His tongue lolls out like a big, pink eraser, and he’s drooling badly. She is careful to keep her legs away from the long clear strings of saliva that drip from his mouth.
The dog ducks his head to sniff at something caught between the blackened bricks of a passing building and DeDe gives his collar a sharp yank. He growls but not at her. Not really.
“Come on, Rot. Almost done and then we can go home.” As though he too has just been reminded of his purpose, he exhales a sniff of breath through his nose and then takes the lead, loping as far ahead of her as the leather leash will let him. She follows. It’s been a long time since she’s been here, but her feet remember the way, it seems, even if her eyes don’t. Her silver high heels clatter over the bracken cobblestones, and the thin silver straps cut into her feet. There’s a blister beginning to form on her baby toe—she can feel it rubbing with every step—and she nearly twisted an ankle on one of the yellow bricks on her way here. Crappy construction on that road to begin with, she thinks, and shitty in the way of upkeep ever since.
“You’d better make this worth my while, you prick,” DeDe mutters, looking briefly skyward, her lips overly pinkened with cheap lipstick and by her habit of constantly chewing on them. Rot barely looks at her when she talks. If she’s not giving him food or a command, he hardly seems to care what’s coming out of her mouth.
No one else looks at her either. She’s just another dirty whore in a city full of dirt and whores. Even her shoes are scuffed enough that they don’t shine the way they used to. She keeps her gun-hand to the walls, her hip to the bricks, and tugs her short skirt down over her thighs with the hand that holds Rot’s leash.
Most of the people going by don’t lift their heads or their eyes as they pass. No one, she notices, wears the spectacles anymore either. And why would they? The city’s hardly going to blind anyone these days. So everyone just trods along, collars up, hands tucked deep in pockets like if they just push a little harder into the fabric they might find something shiny...
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