“Mira.”

The young woman rolled restlessly on her thin mattress. Her old black leather jacket, only a little thicker than the quilt that was lying in a heap on the floor, strained at the seams as she threw her arm across her face. A cold blue light flashed on the rickety nightstand: 2:39 AM. 8 OCTOBER. 2005. 2:39 AM. A slightly dented metal radio was perched by the alarm clock, rattling slightly from the noise coming from its speakers.

“Mira?”

All she heard was a muffled buzzing, as if a fly had flown into the room. That was certainly a possibility: she hadn’t had a chance to replace the glass in the windows yet. Vaguely, she waved her arm to swat the annoying insect away so she could go back to sleep.

“Shamira, dammit, answer the friggin radio!”

Mira’s eyes snapped open. That wasn’t a bug. It was the radio. She groaned. Fumbling for the microphone, she mumbled, “Whadya want, Joey?” She flicked the switch behind the stand, and a faded yellow light faded into life on the ceiling. The fan groaned and began to spin the heavy summer air in a pathetic attempt to cool the room.

“Now, is that any way to treat a guy who’s doin’ ya a favor?”

Joseph Hardt was always annoyingly cheery, but at 2:30 in the damn morning, it was downright painful. “I said, what do you want, Joey! Or do you have a death wish?”

“Nah, that’s your thing.”

Mira growled and nearly threw the radio on the ground in frustration. At the last second, she remembered that she only had the one radio and there was no way Joey was going to sneak her a replacement. She gently placed the radio back on the stand with a calm that she didn’t feel and said, “Oh, Joey?”

“Yes, lovey?”

Great. He was a poet now. “Was there a point to this call, or did you want to torture me?”

“Anything for you, sweetheart.” There was nothing but static and the sound of some ruffling papers. He’d forgotten to turn the mic off. Again. Mira sighed with impatience, not caring if Joey heard her. If he did, he ignored her. “Aha! Here we go. I got your torture right here, just the way you like it. Reapers.”

Mira swallowed the caustic retort she’d been preparing. She tried to contain her excitement. About friggin time Joey’d gotten somewhere! He’d only had a year… “Where?”

“Jeez, you’re a bloodthirsty girl, aren’t you? We got a call just now sayin’ the Reapers was goin’ on ghost patrol, and the Big Guy decided to give it up cause o’ some stakeout or some shit like that. So, you want it?”

“Just tell me where, Joey.”

“O’Connell Avenue. You know, it’s at the corner of –”

“I know where,” Mira interrupted. “Thanks.” She snapped the radio off before Joey could say anything more. Mira felt the adrenaline humming through her veins, her muscles quivering like a drawn bow. She perched at the edge of her mattress for a moment before she slammed her boots on the concrete floor.

Snatching a pair of scuffed leather gloves from the top drawer of her nightstand, Mira strode to the door completely dressed. She’d crawled into bed late last night without bothering to take anything off – not even her boots. She’d been too eager for the peaceful, dreamless black of sleep to care about such mundane things as clean sheets. A smudged black stripe of mascara across her pillowcase testified to this. Mira vaguely wished that she had enough energy to do the laundry, but pushed the thought aside. She had more important things to worry about just then.

Mira paused at the door to grab the leather harness she’d tossed onto a tarnished brass bracket. Letting one strap dangle between her jacket and her dark lycra top, she pulled the rest of the contraption across her chest. She reached behind her back to grab the free strap and yanked it around, then slipped it through the buckle of the waist strap. She gave the strap another pull to tighten it, and listened to the leather protest. The holster settled heavily into the snug dent by her armpit, and Mira felt some of her clenched muscles ease when she fingered the solid pebbled grip of her gun. The pistol made her feel safe. Warm. Protected. Like Michael’s arms had, once.

Mira abruptly jerked her hand free from the cool metal of the gun and placed it on the shaky doorknob instead. She had no time for such stupid thoughts, she told herself firmly. They were dumb, pointless, and would only get her killed. She started to leave, but before she could turn the knob, the glint of a polished silver picture frame caught the light and her eye, like it always did.

Michael’s handsome, tan face grinned from behind the sparkling glass. A brown cowlick stood out against the blue spring sky, and Mira’s fingers itched to comb it down flat, like she had for him so long ago. A thin cord was peeping through his collar. Unconsciously, Mira fingered her own cord, the one that held her yin to his yang, her dark to his blazing sun. But her sun had set, and it was never going to rise again.

She should’ve known it had been too good to last. ‘’Til death and beyond.’ That was supposed to have been their wedding vow. The words still rang true, even after all this time. Wasn’t she doing this for love of him? This was her revenge on the world that had stolen Michael, and how she kept him alive in her heart.

She couldn’t look at him anymore. Mira wrenched her eyes away from his picture and snapped the light off before leaving her room without a backward glance. She strode down the hallway, past the rats that chittered and raced at the edges of her vision. Mira didn’t bother with them as she walked past, and she hadn’t bothered to lock her door. The people who shared the floor knew better than to mess with her room.

She didn’t have far to go. According to Joey’s directions, the Reapers were just two blocks away from her apartment. Mira spotted the gangsters the moment she stepped out of her complex and into the muggy night. Her street was fairly well traveled, day or night, and the bright headlights of passing cars revealed the massive silhouettes of the two Reapers a couple of alleys down. Mira frowned as she studied them. They weren’t very smart: they should’ve posted guards facing the street so they’d know if someone was sneaking up behind them, like she was about to do. Mira mentally shrugged and melted into the shadows beyond the dim yellow halos of the streetlamps. She wasn’t about to complain about her enemies’ stupidity, not if it could be used to her advantage. She slipped across the street during a brief break in the traffic and arrived at the mouth of the alleyway. Mira watched the scene for a moment.

The Reapers’ victim was laid out on his back, staring at his assailants, just waiting for the blow that would inevitably fall. He didn’t move – he just stared. All of a sudden, Mira was filled with an anger so intense that she couldn’t see anything but the pale body that was awkwardly sprawled in the dirt. How could he let this happen? He could’ve called for help or tried to run or something, anything, besides lying there like some gasping fish. He could fight. He’d been given the chance that Michael had never been given, and he was throwing it away.

While Mira was lost in her thoughts, the man on her left cocked his fist in a melodramatic, threatening gesture, and the time for observation was over.

“I don’t think so,” she said aloud, and her lips peeled back from her teeth in a terrible snarl. Before either of the Reapers could move, she caught the nearer man’s raised fist with a powerful grab. A swift turn braced her back against his and, with a feral growl, she thrust his arm back the wrong way. A deafening crack told her the elbow was broken, and she kicked him to the asphalt. He struggled to his knees and stared at his arm, which was protruding from his side at an unnatural angle. There was silence for one beat, two, before the relative calm of the city night was shattered as the wounded man screeched in pain, clutching his arm. Mira cursed, and kneed the idiot in the head. He toppled face first to the road and didn’t stir.

“One down,” Mira whispered, and she spun on her heel to face the other man, prepared to take him out the same way. She found herself looking down the business end of a semi-automatic, the barrel blackened with use. One look into his hard dark eyes confirmed what his gun had already told her – he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her. She felt, rather than saw, her opponent’s hand clench around the trigger. She heard a gun fire.

Her gun. Somehow, she had drawn her own weapon and fired it at point-blank range. Her pointer finger was still curled around the trigger. She watched with unhealthy fascination as the blood silently spread across his chest. The body sagged and crumpled to the dust, his eyes empty of everything.

Mira waited until she was sure the man was dead before she spat on him. Her saliva ran down his cheek and swirled in the pool of blood collecting beneath the body. “For Michael,” she whispered. “May the rest of you murdering bastards end up in Hell.”

A small whimpering noise forced Mira’s gaze up to the person whose life she’d saved. The boy who had been sprawled on the ground was now staring at her with terror clear on his face. She felt the adrenaline and confidence begin to fade as she looked back at the boy. What was she going to say? What could she say? She’d shot a man. Saved a life, too, but she’d still shot and killed a human being. What happened now?

The boy answered her unspoken question. “Thank you,” he whispered. He wasn’t looking at her now, having switched his stare to the body beside him. “Thank you for saving me.”

Mira suddenly grew cold. “I didn’t do it for you,” she snapped. “Not for some whining, sniveling piece of shit like you.” The boy’s eyes grew round with shock, but before he could say another word, Mira turned and left.

She managed to hold onto her inexplicable anger until she arrived back at her dark room, where it disappeared like smoke. A terribly familiar sorrow took its place, and with a tortured sob, she collapsed onto her dirty bedspread to cry until dawn. I did it for you, Michael, her heart moaned into her breast. Only for you.