Hwa lifted her drink. “I doubt they have gin there. So there’s no reason for me to leave.”
Again, Zachariah laughed, and then they all laughed, for as long as seemed required. “But of course you, Miss Go, must feel the need to transform,” Zachariah said, when the laughter died down. “You have a number of conditions which could be easily corrected. You could live on indefinitely, with the proper treatment. Why sentence yourself to a short, unhappy life?”
Hwa drank deeply from her gin and club soda. “This is the thing I’ve always wondered about vampires,” she said, after a moment. “Every vampire story is about how sad they are. You’d think it would be great, eh? But no. And after I got me first job, I understood. If you want to live forever, you have to work forever. Unless you’re rich. To be a vampire, you have to be rich.” She finished her drink and rattled the ice cubes in the empty glass. She stared around the table at all the Lynch siblings in turn. “And I got no taste for blood, me.”
Flatware clinked onto the salt table. Gazes flicked from Hwa to Zachariah and back again. Zachariah himself was staring at her, and she didn’t know if he was profoundly amused or deeply offended.
“But you have to live a long time, Hwa,” Joel said, plowing through his salad as though nothing had happened. “Because I’m going to live a long time. Even longer than Dad. So you have to get the treatment. Implants or machines or editing. Even a whole new body. Whatever’s the best, you have to get it. I’m going to run things one day, and I won’t trust anyone else to protect me.”
Hwa reached over and squeezed his shoulder. She smiled at the other Lynches. She again thought about how quickly she could kill them. “You got me there, Joel. You got me there.”
*
Later, she wheedled an overnight invitation out of Joel. It was after the sorbet and cheeses, when the older siblings and their partners were all doing cognac and coffee, and Hwa was checking her homework against Joel’s, and it was getting on toward 22:00.
“It’s silly for me to go all the way back to One,” she said carefully. Joel was trying to juggle, as he paced the length of his room. The juggling wasn’t going well. The pacing he was fine at. “We’re just going to school in the morning anyway. And Síofra isn’t in town for me to run with. I have a spare uniform at school, so that’s not a problem.”
“You should just come live here,” Joel said, watching the balls in the air. “I know you’re still technically on probation, but I think it would be better if you lived here.”
Hwa frowned. “Better how?”
“Well, more efficient. We have the same schedule. And it would be safer.”
Until now, Hwa hadn’t noticed any sign that Joel might be nervous about the death threats. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t. “Are you worried about stuff like that?”
Joel gave her a completely disdainful look that, for once, made him look fifteen and not fifty. “I didn’t mean safer for me,” he said. “I meant safer for you. Daniel says that the Tower One security isn’t nearly good enough.”
Hwa snorted. “You want me to be a Fiver like you guys, eh?”
“Would that be so bad?”
Hwa didn’t answer. She couldn’t imagine living this way. The moment she finally got used to it, it would all be taken away for one reason or another. And she would be afraid of that eventuality, all the time, and so she’d never be used to it, would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. So it was better to stay where she was. But she couldn’t possibly explain all that to Joel.
After Joel was in bed, Hwa relaxed somewhat. She listened for the other Lynches to leave, until it was just Zachariah and the softbot that followed him around. Hwa wasn’t even sure the old man slept normal hours. Then she heard the steady rhythm of his machine, and knew he was down for the count.
Even so, she waited another hour just in case. By then both Joel and his father were sleeping soundly. They breathed in synchronicity, the old man and the boy, even across the flat. Joel must have grown up hearing the sound of his dad’s iron lung. Maybe by now it was a comfort. Better than the alternative. For the first time, Hwa wondered what would happen to Joel if the old man died soon. Which of the assholes at the salt table would be his legal guardian? It seemed like a reasonable concern, and yet no one had brought it up to her. Did the old man really think he was going to live forever?
Hwa rolled herself off the smart cushion beside Joel’s bed, took the boy’s watch, and made for the old man’s study.