The woman took a few steps forward, still searching through the haze of smoke. There was something in the way she moved that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Graceful, but not a dancer. Her stride was too purposeful, and she held her head up in a way that bespoke confidence and possibly some superiority. An athlete maybe? That didn’t feel right either, but he wouldn’t rule it out.
Her hair is like winter sunlight, said Magnus, almost sounding lovesick as he whispered in Justin’s mind. Still, it wasn’t a bad comparison. Not quite gold, not quite platinum. She wore it in a charmingly old-fashioned way that still managed to be stylish, pulled back and folded into itself at the back of her head. It revealed an elegant neck, which Justin rather liked.
“Justin!”
The booming voice was his only warning before a powerful hand slapped him on the back, causing him to stumble into the craps table and spill part of his drink. With one last look at the blonde, he put on the smile he knew was expected and turned his attention back to the game.
“Are you going to bet or not?” Cristobal Martinez, the party’s host and—more important—Justin’s benefactor, grinned down at him with teeth so white they glowed. Literally. It was a trendy new UV treatment. They tended toward the extreme here in Panama. “You’re not out of money—yet.” His tone implied that he knew how this night was going to end.
“Sure, sure.” Justin set his money on the line and then glanced back toward the doorway. The blond woman was gone.
By the bar, said Horatio.
Sure enough, there she was, accepting a drink from the bar’s automated dispenser. Justin touched Cristobal’s arm and nodded toward her. “Do you know who she is?”
Cristobal shifted his gaze toward the woman, a small frown appearing on his face. Half of it was covered by a stylized tattoo of flames, the mark of his gang. “Never seen her. One of my prettier party crashers.” He studied her a few moments longer and then promptly lost interest in that fickle way of his. He turned back to the action, whooping when someone rolled a seven.
“She’s military, whoever she is,” said Huan, standing on Justin’s other side.
Justin did a double take. “Her? No. No way.”
“Takes one to know one. It’s in the way she stands.” Huan gave her one more scrutinizing look before returning to the game. “She’s one of us too,” he added. “EA or RUNA.” He was from the EA, somewhere Justin would’ve run to in an instant, if he could’ve. Unfortunately, the Eastern Alliance honored its sister country’s policy toward exiles.
“How do you know that?”
“The dress. Next bet.”
Justin obligingly set down more money and pondered Huan’s words. He had a point. The woman’s dress was a deep plum crepe de chine, with no sleeves and a high neckline.
Who in the world knows what crepe de chine is? asked Horatio.
I had to learn that stuff a long time ago, Justin said.
The dress’s slim fit hugged her body and hit just above the knee. To Justin’s eyes, it was suggestive but elegant—and completely boring by local standards. Panamanian fashion favored garish colors and excessive embellishment these days, along with necklines that displayed a lot of skin and very little taste.
Too refined to be from around here, Magnus said in agreement. At least he appreciated Justin’s fashion analysis. A woman among women. Can’t you see the stars and flowers?
Stars and flowers. Those were words Justin hadn’t heard in a long time—ones he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear. A nudge from Huan put the rumination on hold. “Your turn to roll.”
Justin did, earning groans when he turned up a three. He yielded his bet and tried to spot the woman again, but she had disappeared.
“Why do you play this?” asked Huan. “You always lose. You could make a killing over at the poker tables, you know.”
Justin did know. Cristobal often asked the same thing, but Justin couldn’t quite explain to either man how addictive the idea of random chance was. Too much of his life was spent reading faces and other social cues. He observed too much, deduced too much. Sometimes he just needed a casual throw of the dice to dictate his future.
To Huan, he simply said, “Too easy.”
Huan chuckled and shook his head. He had an easygoing nature that Justin liked. Justin also liked that Huan was from the EA. He had the same sort of mixed heritage that Justin did, though Huan’s features favored Asian ancestry a little more than Caucasian. The RUNA’s slang term for that mix was “plebeian,” and seeing it reminded Justin of home, as did the fact that Huan was probably the only other civilized person in the room. A large part of their friendship was based on discussing how much Panama sucked. The difference between them was that Huan always got to leave when he concluded his embassy’s business here. Justin was stuck.
“Cristobal, there you are!”