“Was I sneaking?” It wasn’t intentional. Force of habit, maybe, the side effect of a year spent in and out of shadows.
“You don’t even slosh. It’s not natural.” Gram’s stare drifted back to the table. “Negative three. Odds are in the house’s favor.”
So they were, much to the chagrin of the man who watched his chips get swept away after the next hit me. Gram let out a sigh—part satisfaction, part… relief? The people at the blackjack tables kept playing, tapping for more more more as the cards were laid down.
“The landing on the Titanic gave you trouble, didn’t it?” Eliot asked.
“You could say that.” A frown. Slight side-eye. “What would you know of it?”
Everything and nothing. The rabbit hole became an abyss, yet Eliot pressed on. “What time were you aiming for?”
“Six o’clock in the evening. We landed around ten instead.”
Did the tear span all four hours? Eliot couldn’t count on herself to know. There was no plug-in formula for such growth… merely guesswork. What she needed was a point of reference, a coal-mine canary for the Fade’s spread. At 10:20 that evening she’d been talking with the boy on the settee. What was his name? What was his name? Panic spun through Eliot just a moment before the details landed. Charles. Charles with the baby-fat cheeks, nineteen years old. Sandy hair, bright eyes, over a century dead.
“Remember Charles,” she muttered, both as a reminder to herself and for Vera to record as a memo.
Gram glanced down at her. “Who?”
Charles. Charles. Baby-fat Charles.
“It’s nothing.” Which couldn’t be further from the truth. Eliot’s memories weren’t just an arsenal but a barometer. Once she started forgetting Charles…
“I’ve never seen anything like it before. The numbers…” The Engineer’s voice faded, then picked back up along a different line of thought. “I’ve spent my entire life learning about order, knowing how to keep it. What do you do when the world stops making sense?”
READINGS REMAIN 23% COMPLETE, Vera reminded her. REMEMBER CHARLES.
Water crashed all around Eliot, cascading from the ceiling’s edges, enough to drown in. The man at the blackjack table, who’d been counting on luck to toss him a bone, had instead been beaten by the odds. He threw up his hands and wallowed off.
“There’s nothing like the nihilist to bring out the hedonist.” Eliot gestured to the empty seat.
“We can’t. There’s too much reshuffling. The redistribution could—”
But she was already wading over to the table, cash produced seemingly out of nowhere, at the ready. Carpe the hazing diem. Make it count. Either Vegas’s gilded lifestyle was rubbing off on Eliot or she was just too tired to care. What she needed was a distraction, something to do besides worry herself into bits.
Even Nero had fiddled while Rome burned….
The cute blond dealer checked Eliot’s doctored holo-ID before exchanging her dollars for chips—a tidy sum. Eliot didn’t care if she lost it or not. The money of this era looked like play stuff, all green and papery, and the chips even more so. She placed the highest bet she could. The cards were laid.
Gram appeared beside her. “Far won’t like this.”
“Well, your captain isn’t here, is he? What’s the point of coming all the way to Las Vegas if you can’t toss around a bit of cash?”
“It’s irresponsible.”
Eliot shrugged. “We’re young. Isn’t that our job? If you don’t want any part in it, feel free to join Imogen.”
Gram didn’t move. The dealer was waiting for a decision, and so Eliot tapped the table.
“She’s pretty, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I mean, I guess.”
Typical boys and their monosyllabic answers. “Why don’t you take her out on the town? Maybe to one of those Penn and Teller magic shows?”
“We’re crewmates.”
“That doesn’t seem to stop Priya and Far.”
Gram glanced back through the curtain of falling water—most of Imogen was blurred, but her topknot shone bright. He watched the green glow, something other than numbers flashing through his eyes.
“They’re the exception to the rule. The probability of such a relationship not ending poorly at our age…” The Engineer shook his head. “It’d make things too complicated.”
Everyone kept getting in their own way today. Must be something in the water.
It felt wrong to laugh, but Eliot couldn’t help herself. The sound was unhinged and hysterical and made the dealer do a double take once the cards were placed. Hit or stand? She was at a negative count, but odds mattered less than everyone thought, especially when you pushed back. Life was for the living. She wasn’t going to worry about wasting water or time slipping or Agent Ackerman or frozen readings or pivot points or redistribution or Charles or all the undoings she could not undo.
Time to take a fexing vacation.
“Hit me,” she said.
19
WIZIZARDS
FAR AND PRIYA TOOK THE LONG way back from the Invictus. They strolled hand in hand, stopping by the iconic Las Vegas sign for a picture, hitting up happy hour at the Cosmopolitan, pausing to watch the song-and-spray number in front of the Bellagio. It was the reprieve Far needed. Big-picture problems fell away when he was with Priya, the world strung together with small joys. An extra side of truffle fries. A kiss enveloped by fountain mist. Jokes and stories and laughter with rubies spilling through it—for Priya’s was an outside-in, inside-out beauty. He wanted to be enough for her, and he hated—hated—that Eliot had brought this into question. Eliot. Ugh. There she was, under the skin again. A vampire-leech-mosquito taking not blood, or simply pride, but control.
Far wrested these thoughts and sent them splashing into fake Venetian canals. Was it too much to ask for a worry-free walk? Couldn’t he stay in this spell of normality they’d woven?
The post-sunset city grew frantic around them—the crowds on the Strip’s sidewalks quadrupled, adverts flashed with growing desperation. It was the sort of energy Far thrived on, but he kept his pace leisurely, even pausing to toss some coins to a haggard-looking man whose cardboard sign claimed ALL I NEED IS WEED.
At least the guy was honest about his motives. Unlike some people…
Eliot, again. Far’s shoulders cramped up, ten pounds of tension returning with visions of the girl who’d bested him thrice now. No Rubaiyat, no lead. How were they going to get back to Central to tap the Ancestral Archives without Lux tracking them down, demanding what could not be given? Ice in the desert, this prospect, seizing every muscle.
“What’s wrong?” Priya paused.
“Is it terrible that I’m thinking about running back to the Invictus and hightailing it to a remote tropical paradise where no one will ever hear from us again?”
“Yes.” Priya arched her eyebrow—all playful—because she knew it was a pipe dream. He did, too. The only place the Invictus could go without Gram was Central time, where remote tropical paradises were few and far between.