“You have my image on your security feeds. That’s enough collateral to make anyone amenable, wouldn’t you say?” More magic: Eliot’s hand emerged from behind her, clutching a bottle of port. Its scripted label looked old but unaged. 1906. Fresh as yesterday. “Also, I picked this up from the Titanic’s first-class dining saloon, as a gesture of my goodwill.”
Lux accepted the bottle, examining it like a second relic: blood-dark contents, cork made of actual cork wood, glass the color of deep-sea sorrow wherever daylight struck. “From the Titanic’s menu? Truly?”
“Vintage and morose,” Eliot assured him.
“Extraordinary.” The mogul turned back to the vista wall, where the city hummed through the afternoon’s golden haze. “Your goodwill has been noted. We have ourselves an agreement: fifty-five percent to me. The Invictus’s cut will come out of that.”
Far glanced behind Eliot to get a glimpse of the port’s origins, but there was nothing to see. Strap-backed jumpsuit, crossed hands. Once more she’d put Far to shame—he’d thought himself a master negotiator and here she was a sorceress, her sleight of hand so distracting that Lux hadn’t even done a background check. Shazm. If Far had known a vintage bottle was all it took to transform the black marketer from a kill you in your sleep control freak to a pat you on the back boss, he would’ve become a hashing sommelier ages ago.
“We’ll get started with mission prep,” Far said, fighting back the urge to upchuck his hangover nerves into the nearby potted bougainvillea. Lux’s goodwill probably wouldn’t extend to vomit on his houseplants.
The mogul ignored him. His stare slid from the wine label to Eliot. “Excellent haul. I’ll inform Wagner about the updates to our business agreement and have the payments processed accordingly.”
There it was, said and done. Eliot had become a part of the crew. Far was still alive, thank Crux, but now he’d have to walk back through the cellar and draw his line into a life he had no agency over. One that spun at her whim, leaving him fearful, always fearful.
What kind of future was that?
24
AN AGREEMENT
ELIOT’S STEPS FELT KILOS LIGHTER WHEN she climbed back in the magcart. The meeting had gone as well as possible. Subject Seven hadn’t thrown any tantrums—a good thing, too, since it would have ended badly for him. He’d just stood there glowering as the drama unfolded. Oh, and what drama! Men like Lux were easy to bait; she’d given him everything he wanted—the Rubaiyat, some wine, the promise of more—all while upending his authority through technological trickery. Eliot acted on every cue, tossing breadcrumbs to get the scene to end the way she wanted.
READINGS ARE 57% COMPLETE. REMEMBER CHARLES.
So far she was on course.
Seven reclaimed his magcart seat. His aviators were back on, making him look far more suave than he likely felt after so many vodka shots and a face-off with Lux. “Some warning wouldn’t have gone amiss, you know. Maybe a ‘Hey, Far, I actually do have the Rubaiyat and I’m not going to let Lux rip out your entrails and roast them for breakfast.’”
“Lux is too refined for that.” Eliot clipped her safety belts into place. “I imagine he only eats eggs Benedict with a silver spoon.”
The boy smiled. Eliot could tell he was trying not to—the fight of it all wrinkled his cheek. “Fine. My guts would be hors d’oeuvres, then, right before he’d drink my blood as an aperitif. Why didn’t you just tell me you could magic things into existence? It would’ve saved me a hundred gruesomely imagined deaths.”
“Would you have believed me if I had?” Eliot traced the bracelet-that-was-not-a-bracelet on her wrist—holding everything, the least of her secrets.
“I don’t know!” Seven’s expression snapped with his voice. “Maybe if you’d slice the shazm with all this cloak-and-dagger business and talk to me, we’d get somewhere. Hades, I’m not asking for a bottle of wine, just some goodwill explanations!”
Subjects like Seven were harder to wrangle once they caught the scent of the truth. Eliot would need to feed him some, if they were to keep moving forward. “I don’t travel as light as I look. I have a—well, it’s kind of like an invisible, bottomless bag.”
Far’s brows twitched over his glasses. “Got any mints in there?”
“No.” Though there were plenty of other items: wigs, eyebrow pen, outfits for a vast array of times and occasions, extra storage for the memories she kept losing, a first aid kit, her laser knife, her gun. Thinking about the last item always made her stomach clench. “I keep it to the essentials.”
Seven exhaled, and Eliot realized that mints actually were essentials. His was a special kind of halitosis. Hangover, stress, and morning breath all in one. “Anything else you feel like sharing? Like why we’re really going to Alexandria? Or why I keep forgetting what happened on the Titanic?”
“You remember that?” Eliot figured he’d had enough Belvedere in his bloodstream to forget what he’d forgotten. She hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol and even she needed Vera’s prodding to gather what was being lost.
“Hard not to. Usually you’re so composed, and the look on your face…” Far paused. A frown slashed his lips. “Ever seen your life flash in front of your eyes?”
Eliot stared at the boy on the other side of the magcart. Her reflection stared back through the silver of his glasses, smaller than life, hardly recognizable with a fresh wig and What Abyss Waits shaded eyebrows. What could she say that was true? What could she tell him that he would believe? Nothing Agent Ackerman would clear, that’s for sure.
Far went on. “I used to think it was a line poets pulled out of their tails when they couldn’t come up with something better. But this job gets dangerous: bullets, flames, the works. Once I started getting shot at on the regular, I realized there was truth in the saying. When you start facing death, all you can see is life. That was the feeling I just had in Lux’s villa. That”—he pointed at her—“was the feeling on your face last night. When you appeared on the Invictus, I thought maybe you were running some sort of con. But that wobbly landing, the memory gaps, your fear… those things add up to something bigger.”
Their magcart sped along. Earth’s darkness cut through its windows again and again as they passed the tunnel’s lights. Bright, shadow, bright, shadow, life, death. The Eliot trapped inside the aviators flickered and squirmed.
“When you showed up on the Invictus, you claimed you wanted a fresh start, which makes me think you’re running from something,” Far said. “You want to work with a crew? Well, here’s your chance. Take your thumb off my operation, come clean about what’s going on. Gram, Priya, Imogen, and I… we can help you.”