He shook away the memory, jostled the boy next to him a little too hard. A spill of long, golden brown hair slipped free from the hood. Not a boy after all. Reef couldn’t see her face, but it didn’t matter because his gaze was locked on that long fall of hair, glinting a dozen different colors in the morning light. He reached to touch it, though he felt the same as when he had reached for the Banishment Spell in its ephemeral bubble—that it was impossible, that she would only disappear . . .
She turned sharply. “Not for sale,” she said, as if he couldn’t tell the difference between a prostitute and someone with regular access to a shower and no taste for a drug that would forever alter her body chemistry. She took in the sight of his goggles perched on his head, the rings around his eyes, the stain of the drug on his shirt where flakes of resin had dropped and left green-gray spots. “Couldn’t pay me enough to be with a filthy raccoon like you anyway.”
She snatched her bag of food from the counter with a trembling hand, her face white with fear of whatever violence she imagined Reef would do to her. Reef caught sight of the bracelets on her wrist, engraved with her husbands’ names, and then she darted out the door.
“I think you mean owl, not raccoon,” Olly said after her. “And if you wait for the afternoon rainstorm, we’ll be cleaner than whatever’s stuck up your ass.”
Reef tried to laugh but his throat seemed to have swollen nearly shut.
The owner of the diner, Maksim, came by then and set down two bowls of their usual: potato and Tabasco soup. “What trouble have you two been into today?”
“No trouble,” Olly said. “Just saving the continent from a looming digital war.” He rolled his eyes.
Maksim shook his head in disapproval. “It’s always that game. You need to find a girl.”
“You going to provide the map? The one who was just in here doesn’t seem eager to come back.”
“Don’t need a map.” Maksim winked. “Just a little money.”
Olly stared into his bowl, but not because he was embarrassed. Reef knew he’d been with girls before, and what other girls were there besides prostitutes?
“What level you boys at now?”
Olly gave him a glum smile. He was far below Reef. “Two ninety-nine,” Reef admitted.
Maksim whistled. “No. Really? How does someone your age get so high up there?”
“Start as a little kid. Got to have something to do while your mom’s with clients.”
The comment didn’t throw Maksim at all. “They’ll be surgically attaching those goggles to you someday. Owl Eyes is already half there.” He nodded at Olly.
“Better than having them snatched off my head like my last pair,” Olly muttered.
“When’ll you hit level three hundred?” Maksim asked Reef.
A fresh surge of frustration mixed with the soup in Reef’s stomach.
“He’s stuck at a paywall,” Olly said. “One that requires a pretty serious amount of cash.”
“Ah.” Maksim grimaced in sympathy as he turned to help another customer.
Olly gulped the last of his soup and hopped down from his stool. “I got to go meet with a raiding party, Two Ninety-nine.” He pulled his goggles back on and looked at Reef. “Think you can delay the digital war on your own for a while?”
Reef frowned. “Do I take names first and then kick asses, or is it the other way around?”
Olly chuckled and strode out the door.
Maksim returned to the counter and said to Reef, “You seen this posting? Could help you get past your paywall.” He tapped a monitor on the wall.
Reef squinted at the screen. It was an ad for a worker husband. Posted by someone with two husbands already and looking for another income. The photo showed a young woman with the wide-set eyes and rounded chin of a doll. The ad said she was only nineteen, but Reef suspected it was a lie. Ads like these were always too promising.
“You get the money you need for level three hundred, she gets a little slice of your income.”
“Any slice is a slice too big.” But Reef’s gaze wandered to the photo of the girl again. Underneath her sweet expression were hints she had lived in Seattle too long: the tilt of her mouth, the flinty black of her pupils. The way she side-eyed the camera seemed to say he could fix all of that for her.
“Photo’s nice.” Maksim leaned one elbow on the counter and flashed a fatherly smile that made Reef look away. “Fairy-tale characters can’t fill up the space in that empty container of yours.”
Reef nodded, mostly to put an end to the conversation. In his mind, he went back to the days when he’d come home to someone who was happy to see him, who would tousle the rain from his hair and give him tea warmed with a heat sleeve. And then he couldn’t stop his thoughts from returning to the day when he’d come home to that terrible sight: black-oil blood, his mother dead.
It wasn’t really true, what the stories said. About how you’ll find the Other Place when you look for what is lost.