The dream came to Reef a week later: His container was perched at the top of a thousand-container stack, so close to blue sky Reef was almost above it, lost to gravity. It was just him and sunlight in a field of vapor and gas and the tiniest water droplets. They were all wrong about the way to pass into the Other Place. This was the way, through color and light. He pulled a lever, released the prongs that clamped his container to the one below it, and lifted away.
A heavy knock on the door dragged him back to earth. He lurched upright in bed and pushed aside a can of soup to peer through a peephole at the back of a shelf. “Olls?” But it wasn’t Olly out there hiding under the hood of a huge coat. Reef jolted back. His head slammed against another shelf. He let out a few whispered curses while he undid the locks and popped the door open.
“Too early?” Cadence asked from under the hood.
“No, I’m awake.” Or I am now, anyway. She was shivering in the cold and he wanted only to pull her inside and wrap his arms around her. But a familiar ache was starting up his bones. He stopped himself from looking around for his resin. Food would take his mind off it. “There’s a place around the corner that serves breakfast. Just like eggs, if you close your eyes while you eat it.”
A paper bag appeared from under the coat. “I brought egg rolls. Close enough?”
“All right, hang on.” His heart zigzagged inside his chest. He shrank inside and hurried to shove aside partitions to make room for another person to fit inside his cramped living space. He pulled down a bench-top over the bed, a table over the basin that served as a sink. Some of his stuff had to come down from their hooks to leave enough head room. I’ll be pissed if this turns out to be a dream, he thought.
Cadence ducked inside and slid onto the bench. He sat on the table. His knees had never been so close to a girl’s knees before, not even the night he had not quite danced with her.
“Is that a real book?” She tugged a paperback out from where it was wedged under a drawer. The drawer tilted precariously. “Looks like you.” The cover showed a man with a gas mask dangling over his chest. Reef looked down and realized he’d slept with his goggles around his neck. He let out a laugh and Cadence laughed with him. He reached to move a shelf jutting near her head but his hand went instead to her hair and then to her cheek. He nodded at the book. “That’s the Aeneid. ‘I sing of arms and the man.’” He spotted his tin on the floor next to her foot and his mouth went dry. “I always thought that would be a good name for a pub—The Arms and the Man.”
This time she only smiled. He reached for the paper bag instead of the tin.
“The sign could have two crossed arms like this.” He held an egg roll in each hand and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You have to imagine these egg rolls as guns to get the proper effect.” He was trying to get her to laugh again, but it wasn’t working. He suddenly remembered something she’d said the night before, about how the aliens had stopped wearing red bracelets because they got sick of everyone asking them for things. Why had she told him that? Because she wanted something from him?
Because she was unhappy that he wanted something from her?
He leaned his legs away.
She fidgeted with the sleeves of her coat. “Aedric got into some trouble on the Floating Isle. He can’t go back there without risking his life.”
Reef fought to keep his face blank against the surge of triumph he felt. There was no way now that Aedric could steal Cadence away to Canada.
He shifted over next to her and rubbed his hand up and down her jacketed arm, his reservations forgotten. “I’ll make sure you have whatever money you need. I’ll run more instances—and I’ve got some Alt items I can sell—”
“I’m taking a fourth husband. He has visas for me and Shasta.”
Some invisible force slammed into Reef’s chest.
Cadence hurried to add, “Once the three of us get to Canada it’ll be easier to get visas for the rest of you. I wouldn’t leave Croy otherwise, not like he is.” She rested her hand on his knee. He felt angry and excited all at once. “I’ll get a visa for you.”
Reef put all his concentration into memorizing the feeling of her hand perched light as a bird on his knee. It was the only thing he could do to ignore the acid eating away inside his stomach. He remembered what Aedric had said to him once—that if Reef had claimed he could get visas for all of them, Aedric would have known he was a fraud.
“I won’t let Shasta stay here one second longer than she has to,” Cadence said into her jacket collar. She couldn’t look at him. Her face was lined with regret.
She moved toward the door and he caught her wrist. Her bones were like bird bones. The light coming through the ceiling vent showed the downy hair along her arm where her coat sleeve had slid back.
“Good enough to grace your pub sign?” she asked, waggling her arm in his grip.
He looked from her weak smile to the bed half hidden under the bench-top he was sitting on. He tried to think of some way he could stop her from leaving him.