When I get backto my room, the lights are back, but the screens are dark, and Sapphire’s sitting on the edge of the couch. Arms folded over her tits.
“So…”
“Breaker,” I explain. The building is older than dust and the circuits overload anytime we so much as plug in an autoclave in the shop. My rigs are power hogs and I know it.
But that’s why I stream in themiddle of the goddamn night. When no one else should be doing anything.
“Ah.” Sapphire nods. Her curls are fuzzy at the edges now. Messed up.
I rub my forehead. All of a sudden, I’m too tired for this. Too tired to deal with anyone, withpeoplein general. “You can just…go.”
“Oh.” She blinks. “Yeah.”
I move to check all the equipment—not that it needs it—as she picks up her clothes piece by piece and pulls everything back on. Finds her shoes, her little handbag, while I stand around messing with shit like a jackass.
“Well…” She pauses at the door, hand on the knob. “Sweet dreams, then.”
“Sure.”
I shut the door after her, tight, and sit on my bed in the dark.
Thing is, I don’t actually know Tink too well. I know Pan’s half in love with him for some reason, but Pan’s like that. Prove loyalty once and you’re in for life.
Me? I take more convincing. See through more bullshit. Like thatmade a girl come seven timesbullshit at the bar, which I didn’t buy for a second. He was either stretching the truth or outright lying.
And I think I just caught him doing it again.
CHAPTER 7
FOX
You knowhow sometimes you wake up hungover, but like, extra?
Like your head hurts and your body kinda hurts and all that, but you also have this weird feeling that you did or said something really stupid the night before?
Well, that’s basically how I wake up.
“Shit.”
And it doesn’t help that I immediately crack my head on a beam.
I rub my temples, which now hurt twice as much. One of these days I’m going to remember that I sleep like two feet below the ceiling, and that I’m six feet four inches tall, and so if half of that is my torso, that’s like…
I don’t know. More than can fit sitting up straight.
“Damn,” I say to myself. My head hurts. Mybrainhurts. I need food. And I feel…
I feel bad.
What did I do last night?
But I don’t have long to wonder, because somewhere below me I hear rustling, and…andgreat, now Kit’s awake. Or at leastmoving. Maybe twin telepathy is real and I summoned him with my mind.
From below, somethingthumpsinto my mattress. Kit’s foot.
“Ow!”
“Shut up.”
