Page 30 of Gave Proof Through the Night

I look away. Tippy toes. Fine. Whatever. It means nothing.

“Nobody said anything about kissing.”

“I’m just describing what’s in front of us.”

“If you like him so much,” I say. “You ask him out.”

She looks at me. Looks at him. Back at me.

“I would,” she says in all seriousness. “But I’ll be the girl in the van.”

I start walking. “Come on, I’m tired. And I still need to find a smithy.”

“I know.” She falls into step beside me. “But I need you to get us into that gala.”

“I’ll flirt with the jock,” I say.

Zoe opens her mouth.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll flirt with the jock tomorrow.”

She decides to take the win. We get to the loft but the first lock is already open.

I know with one hundred percent certainty that I engaged all the locks and alarms before our recruitment trip. I check the second lock. The third.

All disengaged.

I push the door open, slowly. Zoe steps in behind me already holding a mop she must have left by the front door because I certainly have never mopped in here.

The loft is exactly as we left it: folding table in the center, Zoe’s equipment against the left wall. The security panel blinks its steady green. Nothing moved. Nothing missing.

There is, however, a girl sitting on a crate eating a Cinnabon.

She is fully, comprehensively orange.

Deep, saturated face paint… orange, with white markings in careful lines across her forehead and the bridge of her nose. From a headpiece rise two long white-and-blue fleshy head-tails draped over her shoulders, where a dark blue hooded cloak rests. The rest of the costume is fitted to her body, clearly made by hand with a lot of love and care. There are two lightsabers on the crate beside her.

She looks up.

Zoe has the mop raised. I put my hand on it and gently push it down.

“Who are you?” I say. “And how did you get in here?”

“I’m Suri. Sal sent me,” she says. She looks at the mop. “Why are you holding a mop?”

“It was close by,” Zoe says.

“And…” I gesture at all of it. The face paint. The leather. The bicep cuffs. The fingerless gauntlets. “What’s with the costume?”

“I was at a convention,” she says.

“What kind of convention?”

“Science fiction.” She says this like the answer is obvious, because to her it is.

Zoe makes a noise. “She’s Ahsoka Tano,” she says.

I give her a hard side stare which she takes as meaning I need further explanation because she clarifies, “Star Wars. The Clone Wars.”