Page 60 of Black Reign

NULL opens behind three layers of authentication.

The conversation from last night waits.

I have already read it twice.

I read it again.

GHOST: My friends have hijacked the evening.

Then the ridiculous invitation.

The drunk committee.

Miss London Bridge.

His friends calling me exhausting.

Me deciding I hate men I've never met.

Then the part that has kept me awake.

VESPER: You would actually invite me into your real life?

His hesitation had been long enough that I almost logged off.

Then:

GHOST: Ignore them.

And me:

VESPER: Do you want me to?

Fourteen hours later, it still makes something warm curl through my stomach.

I close the screen.

Immediately reopen it.

Pathetic.

Maybe Marc was right.

Maybe there is someone else.

Except Ghost could be anyone.

That is the part my apparently suicidal romantic imagination keeps ignoring.

For all I know, Vesper has spent several years flirting with a fifty-seven-year-old Russian cryptographer named Igor who owns seven goats.

Or perhaps he's some thin married man living in Bangkok with a pencil mustache, three children, and a wife who believes he spends his nights doing international accounting.

Maybe he's a twelve-year-old genius who started talking to me at six and has been lying about his age ever since.

That would be unpleasant.

Maybe he's some scammer running phishing networks from a basement, stealing credit-card numbers between conversations about Renaissance philosophy.