Page 142 of Victorious

She glanced at a clock on the wall, lips moving as she counted. “Come back tomorrow night at eight.” She was timing it so a dose would wear off while he was there. “I’ll reserve the lab.”

Victor rose to his feet, taking back the cartridge. But this time, he didn’t reach for the paper with the formula. He let her keep it. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought, turning toward the door.

“And Victor?” said Dani. He glanced back. “If you ever use your powers on me again without express permission, I’ll let you die. Understood?”

Victor nodded and left the good professor to her work.

IIINOW. THEN.MEANWHILE, BACK IN MERIT …

“ICED latte for Angela?”

A pretty girl bobbed over to the counter. “Oh my god,” she said, reaching for her drink. “You have like, really pretty eyes.”

June smiled. “Aw, thanks!” she said. “I picked them out myself.”

The girl giggled, as if it was a joke, and strolled away.

June fiddled with the apron knot. She liked working at the coffee shop. She’d only been there a few days, but it was good people-watching, and whenever someone was a dick, she made sure to graze their fingers when she handed off their order. Just in case she ever needed a disposable corpse.

“May!” hollered an acne-ridden boy named Max who called himself the manager. June rolled her stolen eyes and looked over her shoulder.

“What the hell is this?” he asked, sweeping a hand over the table by the machines, cluttered with wrong orders and ruined drinks. In June’s defense, she’d never been a barista before, despite what she put on the résumé. But everyone knew those were a lie.

“Sorry,” she said, “the machine was acting up.” She batted her blue eyes. They were really pretty. Max flushed red, and said it was fine.

The morning rush had slowed to a trickle. June grabbed one of the to-go cups from the collection of messed-up orders—a macchiato for someone named Jeff—and ducked under the counter.

“I’m going on my break.”

Max made a few flustered sounds of disapproval, but she was already heading for the side door and the alley.

It was a gorgeous day—cloudless but cool, the leaves all turning—and June sighed back against the sun-warmed brick.

She couldn’t taste the espresso, or feel the subtle heat of the wall. If someone took a picture of her, coffee hanging from her fingers and chin tipped up to savor the light, she knew it would look nice.

That was the problem.

She wasn’t living a life, so much as watching it.

And she was bored.

In her defense, she hadn’t jumped straight to making coffee. She’d tried to live a normal life.

But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

Borrowing a stranger’s body for a night was simple.

Borrowing their world was harder.

The issue was that whoever she was replacing still had to be alive for her power to work. Which meant either risking a run-in with the original or stashing them somewhere. June had still tried, opting for the latter, locking a woman—whose name was Ava—in a very nice house in the woods, with plenty of supplies.

And for a week, it was wonderful.

She had a girlfriend, who loved her. A younger cousin who lived with them. And parents who called just to say hello. It was great, right up until the real Ava got hit by a car trying to escape, and June’s illusion melted halfway through making dinner, plunging her back into her own body. June had yelped, half in sheer surprise and half in pain, the skin on her back screaming where she’d cauterized it, and the stitches on her stomach hot and red, as if they’d just been threaded, tied.

She’d made it to the bathroom, locked herself there to discover that even though she’d been shot almost a year before, the gunshot wound was still fresh because it turned out, her body only healed when she was wearing it.

She shoved herself into a different body as Ava’s girlfriend pounded on the bathroom door, asking what was wrong. June ended up having to climb out the window.