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“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?” Caleb finally s
aid.
“I’m not going to tell you anything. Which is exactly what you’re going to tell everyone else.”
“Okay.” He ran a hand over his buzz cut, which was too short for him to tear out. Which was probably just as well, judging from his expression. “Just for the hell of it, let’s say I don’t want to rat him out. Let’s say I’ve worked with him long enough that maybe I don’t want to see what’ll happen after everyone finds out he had another name once. Let’s say I’m on your side. What the fuck do you expect me to do? I already told you, too many people saw. And there’s gonna have to be a report, and—”
“They didn’t see what happened in the car. They only know—”
“That he’s alive when he shouldn’t be. And that’s more than enough to pique some goddamned curiosity!”
“All right!” I said. “Give me a minute.”
“I hope you don’t need much more than that,” he said grimly. “We got lucky when we came in, with almost everybody on shift called out to that disaster you left. But they’re going to be back soon, plus the first day crew is going to be coming on and—”
“How long?”
He glanced at his watch. “Less than an hour before the day crew shows up. And probably nowhere near that long before the first groups start coming back from Disaster City. They’re gonna need to make out reports before they go off the clock, and that takes—”
“So how long do we have?”
Black eyes met mine. “Minutes.”
“Then we had best make good use of them,” Pritkin said, opening the door behind us. “And you forgot a silence spell.”
Caleb cursed. “I’m losing it.”
“With cause.”
“Damn straight with cause!” Caleb gazed at his friend, his eyes scanning the familiar features, as if he expected him to have suddenly sprouted horns.
“What is it?” Pritkin asked stiffly.
Caleb didn’t answer for a moment; then he shrugged. “Nothing. Just never met a legend before.”
“A legend is merely a man history decided to bugger,” Pritkin said harshly. “I’m the same person I always was.”
“Yeah, maybe. It’s gonna take some getting used to.”
“Then get used to it.”
“Don’t take that tone with me when I’m risking my ass—”
“Then don’t look at me as if I’m a laboratory specimen on a slide!”
“Well, forgive the hell out of me for being a little fucking traumatized—”
“Will you two shut up?” I yelled.
They both turned to look at me. I hadn’t actually intended to shout, but it seemed to have worked. And Pritkin was right; we needed to figure something out before Jonas showed up with his fussy little ways and his too-sharp blue eyes and his seemingly innocent questions, and we were screwed.
“We need to deal with this,” I told them.
“I think that’s been established,” Caleb said nastily. “But unless you know—”
“What I know is that people like simple explanations for things. Especially weird things—”
“According to who?”
