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“Okay,” I say. “You’ve got me.”
“This until lunch time,” he says. “After lunch, we work out and I start teaching you how to defend yourself.”
“Uh huh.”
I am not listening. I am reading. I am happy.
7
Elise
This is truly fascinating, and actually much more in-depth than I imagined it would be. Working with limited tech means being creative. I’ve already formulated a potential way to cross-reference various streams to…
“Right. Time you ate.”
I am rudely interrupted by my husband of all of two days who has not yet learned how dangerous it is to interrupt me while I am concentrating.
“Hey!” I exclaim as Cosmos lifts me bodily out of the chair. “I just got started.”
He shakes his head at me. “You’ve been at this for five hours straight. It’s time to eat.”
“What!? No. I need to work. You said I had until lunch time!”
“It is almost three o’clock. I came in twice and you didn’t even know I was here,” he says reprovingly. “You’re done working. It’s time to eat.”
He’s carrying me back through the halls of Direview. I am mad. I didn’t get a chance to save where I was. I was halfway through a thought and that thought is probably going to dangle the entire time I’m trying to eat, only to disappear the second I reach for it once I’m allowed back to work.
“Put me down! I need to make some notes.”
“I will not put you down. Crocombe has made you something to eat, and you are going to eat it. Trust me, you do not want to cross a house demon who has gone out of her way to feed you.”
The dining room at Direview is designed to hold far more people than Cosmos and me. The two of us sit at one end, him at the head, me at his right-hand side. Mrs Crocombe has made a pie, a meat infested pastry casing. I am not hungry.
Cosmos seems to like it. He eats, while I sit and try to think of some way back to the computer. I don’t want him to notice that I’m not eating, so I distract him with questions.
“So what’s your deal? Who’s your dad? Your mom? Where do you come from?”
“My mother was Korean. She died giving birth to me. My father was an American soldier. He brought me back from Korea when his tour there ended and raised me in half a dozen army bases. He didn’t have much time for a kid. I got into a lot of trouble. That’s where I found religion.” He gives me the Cliff notes version. I appreciate that, though it makes me curious. I really don’t know my husband at all. It’s not really my fault. It’s just that’s what happens when you’re forced into a wedding of dubious legality in the middle of the night.
“Would have thought you’d have joined the military?”
“They didn’t think I was temperamentally suited,” he says with a little smirk. “I was a bad kid. One of the ones they worry about in kindergarten. It’s just how I’ve always been. A little more aggressive than most, a little bit more physical than most, a lot more interested in knives…” He smiles ruefully, reflecting what I imagine is a life of trying to pretend to be normal, all the while knowing he was never going to fit in. “But the church takes what the war machine won’t. One of the old Brotherhood found me before I got myself thrown into jail and helped me channel my violent tendencies toward demons instead of people. These guys accept me for what I am. They make me useful, instead of a liability.”
“And what happened to your dad?”
“He’s still around,” Cosmos says. “He was recruited into some top-level government gang bang around the time I was recruited into this place. We don’t talk much. He’s always in some exotic country, doing something unspeakable.”
“Like father, like son,” I quip.
“I guess, yeah,” Cosmos agrees.
“He probably saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives. The Brotherhood guy, I mean.”
“Probably,” he agrees. “I owe a lot to the Brotherhood. They gave me what my own family could not, and what the world would not. That’s why I still serve, even when I disagree with the new regime.”
“You mean Bryn.”
“Yes,” he says. “I mean Bryn.”
The food isn’t bad, but I’m really not hungry. I do like learning about Cosmos, though. And I’ve found a way to keep those ideas I had close. The thread of my thoughts doesn’t have to dangle anymore. I can jot them down while we talk, in a medium that’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
Cosmos
She thinks I can’t see her scratching her little notes into the side of the table. Bryn wouldn’t like that, which is precisely why I let her keep doing it. I can also see she’s pushed her pie around a lot more than eaten it. She is a very disobedient little angel.
