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“That’s so muchbetter, Cal.”
He turned a smile down at her, displaying his willingness to argue. The fucker literally never backed down.
“Is this a joke to you?” she asked.
His shit-eating grin widened. “No, Lucca. None of it is a joke. Your ship is mine. That jump point is mine.You’remine.”
She vacillated between rage and disbelief and fear and the internal drive towanthim to claim her. The look in his eyes was disturbingly calculating and playful at the same time. She’d come to recognize it as the first warning that he was about todosomething.
“Caligher! Lucca!” Morwong slapped them both on the shoulders, then withdrew his hands as if the stone-hard tension radiating out of them had burned him. “We’re drinking ourselves silly tonight, yes?”
Caligher spoke before she could. “There’s something I need to do with Lucca. We’ll see you there soon.”
He took her hand and wove his fingers between hers, making her heart flutter. She loved the feeling more than she cared to admit.
* * *
They went to a large warehouse nested deeper in the asteroid complex. Caligher drew her through aisles and her eyes darted left and right, taking in the objects on display—things she had no name for.
A clerk stood behind a counter along the far wall. Strange metallic attachments hung from the wall behind him. Her guess was that they fabricated items from raw materials.
The clerk regarded them with wide eyes. He was smaller, younger looking, and shifted constantly on his feet.
“Caligher,” he asked with a hint of amusement. His fins lit with each spoken syllable. “We have something new—”
Caligher cut his sales pitch short. “I have limited time. Sorry. I want something specific.”
The merchant’s eyes shifted to her, dipping down to their clasped hands, then swiveled back to him. His mouth dropped into an adorable ‘o’ before he slapped his customer-service face over it. Caligher ushered Lucca to sit on a nearby couch and the merchant offered her a bottle of some sparkling beverage.
The drink distracted her for all of ten seconds before she watched their interaction closely, straining to listen. The clerk placed some circular metal device on the counter and a sense of unease welled in her.
“Would you like anything inscribed into it?” the young merchant asked.
“Yes,” said Caligher. His eyes danced as they caught Lucca’s and held. “My name.”
The blood drained from her face.
There was something vaguely sinister about this.
She couldn’t take it anymore. She shoved the bottle into her pack and walked over, standing next to Caligher while the merchant angled the chassis of some larger machine over the band of metal. Arcane-looking characters were laser-etched into the inner curve of the object. The language was both blocky and elegant, futuristic and ancient. Ternetzi civilization was older and far more advanced than the human expanse. It showed in these details.
She leaned closer to watch the machine work.
Was that Caligher’s name?
Caligher.
Lovely in English. She would know because she’d written it before. It resembled the wordCalligraphy. It belonged in a cursive script, stained into thirsty ivory paper with a fountain pen. But it was so much more fitting in his alien text. Just three symbols with a punchy, asymmetrical balance.
A finger-scanning device connected to a larger module. She watched in rapt fascination as Caligher shot a jolt of static into the scanner.
After the machine darkened, the merchant slid the circle across the counter. Caligher held it, turning it over and inspecting it as she waited with bated breath for whatever he had in his deranged little mind.
He faced her and she had the most acute sense that it had everything to do with her.
“Lucca,” he said softly, eyes burning with seductive heat. “Your wrist.”
She hesitated. “Which… one?”
