His initial interactions with Tristan after returning to the Society house had been strange, in that they were totally perfunctory and not at all as if they’d spent the previous year with no one but each other for company. Not that Nico considered himself and Tristan to be close, but there was something very intimate about murder, however temporary the result. It wasn’t something to be followed up with routine cordial hellos, like ships in the night waving watercress sandwiches as they passed.
Something was very off with Tristan, in Nico’s opinion. He was polite to Nico, even occasionally pleasant. Maybe having Libby back had put Tristan in a better mood, but that didn’t necessarily explain it. Nico could tell something was going on between Tristan and Libby—it wasn’t a very complicated something, either, considering Libby was always in Tristan’s clothes and smelling vaguely of the grooming products Nico knew very well that Tristan used because he’d spent a year attacking him with them—but he didn’t think that was the problem.
The tension between them; the way Tristan always seemed to kind of hate Nico, actually, at least a little bit; that was the part that was missing, and Nico couldn’t figure out why. Lately when Tristan spoke to him it was as if Nico had feelings that Tristan was making a concerted effort not to hurt.
“You do realize that I don’t care if you’re sleeping with Rhodes,” Nico decided to announce after several weeks of contemplation, startling Tristan where he sat reading alone in the painted room. “Wanting her back wasn’t an issue of, like, seduction. I know that’s probably hard to believe considering you all think I’m a child, but my relationships can be astonishingly complex. Besides, I have a—” Nico paused to consider the appropriate terminology for something that was the same as it had always been, only very slightly different. “A Gideon,” he determined after a moment.
“I’d truly hate to witness whatever your version of seduction was,” replied Tristan, who’d looked up in a way that was almost nostalgic—an old, ardent urgency for Nico to leave, which was a constant from the era of fragile alliance they’d entertained up until that point.
So maybe it had been the Rhodes thing after all, and now they could put it to rest and continue regarding each other as the forced proximity work associates they had always been. Nico pulled out the chair beside Tristan’s, falling into it with relief. “I don’t actually have any game, I don’t think. Mostly I just ask nicely.”
“Does that ever work?” said Tristan.
“You’d be surprised.” Nico peered over Tristan’s hand, eyeing the book he was reading until Tristan shot him a look of annoyance. “Has she talked to you yet?”
“About what?” Tristan hadn’t denied anything, which was helpful. Nico couldn’t imagine the trials of playing coy around someone he’d already strangled.
He shrugged. “Fowler? The past year of her life? Pick your poison.”
Tristan shifted, and then the awkwardness was back. Nico didn’t know how to quantify it. He just had a sense for it, like a truffle pig for unease. Maybe it was a physical thing, like body language or something. Tristan had shifted away, like he was concealing some part of his chest. “She doesn’t have to explain anything.”
Nico let out a heavy sigh. “Look, I know you’re the king of emotional repression, but you’re probably not doing her a favor by not letting her process everything that went wrong. Someone betrayed her—that’s a big deal.”
“You think I don’t have any experience with betrayal?” That time Tristan’s physical reflex was sharp, like the sting of a scorpion’s tail.
“That’s not what I meant, I just think—”
“If you want to play shrink, do that on your own time.” Tristan flipped his book closed and Nico reached for it, peering at the cover with a giddy wave of delight.
“Whose notes are these?” Nico asked, because he could be an asshole, too. When the moment called for it.
Tristan glared at him. “Yours, fucker. Which you already know.”
“So then you’re thinking about doing it, aren’t you?” Well, at least there was that. “Speaking of, where’s Atlas been?”
“It’s July,” said Tristan. “This is England. He’s on holiday.”
So was Max’s family, which accounted for Nico’s personal comings and goings from the house—at very brief intervals, just in case Libby was right about physical proximity—but it wasn’t like Atlas had ever been known for his leisurely summer hols. The Atlas of their fellowship era had still been a habitual fixture, if not a constant one. This version of him seemed vaguely Odyssean, though Nico supposed he had a right. No new initiates would be showing up for eight more years, so perhaps now was the appropriate time for recreational quests. “I still feel like he could at least stop by and say hi—”
“This … this theory of yours.” Tristan turned the book toward Nico, opening the page to a diagram with what Nico realized were Tristan’s own scribbled annotations. “Explain this.”
Nico twisted around to squint at Tristan’s tidy scrawl. “Why, you think it’s wrong?”
“I think it’s fucking incomprehensible, Varona. What the hell is this?”
“It’s—” Fair, two-dimensionality wasn’t Nico’s strong point. “Hang on.” Nico tore a page out of the book containing his notes, prompting Tristan to swallow a small squeak of opposition. “You’ve been hanging out with Rhodes too long. It’s just a book, Tristan. Anyway, it’s easier to explain this way.” Nico folded the page in half, then folded the top half of the page back, accordioning it so that about an inch of the page had disappeared. “So, look at it this way,” he said, placing the folded sheet of paper on the table and smoothing it down. “See? It’s flat.”
“Theoretically.” Tristan flicked the side of the page that was already lifting up like the letter Z from the side.
“Right, well, this is very theoretical, is it not? Here.” Nico forced down magically on the page of notes so that the distance between folds disappeared. “The missing inch is gone. When you look down at the page, it’s flat.”
“Right.”
“But it’s not flat.” Nico released the force of gravity and allowed the folded part of the page to spring back up. “There’s a pocket there, which is where ordinary matter can collapse. And if you did this several times throughout the single page, there would be multiple pockets, multiple collapses, reflective universes multiplying with every point where the density of one particular galaxy was disturbed. But if you lived on the top part of the page, you’d never see them. You’d be traversing over them, basically, and the whole landscape would look and feel perfectly flat.”
Tristan’s natural expression of concentration had a way of mimicking scorn. “You think the multiverse exists somewhere between the folds?”
“Yes and no,” said Nico with a shrug. “I’m not making any suggestions about the multiverse—that’s too far along in the experiment,” he hedged, “and I’m starting with a hypothesis of what dark matter might actually be—what the void might actually be. As in, the presence of something that’s actually the absence of it.” That was something Reina had brought up to Nico about Dalton’s abilities last year when she’d accidentally forgotten to hate him for a moment. “Which is something you’d be able to see,” Nico added to Tristan, “theoretically, if I—or you, given that you’re the one with ampler means of persuasion—could convince Rhodes to give Atlas’s sinister plot a try.”
“Stop calling it that,” said Tristan, who was obviously too busy trying to process Nico’s model of the universe to come up with a snappier reply. “So you agree with Atlas, then?” he asked with a Tristanly frown. “You think there’s a way to draw an entrance to other worlds out of … dark matter? Some cosmic fold?”
“Sounds erotic, and yes,” Nico confirmed. “Not that I know if Atlas agrees, because he didn’t actually say anything about my notes, but theoretically yes. Ultimately,” he concluded, “it’s a question of producing enough energy to collapse a corner of this galaxy into its equal and opposite reflection, which Rhodes and I would have to do. But after that point, theoretically, you could see the shape of it and be the one to—”
“Fall in?” Tristan arched a brow.
“Open the door,” Nico corrected. “You might also be the only person who could go between them, but that’s a future concern. For now, I just need Rhodes to do the work with me, and Reina to generate whatever it is that Reina can generate. And to hold whatever Rhodes and I couldn’t.”
“And Dalton,” muttered Tristan. “Who we won’t get unless Parisa’s feeling uncharacteristically benevolent.”
“Right, but this is a hypothetical, anyway.” Nico thought about it further. “And I suppose we’d also need Parisa, don’t you think?” he added. “If only to ensure she doesn’t die of archive-related vengeance. And to make sure Callum doesn’t run off into some other world and start a war.”
“No need. He’s too busy trying to kill me personally to bother concerning himself with the whole world,” muttered Tristan, who was still eyeing Nico’s model of the universe.
“Could be worse,” Nico said. “It’s really kind of flattering, in a way. Want me to give him tips?”
“You’re so fucked, Varona.” Tristan looked over at him then, considering him for a long moment. “Would you do the experiment for Atlas? Hypothetically.” The last bit was added on, Nico suspected, as a tactical matter.
“Hypothetically? Sure.”
Tristan gave him another look of scrutiny. “Would you do it for Parisa?”
“She’s already asked me. I told her the same thing.”
“Which is?”
“That hypothetically, I’m seriously concerned I might leap into a crevasse if she asked me to. Which thankfully she hasn’t yet.”
Tristan rolled his eyes. “So then you think it’s a good idea?”
“It’s an idea,” Nico corrected him with a shrug. “It’s not inherently good or bad.” Which, he did not add, was the point he’d been trying to make to Libby. “There’s no decision-making involved. No ethics, just a moral dead zone. What you do if you can walk through that door, that’s for a philosopher to decide. Or one of two very persuasive telepaths.” Another shrug. “I’m just the physicist who can potentially help make the door appear.”
“Just a physicist, he says.” Tristan was being whimsical, it seemed. Talking to nothing. He looked back at Nico with a shake of his head. “Do you really think that’s true? That there can be any decisions free from ethics?”
Like a proverbial state of nature, a stasis that had never existed without someone’s agenda pressing in. “I guess technically no,” Nico admitted, “not actually. But ethics are weird, they’re tricky. I mean, I can’t be ethical. I can’t buy a T-shirt or eat a mango without harming a thousand people in the process. Right? I mean, clearly this is a discussion for Rhodes,” Nico added. “She’s the one with expertise on the moral high ground. I’m just here for my looks.”
“Right, yes, of course.” Tristan exhaled wearily, rubbing his temples.
“And anyway,” Nico pointed out on a whim, “who says the doom necessarily lies with Atlas?”
“Rhodes,” said Tristan.
“Well, yes. True. But the problem could easily be one of us. Who knows what the prospect of world domination might awaken in me? Think how pleased Rhodes would be to find out I’ve been the villain in the house all along.”
Tristan seemed not to catch Nico’s attempt at levity, choosing instead to frown moodily into nothing before broaching a change in subject. “Well, for the record, I didn’t actually bother to wonder if you cared whether I was sleeping with Rhodes, as your position on the matter does not concern me.”
“There he is, the Tristan Caine we know and love,” Nico declared sunnily. “Glad we got past that, then.”
“No, I’m saying—” Tristan rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing weird between us,” he clarified, gesturing between himself and Nico. “We’re fine. I’ve devoted zero breaths to the subject of your feelings because yes, as you’ve said, you have ‘a Gideon’—”
“Who actually seems to like you, so there’s that for terrible judges of character.” Nico paused to look around, having not really adjusted to the decrease in occupancy of the house. He still expected Parisa to pop in, Callum to show up, Reina to waltz in and render him inadequate with a glance.
Nico came and went from time to time now, at Max’s behest, any time things felt too … claustrophobic. Too severe. If he spent too long in the house, Gideon or no Gideon, he felt himself start to go insane. The old jitteriness remained, the feeling that he was losing himself to something inside it, tapped like a maple tree for everything he contained. Now, though, it was worse.
Now, the longer he stood in this house, the more he longed to put himself to use. Now, Libby was back, and while that came with its own set of problems, it also meant something that was, for Nico, unavoidable, like being handed a new set of keys. It meant a chance to unlock something new; something he’d spent a year seeking.
A chance to see whether the universe might reveal its secrets if he seduced it right. If he asked it nicely enough.
“I really hope you’re, like, happy,” Nico said to Tristan, realizing he’d been lost in thought. “You’re good together, you know? You and Rhodes. She doesn’t seem so anxious.”
Tristan made a noncommittal sound.
“I’m not just saying that,” Nico added. “It’s, I don’t know. You’re both—”
He stopped.
“It just makes sense,” he admitted. “And she obviously trusts you.” He wondered if he was making Tristan uncomfortable, or perhaps saying the wrong thing. “I just mean that you’re—”
Another pause.
“Well, at the risk of being terribly gauche,” said Nico, “I don’t really mind being trapped in this house with you. I’d obviously prefer to leave,” he added, “but as far as forced company goes, you’re incredibly tolerable. Almost decent, really, to be around. So for Rhodes to feel the same way is—”
“I don’t know where she is, Varona,” Tristan said abruptly. At first Nico thought he’d said it to be obnoxious, but upon further inspection it became clear that, actually, it wasn’t. He was telling Nico the truth.
“Oh.” Nico turned away, processing it as Tristan’s usual curt form of dismissal, when he realized it wasn’t the end of the conversation.
It was the beginning of one. “Do you…?”
He pivoted back slowly, facing Tristan as they both seemed to understand that the next question was of equal importance, if not more.
“Do you know where Atlas is?” Nico asked carefully.
He watched the muscle jump beside Tristan’s jaw.
“Varona, I don’t think—”
“There you both are.” There was a clatter from the doorway behind them, Libby’s footsteps followed by Gideon’s, the latter of which was carrying a box of something that looked like leather-bound books. “What’s that?” Libby asked, pointing to the accordioned piece of paper Nico had left on Tristan’s section of the table.
“Ethical quandary,” said Tristan at the same time Nico said, “Paper airplane.”
“Not a very good plane, Nicky,” said Gideon, setting the box of books down on the table beside Tristan’s notes. There were four or five books in there, all enormous. Easily of a size to give a man a concussion or render him rapidly un-aroused.
“What’s that, Sandman? Finally tricked the archives into giving you a little light reading?” Nico peered into the box and Gideon shrugged.
“Can’t actually open the books, just have to send them in for new bindings. Huzzah,” he added weakly to Libby, who Nico realized was wearing something that wasn’t an article of Tristan’s clothes.
“Did you leave the house?” Nico asked quizzically, though unless she’d gotten the wards of the Society’s precious archives to make allowances for online delivery, she had obviously left the premises at some point that day. Which he’d been trying to get her to do for weeks now, either with him or without, but she had ostensibly leaned on their former traditions and customs of doing everything in their power not to be in the same place at the same time. Nico had thought it was because of Tristan, but apparently she’d procured something a bit more classic Rhodes (well, Rhodes if she’d met Parisa first, seeing as it was a dress and not the matching sweater set that seemed to be her shorthand for “a joy to have in the classroom”) without even telling Tristan that she’d gone.
“Got a haircut,” she said, which Nico realized belatedly was true. No bangs, thankfully. Her hair had gotten longer since she first arrived—long enough to be considered long hair, something Nico had never associated with Libby prior to this—but she’d cut it back to her shoulders. The whole thing was very reasonable, and yet he felt both accusatory and guilty at the same time.
“What’ve you two been up to?” Libby asked, looking at Nico.
Nico glanced at Tristan, who pointedly did not look back at him.
“Nothing sinister, I assure you,” Nico attempted.
“Well done,” Tristan sighed, now looking at Nico but not Libby. “Very smooth.”
Gideon, meanwhile, looked very intently at the box of books. The whole thing was very awkward, Nico decided. And not the kind of clandestine awkwardness between people who slept together on a regular basis, either.
Actually, the energy had shifted substantially the moment Libby walked into the room, and Nico wasn’t sure what to make of that. He supposed he was proud of her for growing a healthy sense of dominion (he’d been the one to tell her to do the equivalent of have a spine, which he supposed traveling through time would do) but there was a definite aura of something bigger in the room. Something unspoken and troubling.
“You can tell me the truth,” Libby said to Tristan, possibly hitting the nail on the head, which wasn’t something the old Libby would have done, so again Nico felt an odd sense of pride in her. “You don’t have to lie about the experiment. I know exactly what that,” she clarified, dropping her gaze to the piece of paper on the table, “is supposed to model. I’ve read Varona’s notes.”
“Well, glad to hear someone could make sense of them,” said Nico, at the same time Gideon said, “Notes about what?”
“A world-ending hypothetical.” Libby gave Tristan a look of obvious significance, the two of them having a quick discussion in total silence the way people did when they’d seen each other naked.
Tristan hesitated a moment, then nodded. Libby turned away, glancing at Nico over her shoulder before fixing her attention more permanently on Tristan, who then left the room at her side.
Nico felt Gideon’s presence enter his periphery like walking into a small patch of sun.
“How mad will you be,” Gideon posed neutrally, “if I tell you that I think there’s something wrong with Libby?”
“I’ve always known there’s something wrong with her, idiota. I’ve been telling you this from day one.” Nico stretched his arms overhead and filled Tristan’s chair, kicking out the seat opposite his for Gideon to join him. “It’s weird,” he realized, having a moment’s synchronicity, like déjà vu. Petal-pink toenails and telepathy, a crisis of conscience and Professor X—just say it, Nicolás. “You being here,” he said to Gideon. “It’s strange. Not bad strange, just strange.”
Gideon slid into the chair, sinking down into it. “Thinking of something in particular?”
“Just realizing something I forgot to do.” Get a talisman. A set of petal-pink toes in Nico’s lap. Then you’ll never need to question what’s real.
He wondered what Parisa was up to now. She didn’t ignore him, exactly. They spoke from time to time, briefly messaging back and forth about how cute he was and how hopeless; whether he’d still say how high if she asked him to jump. (Yes.) Truthfully, Nico wanted to ask more, or say more, but he didn’t really know what to casually discuss with someone whose kiss he could still taste. He had a feeling she wouldn’t approve of that kind of neediness—which was ironic, seeing as aside from Gideon, Parisa was the only person in this house who’d ever seemed to care about him at all. (We’re in my head, not yours.)
Nico laughed to himself, turning back to Gideon. “Remember when I said we were supposed to get ourselves some talismans?”
“Vaguely.” Gideon’s smile was irreverent.
“Did you ever actually do it?”
“Get a talisman? No. Did you?”
“No. What for?” Nico shrugged. “I’ve always had you.”
“True,” Gideon said. Nico could warm his hands on that kind of fondness. “And anyway, there’s still no evidence I’ve got sufficient mortality to get myself lost in an astral plane, so, you know. It’s just another, slightly less world-ending hypothetical.”
Gideon closed his eyes. For a moment Nico thought he was asleep, but then Gideon kicked his chair and Nico laughed.
“I’m still awake,” Gideon said. “For now.”
“Is it that bad? Sois honnête.”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Yes.” Nico nudged him, knee to knee. “Of course you would. But don’t.”
“Fine, it’s…” Gideon looked away. “It’s not not happening.”
He meant the episodes of what other people called narcolepsy, but that Gideon had simply called life until Nico interfered. For the past two years while Nico was away, Gideon had existed almost exclusively inside the dream realms. Belatedly, Nico realized he hadn’t brewed a vial for Gideon the entire time he was gone.
“I can make more if you want—”
“You don’t have the resources.” Gideon waved it away, dismissing the offer entirely. “This isn’t NYUMA where you can sweet-talk your way into Professor Breckenridge’s private stash. Nobody here even has a private stash.”
“It’s a magic house,” Nico insisted. “I’m pretty sure I can get it to conjure up some of the good stuff.”
Gideon fixed him squarely with a look of supreme doubt. “Nicky, have you learned nothing? This house doesn’t conjure up anything.”
“What are you talking about? It’s sentient, we all know that—”
“It’s sentient, not a butler. Are you aware there’s almost no food in the kitchen?”
“What?”
“There’s almost no food, Nicky. I got an email from the catering company two days ago. Which,” Gideon added, “Tristan said he would deal with, but—”
“Catering company?” Nico stopped for a moment to gauge whether Gideon was joking, which was very possible. Gideon was very charming and delightful that way, or tended to be, but he didn’t seem to be teasing. “Wait, what?”
“The house doesn’t cook your meals, Nicolás.” Gideon rolled his eyes. “I know you’re privileged, but yeesh.” He was still smiling as he added, “Don’t tell me Libby never once thought to mention it? Since I’m fairly sure she’s the only one of you that didn’t grow up having her meals prepared for her.”
“Actually, Tristan isn’t— Wait.” Nico frowned. “So who cooks them?”
“You have a chef,” Gideon said. “Or a few chefs, I think, who all work for the same company. The Caretaker or one of his underlings arranges for food to be delivered to the house, but according to someone named Ford in Human Resources who really doesn’t care for me—and by the way, you have a Human Resources—those orders haven’t been updated in over a month.”
“What?”
“You’ve also had no visitors, as Ford decided to inform me. Apparently your Caretaker hasn’t been letting people in, which is making Ford personally upset. He mentioned something about a vote of no confidence if this continues, whatever that means.”
“Since when do we have chefs?” Nico only realized he was frowning when Gideon suddenly looked over at him and laughed.
“Oh, Nicky. Are you really so surprised? I told you to wonder where the money was.”
“What money? And this was about you,” Nico abruptly recalled, wondering if Gideon was fucking with him just to avoid discussing that his health was likely deteriorating. It struck Nico like an overly ostentatious gong that his reason for joining the Society had not been hypothetical at all—and yet somehow, amid two years’ worth of mortal peril, he had managed to forget it.
“The money that keeps all of this going.” Gideon made an ambiguous gesture to the house and everything inside it. “And I’m just saying, if the kitchen’s run out of basic pantry essentials, I don’t think you’ll be doing any alchemy anytime soon.”
“Was that Dalton’s job?” Nico asked, frowning into nothing.
Gideon shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s not technically my job, either, and Dalton was just a researcher. Isn’t Atlas the house manager?”
“Caretaker,” Nico corrected instantly.
“What’s the difference?”
“I—” Nico didn’t know, obviously, as he had never known what Atlas’s job was. Scheduling? He supposed it had been Atlas who did things like plan the gala they’d had the year prior. Was it possible the man whose approval he’d begun to unwisely crave was some kind of … administrative official? He didn’t know what to do with the image of Atlas taking inventory of the pantry beside the wormhole he’d given Nico the cosmic materials to create.
But all of this seemed part of a revelation Gideon had cleverly designed, so Nico decided he was better off saving these particular thoughts until later. Gideon already mistrusted the Society, and as marvelous as Gideon happened to be, he still had not met Atlas. It was very possible that Gideon had a right to his suspicions, but it was also a reminder that Nico had sorely needed. Because whatever larger mystery may or may not have been going on within the Society’s walls, none of that was more important than what had brought Nico to accept the Society’s offer to begin with.
If Gideon couldn’t replicate Nico’s sense of loyalty to what Atlas had done by choosing him, that was because Gideon was a consummate outsider, forced into objectivity because belonging had never been an option.
And also, he was still the one who needed help.
“I don’t really know how we got so far off the point,” Nico said slowly, “which is that if you’re having problems, you should really tell me. I can always get things for you from outside the house.”
Gideon gave him a thin smile. “What’s a little collapsing of the realms here and there?”
Nico pondered whether to push the issue before deciding with great uncertainty, “Are you going to tell me who the Accountant is?”
Gideon blinked, then fastened a look of pure innocence. “Am I talking in my sleep again?”
“You are.” A pause. “Have you heard from Eilif?”
Gideon drummed his fingers on the table.
“It’s nothing,” Gideon said eventually.
“Gideon.” A shake of Nico’s head. “Will we ever outgrow this?”
He hadn’t meant it to sound so profound, so adult. It was a tone he hadn’t realized his voice could even take. Something slightly sorrowful, like the last day of summer camp. Like maybe all this fun would have to eventually end.
But was that such a bad thing? Nico was inexperienced, but still. He felt assured that sometimes fun became something bigger, something deeper. “You don’t have to lie to protect me,” Nico said. “And you don’t have to keep any secrets just to keep me.”
For the risk of spoiling everything, his undeniable reward: “Fine, you’re right.” Gideon gave him a look of reluctance. “There’s someone looking for me,” he confessed. “Someone must have consolidated my mother’s debts. I think they’re looking for me to pay what’s left. They can’t get through the telepathic wards here,” he added, “but I haven’t heard from my mother, so whether that’s because I’m here, or because something happened to her—”
Nico had never understood Gideon’s relationship with Eilif and didn’t know whether this was guilt, concern, or something far stranger than both combined. “She’s fine,” said Nico urgently. “And whoever this Accountant is, you don’t owe them anything.”
“I know, but—” Gideon stopped. He shook his head, then shrugged. “The point is it’s fine. I’m here to stay out of your Society’s way—”
“To be safe,” Nico argued.
“Safely out of their way,” Gideon repeated. “So, if I happen to drift off unexpectedly, I don’t think they’ll mind. Even if I were to tumble out from between the balustrades, I’m fairly certain they have insurance.”
Nico had the sudden, unavoidable urge to punish Gideon for his usual flippancy toward his own death, so he chose violence. He leaned over the table and kissed him square on the mouth.
“Shut up,” Nico muttered with his eyes closed, unmoving, because everything between Nico and Gideon was exactly the same as it had always been, really.
With only the slightest degree of difference, in this case being that he could feel Gideon’s smile like he had conjured it himself. “Nicolás. You’re deflecting. This house is punishing you for something. Your Caretaker is missing. Your researcher is lying. Your many-worlds theory has you in a chokehold like some kind of academic siren song. And,” Gideon added carefully, “I’ve been in enough of Libby’s nightmares to know that her problems are bigger than any of you know how to solve—all of which you’re ignoring because you’ve got an infernal gift for selective hearing.” A pause, followed by a mutter. “Just because you make me happy doesn’t mean you don’t drive me absolutely insane.”
Aptly, Nico only heard one thing. “Are you, Sandman? Happy.”
“Oh my god,” said Gideon.
But the rest was solvable, Nico thought. Whatever Atlas was doing, or Tristan, Nico felt certain Libby knew about it, and if there was one thing he could trust—aside from Gideon—it was Libby’s moral compass. Yes, Tristan was clearly hiding something, but Nico had made a promise to Libby Rhodes once, and she’d made it back to him: if she needed something, she’d come to him. He would know when the moment came, and until then, he had fidgety hands in need of distraction.
Best to put them to good use.