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Blanc’s motorbike is a bright, shiny orange like a plastic pumpkin, but sleeker. She motions for me to sit behind her. Once I do, we fly down the road, the wind ruffling our uniforms. She zooms in and out of traffic as I cling to her waist, hoping she doesn’t wreck.
At this point, I’m not sure President Saito would be interested in putting me back together.
Once we arrive at the bakery, Blanc brushes out her hair with her long nail-claws, pulling it back into some sort of tidy “wild” look.
“I’ll see you at the ball, Huntress, but don’t be offended if I don’t talk.” She waggles her fingers at me and disappears into the bakery. I presume she’s planning on changing there, but once I remove my dress from the storage hold and head inside to ask for a bathroom, I spot her sitting at one of the booths, drinking a coffee.
She doesn’t so much as glance at me, her eyes focused on the crowded street outside the front window. Probably chatting with someone via mental augments. If she can afford a changeling body and the ability to jump between that and her wolf form, what’s to say she can’t afford the advanced Network functions?
The lady at the counter points me to the back hall, where I find a quaint, one-room restroom with a wicker basket trashcan and overly-scented floral air cleaner. I prop open the baby changing station to hold my clothes while I change.
Again, the dress fits perfectly. The birds definitely know what they’re doing.
By the time I’m finished, I expect Blanc to be gone, but she still sits in her booth, looking off into the distance. I thank the lady at the counter before stashing my clothes back in the bike.
Time to see Maria again. I swallow the painful lump in my throat. I have to tell her what happened, and I don’t have much time to do so. But my eyes still sting from crying, and my heart aches at the memory. My president is dead.
My knees lock up beneath me, my feet weighing like lead anchors. Too soon, I’m at the ballroom entrance. But I don’t want to tell her. How can I rip away her dreams of meeting her mother right after I gave her those hopes?
“Your name, miss?”
The butler—a lady with short blond hair shaved down one side—gives me an exasperated glare. Several others have lined up behind me while I stare at the entrance, lost in thought.
“Verdi,” I murmur. “I’m with Maria.”
“You’re with...” She looks me over scornfully, stopping at the c-shaped augment behind my ear. “You can’t be serious.”
“Just check the list,” I say softly, not wanting to fight. “I should be on it.”
She narrows her eyes. “Stop wasting my time. Get out of here.”
A man in a dark blue tux behind me groans. “For the love of progression... Did you not see her yesterday? She was the only person Miss Snow would dance with. Never seen such a fond couple.”
The lady butler looks at him, then me, and then at him again, before mumbling under her breath and checking the list. She scowls at both of us and jerks her thumb for me to go in. “Blasted NEL lover,” she grumbles. “Keep your augments to yourself. Maria deserves better.”
My shoulders tense, but I keep walking. Getting into an argument with someone who can’t see that NEL are people, too—if not technically human—is not why I’m here.
But it’s an unmistakable reminder that my dear president is gone. No longer human or NEL.
I scan the crowd for Maria, torn between hoping she’s here and hoping that, maybe, she decided to go home early. But she’s there in the middle of the crowd, holding polite conversation. I assume it’s polite, anyway. It’s hard to tell her expression when I’m facing her scarred side.
But she still looks as lovely as ever.
This time, she wears an outfit that matches mine, except the color scheme is different. Whereas my dress is sequined in silver and blue, hers looks like it’s covered in beautiful cherry blossoms. The base fabric is designed with pearly white sequins, and the vine crawling up the side—the opposite side of mine—is the pale pink of sunrise, outlined in silver. The sequins dangling from her arms look like shining pink Spanish moss.
The similarities between our dresses has to be intentional. On her part or the birds, though, I don’t know.
I hold my breath, dazed. I don’t know how to tell her about Koenigin. I don’t want to tell her. I don’t know where to begin...
“Excuse me, would you like to dance?”
I jump, startled, as a young woman my age or maybe a few years older offers me her hand. She has short brown hair cropped just below her ears, and hazel eyes. She has a petite chin and short stature, but unlike the other women around here, she wears a crisp blue tux.
She’s kind of cute. If I wasn’t here for Maria, I would happily say yes. But heat creeps to my cheeks and I duck my head. “Actually, I already have a partner,” I say quickly.
“Suit yourself.” Her lips quirk into a smile as if she expected my answer. She shrugs, still smiling, and leaves me be. For a second, I stare after her. Is this what’s it’s like to go to balls and not be a huntress, always on duty?
Is this what it’s like for Maria?
I shake the thought from my head and quicken my pace as I travel toward her. I turn down two more requests to dance, one man and another woman, before I finally arrive to the spot where Maria was standing.
“Was” being the key word.
She has managed to move to another cluster and currently speaks with an older gentleman—older for someone who is unaugmented, anyway—in his late fifties or sixties.
Once I finally reach her, she beams and sweeps away from him, almost taking my hands in both of hers before deciding against it at the last moment. “Verdi! You look wonderful! The dress looks great on you... I think our dresses will compliment each other perfectly when we dance.”
I bite my lip and lower my voice. “Can we talk for a moment... in private? There’s been an incident.”
“Can it wait? There’s someone I want you to meet.” She grabs my hand and drags me to over to the now bemused gentleman. “This is Karl Jacob. Mr. Jacob, this is Verdi.”
He bows politely before offering me his hand. I hesitantly shake it. I don’t want to accidentally inject him with poison. A tiny ache pings in my wrist, a self-conscious reminder that time is ticking before the jammer wears off and Dr. Johnson can trigger the poison if I’m not in an anti-tech zone.
I suppress a shudder and focus on Mr. Jacob’s pleasant face so I don’t end up knocking him out like I did Maria. I’m pretty sure poisoning someone in the middle of an SNP ball wouldn’t be seen favorably.
He shakes my hand, his grip as firm as mine. His fingers are grizzled, but not particularly rough for the wear. His warm brown eyes are kind and he has his hair smoothed back, save for a persistent cowlick, along with carefully groomed sideburns along his chiseled chin.
I’m pretty sure that if Goldfinch was here, she’d be swooning.
“I’m honored to meet you, Verdi.” He releases my hand and tucks his behind his back. “Miss Snow has told me a lot of good things about you.”
“She has?” I blurt, surprised.
Maria grins. “Yes, I have. This is the lawyer I’d like to investigate the case we spoke about earlier. He’s been quite fair among both augmented and unaugmented cases.”
I stare at her, horrified. Aside from the fact that the case is now pointless, this is information that shouldn’t get out. President Saito is already mad at me. If Maria tells other people, what am I supposed to do? “You haven’t told him—”
“Don’t worry.” Mr. Jacob holds his hand out peaceably. “She hasn’t told me any specifics about your case. Only that there might be one, and that it would relate to corporations, NEL rights, and evaluating justice.”
“You’re... okay with NEL rights?” I ask hesitantly.
His eye twitches annoyance, but he nods. “Not all of us Progressionists are anti-technology. Plenty of us just want a check on how much technology gets used at one time... and we want to make sure it’s safe before putting it into the hands of the public.”
“Maria said something about that,” I say, but I really need to talk to her in private. Especially since she’s not going to need him anymore.
Not with President Koenigin already dead.
“Could you excuse us for a few minutes? I need... we need to talk in private.”
He frowns, looking to Maria.
Uncertainty wrinkles across the unmarred side of her face, and then she nods. “That might be good. I’ll talk with you again in a little while.”
With a curt nod, Mr. Jacob disappears into the crowd.
She shoots me a glare, but slips her hand in mine before pulling me through the rings of dancers and out a back door to a little porch that overhangs a vine-covered garden. A fountain trickles below us.
“Come on, Verdi!” she protests. “He’s the person you need to talk to, and you need to be seen conversing with the guests.” Her good eye pleads with me to understand, while her scarred eyes twitches ever so slightly under her drooping eyelid. “That’s the only way this is going to work.”
I place both my hands on her shoulders. “Having a lawyer isn’t going to help anymore.”
Her clouded eye looks at me with an accusation I know can’t really be there. “What are you talking about?”
I glance around to confirm there’s no one else out here—since the Network is of no help to me right now—and then look her square in her eyes. “One of the huntresses killed President Koenigin, and Dr. Johnson framed me for the murder. That’s why I needed help from Silber. That’s why I almost wasn’t able to come tonight. Technically, I’m supposed to be back in my room on house arrest.” I bite my lip. “As soon as I answer your questions, I need to get to Koenigin Corp. I’m hoping Ebs can warn President Saito, but I want to be there to help protect him... at least until the jammer wears out.”
Maria Snow stares at me for a long moment, far too silent. Then she yanks herself away from me. My heart skips a beat, blood roaring in my ears. I don’t want her to be mad at me. I can’t blame her, but I don’t want her to be mad...
“President Koenigin is dead? Just like that?” She shakes her head and strides away from me, rubbing her temples as if she’s trying to comprehend it all.
“Yes,” I whisper, my voice refusing to go any higher. “Is it safe for me to go into the details here? There’s a lot I need to tell you.”
“More or less.” Her gaze falls on a bench. She seats herself and pats the cold spot beside her. Lovely morning glories surround the bench like a high-backed chair. “Leave out anything confidential, but tell me what you can.”
I let out my breath, and then do my best to explain the day’s events. I sincerely hope we aren’t bugged, because I don’t want to make another mess for President Saito.
And I hope that, by the time I explain everything to Maria Snow, it won’t be too late to save our new president from whatever Dr. Johnson has schemed.
