February
Lucy's Age: 18
I still wasn't completely sure that we were pursuing the right course. There were so many ways that everything could come crashing down on us, but Venice was my friend and I wanted to help her. Not only that, Geoffrey had taken me in as a small child when he didn't have to.
Part of me suspected that he had some nefarious scheme behind his actions still, but the fact of the matter was that he'd provided for me for a decade and a half and never asked for anything in return. Even if he did have some crazy long-term plan to take advantage of me in some way, it was always possible that Venice was right and he'd used the plan in question as a way of rationalizing what he wanted to do in the first place, which was save a little girl from freezing to death.
Once Venice and I had agreed to go forward with our efforts to redeem Geoffrey, we'd spent the rest of the night trying to come up with a plan that would allow us to spend more time with him in an effort to speed up the process of re-humanizing him.
It sounded to me like Venice was already on unstable ground where Geoffrey was concerned though, so that meant everything came down to me, which I was okay with, but there were complications there.
Venice had a set of valuable skills and an iron-clad reason for interacting with Geoffrey. I, on the other hand, was a burden in every sense of the word. Training with me wasn't any kind of a stretch for Geoffrey because he was so much better than me in that area. Conditioning was a bust too. I was in a lot better shape now than I'd been a few months back, but I still couldn't push Geoffrey hard enough for the exercise to really be worthwhile for him.
Neither Venice or I wanted to risk tipping the set of scales inside his head over from the 'acceptable burden' side of things to 'time to cut my losses,' which meant that I needed to come up with a way to spend time with him where I'd actually be a help instead of just a hindrance.
Just before Venice had ordered dessert I'd finally come up with a decent, if still somewhat risky, option, which had left both of us in a celebratory mood, which had only been magnified when the waiter had brought over our check.
Actually Venice had been celebratory, I'd just been embarrassed. Flattered, but embarrassed. Calum had left his number in our bill with a brief note saying that he hadn't wanted to interrupt our conversation, but that he'd very much like a chance to take me out to dinner sometime.
It wasn't the first time that a boy had expressed interest in me, but I was understandably hesitant to use the number he'd left me. My first crush had gone really well, right up to the point where Renworst had threatened to kill him and Geoffrey had shipped us back to the city. The second experience hadn't really left me with a raging desire to try a third time. I wasn't particularly worried that Calum was going to try and rape me, but it just felt like the wrong time to be chasing after some random guy.
Once I made it home I slipped the piece of paper containing his number into my faded brown journal and then pushed him out of my mind. Geoffrey and I were supposed to go running the next morning and this particular run was more significant than most.
The next morning Geoffrey met me outside of my building just like he usually did. I pushed harder than normal, trying to give him a decent workout, but by the end I was gasping and wrung out and he was barely breathing hard.
We made it back to my building and Geoffrey turned to go, but around gasps I asked him to come upstairs for a minute. I could see him weighing me with his eyes, but after a couple of seconds he nodded and followed me inside.
"You pushed yourself a lot harder today than normal. How come?"
I made a mental note to ask Venice if she'd ever tried curiosity as a way of getting Geoffrey to engage as I shrugged.
"I think I just wanted a change. That was actually what I wanted to talk to you about."
I opened the apartment door and dropped my keys into the red cup on the ornamental table just inside of the living room. Geoffrey followed me in and folded his arms.
"I'm listening."
"A while back we talked and you said it would be okay for me to start picking my own tutors. Well, we never did anything there and I'd really like to get started."
"So pick them. I'll leave you the number for the company I use to run background checks on people. Do a search online to find some likely candidates, get references, run a background check on them and then hire whomever you want. You're an adult now; you don't need me to do some of this stuff for you."
It was looking like I'd caught him on an even worse day than I'd realized. I licked my lips, but it was too late to turn back at this point. If I didn't ask now it would be really hard to do it later.
"You're right, but I was thinking that I'd really like to learn more about business. I already purchased a couple of textbooks on the subject and I've been teaching myself a little, but I think a better way to learn would be by doing."
Geoffrey looked past me, glancing at the antique clock on the wall. "Is this your way of trying to get money out of me? Are you wanting to start up some kind of hobby business now?"
I shook my head quickly. It was starting to look like the only thing that had saved me before was the fact that we'd engaged so little during the blocks of time when he'd disassociated himself from me.
"I just wanted to see if you could use some assistance. You've got some kind of business presence, so I thought that I could help out. You wouldn't have to do much in the way of teaching me, just tell me what to go study and then give me a few tasks to do. I probably won't be much help to start out with, but I'd get better as time went on."
Venice had warned me that Geoffrey would be worried that I was trying to rob him, so I was already prepared to point out that he could just give me information-gathering jobs and keep me away from any of the real assets, but he didn't bring it up.
After several seconds he nodded. "Fine. For starters go off and learn everything you can about utilities."
"Okay. Why utilities though?"
"With all of the drilling going on in North America, there's been a real shock to the energy industry. Most people would agree that it's a good kind of shock, but anytime you introduce a significant new technology into a mature industry you end up with changes and if you understand the changes better than others do, then you can make money. It's too late to profit on the actual drilling side of things—that's probably where the biggest rewards would have been—but there's a chance that you can find something worthwhile in the utilities section of the process."
He'd just thrown me in the deep end of the pool without checking to see whether or not I could swim, but given that I was the one who'd initiated the conversation, there wasn't much I could do other than just nod and smile.