I had never seen Rowan in such a disappointed, miserable mood.
In fact, I’d never really seen Rowan in any mood besides just Rowan-ness.
“Um, Happy New Year’s Eve?” I said.
It was a failed attempt at cracking the polar ice sheet between us.
Rowan was clearly not speaking to me.
“Happy No Year,” Billy added.
At least it was a good thing we didn’t have the girls or Parker with us when we got back to our room. It was Billy Hinman’s suggestion that coming back home in our underwear with two girls, after ditching Rowan all day, would probably cause what he called “awkward social disharmony.”
I realized as soon as Rowan saw us that Billy was absolutely right. The awkward social disharmony was awkward and disharmonious enough as it was.
And Parker had stubbornly refused to accept that I was right about Meg and Jeffrie being humans, so if he had been programmed for such things, he’d be as miserable and upset as Rowan was with me. I ordered him to go fetch a proper valet uniform, which even furthered his annoyance because, well, he was Parker, and he preferred to not be confined by such social conventions as clothing.
Meg and Jeffrie had gone out to break into a stateroom on another floor, and to steal some human clothes not intended for extravehicular emergencies from one of the shopping malls on the Tennessee.
It was New Year’s Eve, the last one anyone anywhere would ever think about—going all the way back to the reign of Julius Caesar—and I didn’t care if Rowan was mad at me.
Kind of.
“Are you mad about something?” I asked.
Rowan said, “No.”
So Billy offered, “Are you at all interested in finding out where we were all day, and why we’ve got nothing on but our underwear?”
Rowan looked at him with a cold, unenthusiastic expression.
“Well, here’s the short version, and keep in mind, it could be a lot worse, Rowan,” Billy said. “We snuck out while you were sleeping, and went swimming in a fake Canadian lake. Then a fucking tiger scared Parker up a tree and chewed the shit out of our clothes. A French giraffe named Maurice ate most of the tiger—his name is Juan, and he still has a head, so he can talk, but he’s very depressed, and who can blame him? Then these three liquid aliens in a flying blue fetus boarded the ship, and they want to have dinner with us, but we’re in our underwear, so we were coming back to our room to put on some clothes, and on the way we found two real, human girls who’ve been hiding on the Tennessee ever since we got here. Happy New Year, Rowan! Would you run the shower for Cager and get some nice outfits ready for us? We’re starving!”
Rowan raised that one eyebrow and looked at me.
I shrugged. “Exactly what Billy just said.”
Rowan pouted, if pouting was something he was capable of doing, but he quietly went into the bathroom and turned on the shower for me. In his usual routine, he stood at the door holding a towel and waiting for me to go inside.
I said, “If it makes any difference in tie color, we’re dining with a queen for New Year’s Eve.”
I grabbed the towel and gave it a quick smell. All boys do that, right? Especially ones with noses like mine, not that any boys I ever knew had noses like mine. Not that there were any boys anywhere besides here anymore. I could smell just the faintest trace of Rowan’s cologne on the towel, but it was, as you’d expect of anything you’d put in the hands of a Messer on a ship like the Tennessee, perfectly fresh.
And Rowan added, “If it makes any difference in dining options, Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique looks like Nuremberg in May of 1945.”
“Thirty wars don’t just fight themselves,” Billy said.
“Ring down and have them tidy up for us. It’s New Year’s, and I own this ship,” I said.
I went inside the bathroom and stepped under the shower. As usual Rowan had known the perfect temperature to set it for me.
I felt like such a spoiled piece of shit.