Compared to me, Yoshi looked ridiculously chipper at ten in the morning. I should have known Lizzie would try and foist another morning person on me—if only so she could have company while I staggered around like a zombie trying to wake up. This morning was worse than normal. I didn't know if it was the late night or the two—okay, three—shots of scotch I'd had when I'd gotten home to calm my lingering panic, but I felt distinctly hung over. Just as well that I wasn't heading into work today.
At least Yoshi wasn't wearing another eye-popping plaid combo, just battered jeans paired with a pinstriped jacket and a button-down shirt. Of course, the jacket was a sludgy green and the shirt was a pale purple, so it wasn't exactly a tame ensemble.
Or normal for a nineteen-year-old. Then again, I knew nothing about what teenagers were wearing. I'd been holed up in my house for most of a year.
"This house is chill," he said, swiveling his head from side to side to scope everything out as I ushered him into the kitchen. The chunky glasses were nowhere to be seen, and in the daylight, his eyes were a pale blue-gray that stood out against his dark hair and gold-tinged skin.
They could be colored contacts, of course, given the lack of glasses—or even a more expensive eye tint—but somehow I didn't think so.
"It will be when it's finished." Where exactly was he living that my part building site, part wreck of a house seemed cool?
"It's still chill. I don't get out of the city much." He peered out the kitchen window, which looked over the back garden but also over all the gardens of the other houses that spilled down the hill from where mine perched. "That's a lot of green." He blinked a few times and leaned closer to the window as though snared by the view.
I frowned at that. Downtown San Francisco was redeveloped, and there'd been a lot of emphasis on making both the streets and the buildings greener. There were small parks, rooftop farms, and green spaces wherever room could be found. If those weren't enough, there was always Golden Gate Park. Only the nastier areas like Dockside were devoid of any vegetation. Note to self: Ask Lizzie where Yoshi lives. "Do you like gardens?"
"They look pretty," he said. "And growing your own food seems chill. Don't know much about plants though."
Note to self: Also ask Lizzie what his school situation had been. Even during my high school days, there'd been an emphasis on planting urban gardens and sustainable small crop methods in biology and home sciences.
"Do you want something to drink? Syncaf or something?"
"Do you have soda?"
I nodded toward the fridge. Lizzie usually stocked a variety of carbonated things with or without caffeine, vitamins, lurid coloring, and other ingredients. I stuck to syncaf, water, and juice.
Yoshi took the invitation to rummage and emerged with something in an acid-green bottle. "So, I guess you want to give me some sort of test?" He cracked open the drink.
"I guess." I'd spent the morning wondering if I was doing the right thing.
Maybe it would be smarter to call in a proper security expert. I knew a few. But confiding in any of them risked word getting out that I was losing my touch. My field was niche, but no one was going to pay me if I couldn't do the job. My reputation was what won me work. And reputations could be tanked easily. Of course, Yoshi could rat me out, too. But Lizzie trusted him, so I could at least give him a shot. Because he was here, and available, and I was rapidly running out of time. So, I'd give him a trial and then lock him down with a confidentiality agreement.
He had seemed eager last night. I hoped it was "I'm not going to screw up a gig" eager rather than "poking around in the TechWitch's systems will be a good story at the game clubs" eager.
I nodded at the comp panel at the wall. "Did Lizzie tell you I don't have an office right now? So this is my home system. Used to be my office system, so it's solid and has more grunt than your average bear. I've set you up an account. We just need to verify."
"Chill." Yoshi slurped soda, then went to the control panel on the wall and put his palm on the glass. I stayed quiet while the computer ran through its security routines, adding his voice and palm prints to the system.
His access was locked down tight, I'd made sure of that, but it still made me nervous to let a virtual—no pun intended—stranger into my system.
Something I needed to get over fast given I was about to drop the kid in the deep end. I'd considered dummying up something to test him with, but I didn't really have time with Damon's deadline ticking away.
I'd already spent more time analyzing the data in my logs this morning before Yoshi arrived. Unsurprisingly, I'd found nothing. My system still insisted it hadn't sent anything to Riley Arts since the day I'd submitted my final invoice—for the amount they'd already paid me a few weeks after Nat's funeral.
So whoever was sending those damn messages to Damon had either done an immaculate job of hiding their hack job, or they were spoofing my system elsewhere.
Hopefully Yoshi could confirm the first option by finding the sucker. If my system had been cloned at some point, that would be harder still to figure out. My security had always been as tight as I could make it. For someone to clone it meant skills of the very-expensive-pay-grade hacker. The black hat kind. Nothing I wanted to tangle with.
So I was clinging to the hope that I’d missed something and Yoshi could find it. Right after I made him sign a nondisclosure agreement. I'd stolen a lot of the content of that agreement from the one Damon had made me sign, so I was fairly certain it was watertight.
Once Yoshi signed, I explained the problem. At the first mention of Riley Arts, Yoshi's eyes lit up. I'd been hoping he wouldn't be a worshipper at the cult of Righteous, but I'd known the chances were slim given he was a deck jockey.
"You want me to find out if your system is sending messages to Righteous?" He was actually bouncing in place, rising up and down on his toes, reminding me just how young he was.
"I want you to try," I said gently. "It's not going to be easy. I've already gone over everything several times and found nothing." I braced myself for what would likely be the inevitable next question if he was a true game freak. Aka how did I know Damon Riley well enough to be sending him email in the first place?
Yoshi went still, expression turning serious. "If there's something there to find, I'll find it."
Ah, to be young and supremely confident again. But his lack of nosiness—or at least his restraint if he was feeling nosy—was a definite point in his favor.
"We'll see."
He just shrugged at me and pulled a terminal deck out of his backpack. "Do you mind if I use this?"
Given the alternative was him using the screen and keyboard in my makeshift office or doing everything verbally, I didn't. But I made him hand the deck over and ran it through my security scans before I let him connect. No red flags, so I gave him access and tried not to let my discomfort with him poking around my system show.
I busied myself making another cup of syncaf and rummaging in the cabinets for snacks while Yoshi logged himself in and set to work. The screen on the wall showed me what he was doing, but I figured watching over his shoulder wasn't going to be helpful for either of us. I needed to know if he could do it on his own.
I put a plate of food in front of him—if Yoshi was sailing close to the wind financially, the least I could do was feed him while he helped me out.
Judging by the speed at which the food started disappearing, I'd been right about his appetite. I left him alone to fuel up and get to work and curled up on the sofa with Cassandra's book. Lizzie was still asleep. I didn't want to wake her. Sleep would help her heal. And if she was sleeping, she couldn't nag me into more magic practice. Still, even without nagging, I needed to read up.
I shot a glance at Yoshi, intent on his deck. How much did he know about Lizzie? I'd asked her, and she'd said he wasn't a witch as far as she knew, but I hadn't thought to ask what he knew about her and that part of her life. Not that magic was high on my list of topics I planned to talk to him about. It shouldn't come up if this all went smoothly.
Ian and Cassandra and Radha had given me another version of the "you need protection until you get your powers back" speech before they'd let us go last night. Cassandra had added something to whatever it was Lizzie's bracelet did. Lizzie, in turn, had refused to go to bed until I found the black tourmaline and amethyst pendant Cassandra had given me when I'd first found out I had powers. I'd stopped wearing it after Nat died, but I hadn't thrown it away.
I was sure if they'd known I'd lost my magic, they would have insisted on it before now. But the possibility obviously had never occurred to any of them. Which made sense. All four of them were deep in the magic world. You didn't become one of the Cestis by being half-assed about magic and power and all the benefits and dangers that came with it. Not that I had any idea how you did become a member of the Cestis. They certainly hadn't replaced Antony yet, which suggested there weren't that many suitable candidates around.
They were clearly shorthanded if Cassandra thought even someone as clueless-newbie as me would ease their load. As much as I wanted to pretend otherwise, I owed them. So I would do my homework so I might have some idea what to do if my magic came back.
"Have you played the new game yet?" Yoshi asked after about an hour of him typing away at the speed of light and me switching between reading about magic and trying to figure out some different approaches for my client's problem when I got too freaked out.
"Game?" I was deep in an inventory selection subroutine, not really paying attention.
"Archangel."
My head jerked up. Crap. Had he seen that stupid ad? "I don't game." I hoped my tone would make "let's not go there" perfectly clear.
He frowned. "But you worked on that project, yeah?"
Either he was crap at reading my tone or he was curious enough not to worry about annoying me.
I frowned, wondering how the hell he'd learned that I had worked on Archangel. I hadn't seen a mention of my name in any article about the game in the weeks after the recall. Not that many people at Riley Arts had known what I was doing there. Clearly someone had talked though. Maybe I should report that to Damon. Give his security team something to worry about other than me. "I did some consulting for Riley last year. I wasn't there to play games."
"So you never played it at all?"
I sighed. Gamers were all the same where Righteous was concerned. Endlessly eager for any intel they could gather. Any tiny inside tidbit was to be treasured. But if Yoshi was going to work for me, he had to learn the rules. "I saw a couple of snippets of early versions. And I signed an NDA that makes that one I just got you to sign look puny, so let's not talk about it. Have you found anything yet?"
Those pale eyes blinked, then narrowed. I got the feeling he was making a mental note to read his NDA more carefully. He should have thought of that before he signed. But I hadn't tied him up in any legalese that was anything I wouldn't have signed myself. I had signed it—or versions of it—many times. But I'd vetted first. Yoshi was young, but if he was running his own business, he needed to learn to look after himself.
"Not so far. It's all clean."
Which could either mean he wasn't as good as he thought or that there really was nothing to find. I needed to know which before I made any more decisions. I switched seats to sit beside him. "Tell me what you've tried."
Twenty minutes later, I had my answer. Yoshi knew his stuff. He'd come up with a few things I hadn't thought of and created a genius sniffer program on the fly that I would have been happy to call my own. That didn't change the fact that we'd still come up blank. I chewed my lip as I stared at Yoshi's deck, trying to figure out yet another angle. Problem was, we'd already done the full three hundred and sixty degrees and were right back where we started.
With a big ball of nothing.
"There's just not anything here," Yoshi said after we'd rerun his program for the third time.
"Tell me something I don't know."
"You're looking in the wrong place."
"Pardon?"
He waved a hand at his deck. "There's nothing here. But these messages that have Righteous all jacked up are coming from somewhere, right?"
That had been the obvious option B. Someone was cloning my system somehow. "Right. Which only leaves us with several billion possible suspects."
"Nah," Yoshi said. "Make like that old detective dude. You know, Sherlock Holmes." He snapped his fingers. "Consider the impossible. What's the least likely place you can think of for those messages to come from, apart from here?"
My heart sank. I knew exactly where his train of thought was headed, and I didn't like it one little bit. "Righteous."