Part-Time Gods

by Rachel Aaron

  There was a horrified silence. “You drove my car?”

  “It’s still in one piece!” I assured him. “I parked it at the back of your lot far away from other cars.”

  “Thanks,” he muttered, clearly trying to sound gracious. Trying and failing. “Is the transmission on the ground?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, refusing to take offense. If the only thing Nik freaked out about in this was his car, that was fine with me. “It made some grinding sounds, but I don’t think any permanent damage was done. You can go out and check if you want.”

  “I will later,” he said. “I haven’t actually managed to get off the couch yet. Every time I stand up, I get so dizzy I go right back down.”

  I winced. “I’m really sorry about that.”

  “Better dizzy than dead,” he said. “But how long does this usually last?”

  “It varies from person to person, but it should pass quickly now that you’re awake.” I frowned, trying to remember all the tricks I’d developed my first year of grad school when I’d been making my final, hardest push to not suck and was backlashing myself nearly every day as a result. “Eat something salty. That usually works for me.”

  “I don’t even want to think about food right now,” Nik said, sounding queasy. “Is this how you feel every time?”

  I’d never had backlash like Nik was experiencing now, but I didn’t think that would be helpful information. “It’ll pass,” I said instead. “Just take it easy, get your electrolytes, and you’ll be fine.”

  There was a long silence. I was wondering if he’d fallen asleep on me when Nik suddenly spoke.

  “We need to talk.”

  I cringed. Nothing good ever came from those words. “Why?”

  “That’s part of what we need to talk about,” he replied cryptically. “Can you come over? I’d go to you, but I can’t stand up right now.”

  “Sure,” I said, trying not to sound like I was bracing for a firing squad. “I’ll be right there.”

  He hung up, and I hauled myself out of bed, not even bothering to look at my burned, bloody skirt and bra-turned-shirt before I threw them both into the trash. My underwear followed, and then I walked into my bathroom to clean up, hoping against hope there was something left in my apartment that I could wear.

  ***

  There was not.

  Thanks to yesterday’s zeal for experimentation, the only clothes I had left were the ones I’d worn to Clean the slug shop yesterday. They didn’t look too bad thanks to the invisible nature of the slime, but the slug guts had hardened overnight, leaving the fabric stiff as cardboard. Fortunately for me, I lived in the DFZ. I wasn’t quite bold enough to stroll down to the corner store in the buff, but I could throw on a blanket and scuttle to the row of vending machines just down the hall from my door.

  I didn’t live in one of the supercomplexes, so my selection was limited, but there were still machines selling at least one of every sort of home good, toiletry, and basic sundry you could need, including clothes. It was all single-wear garbage that was barely thicker than toilet paper, but it was clean and, more importantly, it was what I had. The styling was very “I’m a sixteen-year-old girl sneaking out to go clubbing,” but I actually preferred that to my mom’s conservative couture. At least I didn’t look boring in my new glittery skin-tight leggings and slashed up, asymmetrical T-shirt for a band I’d never heard of, and I was able to scrape the slug grime off my Cleaning boots, which meant my feet wouldn’t get tortured again. That was as good as I could ask, so I grabbed my shoulder bag and ordered up my subscription car for the day.

  While I waited for it to arrive, I noticed Sibyl was still on mute. I took her off at once, apology already on my lips for forgetting her. When her speaker came back on line, though, the first words over my earpiece were, “Do you have your potato?”

  I blinked in surprise. “How do you know about that? I thought you were off-line.”

  “I was off-line,” she said smugly. “But your phone and goggles were still on your person. I keep both of them recording by default just in case I miss something. Good thing, too. They caught the whole night for me. I’ve been parsing the tape for you while you slept, and I’ve got some great links about regulating draw that you should—”

  “Wait, you’ve been recording me this whole time?” I cried. “Sibyl!”

  “What?” she said. “I’m your AI! My programming requires me to keep up with everything that goes on in your life. And I would have asked, but you muted me before I could reload myself from the cloud!”

  I ran a hand over my face. I supposed it was too much to expect privacy from an AI who read my thoughts whenever possible, but I still felt invaded. Not that I’d said anything to Dr. Kowalski I didn’t want Sibyl to hear, but it had still been a deeply personal experience, like a therapy session. And anyway, who liked discovering they’d been secretly recorded?

  “Isn’t this against your EULA?”

  “I don’t know,” Sibyl said innocently. “Did you read my EULA?”

  We both knew I hadn’t, and I looked away with a huff.

  “I did it for you, you know,” she said. “I was worried someone would take advantage of you during your time of emotional vulnerability. But I ran your whole conversation with Dr. Kowalski through four psychology analysis programs, and they all agree that you had a breakthrough! That’s fantastic, Opal!”

  “I also met a god,” I said casually. “That was pretty intense.”

  “You met a god last week, too,” Sibyl reminded me. “But who cares about that? This is progress on your magic! Your inability to cast has been your number-one source of negative self-image for years. Improvements here could be huge for your emotional well-being!”

  I did feel a lot better. I was still short of the eight hours of rest the doctor had ordered, but now that I was awake and moving around, I’d noticed my magic was aching again. You wouldn’t think I’d welcome the return of pain, but after feeling that terrifying nothing last night, the throbbing felt like a blessing. It meant my soul had reconnected, just as Dr. Kowalski had said. I definitely didn’t want to try moving magic, potato-sized or otherwise, anytime soon, but I was more hopeful than I’d felt in years, maybe ever. That was not to be discounted, but excited as I was, I had bigger problems right now.

  “What’s bigger than your magic?” Sibyl asked.

  I didn’t know, which was one of the problems. I’d thought I was saved when Nik had said he didn’t remember, but you didn’t wake someone up and ask them to drive across town to chat about nothing. Granted, most guys who dumped me did so without bothering to invite me over, and Nik wasn’t even supposed to remember all the stuff that would lead us down the doom path, but I’d never had a “We need to talk” that had ended well for me, and that was a problem. The DFZ’s offer notwithstanding, I was still set on using the gold-market trick to get around my dad’s curse. I actually already had a plan to ramp us up to the kind of money I needed to hit my dad’s deadline, but it required Nik to work. If this talk went the way all my others had, I might be crawling back to the DFZ this afternoon.

  But while I was definitely worried about money, my true fears were much simpler. I didn’t want things to blow up because I liked Nik. I hadn’t realized it until after he’d kissed me and thrown everything into chaos, but I’d come to rely on him for a lot more than just work. For example, Peter should have been the one I asked to come with me to the Night Lot. He was the mage, and experimenting with my curse had been his idea to begin with. He was the obvious choice, but I hadn’t even considered asking him to help. I’d gone straight for Nik and guilted him into coming instead. He was the one I trusted, the one I turned to. I’d never had that with a guy before, and if I’d screwed everything up because of one stupid drunken kiss, I was going to be so freaking mad.

  But there was no way to know without talking to him, so I sat nervously on the edge of the subscription car’s cheap seat, staring out the window at the passing c
ity until it turned into the drop-off zone for Nik’s building.

  I got out slowly, tugging at my cheap clothes in an effort to make them look less like I’d pulled them out of a plastic tube. When my teeny-bopper ensemble was as decent as I could manage, I tromped down the stairs to his basement apartment.

  Since Nik tended to answer his door with a gun, I’d made a policy of announcing myself. I did so this time out of habit, knocking on the metal door as I called out, “It’s me.”

  There was a soft shuffle inside, and then the door opened a crack, but I didn’t see Nik. My first paranoid thought was that he was avoiding me, then I spotted him lying on the couch, one long leg stretched out to open the door handle with his bare foot.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, covering his eyes with his hand. “I can’t get up.”

  “Oh my god,” I said, rushing inside. “Have you been there the whole time?”

  “Not the whole time,” Nik said, adding his other hand so he could grind his eyeballs with both palms at once. “I took a shower after I called you, but standing made me dizzy, so I laid back down.”

  That explained why his short black hair looked wet. “You could have moved to the bed, though,” I said, glancing at his legs propped up on the couch arm. “You’d fit better.”

  He shook his head. “If I lay down in bed, I’d just have to get up again when you arrived. This was easier.”

  “I could have talked to you there,” I argued, biting my lip. “Seriously, you look terrible. Can I help you with anything? Do you need food or water or…”

  “Some water would be good.”

  I nodded and grabbed the glass I’d given him last night off the floor. By the time I’d filled it and come back, Nik had managed to push himself into a sitting position. He drank three cups of water in rapid succession and then flopped back against the ugly cushions with a sigh. “Maybe having a couch isn’t so bad after all.”

  If things had been normal, this was where I would have said “I told you so,” but all I could think of now was him telling me last night that he’d kept the couch because I’d asked him to, so I said nothing. Instead, I grabbed the folding chair by the wall—which I’d come to think of as my folding chair—and brought it over. It wasn’t really necessary, but if we were going to have A Talk, I wanted to be sitting down for it.

  “Do you need anything else?” I asked hopefully.

  Nik shook his head and pushed himself up again, but he didn’t look at me. He just sat there staring at his hands, one human, one articulated metal. Both were clenched, digging in my certainty that this was going to be bad.

  “We need to talk about last night.”

  I’d known it was coming, but hearing it still made my stomach drop. “Okay,” I said, trying not to let my voice shake. “What do you—”

  “I owe you an apology,” Nik interrupted, speaking quickly and clearly, as if he’d rehearsed this. “I told you I didn’t want to go to Rentfree, but I didn’t tell you the real reason why. That was my bad judgment, and it almost got you killed. I didn’t know the attack on the roof was coming, but I knew there was bound to be something. I should have warned you, but I thought I could handle it. Obviously, I was wrong. This whole thing was my fault, and I’m sorry.”

  Nik looked at me then as if he expected me to hit him, but I was sitting with my jaw open. “Wait,” I said at last, barely believing my ears. “That’s what you called me here for? To apologize about what happened on the roof?”

  Nik scowled. “What else would there be?”

  “Nothing,” I said. Way too fast, but I couldn’t help it. I was just so relieved he’d wanted to talk about the fighting and not the kissing, which told me something about my screwed-up priorities. Still, it was such a relief to see that he really, honestly didn’t remember. For once in my life, the worst hadn’t happened. I hadn’t screwed everything up, and it felt so much like a miracle, I actually started to laugh.

  “What are you doing?” Nik demanded as I collapsed into giggles.

  “Nothing,” I gasped, waving my hands at him. “It’s nothing, really. Please don’t mind me, and don’t worry about what happened on the deck. It really wasn’t a big deal.”

  Now it was Nik’s turn to gape at me. “Not a big deal?” he repeated, gray eyes wide. “Opal, we got jumped by four guys with full cyber. You were nearly shot in the back so they could get to me. This is not a small thing! I still don’t completely understand how we got out alive. Look.”

  He lurched sideways to grab the armored leather jacket I’d been wearing last night off the arm of the couch. “There’s blood all over the shoulder here.” He held out the coat so I could see. “It’s not mine, so unless you got it near one of the guys I shot, it has to be yours. You got hurt because of me, and then you had to rescue me from my own mess, and I don’t even know what happened!”

  The almost-panic crept back into his voice as he spoke, snapping me out of my stupid giggle fit. “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” I said, calmly now. “First of all, that is my blood on your coat, but it’s not because you got me hurt. I did that to myself, but I’ll pay for all the dry cleaning—”

  “I don’t care about the dry cleaning!” Nik yelled, clutching the jacket as he looked me over, clearly searching for hidden bandages. “How bad were you hurt?”

  “Not as bad as you were,” I said, setting my jaw stubbornly. “And again, it was my fault. I was the idiot who was too busy gawking at what was in front of her to watch her back. I got grabbed, and then I got all pissed off and blasted the roof with way too much magic. It was prideful and shortsighted, and while it did get us out, it’s a miracle I didn’t cook your brains. Really, you should be yelling at me. You were handling things just fine until I messed you up.”

  “You shouldn’t have been in that situation to begin with,” Nik said, seething. “I never should have gone with you to Rentfree. You would have been fine on your own. Tourists go to the Night Lot all the time. Me being there just complicated things, but I didn’t want to let you—” He cut off, snapping his mouth shut as if he’d just realized what he was about to say. “I didn’t want to say no when you asked me for help,” he finished carefully. “But I should have. As you saw, Rentfree and me don’t mix.”

  “Why not?”

  Nik flinched at the question, and I started to scramble. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want! I was just curious.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, slumping back into the cushions again. “You faced a gun for it, so you deserve to know.” He took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes. “You’ve probably guessed I did some…questionable things before I became a Cleaner.”

  I shrugged. “Being a Cleaner’s pretty questionable by itself.”

  “Not like this.”

  He said that like he expected me to gasp and faint, and I rolled my eyes. “Nik,” I said, frustrated. “I grew up in a dragon’s household. I discovered a dead body in an apartment just last week. I’m not a fragile flower.” I pointed at his false right arm. “I know you don’t get cyberware like that from an office job, but whatever you did in the past, I’m the last person in the world who’s going to jump down your throat about it now. People do what they’ve gotta do, and you’ve done more for me than anyone. It’s okay. You can tell me. I mean, were you in a gang or—”

  “Not in a gang,” he said, shaking his head. “But I did work for several. I worked for everyone. I was a freelancer. I did whatever people paid me to do, mostly in Rentfree.”

  That explained Maggie’s interest when he showed up, but, “Why Rentfree?” I asked. “It’s the definition of ‘low rent.’ Doesn’t seem like a good place to look for work.”

  Nik shrugged. “It was good for the sort of work I did, and it was familiar. I grew up there.”

  He spat that last bit out like a pulled tooth, but I sat straight up in my chair. “Wait, really? You grew up in Rentfree?”

  That was clearly not the response he’d expected. “Yeah,” he said, lo
oking at me warily. “You don’t think that’s scary?”

  “It’s rough, sure,” I said excitedly. “But Rentfree’s always in the movies, and it looks damn cool with the bridges and the crazy stacked buildings and everything moving all the time. So did you live in that insane pit area with all the electrical wires or…”

  I trailed off, eyes going wide. Crap. Craaaaap. I was being a total tourist. Nik had just told me he’d grown up in the poorest part of the Underground, a place that was famous for murder, drug use, and gangs, and I’d responded by talking about how cool it looked. Talk about insensitive.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, covering my face with my hands. “Let me try that again.”

  “It’s okay,” Nik said quickly. “I prefer the way you talk about it. I’ve always thought of Rentfree as a cesspool. It’s the bottom of the DFZ, the place where all the trash settles.” His lips pressed into a flat line. “I fit right in.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You didn’t know me back then,” Nik said darkly. “Trust me, I was right at home. I did whatever work people needed, didn’t matter how dirty. Hits, robberies, drive-bys, arson, kidnapping, it was all game. I had no limits so long as people had cash, and as you saw from Maggie, there’s always work to be had if you don’t care what you’re doing.”

  I nodded slowly, trying to imagine it. Then I remembered something. “Wait, does that mean you did kill that guy’s brother?”

  Nik shrugged. “Maybe? I honestly don’t remember. I’ve killed a lot of people, and I was on a lot of drugs back then. It all kind of runs together.”

  He said this like a confession, but I was more shocked than anything else. Nik was so disciplined and together, I couldn’t imagine him as a druggie. That would explain the liver scrubber, though. I’d known plenty of addicts during my trust-fund-kid days, and the ones who got clean tended to be super hardcore about staying that way. A device that automatically scrubbed intoxicants out of your system sounded like it would be a real help in that fight, but it was still so strange. I just couldn’t see the Nik I knew getting involved with anything that messy.