Limitless Evolution As a Snake

By midnight, I had rescued three strangers, ruined a gala and agreed to retrieve nine more people before breakfast, which was a terrible return on a date. Bridget found an empty dressing room beside the deserted rehearsal stage where I could complain without an officer asking whether the complaint belonged in my statement.

She put a bowl of warm water beside the mirror and cleaned icing, dust and somebody else’s sauce from my scales. Her fingers avoided the scrape with care that made my usual jokes feel inadequate, although the rest of me remained very interested in finding excuses for her to continue.

”The invitation promised a live demonstration before dessert, so technically your cousin delivered more than most event planners,” I said. She pressed a clean cloth against the scrape and warned me that defending Adrian was an excellent way to lose the gentler part of her care.

[System: Ask her for a proper date, ya mug; she’s giving you the gentle treatment, and you’re reviewing the fucking buffet like a pensioner with a discount voucher.]

When the drunk koala in my head had better manners than I did, it was probably time to listen. I let Bridget finish tending the scrape instead of offering another review of the buffet.

I was getting there before the beer-soaked relationship counsellor started heckling from his discount pub furniture. Bridget sat close enough for one wing to rest along the back of my coils, and the room became pleasantly difficult to leave despite everything waiting outside it.

She asked whether I’d still attend if she’d invited me somewhere quiet. ”I’d complain about the lack of witnesses, then make a serious effort to keep you occupied,” I told her, which sounded much better before her smile made me consider every possible interpretation.

Her lips find the spot beside my mouth instead of on it. No crowd this time. She stays close after, close enough that her breath ghosts against my jaw. She asks what I want, now that the people from the Drop Off are safe.

”I want a night you didn’t spend planning around my bruises,” I say. ”Just time. Enough to find out what makes you laugh when nobody’s dying in the background.”

She goes quiet, like she expected something simpler. ”That’s it?” she says. ”No yacht? No diamond-encrusted throne shaped like your own head?”

”Give me a week. I’m still workshopping the throne.” That gets a laugh out of her, small and surprised, like it snuck past security.

It’s the best sound I’ve heard all night, better than the applause from the crowd two blocks back, better than anything Old Mate’s ever congratulated me with.

I don’t wait for her to say anything else. I lean in, tuck my face into the curve of her neck, and breathe her in like she’s the only air left in Ami City. Rain on concrete, and under that, something soft and floral, orange blossom maybe, warmed by her skin until it’s less a smell and more a fact about her I’ve filed away permanently.

My snout find’s her throat and I nibble, light, careful, mindful of teeth that aren’t built for gentle. She shivers under it, a small sound catching low in her throat that goes through me like static.

The smoke comes off my coil’s before I tell it to. Tendrils curl loose and slow, drifting on instinct older than thought. One wraps around her, testing, and presses the barest squeeze against her collarbone.

Her breath catches. The whole world shrinks down to that one point of contact, her skin warm under smoke that has no business carrying warmth and somehow does anyway. My control slips a fraction, a low sound building in my throat before I choke it back down like a kid caught with his hand in the biscuit tin.

I pull back fast enough my neck cracks. The smoke scatters, guilty, like it got caught red-handed. I swat at it out of habit, like I can slap my own bad decisions back into their box.

”Shh,” I mutter, half to the smoke, half to her. ”Later.”

”Later,” she says, testing the word, holding it up to the light like she’s checking for scratches.

She’s got a look on her face, half amused, half something I don’t have a word for, like she’s cataloguing every dumb thing I just did and deciding to keep it anyway. Her hand comes up, thumb brushing along my jaw, tracing the ridge where skin gives way to scale like it doesn’t bother her at all.

Bridget claimed the choice of venue, saying she wanted decent food and my full attention. I promised both, then regretted asking whether the second course came with her looking at me like that. We stayed there for another moment before Iona knocked, returning the rest of the night to the usual level of inconvenience.

The medic had drawn a route to the frontier camp on the back of a catering sheet. Nine workers remained in the holding area beside its cold store, including her brother, and the first transport was expected to leave shortly after sunrise.

They had been hired to maintain equipment and move supplies, then told their wages belonged to the militia as repayment for protection. Refusing the deduction made them troublemakers, and trying to leave made them stolen labour, which sounded like a business model designed by somebody who collected chains.

”I own a casino, and even we let people discover they’ve lost their money before asking them to leave,” I said. Iona replied that she’d prefer her brother back before we compared customer service, immediately earning the right to complain about me at breakfast.

Old Mate offered Deliver No One As Cargo, a mission worth 1,500 EXP for getting those nine workers out and into independent safety. Opening a door without arranging somewhere to go wouldn’t count, which was irritatingly close to the lesson Nessa’s closed food row had already provided.

[System: Nine people need somewhere safe to land, champ; you can’t dump them beside a fucking cactus and call that a successful delivery, even if the tracking app says otherwise.]

Find me a mission called Mind Your Own Business next time, because I’d like to see whether the rewards include sleep. I accepted while Bridget asked Iona about shelter, food and who could receive people without reporting their arrival to Rusk.

A quarry settlement beyond the eastern checkpoint had an independent medical shelter and enough room for the workers. Iona knew its staff, so she called them while Bridget arranged a utility vehicle through a hire company her cousin didn’t own.

Lukas entered carrying four packed meals and wearing the pleased expression of a man who had successfully robbed an event without leaving the ground. Iona checked his ribs before agreeing he could drive and help from cover, making him repeat the part about not hanging from anything.

”You’re taking away most of my personality, but I suppose I can replace it with talking,” he said. ”You’ve been overqualified for that position since we met, and the salary remains terrible,” I told him before accepting the meal he’d kept for me.

Rook met us beside the service exit after taking the initial statements. She could pass the reports to the frontier liaison, but her authority over city traffic didn’t let her command a militia checkpoint, and waiting for the right office wouldn’t hold a dawn convoy.

She told us which public road remained open and warned that the Brass Banner included people who genuinely kept beasts away from settlements. I would have preferred a uniform that clearly labelled every bastard, but apparently the city had spent that budget on flying regulations.

I called Lyra through the phone inside my body before we left. She stayed in the casino office with Cherry, listened to the short version and asked whether I needed my father’s people, which would have made the whole trip considerably less like my decision.

”My father already runs a mafia, and uncles Hansen and Harden have supplied enough family nonsense for one lifetime,” I said. ”I’m taking a spider, a fairy and somebody who knows where we’re going, so we’ve almost assembled one sensible adult.”

Cherry told me to send a message when we reached the boundary, then stole the call long enough to warn Bridget against letting me name their rescue vehicle. I was considering several excellent names when Iona checked the road status and stopped drawing.

The route to the camp had been marked closed since yesterday afternoon, with a warning about an active beast containment operation. Rusk had scheduled the workers’ departure through it anyway, and the transport permit described every passenger as material that could be replaced.