Limitless Evolution As a Snake

I got back to Twawi with a medical dressing, a bag of dinner and the uncomfortable knowledge that the bag was the only part of the visit I had organised properly. The journey took the rest of the afternoon, including a taxi driver who charged extra after recognising me.

Bridget stayed in Ami to deal with her family and the statements Hollis needed. I told her I would call when I arrived, kissed her hand before leaving and promised that the next invitation I accepted would involve fewer weapons than the last one.

”A shooting range has fewer weapons than that evening, Matthew,” she said, pressing a fresh dressing over the scrape. ”Then I’ll book somewhere that only injures my bank account, love, because apparently I’ve been dating on the wrong difficulty.”

Lukas came down in the taxi with me because Iona had finally persuaded him that recovery needed somewhere quieter than a frontier loading yard. He spent the trip explaining that the casino hotel was ideal for keeping a low profile, which should have warned me immediately.

Cherry reached the private lift before I could work out how to make an impressive entrance without dropping the food. She wrapped her arms around my upper coils, caught sight of the dressing and loosened her grip so quickly that I wished I had warned her sooner.

”It’s a scrape, sweetheart, and I have brought enough dinner to make discussing it a terrible use of our evening,” I told her. She kissed the side of my head anyway, then called me an idiot softly enough that I couldn’t pretend it was only teasing.

Lyra waited inside the penthouse with the expression she used when somebody had hidden a business expense beneath an unhelpful label. I offered the food first, but she moved it aside and put both hands against my scales before asking where it hurt.

I told her the truth about the burns and the knife, leaving the ugly parts of the pump-house for a conversation that didn’t begin in the doorway. She checked the dressing, kissed the uninjured patch beside it and said I was staying long enough to let somebody else be useful.

[System: There you go, mate, a revolutionary new concept called coming home before your girlfriends have to file a missing idiot report. Try not to turn it into a bloody side quest.]

Put a countdown over dinner and I’ll tell the girls you’re the reason I never shut up. I settled between the women while Desmond replaced the takeaway containers with actual plates, treating my return like an inconvenient but welcome change to the evening’s arrangements.

I asked about the casino instead of making them listen to another hour of my adventures. Lyra described a supplier dispute she had already settled, and Cherry told me about a customer who had tried to claim his lucky trousers as a business deduction.

Neither story required me to arrive with a weapon and rescue the operation. I listened, laughed at the trousers and felt something in my chest loosen when Cherry started leaning against me without checking whether I was about to leave again.

”You’ve both been doing brilliantly, love, and I know that doesn’t make waiting for me less annoying,” I said. ”Give me an arrival time I can trust,” Lyra said. ”I can buy dinner, Matt, but I can’t keep wondering whether somebody’s bringing you home in the bag.”

We agreed on calls I could actually keep and a return message whenever a journey changed. It was a small arrangement, which made it harder to dress up as something impressive, but Cherry looked pleased enough that I stopped trying.

After dinner, Lukas called from the guest floor asking whether the hotel supplied extra pillows. I went down with a stack balanced in my coils because doing one ordinary favour sounded almost suspiciously easy after the week I had been having.

His door opened before I knocked, and an adult woman in a silk robe looked me over with the relaxed confidence of somebody who had already decided the evening was going well. Another woman sat beside Lukas on the sofa, helping him arrange a cushion beneath his sore ribs.

He was holding a glass of water and wearing the expression of a man caught somewhere between a medical appointment and a very successful accident. Both women were old enough to have grown children, and one was explaining that her daughter had married somebody much less entertaining.

”All right, mate, each to their own, although I was expecting your recovery plan to involve fewer attractive mums and considerably more sleep,” I said. Lukas tried to introduce everyone at once while the woman at the door took the pillows from my coils.

Their names were Bea and Miri, and they ran a small transport company together. They had met Lukas over dinner, liked his terrible stories and invited themselves to help him rest, which they explained clearly enough that I didn’t need to invent a rescue mission for him.

Bea tapped his water glass and told me they knew about the ribs. Miri said nobody was hanging him from a ceiling, then added that the evening was still young, making Lukas cough hard enough to regret every decision that had led to the conversation.

[System: The lad went out for dinner and came back with two transport directors, mate; those ribs are about to receive very thorough load management.]

Let him enjoy himself before you ask whether they offer freight insurance.”Enjoy your very complicated physiotherapy, champ, and call if you need an ambulance rather than another pillow,” I told him through the closing door.

Back upstairs, Cherry listened to the story with delighted disbelief while Lyra checked that Lukas actually had his medication. Then she closed the account book beside her, moved my phone calls to the category of tomorrow’s problems and asked whether I had any other errands.

I told her I was finished, meaning it for once. Cherry locked the private door while Lyra set my bag out of reach. ”Come here, Matt, because if you mention another emergency, you’ll be explaining to both of us why it deserves your attention more than we do.”