Rai was trying to approach things in a practical manner. It started off well. They reached the city just as it got dark, though of course in the busy heart of Central, that meant lights were coming on. The Interstate patrol car dropped them at the front doors of Mainline Metropolitan Police HQ, and Sao chose to wait outside while Rai took the box in. He tossed Rose’s notebook on top. He had hammered out a brief report on her involvement with his phone, on the drive over, so the notebook had a case to be filed under. But the flat-faced archive room receptionist swept the pile in over the counter without even checking the inventory.

Rai gave him a light gnawing on. He could see - remember, even - how unexciting the contents were at first glance. Maybe he should have gone lighter.

Rai attributed his next mistake in the elevator to force of habit. He automatically pressed the button for the parking lot and it was only after stepping out into the stuffy concrete sublevel that he realized he didn’t have a car anymore. He’d have to take the bus.

The bus wasn’t a big deal; Sao took buses everywhere and said all routes wound up near the office. It truly wasn’t a big deal — but he felt inexplicably insulted at the sight of all the other cars, unblemished and snug in their spaces. Parking was always at a premium at HQ, but not tonight, of all nights. Free spaces made up half the lot.

It wasn’t personal, only felt like it.

His next mistake followed almost immediately. The ground floor was crawling with people - visitors, sightseers, cops, cleaners. He didn’t see Sao and wondered if he had already left. Unlikely, since he said he’d wait. Rai’s first impulse put him in a stranglehold of fear - but he remembered where they were, and began itching with irritation. What reason would Sao have to wander?

And he remembered where he was, again. He could just pick up the phone and call.

“I’m across the road.” Sao sounded disoriented, like he didn’t believe it was Rai on the other end.

Sao was sitting on one of the uncomfortable cement benches, crossed arms holding the Faerietale Omnibus to his chest, his chin propped on the upper edge. The harsh white street lamps, on top of the fluorescent glow beaming out from the glass facade of HQ, washed him out. The glare brought out the wrinkles and blood on his clothes, the matting in his hair, the roughness of the scars mapping his face. It occurred to Rai that Sao probably felt he wasn’t presentable enough to appear in HQ.

But he’d held up. To be honest, he held up well.

“You held up well.”

“What was that?” Lazy eyelids struggled to raise.

Rai looked away, down the road, at the seemingly infinite line of lampposts. Nights in Central were black and blue, like a bruise. He had a lot to do. “Mission accomplished. I’ll get the report done sometime tonight, but everything else has been turned in.”

Sao nodded and stretched, and lurched uncertainly to his feet. “The book,” he said, holding it up as if he’d never seen it before. “I didn’t think - but it’s a murder weapon, isn’t it? Should we have turned it in?”

“If you want, drop it off tomorrow. The archive guy tonight’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.” Although, tools had a habit of becoming very sharp and sparklingly willing when Sao crossed their path. Did it exhaust Sao as much as it did Rai? “Are you heading home?”

Sao tilted his head. “I was thinking of going for a walk. I feel I need to… readjust. Typical after a vacation, I think.”

“Sounds about right. I mean, don’t take a lot of them.”

“I know.” Sao put the book under his arm. “In the mood to join?”

—

They walked in silence, melting easily into the flow of the crowd, and started down the lighted promenade. The bridge that led to the southern district, where Rai lived and worked, blinked red and yellow like a circus tent in the distance above the waterway. The waxing moon, crackled yet somehow still radiant white, smiled down at them with a coolness that, to Rai’s wandering mind, resembled Sao. Night in Central was absurdly benevolent in comparison to the greenish fog-laden darkness that besieged Temperance when the sun set.

The promenade was busy. There were couples, kids, old guys playing checkers. Runners and bikers. Everyone and their secrets and thoughts contained, unseen, in their own little bubbles.

Rai checked his voicemail as he followed Sao to wherever his need for ‘readjustment’ was leading him. There were only nine messages. So his presence hadn’t been particularly missed (especially considering three of the nine were spam), but catching up would be easy, at least. Four messages were from the restaurant. The recorded voice got snootier with each reminder, until he was sure the caller was talking out of their nose instead of their mouth. He wasn’t getting his deposit back.

It had been a decent chunk of cash. Practically a scam. But then, no-shows were exactly why restaurants had that kind of thing in place. Rai thought of calling them back, making his case. Dinner service would be going on right now, he might be able to grab a last-minute table if he came on strong enough. 

It had been a matter of life and death. Some of those deaths had probably hit the news by now.

Then it would be the two of them, bed-headed and bloodstained, sitting down for a bespoke five-course meal. The damn book would take up half the table. Not the celebration he had been hoping for. Rai smiled and put his phone in his pocket.

“Feeling better?” Sao asked as Rai came up beside him. “I’m sorry about the car.”

“Don’t be. That thing was getting dangerous to drive, and too expensive to fix. Cherry saved me the cost of scrapping it myself.” Rai didn’t like how Sao accepted that silently. As if he agreed. “At the same time, it’s like a kind of phantom limb. Weird to think I’ll never sit in it again. Probably never see it again unless they call me to court over… all that. And even there it won’t be the same.”

“Was it your first?”

Sao put forth the question so breezily; like asking about a first job, house, girlfriend or kid. This attitude sat a little better with Rai. Sao hadn’t honed in on the subject of Cherry. “First car ever I owned. I bought it in high school with the payout I got for the shapeshifter hunt. You remember, the big news clipping on the board in the office. That was a first too - it was back when people didn’t believe shifters would ever come to the city. Anyway, I used all that and more and Cad got pissed at me for buying a beater, and yeah, it was already a piece of shit when I got it. But it was all mine. I didn’t want to owe him a-”

Rai stopped mid-word. Now he was slandering Cadmus. What was wrong with him? “Okay, Cad would have probably bought me a brand new model and never asked anything in return. It would have stressed him out less if I took that route. But, I don’t know, I wanted to be able to rub in his face that I didn’t need him. I was a dumb teenager. I think I’ve told enough stories about how bad that got.” Rai shoved his hands in his pockets. “Why do kids love being defiant?”

“Perhaps they can’t help it.” Sao looked away, evidently finding the waterfront a more sympathetic sight. Rai felt like he’d just walked into a rake. He recalled Sao saying he’d been a pushover when he was young. After going through whatever or whoever made the scars, defiance wouldn’t seem so sweet. No wonder he was always so agreeable.

Rai was seriously considering asking Sao to punch him. He could lend him a glove.

“My upstairs neighbors have a baby,” Sao said.

“Yeah? You’ve mentioned that before. How are they doing?”

“Well enough. But for the last week - it would be two weeks if it’s still going on - the child has been crying through the night, I think because one of the parents is out of town. The moment the sun sets, until sunrise, or later, just sobbing and sobbing, hardly taking a breath. Wailing like the world is ending. And not a hint of enjoyment, I don’t think. Maybe, needless defiance is practice for a child. Setting up and testing out defenses, to become strong enough to fight the real battles to come.” A bashful smile. “The kid beat me. The crying was doing my head in. Of course, there’s no point in picking fights over a baby doing what they do. If I got too fussy, the landlord might drive them out. So you understand why I jumped at the chance to get out of town.”

Rai was about to agree - Sao always made it easy to nod along when it came to these little musings - but at the final line, his response evaporated in his throat.

Sao hadn’t tagged along on the trip out of interest in the job or the tunnel, or any sense of duty, or god forbid, for companionship. He had been hoping to catch up on sleep. How practical.

The nasal restaurant calls and the lost deposit were blessings in disguise. Rai wasn’t thinking clearly when he made the reservation, had he really expected Sao to enjoy being dragged to an overpriced dinner to celebrate - what - that he’d stayed at his contractually obligated office job for a year? It would be like handing over a decorated box, yelling surprise, only for the giftee to find it empty.

Their walk now, at least, had a purpose. Debriefing. It was technically work, or a way to cool off from it, which prepared him to be productive later.

They had strolled to the nicer part of the promenade, a little further from the police station, where the artsy types could let their hair down. Rai could smell cigarettes, and the nearby public toilet. A busker with a guitar attached to a miniature amp was playing to a small crowd, by the stairs leading down to a dock. His warbling ballad was cut with static and out of tune.

A full choir of angels, as far as Rai was concerned, because a few steps behind the busker was a canopied food truck, lights on and side flipped down and the scent of coffee wafting out.

The owner was surly, as a roadside proprietor should be, and mostly served breakfast foods. Possibly leftovers from actual breakfast, judging by how soggy the remaining muffins looked. There was also some fruit; a bunch of bananas, oranges and one apple. The apple was dull, yellow on the bottom and bruised in two places. Rai had never seen anything less magical.

He came to the bench with a muffin and two paper cups. “Dinner is served.”

Sao had the Omnibus open on his lap, the covers so large they touched the bench on either side and made him look kid-sized. He had flipped to the end, as kids were prone to do, but he wasn’t peeking at the end of any story. He was looking at the inside of the back cover. Invigorated with coffee, Rai brain cells were slowly returning to working order. He remembered.

“You told Cherry this used to belong to your friend.”

“A friend who would have some stern words if she saw how Cherry defaced it. The illustrations, it’s a tragedy.” Sao sighed.

“And there was a bucketlist in the back, or something like that?”

“Yes. Well, it’s not exactly written in the book. We put a sheet of paper here and the ink bled through.”

Rai took a seat and traded one of the cups for the book. Sao handed it over gently, like a bomb or a baby, and Rai tried to receive it just as carefully. Chunks of pages began sliding out every which way as soon as he laid hands on the cover. Sao blew delicately at the steam rising from his cup while Rai wrestled the papers back into vaguely booklike form.

“You’ll have to look closely,” Sao said. He pressed his hands to the warm cup, winced, and checked the scab on his thumb. Rai hoped it wouldn’t leave a scar, then realized how ridiculous that sounded. Sao’s hands up to his elbows (and maybe higher, but he always wore sleeves) were already covered in scars. Not measly papercuts either, but what Rai had always thought looked like the results of an attempted skinning.

Still, he hoped. The guy’s looks would no doubt sustain, it was the memories he didn’t want sticking. Cherry had refused to meet either of their eyes in the end.

The book in his hands was reminder enough. The artsy little lamppost above them wasn’t exactly adequate light for reading. Motioning at Sao to move back a little, Rai pulled the glove off his left hand and hauled the book upright on his lap. He was touching the book directly for the first time, and he felt the razor edges of the stray sheets Cherry had stuck in and with her notes and Sao had left in, and the cover that was oddly warm and cushioned, like skin. Turned black by the glow of his fingers, the ink looked like blood spatter. There were a few letters, or shapes that mimicked them, but for the most part just scratches, ticks and blots. Bringing his hand - the light - in and out, he saw that the marks near the top of the page were redder than those at the bottom.

“Orange pen was hers. I used blue.” Sao sipped. “I remembered the basics of what was written, not the numbers, until I read them. My friend was very exact. First line? She wanted a salary of six million dollars a year.”

“Ambitious.” Rai did see what looked like a row of zeros, imprinted where the top of the list might be.

“An apartment on the 100th floor of a skyscraper. On top of an international bank.”

“A regular bank wouldn’t suffice?” Yes, there was the number ‘100’ written extra large, pressed in hard, no hesitation in the hand.

“And a jet plane with at least twenty seats, which she would pilot herself. And a pool. And, appropriately enough, a faerie assistant for whatever that six million dollar job was.” He smiled, less mysterious and more sad. “She had a bit of a fixation. She was part fae. But I think she mixed up the real thing with the fictional sort that preceded them. We hadn’t a frame of reference for true fae culture. No other fae students or teachers.”

“Your friend was a faerie? First time I’m hearing that.”

“Only one quarter. One generation further than Thomi; it wasn’t obvious by looking. She was an orphan, so her heritage was really an estimate of the school doctor’s.”

Rai pressed his hand against the last line in orange ink. The full sentence was as obscured as the rest of them, no repetitive numbers in this one, but he could make out a short string of letters. Saohme, Sao’s full name.

“Any idea what this last one says?” Rai asked.

“Hm. I forget.”

“Take a look. She wrote your name.”

Without urgency Sao did, leaning over and facing the abstract scratches, but not reading. Not trying to. “I really don’t remember. Might have been including me in her business plans. Probably thought I couldn’t fend for myself.”

The busker had moved on to a livelier piece, a lot of high notes and falsetto. Rai moved on too. “So what goals did you set for yourself? Not as ambitious, I see.”

“We noticed the ink was going through as I was writing mine and had to stop.”

Rai ran his eyes over another line that appeared to have a lineup of zeroes. “You were planning to make… seven million a year?”

“Never. I wouldn’t dream of outdoing her. I said I’d be happy with a modest one million per annum. Well, of course that didn’t work out.”

“This last line looks complicated.”

Sao edged close enough now that Rai could smell the blood on him. Blood and something sour, not appetizing, strangely warm. It reminded him of the hospital. “Oh, that. She was the one who recommended I write it, because I couldn’t think of anything else. I was supposed to find a pretty girl to marry and give me allowances; a princess or a model or a banker.”

“Sounds like your friend might have been into you.”

Sao gasped with laughter and had to set down his coffee. “If you’d said that to her face, she’d take you apart faster than Cherry ever could. And get away with it. My friend, she could be vengeful but she had a canniness, a velvet glove sort of... Do you plan to eat that muffin?”

Rai handed the sad lump over with his gloved hand, which too late struck him as not only un-velvety but imminently unhygienic, considering all that glove had gone through. “What was your friend’s name? Everyone’s online these days. Maybe you two can reconnect - you've got the perfect ice breaker here.”

“I’d really rather not.” Sao broke the muffin in half, which made Rai think of the poisoned apple. “Our parting wasn’t pleasant. There was some betrayal involved. It was very much like Cherry's nightmare scenario. I turned around one day and she was no longer there. It probably looked the same from her perspective. You might say I chose to stop following her - that I chose to lose her.”

So there was some history of defiance.

Rai shrugged. “That bad, huh? Better leave it.”

“Thanks. I don’t have Cherry’s resilience when it comes to searching, and being able to take what unpleasantness might be found.” In spite of what he was saying, the smile stayed. “I have to thank you for running right back into Temperance to look for me.”

“What else was I supposed to do? You managed to escape without my help, anyway.”

“But I did need the help of Marinell and Rose. I’m incompetent on my own.” Sao laughed again, over the lilting twang of the guitar. “That won’t be quoted on my annual report, will it? Terrible way to celebrate a year at the office.”

Rai narrowly avoided spurting coffee all over the Omnibus. “You remembered?”

“I was reminded. I’m not clever about these things, Rai. Some might call it a deficiency of commitment.” Sao’s smile wasn’t ambiguous here. “I feel a little bad, not making any plans. A whole year. At the same time, it feels like I’ve known you ten times longer. Time gets funny, when you’re keeping busy. And sleeping the rest of it away.”

Rai hesitated before admitting, “I booked a table at Alga for Wednesday. But I think we missed that window. The trip was more interesting anyway.”

“Then give me a chance to pay you back for the hotel bills. I owe you a decent meal.” Sao bit into the muffin, and seemed to disapprove of it. “I might not manage Alga, though. You must have pulled some strings. A table for two?”

“A few more than that. I got one of the big private rooms. I was gonna invite Cadmus, Lem if she was feeling okay after her surgery. Cad and I wanted you to meet her. Van said he couldn’t make it, but Charm said she could. And of course, Trae will show up anywhere there’s food. The second time I rescheduled, I didn’t want to bug them all again. So it might have just been us. Would have been awkward, huh? The suite tables are huge.”

Sao was tipping out the last drops of his coffee. He’d finished before Rai - the first time Rai could ever remember that happening. The screaming baby above his apartment might be right, the world was coming to an end.

Rai closed the book and handed it back - dropped it on Sao’s lap, since his hands were occupied. “You’re a good guy. I’m glad you stuck around.”

“And I’m glad you put up with me.”

He had half hoped Sao wasn’t listening, and the answer annoyed him. “I’ve said it enough, I prefer people who aren’t like me.” He grasped around until he found his left glove and yanked it back on. “We’re not opposites and it’s not a matter of attraction. Actual opposites in opposition - that gets way too messy. It’s really a balance, you get that too, right? Like acid building in the gut. Too much of one thing and you get sick. That’s where I would be. Sick of myself.”

He was spouting nonsense. What was it Rose said, nonsense was relaxing? That was more nonsense. Here he was sweating and wishing he could walk away and kick himself off the dock. Rose was a blabbermouth, one of those people who was a little too much like himself.

Not a perfect fit, though. To last a year without coffee...

The busker announced his last song for the night. Sao picked up the book, absently stroking the fingers of one hand over the leathery cover that felt like skin. Maybe it felt different for him. It was reddish pink, a reminder of the Temperance sunset.

“You have a way with words,” Sao said, after a while.

“Oh, come on.”

“But you talk like it’s goodbye. Which it’s not, clearly.” Sao paused. “And we aren’t so different. We care about a lot of the same things. I get sick of myself as well.”

Rai’s nonsense sounded just slightly less nonsensical coming from him.

“To good health, then?” Sao said with a smile, one that matched the luminous curve of the moon.

One misdirection after another.

But Rai could drink that. He picked up his coffee.