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Eliana sighed.
“Word gets out I’m hanging around an investigator’s office—”
“You didn’t call me a cop. An improvement.”
“Eh, you’re licensed. Just as bad.”
Eliana laughed, tossed her pillow at him. He caught it, threw it aside, grabbed her wrists, and pulled her close. She could smell the soap from his shower the night before, and the scent of sleep. He kissed her, and for a moment she forgot about her office.
“You can go in late,” he mumbled into her neck, and his hands were already tracing over her hips, finding the places he knew too well.
* * * *
Two hours later, Eliana walked the familiar path to her office. Alone. It was cold as hell this morning, especially now that she was away from her radiator and the heat of Diego’s touch. But those weren’t the only reasons—it was always colder in the days following Last Night, the trade-off for turning up the heat during the celebration.
Eliana pulled her coat more tightly around her waist and readjusted the scarf she’d wrapped around her hair. Nobody was out, just like Diego’d said. But there hadn’t been many clients lately, and she didn’t want to run the risk of missing somebody. She had left Diego in her apartment, flipping through the newspaper like he cared. He probably wouldn’t be there when she went home; as she’d walked through the door, he’d called out, “Guess I should see if the old man needs me for anything.”
A private investigator stepping out with a gangster. That was a story. Almost as good a story as there being a lady PI in the first place.
It took Eliana the usual fifteen minutes to make it to her office, which was on the second floor of a brick building right at the edge of the smokestack district. Last year it had belonged to an old PI named Marco Vasquez. Eliana’d been his secretary. When he’d retired, he’d given her the building and his gun and told her to get her firearm license.
“They aren’t go
“They will once you get your PI license,” he’d said, and for two straight days she’d thought he’d lost his mind. But it was true she’d been just as much assistant as secretary, and although the proctors laughed when she went down to take the test, she passed, and they didn’t have much choice but to make everything official. It was sad, though, that her mother had died before Eliana had started working for Mr. Vasquez. She would have been proud. It was a big deal, for the daughter of an old amusement park dancer to get a job like this one. It was the sort of thing Eliana’s parents had immigrated to Hope City for in the first place, back when it had still been an amusement park. The park had promised endless opportunities, before wars and revolutions and poverty on the mainland had left people unable to believe in its magic anymore. It had shut down back in the 1940s, leaving Eliana’s parents, along with half the city, unemployed. Things got better with the atomic power plants—more jobs, more people moving back in. But her parents had been long gone by then. Eliana had stood in the city’s freezing mausoleum on two separate occasions and watched her parents’ ashes fly out of the dome.
Work had been steady over the last eight months. At first people had been looking for Marco, and Eliana’d gotten used to the disappointment in their voices as they’d said, “It’s just you?” Gotten used to their excuses, to the way they fumbled out of the office without giving her a case whenever she explained, patiently and calmly, that Marco Vasquez had left Hope City for the mainland. But enough time had gone by that now people showed up looking for her specifically, and that was a good feeling.
The mainland. Mr. Vasquez was lucky. Not many people got out of Hope City. Eliana’s parents certainly never did—they’d lived and died here. She didn’t want to do the same, and she hoped this job would generate enough money for her to purchase a visa out of Antarctica. Someday.
Eliana’s footsteps echoed in the stairwell as she clomped up to the office. The name on the door still read VASQUEZ because she didn’t want to waste money getting the glass replaced.
She pulled out her key, let herself in. The bell clanged against the doorframe.
The office was freezing, the air cold enough that she could see her breath. Eliana switched on the radiator and set a pot of coffee to percolate on the hotplate. The air had that still, untouched quality it got when you leave a place alone for too long. Too long—just three days. Still, Eliana had missed the office, with its cracked floorboards and its thick, wavy windows and its worn-out schoolteacher’s desk from which she conducted her business.
Eliana switched on the radio to break up the stillness. Usually she kept it on the mainland station, but this morning she spun through the dial until she came to a news program. The newsman was talking about the blackout in his lisping mainland accent, claiming that there was no evidence of the AFF’s involvement, that it had been the fault of a defective robot from the power plant. The city commissioner pla
Diego hadn’t wanted to hear about it, these last three days. Kept shutting off the radio anytime she tried to listen.
The coffee finished up, letting off clouds of steam. Eliana poured herself a cup and sprinkled in the last of the sugar. She still had some at home, but once it was gone, she wouldn’t see any more sugar until winter was over.
The radio played on quietly in the background, a dull murmur, and the radiator was rattling. Good. It’d be warm enough soon for her to take off her coat.
Eliana turned to the stack of files sitting at the corner of her desk. Left over from the last case she’d worked, one of those adultery jobs where she’d had to tail a housewife all over the city, looking to see if the woman was faithful or not. As it had turned out, this particular housewife had just gotten a job.
The bell clattered against the door.
Eliana immediately sat up, shoving the files into the desk drawer where she kept her pens. She felt a momentary surge of smugness—looked like coming in so soon was about to pay off.
The door swung open, and a woman stepped inside.
Eliana had seen her before. She was certain of it, although she couldn’t place her. The woman looked like a film star, tall and shapely, her hair that peculiar European blond. She glided into the room like she was made of light.
“Eliana Gomez?” the woman said.
“That’s me.” Eliana stood up and walked around to the front of her desk. The woman stood by the door, staring at her.
The radio hummed in the background. The radiator clanged against the wall.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Eliana said.
“No, thank you.” The woman glanced around the office. Her face was as flawless and as expressionless as a mask, and she wore a gray fur draped around her shoulders. Only the wealthy wore fur in Hope City.
“I received your name from a former client of yours,” the woman said. “A
A
“Forward?” Eliana smiled. “Not if you’ve got a job for me.”
“I do.” The woman slipped her fur off her shoulders, revealing a pale silk blouse, a glittering necklace. “I’m afraid it requires a certain amount of discretion.”
“Then it’s a good thing you came to me and not those PI firms downtown. I specialize in discretion.” Eliana gestured at the chairs set up in front of her desk. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell me about it?”
The woman gave a thin, elegant smile, frustratingly familiar. She floated across the room and draped herself in one of the chairs. Eliana felt clumsy and graceless by comparison as she took her own seat.