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“I could remedy that,” I assured her.
“Yeah, but then it would taste ick.” She pressed her lips together, staring into the red liquid.
She drank and stared at her book with distaste as I stared at her, drinking my drink, thinking.
“You know, this would be so much easier for you with a computer,” she said, looking up at Murtagh with a weary look.
“You’re not the first person to tell me something like that,” Murtagh grumbled.
“And they weren’t wrong. You know, computers aren’t going away. I think it’s time you bit the bullet and learned them.”
“Why bother? If this works, then we’re going to Daconia, are we not?” he asked, giving her only half his attention.
She sighed and frowned. “I guess I didn’t think of that.” She looked down at the cellphone by her knee with longing, probably considering what it would be like not to live with technology. “It’s hard to imagine missing the next season of Stranger Things,” she grumbled with a sigh. She looked up at me. “Like, it’s sort of at a cliff-hanger right now, isn’t it?”
I grinned and nodded. “I know, my sweet.” I looked her over, still taking her in. She was funny, in a companionable, easy way. She seemed to be able to get close to me without even flirting. She didn’t try to connect. She just plugged in with me, anyway. I hadn’t known her long, but she was already very comfortable to be with.
“Who knows? Maybe you won’t find them and we’ll just be here and on the run for another millennia,” I teased her.
I found, somewhere in my chest, that I was sort of hoping for that. She and I might have not fit in well in this realm, but it was still our home.
“Come here,” I said finally, putting my drink down in the drink holder of a nearby chair. I crooked a finger, imploring her to come to me.
She looked at me with confusion, then she looked down at her Shirley Temple like it was vodka and it would burn if she tried to drink it in a couple of swallows.
“Why?” she finally asked, but was already looking around for a place to put down the glass.
“I said come here,” I said, but not firmly, just more of a passive order for her to stop acting like coming to me was a hard thing to do.
She sighed and put down her glass, finally, and walked over to me. As soon as she got close, I pulled her into my lap. She obviously wasn’t a girl used to sitting on laps, because she had an uncomfortable expression like a cat who had gotten wet and was surprised to discover that it enjoyed the sensation.
“I know we’ve had quite the question-and-answer session,” I said, pulling her hair off her neck and shoulder. “But how are you feeling with all of this?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, looking around her as if ‘this’ was an object attached to the walls of the airplane.
“You’ve been through a lot in the last couple of weeks,” I reminded her.
“I have!” she agreed with a firm nod.
“So, are you doing okay?”
She narrowed her eyelashes and peered at me. “Why do you ask?”
“Because it wasn’t long ago that you were in the bed, huddled up in a fetal position, screaming just because your eyes turned white.”
“Well, shoot. A lot has happened since then,” she replied simply. “But despite the fact that you were annoyed by it, I have to say that the talking cat did a lot to make it so that I don’t think I’ll go into the fetal position again. You ever stretch a rubber band too far? It never goes back to its original size. And now, I feel like my tolerance for oddities in my current reality is like that. Warped.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said flatly, because I wasn’t sure if it was a relief. I’d been around long enough to know that the primary reason people who had dangerous jobs died was because they’d forgotten how dangerous their job was.
Luckily, she had two mates to look out for her, so she could let herself be lackadaisical for a while. And Miles would surely be a good third set of eyes, for as long as he was around.
“You need to sleep. You’ve had a long day,” I offered, pointing to a door in the back of the plane.
She jerked her head in the direction that I was pointing. “What’s back there?” she asked.
“A bed.”
“You’re shitting me,” she replied, raising an eyebrow.
