“Foster First,” I said.
“Number is the order in which they were brought back to life. Foster was the first.”
“Right,” I said, remembering that tidbit of history. “And Abraham was the seventh. Robert with House Orange was the twelfth—the last.”
“Except for you,” Left Ned said.
“Unlucky thirteen.” I grimaced. “I think I’ll stick to Case. Do you think the numbers act as a ranking, giving one galvanized seniority over the other, or power over the other?”
Neds shrugged. “I don’t keep company with their kind,” Left Ned said.
“Except for me,” I said.
And here, Right Ned smiled while Left Ned rolled his eyes.
“Except for you.” Right Ned opened the door to the café.
It was crowded here too, booths along one wall filled with people, the row of small square tables down the middle of the place nearly hidden by the people standing around them, and the curved bar elbow to elbow with even more customers.
The architecture of the place was at least a century old, maybe two, lots of chrome and bright red and black and white in the place. Music played from the speakers visible in the corners of the curved ceiling, and metal-blade fans that looked like old airplane props rotated lazily down the length of the room.
It smelled of coffee and salt and chocolate. My stomach rumbled.
“Here.” Neds tugged me toward the only open spot: a table to the side and behind an ancient jukebox filled with disks and brightly lit buttons with words stamped into them.
We sat on either side of the tiny table, and Neds pressed three buttons in the tabletop, ordering our drinks.
“I don’t think we have much privacy here,” Right Ned said, “but there’s no place private in a city when the Houses have you targeted. I think you should go home, Tilly. Back to the farm. I think we should all go back. Leave the city before the rest of the Houses get too curious about you and yours.”
“I think it’s too late for that,” I said. “Someone has my brother, probably captive. I can’t walk away from that, from him.”
“You can’t walktowardhim either. We don’t even know where he is.”
“Someone knows,” I said. “And I plan to find out.”
A short woman with curly black hair and a terrific smile pushed through the crowd like a hot knife through butter, stopping at our table.
“Three coffees, black with everything on the side.” She slid a tray onto the table. Three small cups filled with rich, steaming coffee sat on the tray, with an assortment of powders, creams, and little cubes arranged around them. “Anything else?”
“That’s all. Thanks.” Neds pulled a credit chit from his pocket.
Some people still used paper money and metal coin, since it was the safest from embezzlement, but most found it easier to just keep all the comings and goings of expenses linked up to the chit.
She took the chit, scanned it with a small device she wore on the inside of her wrist, gave us a smile, and was off.
“I need to tell you something,” Right Ned said. “About Robert Twelfth.”
“All right.” I dropped four sugar cubes in my coffee and stirred.
“When I shook his hand, I . . .” Right Ned looked away.
“The vision thing?”
“He was a boy, unstitched, maybe fourteen. Climbed down a well and was trying to climb back up. Cold from falling down too many times. His father’s gun that he shouldn’t have been playing with, shouldn’t have let fall in the well, was tucked in his belt.
“He yelled at the sky, but there was a bell ringing out so loud no one could hear him.”
Left Ned picked up one of the cups and took a drink. He preferred it black.
