It really was. Tia wore a white skater dress with a plunging neckline, all lace and soft pleats. She stood poised against a stone column, holding a small purse with a cartoon girl drawn in pink with two puffs of pink hair on either side of her head. Tia’s own hair fell in gentle curls, and her makeup was light and romantic. She looked like she was going to a wedding.
“This is an original Renata dress.”
Tia paused for a millisecond.
Ray suddenly came to life. “What does that mean?”
“It was designed by Lucian Brady for his wife, Renata. She was a Magus Hoplomorphosis, like Tia.”
And, like Tia, Renata Brady was muscular and broad-shouldered and wanted to look softer.
“This dress is super rare. There are only fourteen Renatas, and they had a tiny run, only ten units for each design.”
“How much did you spend?” Ray asked.
“I found it in a thrift shop for fifty bucks,” she told him. “They had no idea what it was. Calm down.”
“And this bag.” I zoomed the picture in on the cartoon girl. “I always liked the pink Poppy-Chan best.”
Ray looked at Tia. She groaned.
Ray turned to me. “Is the bag rare?”
“Yes. During the last recession, Coach released a very small run of these bags in Japan. They got a bunch of crap for it, because these are aimed at teenagers, and people complained that it was manipulative and would make kids beg their parents to buy them luxury bags. Coach pulled Poppy-Chan off the market in a year. They hid these so well, even most Coach employees don’t know about them.”
“Yes, but they’re still in the Coach database,” Tia said. “If you give them the serial number, they can confirm if it’s authentic.”
“Tia?” A warning vibrated in Ray’s voice.
“Two hundred and twelve bucks on eBay and only because someone else wanted it and kept bidding a dollar over me for, like, hours.”
What was it with Ray and the money questions? It wasn’t like the Maderos lacked money, and she wasn’t spending that much. By most Prime standards, this was pennies.
“See? This tells me a lot about you,” I said.
“Like what?” she growled.
“You don’t like expensive things. You like rare things—special, secret finds that you have to search for. They make you happy. You like going out in an outfit like that exactly because you know something about it that others don’t.”
She opened her mouth and closed it.
“Phillip doesn’t get it.” I scrolled through the comments under the pic, found his, and showed it to her.
what’s with the weird bag
She spun away from me. Ray had abandoned the punching bag a few feet short. She marched to it and kicked it hard.
“His family is looking for him,” I said. “His mom is losing her mind. They turned his laptop over to me. Did you know that he was a Derek Areston fanboy?”
Derek Areston was an alpha-male bro. He made his money hawking his self-improvement courses and writing books about how testosterone made you rich and sexy.
“Whatever,” Tia said.
Ray let out a derisive snarl. “Areston is an asshat.”
“Phillip doesn’t just follow Areston. He hypes him up on Reddit.”
“What?”
