My mother once told me,Everything is useful. I’ve taken that and run with it. Years of working in stores as a teenager, then more years as a waitress taught me how to read people, how to shape myself to what they expect and want.
In fact, the only time I didn’t do that was with Michael…
Get him out of your head.
Hank holds his hands up. “Guilty.” A pause. “So, what have you and Kovacs got your eye on?”
“Nothing in particular,” I lie.
“Not that you’d tell me, anyway.”
“I might be new, Mr. Mayweather, but I’m notthatnaïve.”
He chuckles. “A shrew operator in the making.”
I hope so.
“Dare I ask you the same question?” I counter.
“Have you heard of Athena Gravestone?”
I pretend to think, then nod. “Oh, yes, of course. She’s very… experimental.”
He narrows his eyes. “Experimental is good, no, Miss Ward?”
“Oh, yeah. Athena is incredibly talented.”
“Why do I feel like there’s abutin here somewhere?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. Athena is incredible. Young – sure – and perhaps a little untamed, but incredible.”
“One might be forgiven for thinking you’re implying a sensible man might give her a few more years to develop.”
“Well,onemight remember that thisonehas said no such thing.”
“Only heavily implied it.”
I hold my hand up. “Why do I feel like you’re trying to get me to slip up?”
He laughs. “Or perhaps you’re so clever, you’re pretending to slip up.”
“That sort of thing is over my head.”
“What thing?”
“Politics…”
My breath catches. I almost fall. It’s so melodramatic, but I swear, my knees nearly buckle.
Across the room, framed over Hank’s shoulder, a ghost has just walked into the room.
A ghost with dark hair streaked with silver and a light stubble across his jaw, a six-foot-one ghost with muscles straining out of his tight-fitting suit, a ghost who kissed me and claimed me, then abandoned me with our child. Michael – I don’t even know his surname – adjusting his cufflink as half the women in here eye-fuck him into oblivion.
“…metaphysical aspect,” Hank is saying.
I tune in quickly, praying he doesn’t notice the atom bomb that has just detonated in my chest. “Yes, yes, of course.”
“Still,” Hank mutters. “Maybe I’ll pass her up this time. Thanks for the tip, Miss Ward.”
