“Okay,” Dara said.
Ames kept going: “Orhow when he was fifteen, Dara got arrested for solicitation, like literallysolicitation.”
“That was a misunderstanding,” Dara cut in quickly. “I was joking. How was I supposed to know he was an undercover cop?”
“Didn’t we just talk about how you were a telepath?” Leo pointed out.
“I try not to read minds in public. There are too many of them. It gets ... noisy.”
“So ... to be clear, you weren’tactuallyasking a cop to pay you,” Leo said.
“You two are both the worst.” Dara tilted forward and tipped his brow against the edge of the bar counter. “No. I was not, in fact, a teenage prostitute. Despite evidence to the contrary.”
A beat of silence answered that, stretching on long enough Dara could hear his own pulse in his ears.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Ames said at last, her voice gone soft. He felt her hand on his arm, squeezing. “I’m sorry. I’m just ...”
Drunk? Right.
Dara remembered what that was like.
“It’s okay,” he said on a heavy exhale, lifting his head and pasting a smile onto his lips. “Moving on now.”
“Time for embarrassing Ames stories instead?” Ames said, a false note of levity lighting her tone. “I’m sure Dara has just as many.”
Dara did, in fact, have plenty. He stuck to the palatable ones, though—told Leo about the time Ames crashed Lehrer’s government car when she tried to take over from the AI, how Ames used to be pathologically afraid of the color orange because it, quote, reminded her of gas station hot dogs.
And, slowly, the embarrassment faded.
At five, someone knocked on the door. Dara and Ames and Leo exchanged confused looks—the bar didn’t open till eight, and there was no meeting today. Leo held up a hand to tell them to stay in place as he crossed to the door, peering through the spy hole. But then, instead of waving for them to hide, he sighed and turned the latch.
“Did I miss the invitation?” Noam said as he moved into the bar, trailed a step behind by—
“Bethany?” Ames said, rising from her chair. If she’d been slurring her words before, that was gone now, each syllable crisp and sharp. “What are you doing here?”
“Wow, thanks, nice to see you too,” Bethany said, pushing the door shut behind her with her heel. “Hi, Dara.”
Dara slid off his stool as well, suddenly not at all sure what to do with his hands. She was staring at him, a brightness rising in her wide eyes—tears. After a moment she sniffed and laughed, shaking her head, wiping her face with one hand.
“Sorry,” she said. “Noam already told me; it’s just ... seeing you. It’s a lot.”
“Why would you bring her here?” Ames snapped, turning on Noam instead. “What the hell, Álvaro? You of all people should know how dangerous—”
“I’m almost sixteen,” Bethany interjected. “I can decide for myself, thanks.”
“You’ve been gone five days, Ames,” Noam said after a slow moment. “Everyone’s worried about you. But ...”
“Especially me,” Bethany finished for him.
Ames’s color was still high in her cheeks, one hand braced against the bar counter like that anchor was the one thing keeping her from launching herself at Noam. Dara lifted an arm, touched the tips of his fingers above her elbow.
Bethany sighed after several seconds. “I’ll be fine. I really don’t need a second mother, Ames.”
Not that Bethany’s actual mother took care of her at all—but both Dara and Ames knew better than to say that out loud.
“Fine,” Ames grumbled eventually. “Just ... sit down, I guess. Leo, can we—”
“Club soda?” Leo said archly. “Coming right up.”
