“If Marlow paid attention to details, you wouldn’t have needed us in the first place.”
“Don’t say tragic things, Jessica! I’m glad that all happened—the evil contract, almost losing everything…”
She waited for me to finish the thought, to know without being told.
“Because it brought us closer,” I said.
“Not just you and me.” Faraday swigged the rest of her champagne, held out her glass for more. “You wouldn’t understand, dear, because your family isn’t useless. Signing with the Mortons made me part of something.”
“Of course,” I said, thinking of the last-century psychiatrists collecting broken people, lost souls, looking for a home. “Is that why you’re dressed this way?”
She looked down at her clothes. “Am I appropriating?”
“No, dear. But you don’t have to look like us. We aren’t a cult.”
Faraday’s eyes lit up. “A cult?”
“Just something I’ve been reading.”
“But I know this from Sociology!” She held up a finger to pause me, marshaling her memories. “Are Mortons isolated from contact with outsiders?”
I sighed—a quiz. “Quite the opposite. We’re practically flung at them.”
“Do you believe your leader to be infallible?”
“No.” Grandmother Elizabeth, perhaps. But her predecessor, the indecisive Grandpa Dwight, had been gently forced to abdicate.
“Do Mortons believe the End Times are coming?”
“Absolutely not. We plan on being around for many, many generations.” As long as humanity exists. As long as the sun burns.
“Voilà!” she exclaimed. “Not a cult.”
“Thanks for clearing that up. What do you think of the fours of a kind? The best possible hand that is neither straight nor flush.”
Faraday inspected the array of cards before us.
“Still not me. Do you have anything that isn’t math?”
I took herinto the back office, where Garrett kept pieces from old exhibitions. Artworks that hadn’t sold, but in which his affections were still invested.
I showed her a still life—pale grapes and persimmons in a pile. “Rotting fruit, for Victorian ambience.”
“Ruination doesn’t make for a party vibe.”
“Something modern, then. This is by Z, the graffiti artist. That’s his birth certificate name, by the way.”
“Do you have anything in…special someones?”
“Ah,” I said.
Faraday took my hand, her eye alight. “Have you done the deed yet? Are you still smitten? Do you have pictures?”
I took a moment to answer. Part of me had hoped Faraday would forget my slip in the Dining Commons. But a smaller, quieter part had been itching to tell her about Hiromi. This was the kind of interaction Uncle Wolfie couldn’t teach.
“We’ve only had a couple of conversations.”
“Conversations? Goodness. Are you going to befriends?”
