“Then don’t talk. I’m just glad you’re here,” she said, latching on to Scarlet’s elbow as they ducked back into the alleyway. “Because he’s back.” Despite the angelic blond curls that surrounded Émilie’s face, her grin suggested very devilish thoughts.
Scarlet pulled away and grabbed a bin of parsnips and radishes, passing them to the waitress. She didn’t respond, incapable of caring who he was and why it mattered that he was back. “That’s great,” she said, loading a basket with papery red onions.
“You don’t remember, do you? Come now, Scar, the street fighter I was telling you about the other … oh, maybe that was Sophia.”
“The street fighter?” Scarlet squeezed her eyes shut as a headache started to throb against her forehead. “Really, Ém?”
“Don’t be like that. He’s sweet! And he’s been here almost every day this week and he keeps sitting in my section, which definitely means something, don’t you think?” When Scarlet said nothing, the waitress set the bin down and fished a pack of gum from her apron pocket. “He’s always really quiet, not like Roland and his crowd. I think he’s shy … and lonely.” She popped a stick into her mouth and offered another to Scarlet.
“A street fighter who seems shy?” Scarlet waved the gum away. “Are you listening to yourself?”
“You have to see him to understand. He has these eyes that just…” Émilie fanned her fingers against her brow, feigning heatstroke.
“Émilie!” Gilles appeared at the door again. “Stop flapping those lips and get in here. Table four wants you.” He cast a glare at Scarlet, a silent warning that he’d be docking more univs from her fee if she didn’t stop distracting his employees, then pulled back inside without waiting for a response. Émilie stuck her tongue out after him.
Settling the basket of onions against her hip, Scarlet shut the hatch and brushed past the waitress. “Is table four him?”
“No, he’s at nine,” Émilie grumbled, scooping up the load of root vegetables. As they passed back through the steamy kitchen, Émilie gasped. “Oh, I’m so daft! I’ve been meaning to comm and ask about your grand-mère all week. Have you heard anything new?”
Scarlet clenched her jaw, the words of the comm buzzing like hornets in her head. Case closed.
“Nothing new,” she said, then let their conversation get lost in the chaos of the cooks screaming at each other across the line.
Émilie followed her as far as the storeroom and dropped off her load. Scarlet busied herself rearranging the baskets before the waitress could say something optimistic. Émilie attempted the requisite “Try not to worry, Scar. She’ll be back” before backing away into the tavern.
Scarlet’s jaw was starting to ache from gnashing her teeth. Everyone talked about her grandma’s disappearance as if she were a stray cat who would meander back home when she got hungry. Don’t worry. She’ll be back.
But she’d been gone for over two weeks. Just disappeared without sending a comm, without a good-bye, without any warning. She’d even missed Scarlet’s eighteenth birthday, though she’d bought the ingredients for Scarlet’s favorite lemon cake the week before.
None of the farmhands had seen her go. None of the worker androids had recorded anything suspicious. Her portscreen had been left behind, though it offered no clues in its stored comms, calendar, or net history. Her leaving without it was suspicious enough. No one went anywhere without their ports.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not the abandoned portscreen or the unmade cake.
Scarlet had also found her grandmother’s ID chip.
Her ID chip. Wrapped in cheesecloth spotted red from her blood and left like a tiny package on the kitchen counter.
The detective said that’s what people did when they ran away and didn’t want to be found—they cut out their ID chips. He’d said it like he’d just solved the mystery, but Scarlet figured most kidnappers probably knew that trick too.
Two
Scarlet spotted Gilles behind the hot top, ladling béchamel sauce on top of a ham sandwich. She walked around to the other side, yelling to get his attention, and was met with annoyance.
“I’m done,” she said, returning the scowl. “Come sign off on the delivery.”
Gilles shoveled a stack of frites beside the sandwich and slid the plate across the steel counter to her. “Run that out to the first booth and I’ll have it ready when you get back.”
Scarlet bristled. “I don’t work for you, Gilles.”
“Just be grateful I’m not sending you out to the alley with a scrub brush.” He turned his back on her, his white shirt yellowed from years of sweat.
Scarlet’s fingers twitched with the fantasy of chucking the sandwich at the back of his head and seeing how it compared to the tomatoes, but her grandma’s stern face just as quickly infiltrated the dream. How disappointed she would be to come back home only to find that Scarlet had lost one of their most loyal clients in a fit of temper.
Grabbing the plate, Scarlet stormed out of the kitchen and was nearly bowled over by a waiter as soon as the kitchen door swung shut behind her. The Rieux Tavern was not a nice place—the floors were sticky, the furniture was a mismatch of cheap tables and chairs, and the air was saturated with grease. But in a town where drinking and gossiping were the favorite pastimes, it was always busy, especially on Sundays when the local farmhands ignored their crops for a full twenty-four hours.
While she waited for a path to clear through the crowd, Scarlet’s attention landed on the netscreens behind the bar. All three were broadcasting the same news footage that had filled up the net since the night before. Everyone was talking about the Eastern Commonwealth’s annual ball, where the Lunar queen was a guest of honor and where a cyborg girl had infiltrated the party, blown up some chandeliers, and tried to assassinate the visiting queen … or maybe she’d been trying to assassinate the newly coronated emperor. Everyone seemed to have a different theory. The freeze-frame on the screens showed a close-up of the girl with dirt smudges on her face and strands of damp hair pulled from a messy ponytail. It was a mystery how she’d ever been admitted into a royal ball in the first place.
“They should have put her out of her misery when she fell on those stairs,” said Roland, a tavern regular, who looked like he’d been bellied to the bar since noon. He extended a finger toward the screen and mimed shooting a gun. “I’d have put a bullet right through her head. And good riddance.”
When a rustle of agreement passed through the nearest patrons, Scarlet rolled her eyes in disgust and shoved toward the first booth.
She recognized Émilie’s handsome street fighter immediately, partly due to an array of scars and bruises on his olive skin, but more because he was the only stranger in the tavern. He was more disheveled than she’d expected from Émilie’s swooning, with hair that stuck out every direction in messy clumps and a fresh bruise swelling around one eye. Beneath the table, both of his legs were jogging like a windup toy.
Three plates were already set out before him, empty but for splatters of grease, bits of egg salad, and untouched slices of tomato and lettuce.
She didn’t realize she’d been staring at him until his gaze shifted and collided with hers. His eyes were unnaturally green, like sour grapes still on the vine. Scarlet’s grip tightened on the plate and she suddenly understood Émilie’s swooning. He has these eyes …
Pushing through the crowd, she deposited the sandwich on the table. “You had le croque monsieur?”
“Thank you.” His voice startled her, not by being loud or gruff as she’d expected, but rather low and hesitant.
Maybe Émilie was right. Maybe he really was shy.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to just bring you the whole pig?” she said, stacking the three empty plates. “It would save the servers the trouble of running back and forth from the kitchen.”