Chapter 3 #2
Hallie laughed again. “That’s true.” She could say that without vanity. She’d been sent after some of the more lucrative fugitives over the past decade, and if Hallie had made good money from the work, Gin’s share had been far larger.
“We should celebrate,” Girard said, as Hallie turned the corner that brought her in sight of her home. “How about dinner? I’m on late in the office tonight, but perhaps tomorrow, assuming nothing else comes up?”
“That would be lovely,” Hallie agreed easily, almost skipping through another couple of steps and managing to avoid a large puddle.
They’d managed to have a few meetings and lunch after getting back from Cotovatre’s house, but it had not felt like enough and Hallie found herself looking forward to some time alone with Girard.
Perhaps he’d tell her some more funny stories from his childhood, or tell her about the places they might visit for work, or they’d talk about something completely different.
She didn’t really mind. It would be time together, warm and dry and with good food.
Even after Girard had ended the call, his attention needed by someone else in his office, Hallie found herself smiling as she rounded the last corner before home.
This time, there was no Rosalia standing outside, huddled against the rain, and Hallie let herself into the house, hoping her roommate was there so she could share the remarkable news of her new job, and the contents of the bakery boxes she was carrying.
Rosalia was home. She was dressed in soft, warm clothes and chopping up what looked like a month’s supply of vegetables while several pots sat on the cooker, lazy trails of steam rising from them.
Hallie thought she recognised the dark, spicy notes of a bean stew that was a particular favourite of hers along with a fresher, brighter note of tomatoes.
Her stomach growled. Even if she hadn’t been hungry, her stomach would still have growled as an appropriate and natural response to Rosalia’s cooking.
“That smells amazing,” Hallie said. She’d shed her jacket and boots and now carried the bags of bakery boxes across to the kitchen area.
Rosalia looked up with a smile, then her eyes landed on the bags. Her brows lifted, eyes sparkling with curiosity. “Is that the logo of the Sunrise Café?”
“It is indeed. I was there earlier and just had to bring some of their cakes home. I thought you’d like them.” Hallie took the boxes out of the bags, relieved to see that they hadn’t been soaked by the rain, and set them on the only vacant space she could find on the kitchen counter.
“Let me see.” Rosalia left her knife and vegetables, lifting the lids and making a low sound of appreciation. “Amazing. They smell really good. I wonder what they use for that glaze?”
Hallie hid a smile, putting the empty bags away while Rosalia made a thorough visual inspection of the contents of the boxes, muttering more questions to herself. As well as glaze, Hallie heard speculation about lemon and salt and some other cooking phrase that she didn’t understand.
“You didn’t go all the way into midtown just to pick up some cakes, though, did you?” Rosalia asked, dragging her attention away from the boxes. Hallie had to smile. Baking and cooking and food of all kinds were Rosalia’s first loves.
“No. I got offered a job,” Hallie said, bouncing on her toes. “The Conclave Investigators want me to work for them.”
“That’s amazing news,” Rosalia said, and came around the counter to give Hallie a rare hug.
They were neither of them demonstrative people, however good friends they were, but it felt right in that moment.
Hallie returned the embrace and found to her shock that her eyes were stinging.
Until that moment, in her own space with her roommate, she hadn’t realised how much her life was about to change.
Good changes, changes that she was excited about, but changes nonetheless.
She scrubbed her hands across her face and realised she was still wet from the rain.
“Let me get some dry clothes on and I’ll tell you all about it,” Hallie said.
“The food will be ready when you are,” Rosalia answered, still smiling.
When Hallie came out of her room, dressed in ancient, faded trousers and a sweatshirt that had seen better days, Rosalia was setting out what looked like an amazing amount of food on the low table that sat in front of the sofa and armchair.
Hallie looked around the space. It had been her refuge for a long, long time.
A place that was truly hers. She’d bought it outright - the only space she’d been able to afford.
No one else had wanted to live in a space under a railway line.
Hallie hadn’t cared about the trains rumbling overhead as much as she’d cared, and deeply cared, that the space wasn’t in her family vine’s territory or connected with the vine in any way.
For most of the time she had lived there it had been a place to rest between jobs, nothing more, and once the soundproofing had been added to almost completely cut out the noise of trains overhead, Hallie hadn’t made much of an effort to improve it.
Rosalia had made the space far more home-like.
Her roommate had painted the walls and brought in the occasional bit of decoration and colour so that the space was no longer bare.
Even so, it didn’t fit right, Hallie realised, abruptly overwhelmed once more with the sensation of being in the wrong set of clothes.
And it wasn’t just the lingering after-effect of her mother’s unwanted presence the night before.
The space had held her safe, given her independence, and she’d outgrown it.
There. That was it. It reflected a person and a life she almost didn’t recognise.
“What’s up?” Rosalia asked.
Hallie realised she’d been standing in the middle of the floor, looking around, and shook her head. “I was just thinking we should look for a different space. One with windows, perhaps.”
“Funny you should say that,” Rosalia said, eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Oh?” Hallie asked, curiosity stirred.
“I mean, you know how grateful I am to have a place. But while you were away I realised that I miss having windows, too,” Rosalia said. “So, er, I thought about where we might go. And, well, you know that old house a few doors down from the bakery? The one with the green door.”
Hallie frowned as she dug into her memory. “Oh. You mean that old place with the overgrown garden and half a car still in front of it? That place?”
“That’s the one. It’s up for sale. And it’s a bargain.”
“No wonder it’s a bargain. It’s barely standing,” Hallie said, then saw the enthusiasm on her roommate’s face and shook her head. “You went to look at it, didn’t you?”
“It’s got great bones,” Rosalia said. “And although it’s been empty for a while, all the walls are still solid, and most of the windows, too. There’s a basement and an attic, so we could each actually have our own complete floor of the house if we wanted.”
Hallie had a rare impulse to hug her best friend again at the casual and sure way Rosalia had woven Hallie’s presence into her plans for the new house.
Rosalia’s enthusiasm made her smile, though.
It was the same excitement that Rosalia had brought to her plans for the bakery.
There would be no talking Rosalia out of the idea now.
And Hallie didn’t want to. A new space. With windows, and a garden.
Oh, and the remains of a car in front of it.
There was lots of work ahead of them. Hallie still remembered the stiffness and sore muscles from helping Rosalia get the bakery ready.
She wasn’t sure she was ready for another round of that.
But she still made an encouraging noise.
“We can talk about it later, when you’ve had some food,” Rosalia said, that gleam of mischief still in her face.
Hallie grinned. Her roommate knew her weaknesses. With the promise of good food and good company, Hallie settled into the armchair and took a deep breath in then out, trying to let the tension of dealing with her mother fade away.
As Rosalia sat down, Hallie caught a glimpse of the tiny mark on her roommate’s wrist which was the tell-tale scar left from an ID chip implantation, and her mind went back to the earlier conversation with Peredur Roth.
Everyone Hallie knew, whether in low city or midtown, carried an ID chip.
The common folk, and most of the veondken, had an ID chip embedded in their right wrists.
The hochlen carried slim metal bracelets instead, as something about the elite’s physiology meant that their bodies rejected any attempt to implant a chip.
Hochlen couldn’t get tattoos done, either, for the same reason.
Hallie had a plain metal band around her wrist, as her body had also rejected her chip when she’d been transformed from human.
But the bodies that had been found after Findo’s fights hadn’t had any chips, or any marks where ones had been removed.
In previous years, when Hallie had been daydreaming about escaping from the city and her mother’s influence, Hallie had wondered about getting false papers.
She’d never done anything about it. Partly through fear - she was quite sure her mother would have sent people after her.
And partly through distaste. Hallie liked being on the right side of the law.
She caught the criminals. She didn’t want to be one herself.
Not least because she’d seen what happened to people convicted of crimes in the city.
And faking IDs or removing an ID were considered serious crimes, warranting serious punishment.