46. Vesper
VESPER
We fill our bellies in the safehouse the rest of the evening, but all of us avoid the giggle water. The best we do is order some weak bourbon to chase the generous food portions we manage to shovel down, before we end up crashing in our own rooms.
Stevie goes with Locke and probably acts like a perpetual night light that would drive me nuts.
Svetlana curls up at the foot of the small bed in my room after we clean ourselves in the shower, and then I sleep.
Hard. I have no dreams. I don’t even linger in that half-asleep, half-awake mode that often plagues me.
Instead, the moment my head hits the pillow, I’m out.
The next conscious thought I have is upon waking up and realizing that I slept for twelve hours straight.
I stand and stretch, letting my bones pop and my body reacclimate to being on my feet.
Svetlana, upon my waking, stretches as well, standing on her hind legs and extending her arms as high as she can.
The poodle is gone, back to the Bag of Tricks, thankfully.
The poodle, that Svetlana has fondly started calling “little shit,” was not the most helpful of creatures.
Hopefully, the rest of the bag isn’t so terrible.
“Oh, yeah,” she groans. “That was a good sleep.”
I glance at her and nod. “It was. I really needed that.”
“We all did,” she agrees. “With the exception of Steve.”
Ah yes. Stevie. He hasn’t decided to leave us yet.
I’m not sure how long it’ll be before he decides his debt is paid and leaves us for good.
He really has no connection to us other than the Howling Wind Ice Hotel and freeing him from his prison on top of the tree.
I’m happy for him to be with us for as long as he’d like, but it is a little strange to have the ball of eyeballs and wings floating around after us all the time.
“Stevie is the exception to everything,” I tell her as I wash up in the sink. Once I’m dressed, I open the door and come face to face with Locke, Stevie hovering behind him.
“Good morning, sunshine,” I tell him, but he looks far from happy.
There are still dark circles under his eyes, his expression hard when he looks at Stevie as he floats around. “Good is debatable,” Locke grunts.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Locke scowls. “You try sleeping with the light of the fucking sun in your room. Also, that sun never shuts up. I’ve now learned the entire history of his fall from God’s Grace, his relationship with the devil, and how exactly to do his favorite and the most perfect hairstyle.
” He pauses. “Apparently, it’s a honey blonde balayage. ”
“I don’t even know what that is,” I say, frowning.
“Oh, Girl!” Steve starts. “Don’t even get me started! Your hair is a little dark for that style, honestly. I’d go with a much more modest caramel balayage to match the warm tones of your skin! Like, you would look totally fantastic! Want me to explain—”
“No,” Locke growls. “I’ll tell her later. Please. I can’t stand anymore talks about hair.”
Steve sniffs. “That’s why your hair is so choppy.”
Locke shoots the Ophanim a glare and storms away toward the food area.
I glance at Stevie. “I bet you’d have amazing hair if you had any.”
“I know, right?” he says, and does a little shimmy in the air. “See? You get me. Soul sisters!”
I laugh and follow after Locke, picking from the small plates and snacks offered.
In the Velvet Underhall, there isn’t a restaurant.
It’s more of a table laid out with a bunch of food options, most of them small enough to pick up with two fingers.
I’m not going to lie. I destroy the food I manage to get, especially the little dishes called deviled eggs and the finger sandwiches.
Thankfully, I no longer get sick from eating too much.
My body has adjusted by this point and I can eat until I’m so full, I feel like I have to be rolled out of the speakeasy.
Locke and I avoid any of the mysterious liquor altogether, both deciding we should head to the next section and continue trying to level up.
I still need plenty of XP. Until I’m a Tier Two, I’ll continue to be a risk, especially now that Locke has leveled up. I flip open my stats.
TIER 1 – SCAVENGER’S BOND
Wastrel, entry-level
STRENGTH: 10
AGILITY: 11
VITALITY: 10
WILLPOWER: 11
CHARISMA: 10
LUCK: 10
BOND LIMIT: 1
BOND STRENGTH: 30%
CORRUPTION: 5%
CURRENT XP: 602
CURRENT MANA LEVEL: 10/10
CURRENT TITLE: Female Rage Incarnate
I need one thousand XP to level up to a Tier Two.
I have half the Harrow Coins needed and a few of the animal byproducts, but I need three more of those and one more Shard.
The grind is really starting to wear on me.
How the fuck did Locke manage to level up during the yeti when Cipher had been clearly not giving him XP?
Something must have changed. Or maybe that boss fight was just more intense.
It certainly felt intense. I was certain we were both going to die in that snow.
I’d even prepared myself for it until we’d triggered Stevie’s Guardian Angel buff.
Once we finish stuffing our face with foods, we both decide we should head for the first Minor Boss.
There isn’t one in this zone of New Babel, so we’re forced to go over to the next.
The moment we step out of the darkness of the Velvet Underhall into the sunlight, I squint around for any sign of Havoc.
Nothing.
The street is busy like usual, but people aren’t as thick as they were at night. I’m able to see through the crowd right now, enough to look for any sign of Havoc’s dark hair or the large sword he carries on his back.
“What are you looking for?” Locke asks as he steps off to the side.
“Oh,” I say, realizing I hadn’t clued Locke in on my plan.
“I invited Havoc to come with us,” I admit. “I thought he could be helpful.”
Locke raises his brows, like he’s going to question my decision, but then he makes a face and nods. “He’s a Tier Three. That’s a good call. We could really use some more help.”
Surprised, I eye him closely. “You’re not mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you?” he asks genuinely. “He’s the reason you were able to find me in the sewers. I owe the man something for that.” He shrugs. “Besides, if you trust him, then I trust him.”
That complete certainty in my decision makes my heartrate kick up. Not because of some feeling of love, though I do care for Locke now that we’ve survived this place so long together. It’s more of a panic, an understanding of the weight that puts on me.
If he trusts me, it means I can lose that trust.
And I’m still a Wastrel at my core. We both are.
Trust is a finicky thing. I haven’t trusted anyone in a long time outside of Dox. We could rely on each other, and no one else. It’s strange to realize I do trust Locke, though not as deeply as I do Dox. But . . . it could grow.
Or it could go up in flames.
I smile at Locke and we both lean against the wall to wait. An hour later, the happy-go-lucky attitude Locke had sported in the beginning is gone. Havoc hasn’t appeared. There’s been no evidence of him coming at all, and so we both stand here on the street looking like idiots.
“How much longer are we gonna wait for the asshole?” Locke asks, clearly upset. “I say we move on without him at this point.”
“He’s a Tier Three Warden,” I point out, knowing he would be a huge asset in the long run.
“And I’m a Tier Two Bone Breaker,” Locke fires back. “Who cares? We can do it without him. We’ve been just fine until now.”
I sigh and look around one last time. There’s still no sign of him. “I guess he really isn’t coming.”
“Pity,” Svetlana says as she leaps down from the wall where she’d been exploring and hunting for bugs. “I was looking forward to seeing you rile him up more.”
Locke raises his brow at me. “You riled him up?”
“Oh, he was very hard in his trousers,” Svetlana nods. I roll my eyes at her words, my skin flushing. “I thought they were going to fuck in the middle of the street. What a sight that would have been, dah?”
Locke looks from the praying mantis back to me, something shifting in his expression. At first, I don’t know what it is, but the moment he opens his mouth, I realize that this could get ugly. “So what?” he says, crossing his arms. “You collecting us then?”
My stomach flips. “It’s not like that,” I grunt. “I’m not collecting anything.”
He stares at me. “Am I . . .” He stops and swallows. “I know you like to hoard things in your inventory. You’re not just . . . I’m not a . . .”
I cup his jaw and look him deep in the eyes. “I’m not collecting men for my stash, Locke,” I tell him. “I genuinely like you. Unfortunately, I just . . . may like Havoc . . . a little. It’s stupid, I know. But . . .”
His expression wipes clean. “Oh. Well . . . why didn’t you just say that?”
I blink. “What?”
“I don’t mind you being with other people. I just don’t want to be some . . . collectible.” He looks away. “I don’t want to be a toy.”
My hands pull at his jaw gently until he looks me in the eyes again. “You’re not a toy to me, Locke,” I reassure him, knowing exactly where this stems from.
If I could kill Mother Remainder, I would.
At least I’d been able to kill the Rat Queen.
“You’re a person,” I continue. “And we’re a team.”
He lets out a deep sigh. “Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
He nods. “Let’s go. If Havoc isn’t coming, we need to make it to the next zone and keep trying to level up. Otherwise, we won’t make it until your friend shows up.”
I look around again, as if Havoc will magically appear. When I still don’t see him, I nod. “Okay. We don’t need him anyway.”
We start walking down the street, weaving between the people occupying the sidewalk.
While it’s not as busy as the nighttime, there are still crowds thick enough to make travelling slow.
We round the corner, pointing southeast toward the next zone.
I stumble to a stop, my eyes finding him immediately in the crowd.
He’s leaning back against the wall, his expression sour, as he stares off into the city. “Are you done talking about me?” he asks, before leveling me with his gaze.
I keep my face a mask. I don’t show him my relief, or my eagerness. In fact, I reach up and pull my hyena mask down over my face to hide my expression entirely. I don’t want him to see any sort of pleasure about him joining us, especially when he’d made us wait for no reason other than his ego.
Locke, on the other hand, just laughs. “At this rate, we’re gonna have to start a guild,” he jokes.
I glance at him. “A . . . what?”
“Guild,” he repeats. When I don’t look suddenly knowledgeable about what he’s talking about, he frowns. “You didn’t read the information at the beginning? It was in the fine print.”
“You didn’t read anything about your Glitch, but you read the fine print?” I ask, flabbergasted.
“Read is a loose term,” he says, shrugging. “Cipher didn’t talk to me like he did you, so I was left with paragraphs of information. My eyes caught on the word ‘guild’ and I read maybe two sentences. All I know is it’s a group of people really.”
Ah. Yeah, he didn’t read it at all. Still, neither had I.
Cipher had been there to give me the information I needed, so I hadn’t bothered to read that initial information.
With my panic over Dox and my amazement of the new world I’d found myself in, I hadn’t even remembered that it was even there.
Which is foolish. I should go back and read up on everything I might have missed.
“Guilds are very rare,” Cipher announces to all of us. “One has not been formed in a hundred years.”
I frown. “And why is that?”
“A guild is a group of people who form a close connection or had a close connection while inside the Harrow. A guild makes the players more powerful together, as there are some shared stats and perks that can be beneficial. However,” he says, pausing for effect.
“A guild can also make you more vulnerable. Once formed and joined, guild members can see your stats at will. It is very easy to exploit what you know.”
Havoc studies me and then his eyes trail over to Locke. “I would not form a guild with a Bone Breaker.”
Locke’s expression drops. The laughter dies. “And why is that?”
Havoc shrugs. “Bone Breakers are dangerous. It’s never a good idea to be vulnerable around one.”
Locke pops his knuckles and rolls his shoulders, the gentle pop, pop, pop of the bones snapping echoing in my ears despite being on the loud street.
“You talk a lot of shit about my Glitch,” he says to Havoc.
Havoc, to his credit, doesn’t respond immediately, but his eyes find mine and hold. Like a warning.
The same warning that Cipher has repeated to me over and over again. Havoc meets my eyes like he knows that Cipher’s been warning me, like he knows that I’ve been told and have ignored those warnings.
“You’ll see why,” Havoc says, still looking at me, talking to me more than explaining to Locke, “soon enough.”