Page 5 of Practical Boots

Her eyes widened further. "How'd you get here so fast?"

Cat put the package on the reception desk, leaned in, and, when the woman leaned in to hear, murmured, "Magic."

The woman laughed and sat back, equally disappointed and satisfied. "I wish I had that kind of magic. Honestly, Ms. Law is going to be thrilled. She obviously intended to complete her treatment in New York, but—well, you know how things change. The moment was suddenly right—" She broke off, eyebrows drawing down, and pulled herself together. "I'm sorry. I'm sure you're not interested."

"I'm fascinated," Cat promised, quite honestly, but what the receptionist really meant was that she shouldn't be telling the courier about Ms. Law's personal details. "Is she here? Someone's supposed to pay for this. Someone's supposed to pay alotfor this."

The receptionist's eyebrows drew down farther yet, threatening her Botox. "She is. She was very sure you would deliver within the hour, although I don't understand—one moment, Ms. Sharp." She rang a bell, waited, then rose and said, "If you'll follow me this way?"

"Sure. Should I take this?" Cat indicated the little freezer unit.

"No, that will be taken to the lab. Thank you." The receptionist led her into a private waiting area that was better-appointed than any apartment Cat had ever rented. A slender Asian woman in a sleeveless top that showed off terrific biceps was curled on a couch with a fat novel, half-finished, in her hands. She lifted one finger from against the book's back cover as Cat came in, indicating her awareness of Cat's presence and signaling her intention to keep reading.

Cat breathed, "'kay," and slipped past a bed made up to match the couch to get a glass of water. Not from a cooler, oh no. From the kitchenette at the window end of the waiting-room-slash-apartment-slash-she-didn't-know-what-to-call-it. From up here the Los Angeles sky seemed to be a cooler shade blue, more disdainful, as if the warmth had been leeched away. The bed lay opposite the couch, with a coffee table between them. A dining table was tucked discreetly into the side of the kitchenette, and a door led to what she assumed was a private bathroom. She doubted all fertility clinics provided this kind of service, but Ms. Law could obviously afford the best.

She had, after all, hired Cat.

"Sorry," Grace Law said as Cat finished drinking her water. When she turned back, the woman was putting her book on a coffee table between the bed and the couch, and smiling apologetically. "I was almost at the end of the chapter. I'd heard you were the fastest courier in the country, but I did think I'd have time to finish the book before you got here. Thank you for taking this job. My whole life doesn't exactly revolve around this moment, but…"

Cat's eyebrows lifted. "But your whole life revolves around this moment?"

Law's smile went from apologetic to brightly confessional. "Kind of, yeah. The stars aligned, you know? Except I really can't get back to New York right now, so…again, thank you."

"You paid for the fastest service," Cat said with a shrug. "I'm just doing my job. But can I ask you something?"

"If it's whether you earned the bonus, the answer is yes." Law picked up a designer purse and extracted a checkbook, of all things. Cat had never personally owned one, although she'd cashed a handful of checks in her life. "To whom shall I make it out?"

"Cat Sharp Courier Services, or CSCS, or Cat Sharp, or…" Cat did a lot of work through a courier service, but the right people had learned that she could courier almost anything at inexplicable speed. Jobs like this one came straight to her, through a grapevine that had taken years to grow.

Law laughed. "I get it." She wrote out a check with a satisfying number of zeros, tore it out of the book, and handed it over. "What did you want to ask?"

"You're, uh, you're doing this…on your own?" Cat gestured, as if the motion could encompass the entire lack of a male presence in the room.

"Ah. Yeah, I am. Is it something you're considering?"

It absolutely was not. Not in that or any other lifetime. Cat felt like a big 'nope!' sign lit up over her head, and was surprised Grace couldn't see it as Cat said, "I've been thinking about it, yeah."

The other woman's eyes softened. "I'm glad to offer any advice you want. I finally decided I wanted a child more than I wanted to find the perfect guy to have one with. I'd have done it when I was your age, if I'd had the nerve."

Grace looked like a Hollywood thirty-five to fifty; her skin was plump, her jawline smooth, and her hands unveined. But time didn't move the same in the Torn as it did in the World, and while most people placed Cat in her twenties…well, growing up had taken a long time, on the far side of the Waste.

Which wasn't exactly something she could say, so she only nodded. "How did you…this is rude, or weird, to ask, and obviously you don't have to answer, but how did you decide on a sperm donor?"

Law's gaze sparkled suddenly. "Honestly, it was fun. Kind of scary, but also in a way it seemed so much easier than having to live with somebody and their real imperfections, you know? I'd be lying if I didn't say I was looking for hot, smart, and healthy. And tall," she added ruefully. "I'm not very tall."

"Did you get to choose things like hair color? I mean, like, tell them you only wanted to look at redheads or something?"

Law's nose wrinkled. "I'm not much of one for redheads, but I could have, if I'd wanted to. No offense!"

Cat managed a smile around the knot of worry tightening in her stomach. "None taken. So you didn't meet the guys, or anything, or…" She didn't know how to ask if Grace had checked a box for 'elfin, immortal, ambitious, and dangerous' on the fertility clinic biography page.

"Oh, no," Grace said. "It's all clinical. Literally. In the end I decided I wanted someone from my ethnic group, somebody with a college degree, physically fit, who liked dogs." She laughed. "That sounds silly, doesn't it."

"There are much worse things to go by than whether somebody likes dogs," Cat said. She didn't, particularly. There were no dogs in the Torn, or much in the way of cuddly pets at all. Pets there tended to be…capricious, and coming to the World hadn't entirely erased her suspicion of them. She wouldn't go so far as to say she was afraid of them, but only because she had her pride. Still, she recognized that was about her, not about dogs. "I don't know, I guess I'd be afraid…I mean, I'm sure it doesn't happen, but I guess I'm afraid that the numbers would get messed up or something and I'd end up with some random dude's kid."

"It does happen," Grace said with a kind of fascinated horror. "A few years back there was a doctor who turned out to be the biological father of a bunch of IVF kids whose mothers had been his patients. But I guess it's a risk you have to take. People are never who we expect them to be anyway, are they?" she said more softly. "We always have an idea of who our kids—or parents, or friends—are going to be, and I don't think anybody ever turns out to be what our idea of them is, not really. I think maybe part of being a good parent is being willing to find out who they actually are, instead."

"Wow. I wish you were my parent." Cat bit her tongue on the honesty behind that, then smiled again. "Thanks for letting me take up so much of your time. I'll let you get back to your book."

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