Page 7 of Practical Boots

'Bitch',surrounded by hearts, came back a moment later. Cat laughed and had the food laid out on a coffee table made of milk crates and raw plywood before Kallie arrived on the doorstep, sweaty and looking hungry. "Who'd you screw to get this spread?"

"I screwed no one," Cat said in a superior tone. "Diana called me about it because she wants to screw you."

Kallie threw her helmet onto a pile of dirty laundry, then threw herself into the slightly-less-threadbare-than-the-couch armchair on the coffee table's far side. She was pretty in ways Cat could only dream of, with close-cropped tight black curls, a heart-shaped face, and curves that sixty miles of cycling a day could only hone and improve, not whittle away. She never wore a coat, always wore bangles up and down her forearms, and usually wore foundation with gold in it. Her dark skin all but glowed against the armchair's cream brocade. "Methinks you doth protest too much, Cat. She coulda calledmeif she was trying to bribe me with food. I think she's intoyou. What happened to your watch?"

Cat glanced at her wrist as Kallie leaned forward to grab some injera and started to scoop food up with it. "I gave it away. And if Di's into me, why'd she ask me to say hi to you?"

"Subterfuge," Kallie said around a mouthful. "So you'll be off-guard when she asks you out. Oh my god, this is delicious. Who'd you give it to?"

"I would definitely be off-guard." Cat sank back in the couch with a pile of food and worked on making it disappear before saying, "Somebody who needed it."

Kallie pointed at her, rattling her bangles and deliberately shaking her wrist to emphasize the loosely-fitted, sparkling watch in their midst. "You've given exactly three people one of those watches in the last seven years, and now just some random person who needed it? That's bullshit."

"Dad found me." Cat almost choked on the words, having not intended to say them. There were very few people she would say themto—the three people she'd given watches to, specifically—and even so, she hadn't meant to. But Kallie had been there since the beginning.

Kallie had been the one to pull Cat out of traffic, the day she'd first landed in the World.

They hadn't met again until weeks later, of course. Months, probably. The time blurred. But one wet afternoon they'd run into each other on a street corner and Kallie had blurted, "You're that nut job I pulled out of traffic!"

Cat had cut her hair by then, and changed her wardrobe entirely, and wouldn't have expected anyone to recognize her. Wouldn't have expected anyone torememberher, regardless; no one did, in the Torn. Not in a good way, at least. But Kallie had sounded delighted. "I'd been worried about you, in those weird thin clothes and all that rain and the sense God gave a goose. Nice wardrobe upgrade, anyway, much better than that flimsy thing you were wearing, although it would have looked fabulous on me," which was true. "Swear to God, though, I've had nightmares about that. I don't even know where you came from," she'd said, clearly baffled. "One second you weren't there and the next you were in the middle of goddamn traffic."

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," Cat had said then, and she'd been right. Kallie hadn't, when she eventually did tell her. But it wasn't that hard to make a believer out of somebody when she could step away, into the Waste, and back again, or shape an Artifact out of the stuff of the World. It hadn't taken all that much. And it had taken everything, of course. It had taken everything Cat had, to trust somebody in the World that much.

It had been worth it, though. Having a friend who really knew who she was and who liked her anyway, without expecting anything from her, had been worth it. After a while, Cat had found another, and then a third person she thought she could trust that much.

And right now, the first of that trio sat up straight, brown eyes gone wide, as Cat tried to sink even deeper into the couch. "Holy fuck, Cat. Why? Are you okay? What happened?"

"I'm…I mean, yes? I'm okay? Like I'm not dead or injured? He used another Artificer to catch me in the Waste, and he…well, he wanted my courier package. He wanted what I was carrying."

"Which was…?" Kallie set her food aside, a worried frown marring the gold-glittered skin between her eyebrows. "What were you couriering, Cat?"

Cat sighed. "A baby."

"A b—" Kallie slammed her mouth shut on the word, staring at Cat for what felt like forever before she spoke again, her voice very, very careful. "Whose baby?"

"His. My half-sibling."

Kallie's voice sharpened. "He told you that? You can't trust him, Cat."

"You're right, but he also can't lie. Not to a direct question."

"Did you give it to him?" Dread filled Kallie's tone.

"No. Of course not." Cat closed her eyes, not wanting to see Kallie's expression as she said the next thing. "I swore an oath of fealty to him instead."

"Cat!"

Cat waited a minute, hoping Kallie would get her expression under control, then opened her eyes.

Kallie's expression was most definitely not under control. Horror, worry, disbelief, fear, and other things, more difficult to define, were stamped on her mutable human features. Cat had a much better poker face, when she needed it; being easy to read would have gotten her killed in the Torn, powerful father or no. Or maybe she'd only had one expression to present in the Torn: permanently pissed off. Forever wearing a Bitchy Cat Face, the same way her dad wore Bitchy Elf Face, was as effective as being actually unreadable.

"But Cat," Kallie said, this time in a whisper, and asked the one thing Cat had been trying not to think about. "Cat, what about your mom?"

* * *

The people of the Torn had very good memories. Excellent for remembering slights that had happened decades, centuries, or even eons ago; excellent for nursing those insults and injuries, and plotting slow, exacting revenge. Good for planning one's own rise; good for bringing forth a bit of destructive gossip from ages past; good for many, many things.

Difficult, though, for a small girl, half of the Torn, when her mother returned to the World without her.

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