Page 9 of Practical Boots

Able to step in and out of the Waste at will.

It didn't seem likely to help get her out of her father's clutches, not with the oath she'd sworn, but the thought itself was goddamn uncomfortable, and felt like one she needed to wrangle with for a while. Like it might help her see something she'd never been able to.

Like she'd been the person keeping herself from seeing it, all along.

Cat pushed the thought aside as best she could and dug her box of Artifacts out from beneath a battered end table. Or perhaps it was her Artifact box, as it both held them and was one in and of itself. To Cat's eyes it was simple, silver filigree on the exterior and deep violet velvet on the inside, and not technically large enough to hold everything that could be put inside it.

Kallie, though, watched with the same slightly befuddled expression she always had when Cat got something from the box. It turned out an Artifact box, made of and holding magic, was hard for humans to see, even if they knew it was there. A furrow appeared between Kallie's eyebrows, like she was trying to hold the silver square in her vision as Cat pushed a couple of trinkets aside and withdrew a chunky sports watch. She closed the box and Kallie rubbed her forehead. "Iknowit's there. Why can't Iseeit?"

"Because it's meant to hide things, Kal. It wouldn't do much good if you could just see it, would it?"

"But I can see my watch!" They'd had this conversation about seventy times, and it annoyed Kallie every time.

This time, though, Cat thought she was going through its motions in order to give Cat some more time to bring her emotions back in balance, and if Kallie was making the effort to normalize things, Cat would play along. "The box is meant to hide Artifacts. Your watch is one of the Artifacts it would hide, if I hadn't given it to you. And its whole point is to allow you to call me. It wouldn't work if you couldn't see it."

"Iguess." Kallie scowled at the bangly watch on her wrist, and finished up the entire ritualized set of complaints with, "But I still don't get why you don't make yourself something pretty."

"You do get it. You just like pretty things, so you want me to wear them. But everything in the Torn is pretty. I like chonk."

"I wish—" Those ill-advised words were always at the surface when they talked about the Torn, but they'd never slipped free after the first time Kallie had spoken them. Surprise, dismay, and finally anger cascaded across her features as she bit the rest of them back. "Sorry. I don't know—sorry."

"It's okay." It hadn't been, the first time she'd said them, and Cat was surprised to discover it was, this time. "I'd take you there for a visit if I could. If I thought it was safe."

"I know." Kallie's anger deepened, tension drawing lines across her forehead. "I'm sorry, Cat. You told me never to say that again."

"You didn't," Cat said, almost as gently as Kallie'd spoken to her earlier. "You stopped. And a wish half-spoken isn't made at all."

"I'm not sure that's how wishes work, Cat."

"I am." Cat sat down, strapped the watch on, and went back to eating injera. Kallie joined her after a hesitant moment, obviously still concerned about her slip, but she gradually relaxed, and after a while said, "Fuckin' Rick, Cat!"

Cat grinned into a bite of dinner. "What'd he do now?"

"You know that girl he's been seeing? Trina? He ghosted her."

Cat stopped with another scoop of food halfway to her mouth. "Really? I thought he really liked her. She seemed cool."

"'She seemed cool', from the coolest courier in town. High accolades, Cat, high accolades."

Cat snorted. She wasn't cool. She just dressed like she could kick your ass. Which, to be fair, she could. Kallie, clearly following her line of thought, grinned before saying, "But yeah, she does, and yeah, he did. She texted me a couple days ago to see if I knew where he was. She hasn't heard from him in days."

"You have, though, right? He's on that long haul, isn't he?" Most courier jobs involved getting something across the city as fast as humanly possible. Some wanted to get things farther, faster than that; those were the people who paid Cat for the skill set she never explained. But sometimes there were long jobs that involved shuttling back and forth between states or countries, essentially running errands for people who wanted the anonymity of cheap flights and strangers not obviously on their payroll. Even Cat had done some of those, spending an afternoon in Rome or a weekend in Seville on somebody else's travel dime. Rick called himself a dogsbody and lived for the long hauls, seeing the world one random location at a time.

"He texted me yesterday, yeah. I read him the riot act about Trina, but he didn't even send a guilty gif in response. I dunno if he doesn't like her as much as I thought or if he just found a spectacularly hot babe in…wherever he is right now. Singapore, I think."

"Aw, poor Trina. I hope he's just pulling that girl-in-every-port bullshit that he likes to pretend he's got going on. He'll probably come back all full of sweet talk and apologies."A chill crawled up the back of Cat's neck and rushed over her, raising hairs on her arms. She ran her hands over her arms, trying to warm herself up, and wondered if she was more worried about Rick than she knew.

Kallie tossed her curls. "I hope she kicks him to the curb if he does."

"This is why you should go out with Diana," Cat concluded. "She figures you can't count on dudes either."

"You don't."

"Babe, I don't count on anybody but myself." Cat said it with a superior sniff, but knew it wasn't far off the truth, either. Most of her life, she hadn't. Even now, the idea that shecouldcount on Kallie, on Rick, on one or two others, was strange enough that she couldn't sit comfortably with it. Another chill rolled over her, like someone was putting a cold hand on her nape and pulling the hairs there.

The third time it happened, she rubbed her own hand over her nape, shivering, then, like a slowly-dropping penny, realized somebodywaspulling at her. "Fuck."

"Mmf?" Kallie looked up from stuffing the last bites of dinner into her mouth. "Waff wog?"

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