Page 60 of Awry

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I don’t have an easy answer for that either, so I just stay silent.

She shakes her head again.“And just like the kids, I kept my mouth shut about you.Why?Why did I not … say anything?The fucking Authority pulled me in for questioning, put me in a containment cell, the moment I got off the plane with those kids.”

“I’m sorry.I guess … I must have thought you could take care of that part.”I’d been well into the process of dying at the time.If someone — such as Cayley, who I really didn’t remember — hadn’t stepped up to take custody of the kids, I would have dragged them back to a safe house.Unless Coda had connected us with another trusted source, the teens would have had to wait a few more terrified days as I died, then recovered enough to get them out of the country.

I might not have wound up in a morgue if that had been the case.

Cayley huffs.“Well, yeah.I could take care of it.I did.But … you … you just walked those kids right up to me.My sister stumbling behind you, then trying to run the moment she saw me.She was, they all were, drugged out of their minds.The medic I had on call said they had enough fucking essence-twisted ketamine in their systems to knock out a fucking herd of elephants.”

I nod.

She laughs, in disbelief now.“But you had them on their feet.”

“They needed to be on their feet.”

“How are you so calm about this?”

“What other choice did I have?Do I have?”

“You already had transport on site.”

Not me.Coda.Coda would have had eyes on me the entire time— but not enough contacts in the city to save me from the fucking visit to the morgue.Though it probably wouldn’t have mattered.

I owed the universe for taking the kids when their destiny lay elsewhere.It was my balance to pay.

I don’t offer up any of that as clarification, though.

“We got the kids in the van, but I turned around, and you were just gone.”

“Yeah, I do that.”

She snorts.“And then there’s the scholarships to the fucking Phron-fucking-tistery.”

Right.The kids needed a little extra help, and some very specific trauma counseling and training.The Phrontistery, an elite global academy for essence-wielders overseen at the World Council level, was happy to provide both.I shrug.“That was a favor.”

“A favor … one for each kid?And with that specific campus?You have to have verified bloodlines stretching back six generations to even qualify.”

“Six generations?”I frown playfully.“Sounds far-fetched.And I meant the other way around.The Phrontistery is now lucky enough to be training teenagers, who will soon be powerful alumni, who the yakuza deemed unique enough that they went to great lengths to kidnap them.To own them.The Phrontistery now owes me.”

In truth, I’m probably even with the Phrontistery at the moment.They have access to an almost unfathomable network of exceedingly powerful players in our world.The bill between us is almost always evenly balanced.

Cayley laughs hollowly.“I’m sitting here across from you, and you are melting my brain while sipping a milkshake and mowing through fries.I thought the experience itself was surreal, but …”

I finish the aforementioned milkshake with a noisy, definitive slurp.Then I pat my now-rounded belly happily.

“Because that’s what you do, right?”Cayley asks.“That’s the way you get paid for what you do.Favors.”

“Occasionally, yes.”Mostly, actually.Other than precious metals, cash is merely a series of zeroes and ones.And there are always more of those to be added together when Coda, or more specifically Gigi, manages financial transactions.Granted, most people can’t afford an unspecified favor.

A trueknowing— one I can’t ignore or trigger myself — doesn’t care about getting paid, though.

“You’re afixer.”

A generic term for one of the revered— or more often reviled— awry who take on impossible jobs with impossible odds.Coda and Gigi, who is actually a mage, are also technically fixers.My aunt was as well.Just on another level.

“On occasion.”

Cayley just blinks at me.I let her look, eating a few more fries.She yanks her salad back toward herself, stuffing a few no-longer-curated forkfuls into her mouth and chewing angrily.I wait for her to speak again.Because seeing me in this context has riled her up, causing some sort of internal conflict I haven’t figured out yet.