Page 7 of Skinwalker's Bane
“Why not?” Bishan said. He turned on one heel and headed for the door. As usual, he didn’t say goodbye. He was just suddenly gone and the room felt peaceful once more.
The birds were still chirping outside. Now they sounded cheerful again.
Chapter Three
Adam checked the unit number again, to make sure he had the right one. He didn’t know the Aventine very well and had been forced to consult with public terminals to navigate his way into the Port Corner and find the office that Devin Bronson’s Forum profile said was hers. She had removed her private residence from the profile, forcing him to contact her at her place of work instead.
The corridors in the Port Corner were all wide, carpeted and hushed. The few people he had passed had been Patricians, their clothing and air of entitlement marking them indelibly, as did their startled glances at Adam. There was an air of exclusivity in this section that may have been his imagination, or perhaps not. The most influential and powerful people on theEndurancehad offices here. The Organic Coding Institute was here. The Accouchement Clinic was tucked into the far corner on the top floor of the six stories in the Corner. It was the most select and low-traffic office on the ship.
None of it made Adam feel any less awkward. He just wanted to get this over with. As Devin Bronson was the only Devin currently living on theEndurance, she had to be the one Lincoln had meant in his message, although now Adam was here, it seemed more unlikely with every passing minute that there could be any connection between them. Perhaps the Devin that Lincoln had been referring to had been the nickname for someone else?
Adam looked up and down the corridor once more, as he stood in front of the solid door to the office, weighing up whether he wanted to do this. He was still feeling the effects from last night’s attempt to smother the feelings generated by Lincoln’s memorial gathering. Only, today was the start of his and his crew’s five day off-rotation. Off-rotations were for properly relaxing and recovering from the rigors of five consecutive twelve-hour outside shifts and the effects of gravity surges and zero-gravity environments. He didn’t want to go through his five off-days wondering who the hell Devin was, or why Lincoln needed to apologize to her.
The mystery pushed him into slapping the alert panel. The door opened immediately, surprising him.
The office was one of the single-room units. It wasn’t particularly large, although there was a big window, polarized against the daylights outside. Someone had added lengths of material to either side of the window, hanging from the top, on a slender rail. It looked as if the material could be drawn along the rail, which would cover the window. As the window was polarized, as most windows were, Adam couldn’t see the point of additional fabric as a shield, yet the effect was interesting. It looked old-fashioned and he wondered if he had seen windows like that in history files. He wasn’t much for delving into history the way people like Cai Lessie were.
There was a screen divider cutting off half the office, with space next to the window to step around the screen. Above the screen, he could see the top of another window that matched the one he could see.
On this side of the screen, there was a small desk and a woman behind it looking at him expectantly. Her gaze moved down to his boots, then up again.
Adam shoved his hands in the pockets of his engineer’s jacket and looked right back at her. “Are you Devin Bronson?”
She smiled. “I am Nichola Franzese. I am Devin’s assistant. Can I help you?”
Assistant. Did that mean Devin Bronson was sitting on the other side of the screen, listening to everything he said? “I need to speak to her,” Adam said and braced himself for the woman to tell him to go away, or laugh at him, or explain he didn’t have an appointment, so sorry…
She nodded. “Devin is talking to someone at the moment, if you don’t mind waiting?”
He glanced at the screen again. “She is?”
“There’s a silence shield,” Nichola explained.
“Heard of them,” Adam muttered. He looked around. “I should wait here?”
“It shouldn’t take long.”
“You’ll let me talk to her, just like that?”
“That’s Devin’s preference. She wants to talk to people.” Nichola’s mouth turned down, as if she thought it a bad idea.
“Whoisshe?” Adam demanded. “Her profile goes on for screens and screens and says nothing.”
Nichola grinned. It was a sudden, impish expression that made her dark eyes sparkle. “There’s a reason for that. Of course, it’s not my place to say.” She glanced down at her screen. “There, she’s done.” She lifted her voice. “Devin, there’s a man here to see you.” Nichola looked at him. “Your name?” she asked, dropping her voice again.
“Adam Wary,” he replied. “Though that won’t mean anything.”
Soft steps sounded, then Devin Bronson appeared at the gap between the end of the screen and the windows.
Adam had never met anyone who looked worse than their three-sixty profile image on the Forum. Most people looked better. Many people lookedfarbetter. Devin Bronson was of the latter category. Devin Bronson in person made her profile image look like a terrible lie, even though all the details were correct.
She had shoulder-length light brown hair that curled in big waves. The silky gleam of it made Adam wonder what it would be like to touch it. Would it be as soft as it appeared to be?
She was tall for a woman and slender. Her throat rose from the opening of a shirt that had extra folds of cloth rising up around her neck that looked both old-fashioned and incrediblydifferent, just as most Patrician women always looked strange to Adam’s eyes. Her flesh was pale, proving she didn’t spend much time under daylights. It was as smooth as her hair and gleamed the same way. The only word Adam could think of was “flawless”. It was a word Lizette used when she drooled over the gems she used to make her jewelry. It fit with what Adam was looking at now.
Devin Bronson’s brows were twin arches, thick and strong. He couldn’t tell what color her eyes were from where he was standing, except that they weren’t dark or black. He had a sudden urge to see them up close, to determine the color.
Her very full lips were colored a soft pink and they thinned a little as she considered him. “Do I know you?” she asked warily.
