“They do.” Jon let out a sigh so long Francesca wondered where he kept the air for it. “But this seems like something that could use a few additional angles, and you shouldn’t have to dip into vacation time just because the circumstances make it hard to do your normal work.”
Because of course the city wouldn’t just pay her for a day she didn’t work due to an emergency. Closing her eyes, Francesca gripped her mattress cover and prayed for patience. “I’ll look into it.” She could just put in the least possible effort and tell Jon that she’d tried.
“Great, thanks. I’ll uh… check in with you again later.”
“Uh-huh.” Francesca hung up before Jon could say anything else. She exhaled, long and heavy, and stared at the blurry, grey, call-ended screen on her phone. Her head pounded, and the skin under her eyelids ached. Without electricity, the building was chilly, and Francesca’s limbs locked up under the covers, resistant to any orders she might give them.
But her brain knew it was one in the morning, and that Tim was probably still awake. She could almost see him, tapping away at his computer or sketching out circles on his artboards, cans of energy drinks littering his blue-lit room. Her brain reminded her that she’d been asleep since six in the evening. She’d gotten enough sleep to start the day.
With a rumbly groan, Francesca unraveled her limbs and crept her fingers up to the edge of the blankets. Somehow, moving them felt as herculean as removing a mountain to fill in a sea, which was something people had once done to the landscape of San Angelo, so perhaps Francesca could get out of bed. She rolled out, toppling from the mattress in a blanket-covered crouch, and dragged herself to her closet, sheets trailing like a royal train.
In the dim light of her phone screen, Francesca flipped through her clothes. She’d never worked from home before. Should she dress in slacks and a blouse, just to set her working hours apart from the rest of the day, or forego any facsimile of professionalism and lounge around in sweats? She was pretty sure Tim wore boxers with a button-up most days. Maybe leggings and a nice shirt would hit the right balance.
Abandoning her closet, she headed for the drawers and texted Tim to see if he was awake. He replied almost immediately, incredulous that she was up too. Francesca didn’t deign to respond, tossing her blankets and phone back onto the bed so she could shiver and shimmy her way into something acceptable for wandering the apartment complex at one in the morning. And then she let herself out into the hallway, steps quiet on the tile floor, and climbed the stairs to Tim’s apartment.
She knocked on the door, feeling strange in the unlit hallway. Usually, Tim was the visitor. He swung by at odd intervals, always bearing alcohol or food or movies, and entirely at ease with himself. Francesca, by comparison, stood in the hall with her arms crossed self-consciously over her chest as she waited for him to let her in. She tapped her foot and fidgeted with her sweater, glaring up at the white popcorn ceiling.
Tim flung the door open a moment later. “Cheska!” A curious smile stretched over his face, and he stepped back to let her through. “This is unusual.”
“My boss wants me to talk to some wizards,” she said, toeing her shoes off in the doorway. “I figured I should catch you before you go to sleep or I’ll be stuck waiting until noon.”
Tim shut the door to his apartment with a soft click and shuffled up behind her, guiding Francesca into his living room with a steady hand at her back. He was dressed as she’d expected, in hideous anime boxers under a pristinely starched, blue button-up. She noted a pair of garish, red socks that climbed halfway up his calves and almost felt her admiration for him fade, and then she saw the charming disarray of his hair, and all was well again.
He brought her to his living room and sat her on his couch–a futon with real, hardwood framing and the nicer upholstery than any futon ought to have–and then retreated to his kitchen to turn on a kettle.
“So?” he called, over the sound of cupboards opening and closing. “What in particular are you supposed to talk to wizards about?”
“Isn’t in obvious?” Francesca was tempted to lie down, but she restrained herself. Besides, the other half of the futon was smothered in paper, all covered in complicated aether conduit circles and theory notes. She picked one up, squinting at it in the dim apartment, and then gave up. She could hardly see. The only light seemed to be from an old-fashioned lamp with a fabric cover, onto which Tim had drawn an aether conduit.
He poked his head out from the kitchen and tilted his head. “I have milk in my fridge. We probably need to use it up.”
Francesca grimaced. “We’re both going to be sick. Why do you even have milk?”
“For mac and cheese,” Tim said. “I could make cocoa with it? I think I have some heatproof markers somewhere.”
“Don’t you have a propane hot pot plate?” Francesca tried this time to look for some scrap paper. She needed more light in this place.
“Ooh! Good idea. I’ll get that out.” He disappeared again, accompanied this time by the clank of moving pots and pans and cardboard boxes, until at last he emerged with the hot pot plate. Francesca watched from the couch as he placed a saucepan over it and whisked in milk and cocoa mix.
“You wanted to ask me about how the city is moving?” Tim prompted, once he settled in with his whisk. He ran his free hand through his hair, and Francesca decided, hell with his circle sketches, she was going to lounge on his couch.
“Yeah,” she said. “My boss said since we don’t have power in the building today that I could just do research. I wasn’t all that close with our professors though, so I figured I’d ask you first.”
Twisting to peer over his shoulder, Tim gave her a concerned frown. “Well, in my professional opinion, it couldn’t possibly be a wizard doing this. No wizard has really accomplished the kind of power needed for this scale.”
“Well unless you count the floods of Mesopotamia referenced in the Bible and… all those other ancient religions,” Francesca countered, “then no aether-loved has achieved this scale of magic either. And those floods could have been entirely natural.”
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