Minimum Wage Magic (DFZ Book 1)

by Rachel Aaron

  “Normally, sure,” he said. “But you have a bounty on your head, and Kauffman’s throwing money around looking for you.”

  “Then I’ll go to places where people who take that sort of money don’t hang out,” I said stubbornly. “The DFZ isn’t entirely made up of criminals, and we’ve only got eight more hours to kill. I’ll just kick back in a coffee shop or something. It’s not a big deal.”

  I didn’t fully appreciate how sad that sounded until the words were out of my mouth. I really was homeless now, wasn’t I? Next thing you knew, I’d be living out of my rental truck. The one I couldn’t move because the tires were still slashed and I couldn’t afford to buy new ones.

  “Opal,” Sibyl whispered from my lowered goggles. “I think this has gone too far.”

  Not now, I thought at her.

  “Yes now,” she said, not even bothering to hide that she was reading my mind anymore. “I’ve gone along with everything so far because I’m your AI and it’s my job to support you. But I’m also programmed to protect your mental well-being, and you’re being very self-destructive. You nearly killed yourself tonight. There are dangerous people after you right now, and your plan is to wander the streets because you can’t afford fifty dollars for an hourly hotel. Surely you can see why I’m concerned.”

  I wasn’t planning to wander the streets. I was going to sit in a quiet cafe, drink a coffee with free refills, and catch up on episodes of—

  “I think it’s time to call your father.”

  “Absolutely not,” I said out loud, making Nik jump.

  “Absolutely not what?” he asked.

  “Stop being stubborn,” Sibyl said at the same time. “Maybe you can’t see what you’re doing to yourself, but worrying about you is why I exist, and this is too much, Opal! You made a good try at it. You lived as a Cleaner for a lot longer than anyone expected, including yourself, but enough is enough. This is your life we’re talking about! Mr. Kos might be bulletproof, but you’re not. It doesn’t matter how much money Dr. Lyle’s stash is worth if you don’t survive to get it!” She heaved a recorded sigh. “It’s time to face reality. You’re out of money, you have nowhere to go, you’re being hunted by a career criminal, and your only ally is a guy who barely let you into his car and bullied you into giving him sixty percent of your prize. This is not winning, Opal! This is really bad, but it doesn’t have to be this way. You can fix everything right now. All you have to do is let me stop blocking your mom’s calls and tell her you need help. She won’t even gloat. All she wants is for you to be safe. I bet your dad can have a car out here to pick you up in five—”

  I yanked my goggles off my head, breaking the mental connection. I turned my phone off as well, pressing the power button before Sibyl could switch her voice to the speakers. I was not listening to this. I’d let Kauffman string me up by my toes and force-feed me Dr. Lyle’s hand before I gave my father one inch of leverage over me. Not a phone call. Not a peep. I didn’t care if I was hungry. I didn’t care if I was tired. I was going to make that damn payment on time. I’d sell a kidney if that was what it took, but I would never bow my head to him again.

  Just thinking about it made me shake in rage. I was shoving my goggles and my powered-down phone into my bag to cover it up when I realized Nik was still watching me.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I said angrily. “But I will be. Just drop me off wherever. I’ll make it work.”

  Nik nodded and settled back into his seat, but he didn’t get us moving again. He just sat there scowling at his hands on the steering wheel. Then, as though he’d come to a decision, he put the car in reverse and pulled out, turning around in his seat to look out the rear window as he backed us into traffic.

  “You can stay with me.”

  My head whipped around. “What?”

  “You can stay with me,” he repeated. “My place isn’t great, but it’s safe, and Kauffman doesn’t know where it is. If you don’t mind roughing it, it should be fine for eight hours.”

  Roughing it, nothing. Compared to my plan to squat in some poor cafe owner’s least expensive chair, anything with a roof and a door sounded like paradise. But while I was touched that he’d offered, I couldn’t. Nik had barely let me into his car. I couldn’t invade his home as well just because I was short on cash.

  “I can’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Thanks for the offer, it means a lot, but I don’t want your charity.”

  “It’s not charity,” he said sharply. “The bounty’s for both of us, so it makes more sense to stick together. Also, I can’t stand the idea of you wandering around until morning. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

  That sure sounded like charity to me, but my resolve on this matter was quickly fading. I might have been ready to go through hell to make this work, but that didn’t mean I was jumping at the opportunity. It galled knowing I was relying on Nik to save me, but Sibyl had been right about one thing. It was time to face reality, and as much as I wanted to stand strong and fight, I was at the end of my rope. I’d have a much better chance of pulling this off if I could get a few hours of sleep, and Nik did have a good point about sticking together.

  It was a thin straw, but I grasped at it anyway, lowering my head like the charity case I was desperately trying not to be. “Thank you.”

  Nik shrugged and kept his eyes on the road, driving us silently through the pre-morning rush hour as the flickers of sky visible between the cracks in the Skyways began to brighten with the first light of the false dawn.

  Chapter 8

  Nik’s apartment was at the southernmost tip of the DFZ. He lived just half a mile from the airport, in a neighborhood that was a Tetris stack of extended-stay hotels, industrial office space, car rental agencies, and self-storage units. He actually parked inside one of the latter, driving his fancy car into a self-storage locker and locking the rolling metal door, which was a pretty cheap alternative to renting a private garage.

  His apartment was right next door in the basement of a nondescript building that seemed to be a mix of office space and closet apartments aimed at business travelers. The stairs down to his unit reminded me uncomfortably of the subbasement where I’d found Dr. Lyle’s body, but at least there was no unidentifiable sticky stuff or black mold. Quite the opposite; the stairs down to Nik’s door looked like they’d just been pressure washed, and the security light was so bright it made my veins glow blue-green under my skin.

  Since it was basically underground, there were no windows, just a metal door set into a wall at the bottom that Nik opened with a key code. This was not an apartment you could sneak up on, in other words, and while I didn’t normally appreciate the military-industrial vibe, that was something I could get behind tonight.

  “You can put your stuff wherever,” Nik said, turning on the light as we walked in. “Don’t mind the mess.”

  Given that I was an unexpected guest at a bachelor pad, that comment had me braced for horrors, but the room I walked into wasn’t messy at all. It couldn’t be, because it didn’t have anything in it.

  The bunker ambiance from outside didn’t stop at the front door. Nik’s apartment looked like the inside of a gray cement box. There was no carpet and nothing on the walls, just a high-efficiency ceiling light and smooth-poured cement top, sides, and bottom. One wall had a shelf built from cinder blocks and wooden boards stacked with what appeared to be Nik’s daily necessities: cleaning supplies, ammunition, weapons maintenance kits, a giant box of zip-ties. There was a single metal folding chair and a plastic card table set up in the opposite corner, but otherwise the room was empty. There was no couch, no television, not even a closet for coats. And to think I’d been embarrassed to show him my place. My picked-over apartment was a decadent palace compared to this bleakness.

  “You can use the shower first,” Nik said, draping his armored coat over the back of the folding chair and then placing it against the wall so it wouldn’t topple backwards from the weight. “I’ll
get dinner.”

  “I think it’s breakfast now,” I said, setting the trash bag I’d stuffed full of my clothes down in one of the empty corners. “And I’ll buy the food. It’s the least I can do since you’re putting me up.”

  I couldn’t afford much, but I’d spotted a Zip Kabab on the drive over. It was the lowest form of fast food, but you got a lot for your money. When I mentioned the idea to Nik, though, he wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Save your money. If we want to eat garbage, we can get it off the street for free. Don’t worry about food. I’ll cook.”

  I gaped at him in amazement. “You can cook?”

  “Only one dish,” he said, giving me a rare smile. “But I do it very well.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, and I meant it. It had been ages since someone had cooked for me. “Do you cook a lot?”

  “I cook every meal,” he said, walking over to turn on the light in the tiny kitchen, which was tucked away in its own little cement hole at the back. “It’s cheaper than packaged stuff when you average it out, and it’s the only way to know what’s actually in your food. Never forget: this is the DFZ. It’s not like we have food safety laws or health inspectors.”

  My eyes shot wide. I’d lived in this city for three and a half years now, and the idea that no one was checking the food had never occurred to me before this moment. My stomach did a double flip remembering all the cheap takeout I’d eaten over the years. It was a miracle I wasn’t dead.

  “Well then,” I said, trying not to look as nauseous as I felt. “Thank you for saving me from salmonella.” I moved a little closer, hanging awkwardly by the kitchen door while he pulled a very well-used frying pan out of the cabinet. “Can I help with anything?”

  “Not enough room in here for two,” he said, which was absolutely true. I hadn’t even stepped through the doorway, and I already felt like I was crowding him. “Just go clean up. I’ve got this.”

  “Okay,” I said, stepping back. Then, because I felt the need to say something, I added, “Thank you.”

  He waved my thanks away and put the pan down on his tiny one-burner portable electric range, whistling as he grabbed a head of something green out of the fridge and started chopping it straight on the counter with a chef’s knife that had been sharpened so many times the blade had been worn down to a metal spike. Duly dismissed, I crept back to my trash bag, dug out some clean clothes and the toiletries I was so glad I’d remembered, and made my way to the only door in the tiny apartment I hadn’t been through yet.

  The door to Nik’s bedroom.

  My heart started fluttering when I grabbed the doorknob, which was stupid. I wasn’t a teenager anymore, but despite going on a lot of dates in college, the number of guys’ bedrooms I’d entered could be counted on one half of one hand. I wasn’t overly picky or anything like that. It was the guys. For some reason, every man I showed interest in always ghosted on me after the first week. It had gotten so frustrating that I’d eventually given up on dating entirely, which had left me a little rusty at the whole “I’m so cool, I totally don’t care that I’m walking into your private space” song and dance.

  Not that this situation was anything like that, of course. I was here as a shameless couch crasher, not a date. But now that he’d taken his bulky jacket off, it was impossible to ignore that Nik was, well, a guy. A very well-put-together guy, which was only to be expected given that parts of him had been literally put together. But the stupid fluttery parts of me didn’t seem to care that the solid shoulders and back muscles I could see through his T-shirt had been shaped with a band saw. They just liked the way he moved, and that made walking through his bedroom to get naked in his shower super awkward.

  I stood there tapping my fingers nervously on the doorknob for a good thirty seconds before I realized what an idiot I was being. Nik was cooking me dinner because I was broke, and he’d asked me to shower because I probably still smelled like dead guy. There was nothing to be fluttery about in this situation. A shower was the only thrill I was getting tonight, and I was wasting time I could have spent under blessed hot water feeling awkward about things that were entirely in my head.

  Thoroughly disgusted with myself, I shoved the door open and marched inside, turning on the light only so I wouldn’t trip over any piles of dirty laundry only to find that there was nothing of the sort. Nik’s bedroom was as empty as the rest of his apartment. That shouldn’t have been a shock at this point, but for some reason the twin mattress on the floor with its single blanket and military-style unfitted sheets hit me a lot harder than the furniture-less living room. It just looked so…lonely. There was nothing personal, no pictures or books or knickknacks. He didn’t even have boxes in his closet. Just more jeans and plain black T-shirts on cheap wire hangers.

  It was so sterile and practical that I was starting to wonder if he’d taken me to a safe house to keep me from knowing where he actually slept. That would have been suitably Nik-level paranoid, except that I’d seen him pull fresh produce out of the fridge. Perishables didn’t seem like something you’d stock in a place you only visited when you needed to hide, but I couldn’t imagine Nik lived in this spotless mausoleum of an apartment all the time. There wasn’t even soap scum in the shower of his tiny bathroom. You couldn’t be a Cleaner without developing a certain level of neat-freakiness, so I hadn’t expected it to be that bad, but this looked like he’d just moved in.

  It was all very strange, but I was in no position to look clean bathrooms in the drain. I stripped off my filthy, bloody clothes and dove in, turning the water as hot as I could stand it. Nik’s soap was predictably horrible, one of those super-cheap, abrasive bulk bars that could double as dish soap or laundry detergent in a pinch. But in a rare stroke of good fortune, everything from my bathroom had fit into one plastic bag, which meant I had my own soap, shampoo, and conditioner. I even had my loofah, and I used it to scrub myself raw, scouring my skin until every bit of death and blood had been washed down the drain.

  When I was bright red and wrinkly and my hair was so clean it squeaked, I turned off the water and stepped onto the cool linoleum floor, the only floor in the entire apartment that wasn’t bare cement. I had to use two towels from the stack in the plastic bin that served as a linen cabinet to get properly dry, but once I was in clean clothes, I felt like a new woman. Even my magic felt better. It barely hurt at all when I pulled a little into my palms to dry my hair so that it wouldn’t curl. Satisfied that my life had finally turned at least the first hint of a corner, I put on my socks and padded back out to the living room. Which smelled like heaven.

  “What did you make?” I asked, hurrying over to the card table, where Nik was placing a plate in front of the apartment’s only chair.

  “Pork and chicken sausage patties, buttered shredded cabbage, and pan-fried potatoes,” he replied.

  I nearly bowled him over in my rush to sit down. I’d been getting increasingly hungry over the past several hours, but it had been easy to ignore in the face of all the other impending dooms. Now, though, I was certain I would die if I did not eat in the next sixty seconds. But as I sat down and grabbed my fork to dig in, I realized there was only one place set at the table.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  “I ate already,” Nik said, walking around the table to lean against the wall where he could look at me. “Not trying to be antisocial, it’s just that I only have one plate.”

  “Oh,” I said, pushing aside one of the perfectly fried sausage patties to get a look at the cafeteria-style hard plastic plate beneath it. “You should try a restaurant surplus store. Sometimes they have whole matching sets for less than the price of one normal plate.”

  “I know, I just never saw the point,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t exactly have many guests.”

  Given his single chair, single plate, single bed, and single everything else, it didn’t look as if Nik had ever had a guest. That made me feel a strange mix of special and sorry, because Nik wasn’t a bad guy. He de
served to have more company, especially with food like this.

  His earlier bragging was justified. I had no idea what was in the sausage patty other than pork and chicken, but it tasted incredible. Everything did. Maybe it was the starvation, but I’d never enjoyed a plate of food so much in my life. I couldn’t even talk while I ate; I was too intent on getting everything into my mouth as fast as possible without choking. Nik waited quietly until I was finished, but though his gray eyes were constantly moving like always, they kept coming back to my face.

  “What is it?” I asked when my plate was spotless and every molecule of food was in my stomach. “Never seen someone vacuum up food like that before?”

  It was supposed to be a joke, but Nik’s expression was serious. “Actually, it’s your hair. I’ve never seen you wear it down before. I didn’t realize it was so long.”

  It had been a while since I’d had a haircut. I glanced down at my black hair, which was already curling up against my collarbone despite my best efforts. All the ends were splitting, too. Yet another thing I needed to take care of if I ever got money again.

  “It is a bit out of control, isn’t it?”

  Nik shrugged and dropped his eyes. “I think it looks nice.”

  “Thanks,” I said, shifting awkwardly in my chair as I scrambled for a return compliment that wouldn’t be an admission of the fact that I’d been checking him out earlier. “Your food was delicious. Thank you very much.”

  He shrugged again. “Everything tastes better when you’re hungry, and you looked pretty hungry.”

  Now it was my turn to look away. “Yeah, well, it’s been a rough few months. And I never was much of a cook.” I certainly hadn’t had the chance to learn at home. I didn’t even think my mother knew what a stove was.

  Nik nodded as if that wasn’t much of a surprise, and then he looked up again. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” I said, tilting back in the chair. “I’m your guest. The least I can do is be entertaining.”