by Rachel Aaron
I blew out a long breath. Then, to my absolute mortification, I started to cry.
“What?” Nik said, looking at me in horror. “What did I say?”
“Nothing,” I said, scrubbing at my face. “It’s me. It’s all me, not you. I just…I thought you were going to hate me, and I’m so relieved that you don’t.”
“How could I hate you?” he said, his voice frustrated. “You were just trying to help me. I’m mad at you, but it’ll pass.”
“I can accept that,” I said, giving him a watery smile.
He nodded, and that was that. We spent the rest of the drive talking about little things—how fancy the Dragon Consulate had been, the idiot on the corner who was trying to wrestle a bucket of fried chicken away from a gutter nutria the size of a pit bull, how much longer we’d have to endure the heat before fall arrived to save us—but we didn’t mention what had happened in the cistern again. I was still laughing about the chicken guy when we pulled into the lot for my apartment, and Nik cut the engine with a click that felt unaccountably final.
“So what are you going to do?” he asked the steering wheel. “About your dad, I mean.”
I sighed. The clock had turned off with the car, but I didn’t need it. I’d been secretly watching it the whole way back. I knew exactly how late it was and how screwed that made me.
“Nothing to do,” I said at last, giving him a hapless shrug. “It’s eleven thirty. The deadline’s at midnight, and I have exactly zero dollars. So unless you know of a way someone with maxed-out credit and nothing to sell can get ten thousand dollars in thirty minutes, I’m pretty much sunk.”
I knew why that was now, of course. My five-month-long bad luck streak hadn’t been a streak at all. I’d been under a dragon curse, and I was pretty sure I knew which dragon was responsible. But that was a fury for my father, not Nik. We’d already met our negative-emotions quota for the night. I wasn’t about to bring in more now, especially since this might be the last time I saw him.
“It won’t be so bad,” I said quietly. “Like you said, I’m going back to the land of private jets and chauffeured cars. It’s hardly the Gulag. I lost this round, but there will be other chances. Even dragons can’t think of everything. I’ll just find a different way to win.”
“I bet you can,” he said, smiling at me. Then he glanced up at my apartment. “You think he’ll come for you here?”
“That would make the most sense.” I was certain Sibyl had already ratted out where I lived.
Nik nodded like that was a profound statement. “Need help carrying your stuff up?”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. I only had the one shoulder bag, and I didn’t care what happened to my plastic trash bag full of Cleaning clothes and almost-empty bottles of shampoo if I was going back to Korea. I was opening my mouth to tell him not to worry about it when I suddenly remembered.
“My collection!” I’d totally forgotten about the box of treasures Nik had packed up for me when I’d had to flee my apartment, which made me feel terrible. How could I forget my darlings? “They’re still in the trunk, right?”
“Actually, I moved them up here,” Nik said, reaching back to pull the box out of the back seat behind me. “I didn’t want Kauffman to bleed on them.”
I could have hugged him then. He was just so thoughtful in the strangest ways. But it didn’t seem appropriate, so I held back, distracting myself by grabbing the rest of my stuff and running up the stairs while Nik came behind me with my box. When I reached my door, though, I didn’t know why we’d bothered.
“Great,” I said, dropping my bags to the ground.
The door of my apartment was hanging on its hinges, the deadbolt shattered by what had to have been one hell of a kick. The inside was even worse. Kauffman must have brought in the same guys who’d destroyed Dr. Lyle’s house, because everything that could be broken had been. They’d even taken the time to rip open every single paper cup in my Cup Noodle stash, which was just petty. If I hadn’t been about to be kidnapped back home, I would have flown into a rage. As it was, all I could do was sigh.
“Please punch Kauffman a lot for me.”
“I will,” Nik promised, setting my box down in the middle of the living room floor, the only part of my apartment that wasn’t covered in pulverized debris. “So,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess this is goodbye.”
My heart started to sink. I’d known this was coming, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it. “I’ll be back someday,” I promised, both to him and myself. “My dad hates this city, which makes it my favorite place in the world.”
“Do you want me to tell the other Cleaners?”
“That I got sent home?” I snorted. “No way. Let them think I hit it rich and retired to a life of leisure. That’s a good, happy ending to the life of Cleaner Yong-ae.”
He nodded, then I nodded, and then we both just stopped and sort of stood there, staring at each other as the minutes ticked down.
“You should probably go,” I said at last. “You don’t want to be here when my dad arrives.”
“No,” he agreed, looking at me one last time. “Have a good life, Opal.”
“You, too,” I said, proud that my voice didn’t shake. Honestly, this felt more like defeat than anything else had tonight, but I’d already been a weepy idiot once. I refused to do it again while he was here. There’d be plenty of time for crying and hating the world back at my father’s lair in Seoul. For now, I was going to remember every moment, watching Nik as he waved goodbye and slipped silently out my broken door, shutting what was left of the splintered wood behind him.
I stood staring at the place where he’d been for a long time. It was a sad, mopey thing to do, but what else did I have? My apartment didn’t even have a place to sit down anymore. In my bag, I heard my goggles turn themselves back on, which I assumed meant Sibyl was sending my location to my dad. I could have marched over and turned her back off, but there didn’t seem to be much point. Whether it happened now or an hour from now, I was finished. I’d challenged the Dragon of Korea, and I’d lost. I was trying to be stoic about it when a knock sounded on my door.
Like a condemned prisoner walking to her noose, I trudged the four feet across my splinter-strewn carpet. I didn’t want my father to see me beaten, though, so I forced myself to straighten up. When I’d squared my shoulders and pulled myself to my full height, such as it was, I grabbed the hole where my doorknob had been and yanked the door open, defiant scowl ready on my face.
And nearly walked straight into Nik.
“What are you doing back here?” I whispered frantically, pushing past him to check if my father’s limo was in the parking lot yet. “He’s coming any minute!”
“I know,” Nik said. “That’s why I rushed.” He grabbed my hand and shoved something into it. “Here.”
I looked down in confusion. Nik had thrust an envelope into my hand, one of those yellow bank envelopes no one used anymore. The kind they put cash in.
“What’s this?”
“A loan,” he said, staring at me intently. “I’m loaning you ten thousand dollars.”
I jumped so hard I almost dropped the envelope. “What?”
“I’m loaning you ten thousand dollars,” Nik repeated. “Now you can pay your dad.”
“You can’t do that!” I cried.
He shrugged. “Why not? You already cost me millions of dollars tonight. What’s ten thousand more?”
“I can’t accept this,” I said, thrusting the envelope back at him. “You can’t just give me ten thousand dollars!”
“I’m not giving it to you,” he said, his voice growing annoyed. “I already told you, it’s a loan. You can just pay it back later.”
“No, I can’t,” I said desperately. “If I could just ‘pay back’ ten thousand dollars, I wouldn’t be in this mess! But there’s no chance. I’m cursed.”
Nik smiled at me. “You’re not cursed.”
&n
bsp; “No, I mean I’m literally cursed with dragon magic,” I explained. “That’s why I’ve had such a horrible five months. I found out from the dragoness who took the cockatrices that my dad cursed me to have bad luck.”
“Oh,” Nik said. Then he shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“How does that not matter?” I cried.
“Because I’m not cursed,” he said, giving me a smirk. “How about this? You’ve always been a better Cleaner than I am, and I’ve always been jealous of your ability to look at a place and see the hidden money. Now you need someone to make bids who isn’t magically doomed, so what if we worked together? You can tell me which units are good buys, and I’ll handle all the actual transactions that your bad luck would hurt. That way, we can finally stop wasting cash bidding against each other. We’ll piss everyone else off, make a ton of money, and you can pay me back out of our earnings. Everyone wins! We’ll split everything sixty-forty. It’ll be great.”
I scowled at the envelope of money in my hands. “Fifty-fifty.”
“Deal,” he said immediately, sticking out his hand.
I took it at once, wrapping my fingers tight around his as we shook. “Thank you.”
“You act like I’m the one giving charity,” he said, grinning at me. “But I just got my number-one competitor working on my side, so who’s ahead now?” He rubbed his palms together. “I’m finally going to get my hands on those jackpot auctions you’re always winning.”
“Don’t count your money yet,” I warned him. “I still don’t know how this curse works, and—”
I cut off when my ears caught the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Very familiar footsteps. From the look on his face, Nik heard them, too, and he bolted for the door. “Tomorrow morning,” he whispered over his shoulder as he raced down the open hall. “Six a.m. auction. I’ll pick you up.”
I nodded, shooing him away with my hands just in time as my father rounded the opposite corner.
There was no pretty accessory mortal this time. He was alone, and he looked strangely tired, his beautiful face pinched. His eyes flicked past me to the open-air corridor Nik had just vanished down, but while I was sure he could smell that I’d had a visitor, my father didn’t comment. He just held out his hand.
“Come.”
I scowled at his extended palm, and then I slapped Nik’s envelope down on top of it.
My father’s upswept brows furrowed slightly. “What’s this?”
“My payment.”
His yellow-green eyes flicked down as he tore the envelope open, and then his jaw tightened. “Cash?” he said scornfully, pulling out the bills. “Who still uses cash, aside from criminals?”
“Me,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Sorry it’s not a bank transfer, but it’s still legal tender, and you have to take what you can get when there’s a curse on your head.”
He didn’t even try to deny it. “I suppose you’re going to demand that I remove it?” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re not going to, so I’m not going to waste my breath. I just wanted you to know that I know and that it doesn’t matter. Curse or no curse, I’m not giving up. I’m going to pay you back in full, and then we never have to see each other again.”
My father’s hand clenched, his pale, elegant, claw-like nails shredding the money I’d handed him into confetti. I flinched at the soft sound of ripping paper, but when I looked up again, he wasn’t staring down at me in fury. He just looked sad. So, so sad, like that money had been his heart, and I, not him, was the one who’d torn it to shreds.
“Why are you doing this, Opal?” he asked quietly. “Why will you not come home?”
“Because I don’t want to come home.”
“Why?” he demanded, throwing the shredded money on the ground. “Have I not been a good provider? Have I not given you everything you could want?”
“You never gave me what I wanted,” I told him bitterly. “You gave me what you wanted. You gave me a handcrafted Steinway baby grand piano for my twelfth birthday. I don’t even play!”
“You could have learned,” he said, the horrible sadness falling off his face as the much more familiar anger pushed its way to the fore. “I will not apologize for being generous. And as to your wants, I have done nothing but cater to them for the last four years. I have let you run positively wild, and you have made an absolute mess of it. I just had a call from the Peacemaker—the insane Dragon of Detroit himself!—that my daughter was running around in the Gnarls with injuries. Do you have any concept of how badly that reflects on me?”
“On you?” I cried. “I was the one who was hurt!”
“Because of your recklessness!” he yelled back. “You care more for the well-being of the criminal who was just here than you do for your own. But you are my Opal! My treasure! I would never allow anyone to treat my property as shoddily as you have treated yourself.”
“Then stop making me!” I shouted, not caring that my neighbors were starting to poke their heads out. “If I wasn’t trying to pay your debt and struggling under your curse, I wouldn’t have had to do any of this!”
“The debt was your idea,” he snarled. “Not mine! If you can’t pay it, that’s not my fault. But if you think for one moment I will allow you to walk away without a fight, you have not been paying attention.”
“Believe me,” I said in a deadly voice. “I’ve been paying attention. I know exactly how dirty you’re willing to fight now, but you should know better than anyone that I will never give up. Curses, debts, hacking my AI, that’s just you showing how desperate you’re getting, which means I must be closer to winning than ever. And I will win, even if I have to break everything to do it.”
By the time I finished, my dad was staring at me like he’d never seen me before. “You selfish, foolish child,” he whispered, reaching out to touch my face. “You don’t even know what you’re stomping on.”
“Neither do you,” I said, ducking away from his touch. “If you want me to stop taking risks, stop putting my back against the wall. Just leave me be!”
“Never,” he swore. “Where do you think you learned not to quit? I will never stop chasing you, little dog girl. Not until you are safely back at my feet where you belong.”
“Then I guess we’ll be doing this again next month,” I said stubbornly. “Because this month is mine. Now.” I pushed the pile of shredded money he’d dropped on the ground toward him with my foot. “Here’s your payment, so kindly get off my porch.”
He grabbed the money in a motion so fast my eyes couldn’t follow it. Clutching the ruined bills, he bared his sharpening teeth at me and whirled away, stomping down the stairs with such force, the whole apartment block shook. I shook, too, my body trembling as I watched him get into his limo and drive away.
When I was certain he wasn’t coming back, I went back inside and started moving the bigger pieces of debris to block my broken door. Not to block him—I’d learned ages ago there was no stopping my father when he wanted in—but it was impossible to relax when you didn’t have a door. I couldn’t fix it tonight, but I could make a barrier, so I piled the wreckage high. When I felt comfortable that any would-be intruders would trip and break their necks before they reached me, I curled up in the shreds of my bed and went to sleep. After all, I had an early work day tomorrow, and there was no way Nik was letting me sleep in.
And when I dreamed, I dreamed of the brief, happy time when I’d been young enough to confuse presents with love and my father had been my world.
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for reading Minimum Wage Magic! If you enjoyed the story, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review. Reviews, good and bad, are vital to every author’s career, and I would be very grateful if you’d consider writing one for me.
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Yours always,
Rachel Aaron
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The Heartstrikers Series
As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: stay quiet, don't cause trouble, and keep out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't cut it in a family of ambitious predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.
Now, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ--a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit--Julius has one month to prove to his mother that he can be a ruthless dragon or lose his true shape forever. But in a city of modern mages and vengeful spirits where dragons are seen as monsters to be exterminated, he's going to need some serious help to survive this test.
