Part-Time Gods

by Rachel Aaron

  As usual, the answer was “more than me.” While I’d been frog-walking across the floor scooping up slugs, he’d trashed all the ruined merchandise and removed all the display racks from the store into the alley. As expected from such a high-end establishment, the shelves were lovely: big slabs of handsome, solid hardwood held together by clever nail-free joints. They even had wards carved into the sides to prolong the viability of the magical materials. It was seriously high-quality retail equipment. Under any normal circumstances, those shelves would have paid for the whole damn job right there, but these were not normal circumstances. This was my life, and from the look on Nik’s face, my dad’s curse was holding strong.

  “They’re shit,” he said angrily, placing his gloved hand on the gleaming hardwood. “Literally. They look good, but there’s invisible dream slug crap and casings and who knows what else all over them. I scraped one down and bleached it to see if I could save them, but the filth’s seeped into the wood grain. See?”

  I pulled off my glove and ran my hand over the place he was tapping before snatching it back with a grimace. He was right. The wood looked fine, but it felt like a grease trap, and it smelled even worse. It was so strong, I could taste it through my rebreather mask. It was enough to make my eyes water, though those might have been tears of frustration. The shelves had been our last chance at turning a profit on this job, and they were even more ruined than the shop’s inventory.

  “Was anything salvageable?” I asked, trying not to sniffle.

  “I did find a couch in the back room,” he said, nodding at the front of the alley, where Sibyl had finally managed to wedge in our rental truck.

  I perked up. Couches were good. I could sell a couch. When I got to the truck, though, I saw why Nik hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic. The couch in question was the most atrocious shade of orange I’d ever seen. I’d noticed during my killing spree that there were no worms in the shop’s tiny back room, probably because there was nothing magical back there to eat, so at least it didn’t stink. That put it miles above everything else we’d found, but the cushions were worn and, again, stupidly ugly. Now that I was closer, I saw that the hideous orange was actually covered in an equally hideous pattern of tiny deformed birds. Or maybe they were leaves? It was impossible to say.

  “What do you think it’s worth?” Nik asked, stepping up beside me.

  I sighed. “Depends, is the buyer blind?” I gave the couch a shove. “The frame’s in good shape, but no one with eyes is going to put up with that fabric.”

  “Could we get it recovered?”

  “Not if we want to make a profit.” Still, it seemed a shame to just throw it away. If you ignored how it made your eyes bleed, it was a perfectly functional couch. Good length, pretty soft, legs were in good condition. That made it infinitely better than my couch, which was still lying in a pile on my living room floor thanks to Kauffman’s goons.

  “Would you mind if I took it?” I asked Nik. “We can’t sell it, and my place is kind of short of furniture right now.”

  “Go for it,” Nik said. “We’re paying for the truck whether we fill it up or not. Might as well use it for something, and the dumpster here is going to be full enough as it is.”

  That was the damn truth. “I guess we’ve got to actually start cleaning now, huh?”

  Nik nodded and turned away. “You’re on floors.”

  I groaned as I followed him back to our boxes of cleaning supplies. This was the unglamorous side of the job. Once you got all the good stuff out of a unit, you couldn’t just leave it. You had to make it livable again so the DFZ could rent it out to a new tenant. That was why we were called “Cleaners” and not “Looters.” Scrubbing was part of the process, and you couldn’t cut corners.

  The DFZ had surprisingly harsh standards about her units for such a trashy city. Units had to be spotless before she’d take them back, and you didn’t know if you’d made the grade until the end of the month. When we bought a unit at auction, it became our responsibility. If we didn’t clean it out to the DFZ’s satisfaction, she’d just charge us rent for the next month, and she’d keep charging until we got it right. Having to pay rent on your units was every Cleaner’s greatest fear, so we scrubbed from top to bottom. Since I was by far the shorter half of our team, I usually got the bottom.

  At least the work was mindless. I just grabbed the scrub mop and bucket from Nik, turned my music to blasting, and started attacking the caked-on slug filth. While I scraped the invisible poop off the floors and walls, Nik tossed all the ruined shelves into the building’s dumpster, lifting the huge, heavy wood racks one-handed with his artificial arm as if they weighed nothing.

  I made sure to stick by the door while that was going on. I’d never admit it, but this was my favorite part of working with Nik. Watching him lift heavy stuff had become one of my greatest pleasures, especially on days like today when he’d taken his jacket off.

  You’d think it’d be creepy since his coat hid all his artificial parts, but ironically, seeing the articulated metal moving beneath his black T-shirt actually made him look more human to me, not less. I think it was because I traditionally associated that sort of crazy strength with dragons, and seeing Nik’s cyberware was a clear visual reminder that he wasn’t one of those. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for a well-cut chest. Either way, it was a show I made sure never to miss. I never let him catch me looking, of course. That was what cameras were for. But watching him move was a precious highlight in what was otherwise a literal shit day.

  By the time the afternoon rolled around, we were both disgusting, but at least I’d figured out how the shop had ended up filled with dream slugs. While I was scrubbing floors, Sibyl had found a folder of electronic receipts on the unit’s local AI. Turned out, the previous tenant had tried to get in on last year’s trend for invisible pets by purchasing a ton of dream slugs on the cheap. Too cheap, it turned out. By the time his cut-rate package had finally arrived, the craze was over, and he was stuck with a bunch of worms he couldn’t sell. To make things worse, the dream slugs had bred like crazy on their trip across the sea, and since—as I’d discovered myself—it was pretty much impossible to keep the damn things contained, they’d promptly escaped and started eating his inventory. Realizing his business was ruined, the shopkeeper had skipped town without paying his rent. A month later, Collections had taken the store, and the rest was history. It was a classic DFZ story of irresponsibility, reckless greed, and, as always, someone else being left to clean up the mess. Just my luck it would be us.

  “I think that’s the last of it,” Nik said, tossing the final soggy box of used-up inventory on top of the now very tall pile in the dumpster.

  I nodded tiredly, staring bleary-eyed at the mountain of trash. “Did anything end up in the truck?”

  “Aside from the couch? Not a bit,” Nik said, clearly trying hard not to sound disappointed.

  I slumped down on the shop’s step. Great. Not only had we spent ten thousand dollars for the privilege of cleaning out someone else’s store, I’d wasted one of the four days per month I was allowed to request a truck from my car subscription service. It was a minor loss compared to everything else, but there were only so many times you could get kicked in the same place, and for some reason, that pushed me over the edge.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, burying my face in my gloved hands. I didn’t even care that they were covered with slug slime. Everything was. That was the problem. “This is all my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Nik said, though he didn’t sound nearly as sure this time around. “And anyway, it’s over now.”

  That much was true, at least. Cleaning the shop hadn’t taken nearly as long as I’d feared, but it was still way too much. We’d gotten here at seven a.m. It was now nearly five. That was a full day of work gone to waste, and while it was definitely the worst we’d had so far, the others hadn’t been much better. There were only three weeks left before I had to pay my dad again. If they were
all going to be like this, I might as well call him and surrender right now. At least that way Nik wouldn’t have to suffer another twenty-one days of this.

  I must have looked pathetic, because Nik sighed and walked down the steps to his car. I heard the click of his trunk, and then he walked back up to me and set something soft on my hair. When I looked up, I saw it was a shop towel, the super-cheap kind they sold in hundred-count boxes at hardware stores. He’d gotten one for himself as well. The white cloth was draped around his neck, making him look like a boxer fresh off a championship fight. I was sure I didn’t look nearly so glorious, but I was happy to have the towel.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, pulling off my rebreather and goggles so I could scrub the sweat and slug guts off my face and neck.

  “You’re welcome,” Nik said, sitting down on the step beside me. Then, after a long, tired silence, he said, “Tomorrow will be better.”

  “But what if it isn’t?” I whispered, pressing my face into the thin, rough terrycloth. “What if we just keep sinking lower and lower and—”

  “Can’t sink forever.”

  “That’s called hitting rock bottom,” I reminded him.

  Nik was quiet for a long time after that. I just kept staring into the towel, hoping against hope that he wasn’t coming to the same obvious conclusion I’d been trying to avoid all day.

  “Listen, Opal…”

  Crap.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he went on, squinting up at the late-afternoon sun that was streaming down like a spotlight between the buildings. “It’s been a really bad day. Maybe we should—”

  “Stop being partners?” I said before he could.

  Nik’s head jerked around in surprise, which was a surprise to me as well. I’d thought I was getting ahead of the hammer, but I must have seriously misjudged the situation, because Nik looked furious. “I was going to say ‘get dinner,’” he snapped, glaring at me. “Why would you think I’d want to stop working with you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I just cost you ten thousand and made you waste an entire day shoveling invisible worm poop?” I replied. “I mean, it’s kind of obvious.”

  “It’s not obvious at all,” he said angrily. “You didn’t do this!”

  “Dude, stop,” I begged. “This isn’t just me being down on myself, okay? I am literally cursed with bad luck.”

  “That’s not your fault. Your dad’s the one who did this to you. He’s to blame, not you.”

  That was very true. It also didn’t change anything. “I’m still a walking disaster,” I reminded him. “I’m not saying it’s a personality flaw. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be insulted if you didn’t want to be tied to me anymore.” Just hurt. Very hurt, because I’d really enjoyed not having to do everything by myself for once. I hadn’t even realized how isolated I’d become until he’d elbowed his way into my life, but now that he was here, I didn’t know how I could go back to being alone. There was no way in hell I was laying that guilt trip on Nik, though. I was determined to do the right thing and give him his out, so I was very surprised when he turned around and shoved it right back in my face.

  “I’m not tied to anything,” he snapped. “This partnership was my idea, remember? I’m not going to abandon you.”

  “You wouldn’t be abandoning me,” I said, striving to be reasonable. “We made that deal back when you thought I could still make money, but it’s obviously not working. I appreciate you trying to help me, I really, really do, but this curse is a lot stronger than I gave it credit for. That’s my fault. I underestimated my dad’s magic, but there’s no reason for you to get caught in my vortex of failure.”

  “You’re not a failure,” Nik said stubbornly. “I never would have bid on this store if you hadn’t tipped me off, and you were right. If it hadn’t been for the dream slugs, we would have hit the jackpot on this unit.”

  “But it’s my fault that—”

  “You can’t just take credit for the bad things and ignore the good,” he said stubbornly. “Today was pretty damn bad, I admit, but every day won’t be like this. You’ve been cursed for the last five months, right? Were all your units this bad before?”

  This was the worst unit I’d ever Cleaned, including the one with a dead body in it, so I was forced to shake my head.

  “Exactly,” Nik said, nodding sharply. “Just ’cause we pulled a bad lot this time doesn’t mean that’ll happen every time. Cleaning jobs are always up and down. This is just a trench. We’ll be up again, and when we are, with both of us working together, I bet we’ll make bank.”

  I pressed my face back into my towel to hide my smile. You wouldn’t think being bluntly informed that I was only being used for money would make me all warm and mushy, but it was just so nice to hear someone say they believed in me for once. No one in my old life had believed I could do anything. My parents had always made it clear how disappointed they were in my life choices. Even my legit friends like Heidi semi-joked that I was a magical disaster area. Hell, even I knew I was garbage at pretty much everything that didn’t involve esoteric historical trivia or evaluating treasure. But Nik was sitting there glaring at me like he was pissed I wasn’t understanding how hard we were going to work this place over the moment we got our chance, and it was just…nice.

  “Are you sure you’re not an optimist?”

  “Not a bit,” he said solemnly. “I keep my feet firmly in reality. It just looks bright because you’re so dark right now.”

  I had been pretty depressed lately. In my defense, learning that life’s dice had been supernaturally weighted against you was pretty damn disheartening. I was already doing everything I could to fight that fight though, so maybe Nik was right. Maybe there was no point being—

  “Hey!”

  We both jumped. Down the alley, a large man wearing janitor coveralls was leaning out of a service door glaring at us. “Are you guys the ones who’ve been throwing all the trash bags into the chute?”

  “What about it?” Nik asked, rising to his feet.

  “You can’t leave that stuff with us!”

  “This unit’s part of the building,” Nik said. “We got a right to dispose of stuff here.” He rolled his shoulders as he spoke, bringing his false right hand to hook his thumb on the strap of his chest holster near his gun. It was totally inappropriate, threatening behavior, but I didn’t say a damn word. I didn’t want to move all that trash again, either.

  “The normal trash is okay, I guess,” the man said, backing down at once. “But you can’t leave these.”

  He tossed three trash bags onto the brick pavement by Nik’s feet. Three wiggling bags.

  “I don’t know what the hell that is,” the man said. “But all magical materials need to be warded before disposal. City ordinance!”

  Now it was my turn to get mad. “There’s no city ordinances in the DFZ!”

  “There are in College Walk!” he yelled back. “Don’t you damn Cleaners ever check the rental agreement?”

  Still glaring at him, I grabbed my phone and sent Sibyl off to see if he was right. I’d never heard of any sort of trash-disposal rule before, so I was certain he was just trying to shove his work back onto us. To my enormous surprise, though, my AI came back with a ton of documents.

  “He’s right,” she reported in my earpiece. “This is a special district. The DFZ licensed it to a private developer a decade ago, and it looks like they put in a lot of extra clauses to the leases to ‘preserve the aesthetic and value of the College Walk neighborhood.’”

  “They can do that?” I said, shocked.

  “You can do anything in the DFZ if you have enough money,” Sibyl replied. “Technically, you’re also not supposed to load the dumpsters past the lids, either.”

  Like hell was I informing the janitor of that one. We’d stacked those suckers to the sky.

  “Why do we have to obey the ordinances?” Nik asked stubbornly. “We don’t live here. We’re just Cleaners. Unless the DFZ herself sho
ws up, we don’t have to do bupkis except make sure the place is rentable.”

  I was nodding vigorously when Sibyl piped up again with my two least favorite words. “Well, actually—”

  I rolled my eyes. “Really?”

  “Hey, you took on all legal obligations for the property when you won the auction, including the special clauses. Sorry, Opal, but legally he’s in the right.”

  She’d said all of that in my earpiece, but the man must have seen the truth on my face, because he grinned from ear to ear, which only made me wince even harder.

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “Just ward these so the evil doesn’t leak out and stick them in the dumpster across the street,” the man said, kicking the wiggling bags full of worms toward me. “Ain’t my problem if it’s over there, but I’m going to call the development authority on you if you leave those damn invisible stink demons on my property. They’ve been crawling through the walls for a month!”

  By that logic, he should have been hailing us as heroes for getting them out, but I held my tongue. Calling the development authority might not sound like much of a threat, but I’d lived in College Walk. Everything here was rich and picky and ready to come down on you with a fleet of lawyers the second you gave them a chance. I’d ignored a parking ticket once and gotten hit with a four-thousand-dollar fine I’d never been able to contest.

  There was no way I was settling us with a fine on top of everything else I’d cost us today, so I walked over and grabbed the trash bags, holding my breath against the smell as I dragged them back across the alley toward the dumpster for the adjacent building, where the janitor had instructed me to dump them.