“What’s your damage?” he asked in another’s voice. “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”

“This . . .” She waved a hand around the circle, the shadows bending toward the gesture. “. . . isn’t my job. I won’t let it be my job.”

Haryain snorted. “Who says you get a choice?”

Arra jerked awake. Squinting up at the pair of monitors, she reached for her mouse with one hand while wiping away drool with the other. There was always a choice.

There was always another gate.

Fourteen

Fourteen

“ SO HOW’D the date go?”

“Date?”

“With Zev? Friday night? I was going to call you, but I had a busy weekend.” Amy laid a salacious emphasis on busy and waggled her eyebrows in Tony’s general direction.

“Barry?”

She punched his shoulder. “Brian! Dipwad. Now tell.” Setting her extra-grande mochaccino on the corner of her desk, she dropped into the chair and grinned up at him. “Mama wants all the gory details. Make this Monday morning worth her while.”

“I had hamantaschen.”

Heavily kohled eyes widened. “Kinky!”

“Cookies.”

“You had cookies? What are you, twelve?”

Tony shrugged. So much had happened since Friday night he’d almost forgotten about his non-date with the musical director. “We went out for coffee.”

“I was drinking coffee at twelve,” Amy told him with a pointed slurp from her cup. “That was it?”

“And we talked.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. I always thought gay men were supposed to be getting more than the rest of us. Don’t you guys have a quota to keep up or something?”

He felt himself smiling for the first time in what seemed like days. “Not since the eighties.”

“The eighties?” She smirked as she reached for the phone. “I guess you were doing more than coffee at twelve. CB Productions, how can I help you?”

Maybe it was Amy’s “the world wouldn’t dare fuck with me attitude,” maybe it was her electric-green hair, maybe it was the familiar sound of her answering the phone—whatever it was, he felt energized, anticipatory. Like he’d been waiting for something big, something amazing, and that wait was almost over. The fear and doubt that had haunted his dreams and his ride to work were gone.

“Tony!”

And they’re back. He turned in time to see Arra emerge from CB’s office. She still looked like crap, full sets of luggage under both eyes and her hair sticking up in uncombed gray spikes—exhaustion creating the same hairstyle Amy had probably needed a liter of gel to achieve. Obviously, a good night’s sleep hadn’t been in the cards.

Given that she’d probably spent most of the night trying to define the future by way of spider solitaire, that could have been an amusing observation. Except that it wasn’t.