In the doorway stands a short, slight figure, chunky headphones over a purple knit cap over long black braids. Holey grey hoodie over a T-shirt and black jeans. All this layering topped by a smirk like she doesn’t want to ruin her cool by laughing, but the sight of two guys scared witless is clearly too hilarious for her to maintain the deadpan.

“Yo,” Liv says.

“Yo?” Siaka repeats incredulously. “You barge into my private lab space without warning? How did you even get in the front door? It’s locked! Wait, no, I don’t care. And you dare bust in all, ‘Yo?’ like you didn’t just give us both a stroke?”

“Wassup?” she tries, then dumps a load of bags. Turning one upside down, she empties it unceremoniously onto Bran’s desk. A river of candy, gum and cans of energy drinks spills out. She opens a large-screen laptop with a couple of external drives and a handful of USB hubs. All the while completely ignoring us.

Siaka stands, arms folded across his chest. “Cuz? Did you hear me? I did not know you were coming. I did not invite you. You don’t just come barging into my personal space—”

“Like you did the other day?” she replies, concentrating on plugging a half-dozen devices into her computer, and then running the cords down under Siaka’s desk. She stops when she gets to my legs, and stares up, waiting.

“Yeah, I’ll just scoot back to let you by,” I say.

She crawls past me under the desk to link the cords to Siaka’s computer tower. Her task finished, she flops into Bran’s chair, opens a bag of jelly Smurfs and starts typing madly into her keyboard. She’s listening to Rage Against the Machine. It’s so loud, I can hear the lyrics though her earphones.

Siaka shakes his head. “Sorry about that. She’s not usually this... No, I take that back. She’s always like this.” He glances at her pile of candy, then at me. “It’s actually lunch time. Should we go out and get something?”

So, one, he’s talking to me again. And, two, I would love to get away from this sullen girl with a chip on her shoulder. But Charlotte told me to guard the bardia’s computer with my life. “Technically, you’re not even supposed to let Siaka use it,” she’d told me.

“Um, I probably shouldn’t leave...” I was about to say, ‘my laptop,’ but Siaka sighs and cuts me off.

“That’s okay. I don’t mind going for the two of us. Ham and cheese sandwich?”