Since the platform was up, I had no legitimate reason to go to Le Corbeau. I set up an office in a corner of my apartment-sized bedroom and worked by day manually transferring the information from the bardia database to the C2C. At night I would visit my old numa haunts with a few of my kindred, dredging up any useful information I could retrieve from my memories. But most of the time, I was in the library with Gaspard, phoning kindred who hadn’t been in touch since the beginning of the Internet, and so had never provided email addresses. To some of these people, a few decades must have been like the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, Siaka was busy loading the C2C with Flame-finger information. So, a good week goes by with only online communication between us.

Now, every time I think of him, I try to smother my regret with a good dose of reality. We barely spent any time together. Am I so desperate for a boyfriend that I obsess over the first cute I guy meet?

Deep down, I know it’s more than that. There’s something special about Siaka. If it’s due to the close tie between his kind and mine, I have no idea. It’s true that most bardia choose a romantic partner from among their own kind—to avoid the situation Arthur and Georgia are in.

But though Siaka bears the signum bardia and knows our secrets, and even has supernatural abilities of his own, we aren’t the same creature. Like Georgia, he will die one day. I won’t—unless I have some very bad luck.

He was friendly toward me, nothing else. What was I thinking to allow myself to crush on him? It was dancing with disaster: idiotic and self-sabotaging.

This is what I tell myself, at least, and it puts me on high alert any time I write him. I read each message carefully before pressing the “send” button, to be sure I don’t say anything he can misconstrue. I don’t even try to explain my awkwardness again. I simply focus on our project.

And that’s my life, besides working out every morning with Ambrose. Sometimes Gaspard joins us. In our three-way spars, I can barely keep up, but I’m getting better every day.

Gaspard has me prioritize Germany and France for the platform, so I begin setting up a secure two-way video link through the C2C. By Friday, it’s up and running, and Gaspard calls a house meeting in the basement cinema.

We take our places around a U-shaped table equipped with multiple cameras. Kate and Vincent share one camera, Charlotte and Ambrose share another. Gaspard, Arthur and I each have our own.