We continued through the park. My gaze slid over the bizarre buildings surrounding us—one seemingly made from snow-white plastic with shiny stainless-steel balconies, and another patterned in the crosshatch black used in so many carbon fiber designs.
"Why are we always in a hurry to do something when we come here?" I complained. "I'd really like to take you on a real date for once."
Elyssa squeezed my hand. "How about after your magic lessons today?"
"Don't you have Templar duties?"
She shook her head. "I'm still on recovery leave."
"Dinner and a show?" I'd seen a cool Chinese restaurant the first time I'd been here, and Shelton had mentioned a live-action theater he liked to visit.
"How about dancing instead?
Dancing wasn't exactly my forte, but so long as it was with Elyssa, I was willing to give it a shot. "You got it, babe."
A bright smile lit her face. "It's a date."
We left the park and crossed the marble street to the Orange store, bearing a stark white sign with a partially peeled orange emblazoned on it. The building consisted of a similar white material lined with liquid glass, rippling like the surface of a crystalline lake. Across the road from Orange, almost all three stories of the MagicSoft store were made entirely of the liquid glass. I wondered if the floors were too. Unlike the last time we'd been here, there were few people inside either store. We walked up the glowing white stairs, passing a poster which declared, Now you can compare Apples to Oranges!
About a half-hour later, we emerged from the store, my shiny new arcphone in hand. Apparently, smartphones were considered dumbphones by Overworld citizens since they couldn't use magic and were limited to traditional cell towers. Arcphones could make use of just about any nom cell signal and the magical cell network. My new toy was wafer thin and no larger than a credit card. I dragged my thumb across the glowing Orange logo on the screen, peeling the fruit and revealing a list of apps. I tapped one of them to reveal a slider and slid it up. The phone expanded until the edge-to-edge screen was nearly seven inches. I pulled the slider down, shrinking the phone to five inches, then three, and back up again.
"Will you stop playing with that thing?" Elyssa said, an amused grin on her face.
"How did I survive all these years without one of these?" I rubbed the smooth, polished surface of the device like a pet. "Nookli, I love you."
"You are the wind beneath my wings," the phone replied in a mellifluous voice.
I laughed. "Awesome!"
Elyssa rolled her eyes.
I played with my phone as we weaved our way back through the Grotto to the parking garage. Despite the magical origins of the new arcphone, it interfaced perfectly with my nom email, and the salesperson had even ported all my saved texts, pictures, and old phone number. I flicked through the few texts in the list. Katie Johnson, my former crush, had texted me several times over the past few days. Ash and Nyte, two Goth guys who, along with Elyssa, had befriended me at an especially low point in my life, had also tried to reach me.
At first, the messages showed up in typical text lingo, with all the associated abbreviations and bad grammar. Then the words shimmered and morphed into something resembling normal sentences with proper punctuation. It was all I could do not to kiss Nookli. What a smart little phone!
I felt guilty about not replying to any of my non-supernatural friends since returning from Colombia, but with the forces of darkness out to kill me, I didn't want to put them in any danger. They couldn't deal with vampires, fallen angels, or hellhounds. I'd barely held my own against most of the threats I'd faced, and I was half demon spawn. Still, didn't my friends deserve at least some small reply? Or would I put them in harm's way somehow?
For what must have been the fifth time, I pulled up Ash's texts and read through them again.
Dude, you still alive?
Seriously, man, holla back.
Katie says you're okay. Me and Nyte gotta show you something cool!
Nyte's texts were similar, going on and on about how he and Ash really wanted to show me some cool new thing—probably a new nose ring or something Goth and gross. Katie's texts were a bit more somber.