He nodded. “Those business cards contained a photo of Lily in a provocative pose, to lure in customers. It was animated so it’d gyrate around and catch your eye. But the mage she got to enchant them was a friend, and wanted hers to stand out. When he did the spell for the ‘toon, he added a bit more oopmf than strictly necessary, and some of her personality got imbedded along with her looks.”
“Fascinating,” Louis-Cesare said, now also watching the redhead.
“Oh, that wasn’t the fascinating part. One of her cards was caught in the cross fire during the battle, and somehow got transferred to a mage as a temporary tattoo. He and I ended up joining forces—you remember him,” he added, looking at me, because I’d crossed paths with the man briefly.
“Typical war mage; completely nuts,” I told Louis-Cesare, which wasn’t entirely true—the typical part, not the crazy—but I didn’t want to get into all of that now.
“He was that,” Zheng agreed. “And—well, let’s just say that the tattooed version of Lily turned out to be a true asset. Enough that I decided to meet the real woman, and we joined forces.”
“Joined forces as in . . .”
He grinned. He seemed to be in a good mood today. “That, too. But mainly, the family needed a new line of work now that we’re legit, and she needed protection in these difficult times. And the magic to try out the idea she came up with after I told her how we ‘met’.”
“And the personalities?” I asked, as the redhead paused by a nearby table to light a man’s cigarette.
Zheng shrugged. “She talked a few of her friends into lending their characteristics to the new scheme, in return for a cut of the take. So far, it’s been very lucrative.”
“How?” Louis-Cesare asked, still watching the redhead.
I really couldn’t blame him, this time. The others we’d met had been well into uncanny valley territory, with even the more realistic having improbable curves and weird, glassy eyes. They looked like what they were: sex dolls that could walk around. But this one . . . could have fooled me.
That probably wasn’t true for Louis-Cesare, because there was no blood flowing in the veins she didn’t have and no heart beating in that ample chest, something that a vampire would detect immediately. But there was a dewy freshness to the skin and a glossiness to the hair, which wasn’t the flat, dyed red of several others in the room, but a rich flow with hints of brown and gold. And her eyes—her eyes were perfect.
“Would you like some company?” she asked me, smiling, and bending down enough that I was able to see the striations of yellow and a dot of brown in the otherwise clear blue of her iris. She had a tiny mole on her left temple, like a beauty mark. And thick, dark eyelashes that were a little uneven, like a real person’s.
And, suddenly, I wasn’t sure anymore.
“Is she?” I asked Louis-Cesare, who was looking at her with concern.
He shook his head.
“No, thanks,” I said, and she gracefully moved on to the next table.
“You cannot be making a profit,” Louis-Cesare said to Zheng. “The amount of magic such realism must require—the cost would be prohibitive. Especially for so many . . .”
His eyes went around the place, and I could see him getting more and more puzzled, as he did the mental math.
Zheng saw it, too, and his expression changed. “You asking as a friend or . . .”
“Or what?”
“A senator. You are one—”
“As are you.”
“—and maybe you’d like to be one after the war, too.”
It was Louis-Cesare’s expression that changed this time. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that our dear consul is going to want a reason to flush those of us she doesn’t like, but needs for the war, once the fighting is done. Especially ones like me, who she doesn’t trust anyway.”
“You think I would betray you?”
“How should I know?” Zheng sat back, and spread his long arms along the top of the booth. “I don’t know you that well. Short stuff here, well, that’s a different story. Assuming she’s vouching for you?”
“He’s not going to say anything,” I said, impatiently. “You can trust him like you would me.”
“Oh, well, that’s different then.” Zheng paused. “And as long as we’re all friends, I was thinking—”
“Here it comes,” I said, and took the glass the waiter brought me. I hadn’t ordered anything, but Louis-Cesare knew what