like to start it o right, with a big breakfast. Who's hungry? "
"Um ... er ...," Shelby stammered, looking at Luce, then Arriane, then at the casino. "What just ... How did ..."
Miles's gaze was xed on the shiny, marbled scar that spanned one side of Arriane's neck. Luce was used to Arriane by now, but it was clear that her friends didn't know what to make of her.
Arriane waved her nger at Miles. "This guy looks like he can eat his weight in wa es. Come on, I know a lthy diner."
As they clipped up the alley toward the street, Miles turned to Luce and mouthed, "That was awesome."
Luce nodded. It was all she could do to keep up with Arriane as she jogged across the Strip. Vera. She couldn't get over it. All those memories, glimpsed in a ash. They'd been painful and startling, and she could only imagine what it had been like for Vera. But for Luce, they had also been deeply satisfying. More than with any of her glimpses through the Announcers so far, this time she felt as if she'd experienced one of her past lives. Strangely, she'd also seen something she'd never even thought about: Her previous selves had lives. Lives that had been full and meaningful before Daniel had shown up.
Arriane led them to an IHOP, a squat brown stucco building that looked so ancient it could have predated everything else on the Strip. It seemed more claustrophobic and sadder than other IHOPs.
Shelby led the way inside, pushing through the glass doors, chiming the cheap jingle bells duct-taped to the top. She grabbed a stful of mints from the bowl by the register before claiming a booth in the far back corner. Arriane slid in next to her, while Luce and Miles took the other side of the cracked orange leather booth.
With a whistle and a quick circular gesture, Arriane ordered a round of co ee from the plump, pretty waitress with the pencil stuck in her hair.
The rest of them focused on the thick, spiral-bound laminated menu. Turning the pages was a battle against the ancient maple syrup welding the whole thing together--and a good way to avoid talking about the trouble they'd just narrowly escaped.
Finally Luce had to ask. "What are you doing here, Arriane?"
"Ordering something with a funny name. Rooty Tooty, I guess, since they don't have Moons Over My Hammy here. I can never decide."
Luce rolled her eyes. Arriane didn't need to act so coy. It was obvious her rescue e ort hadn't been coincidental. "You know what I mean."
"These are strange days, Luce. I gured I'd pass them in an equally strange city."
"Yeah, well, they're almost over. Aren't they, according to the truce timeline?"
Arriane put down her co ee cup and cradled her chin in her palm. "Well, hallelujah. They are teaching you something at that school after all."
"Yes and no," Luce said. "I just overheard Roland saying something about how Daniel would be counting down the minutes. He said it had something to do with a truce, but I didn't know exactly how many minutes we were talking about."
Beside her, Miles's body seemed to have sti ened at the mention of Daniel. When the waitress arrived to take their orders, he barked his out rst, practically shoving the menu back at her. "Steak and eggs, rare."
"Oooh, manly," Arriane said, eyeing Miles approvingly in the midst of the eeny, meeny, miny, moe game she was playing on her menu. "Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity it is." She enunciated as properly as the Queen of England might, keeping a remarkably straight face.
"Pigs in a blanket for me," Shelby said. "Actually, make that an egg-white omelet, no cheese. Aw, what the hell. Pigs in a blanket."
The waitress turned to Luce. "How 'bout you, hon?"
"Breakfast Sampler." Luce smiled apologetically on behalf of her friends. "Scrambled, hold the meat."
The waitress nodded, padding o toward the kitchen.
"Okay, so what else did you hear?" Arriane asked.
"Um." Luce started playing with the carafe of syrup next to the salt and pepper. "There was some talk of, you know, End Times."
Snickering, Shelby splashed three little tubs of creamer into her co ee. "End Times! You actually buy into that crap? I mean, how many millennia have we been waiting around for that? And humans think they've been patient for a mere couple thousand years! Hah. Like anything is ever going to change."
Arriane looked about a second away from putting Shelby in her place, but then