dragon’s gaze. He saw me watching him, saw me raise my pretend pistol to my lips and blow across the pretend barrel before I followed the dragons to the meta-space of the Makers.
I slowed as I approached the door to the Castle, the silent cityscape of Boston University around me. I was grubby from the explosion and frankly hadn’t spent a lot of quality time with the tweezers and razor lately.
I didn’t have time to think of a whole new metaphor, and I’d felt surprisingly weak after the explosion. I didn’t want to waste my energy by creating a whole new meta-me; besides, if I went all badassed and swaggery and Queen Empress of Doom, rolling up in a blacked-out Escalade followed by a retinue of scary-looking troll praetorian guards, it would have been rude. The Makers had, in their way, been nice enough to show up and interact with me, heavy-handed as it had been. I couldn’t afford to be rude, but I had to be . . . more of an equal. I had demands to make and negotiating to do.
I could change what I was wearing. Clean it up a little.
I was in the lab.
“Sean!”
He looked up from the catalog he was working on, smoothed his mustache. “Yeah?”
“I need something to wear.”
“Like what? I’m not exactly Tim Gunn.”
And it was moments like those that I realized it was only an idea of Sean derived from my memories, not his. Alive, he wouldn’t know Tim Gunn from Tiny Tim. “Uh . . . something that resonates power—not like a Transformer,” I hastened to add. “Like . . . worldly power.”
“Like the pope?”
I took a minute to figure out how “pope” and “worldly power” went together, in Sean’s mind, and then shook my head. “Um . . . less masculine?”
“Wonder Woman.”
“No, jeez, not like a comic book—” Then I realized, I wasn’t sure what to do. Time was drawing short, and if it was an illusion for the Administrator, it wasn’t for me. Putting it off wouldn’t do me any good, and my nerves were already clanging.
Fuck it.
I clapped my hands once: My jeans were new and clean and fit me as if angels had collaborated with Edith Head to design them. My old boots—tired, beat up, multipurpose hiking and digging—were replaced with cowboy boots. I hadn’t ever worn them, but they were gorgeous and comfortable and were so complex—what with the brown and red detail and bronzed studs—that I felt as if I’d grown four inches and had built-in swagger.
A blouse, silk, plain, button down, tailored to a fare-thee-well. Midnight blue was a color, at least, and not a retreat into my gothic-punk attitude, so I counted that as a win. I couldn’t put on my battered jacket. It was falling apart, even within my imagination, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I held a Viking funeral for it.
I knew what I wanted even before I knew it: calf-length, dark brown suede, super-simple, elegant, and it secretly made me think “Browncoat.” I stuck a Swiss Army knife into the pocket, and tucked a trowel into my belt, under the coat. Metaphorical, of course, but good-luck charms nonetheless, and I felt better with them.
I walked through the outer office without a word to anyone. They were all terribly busy. Something serious must be going down. I knocked on the door, and when I heard the muffled “Come in,” I entered, closing the door behind me.
The Administrator looked up from the papers he was working on. “Miss Miller, have a seat, won’t you?”
“Thank you.”
“We’ve determined to try and fix you. You have thirty rotations to effect this. You will bring the population to order and we shall consider ourselves satisfied. We will give you the power necessary, but only for one major attempt at imposing order, subject to our review. If we are convinced you are making significant progress, we will give you more.”
“Order . . . can mean a great deal of things,” I said carefully, trying to ignore the sound of my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. “What does this goal look like for you?”
The Administrator frowned. “Order such that we may get what we need when we decide it’s time to visit your plane of being.”
Visit . . . plane of . . . holy shit. I cleared my throat. “Why not one more senior to me?”
“Because we are in contact with you,” he said impatiently. “And it is easier