and they’re going to take other markets down the slide with them. But for tonight, for the moment, we’re okay.”
The door slid open; they stepped in. “All right,” Dev said as the door closed and the elevator headed down. “I’ll get up to Castle Scrooge in the morning if I can.”
“Why?”
“So he can yell at me,” Dev said, resigned.
The door opened and they stepped out into the downstairs lobby. The doors to the courtyard were open: the scent of warm evening was flowing in through them, a baked-pavement smell fragranced with bougainvillea, jasmine, and magnolia from the flower beds in the middle garden. Dev breathed it in gratefully as they went out and headed for the doors to the residence side. “Jim’s not going to yell at you,” Tau said, sounding surprised.
“Oh, yes, he will,” Dev said, “because you did, and you told him you did.”
“How do you know I told him?” Tau said, sounding faintly outraged.
“Because it’s what you’d do,” Dev said as they stopped by the downstairs doors.
Tau gave him a look in the dimness, but didn’t deny it. “So,” Dev said. “Call me in the morning as soon as anything new starts to happen. Don’t give me that look! Yes, detail me a bodyguard this time, whatever. And, Tau, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Tau said, “you idiot.”
Dev grinned at him, weary. “Guilty as charged. Good night.”
“Night, Dev,” Tau said, patted him on the shoulder, and headed off across the plaza.
Dev sighed and went upstairs. He paused briefly by Lola’s quarters, finding the place in nighttime mode and Crazy Bob holding down the front office, eating a burrito and watching a foreign soap opera on the screen next to the monitor that showed Lola’s bedroom.
“Hey, Dev,” Bob said. “Busy day?” He was a big blond man, a former Olympic shotputter, huge across the shoulders and looking like the archetypal jock—which made the doctorates in child psych and so on all the more surprising for those who weren’t expecting them.
“You have no idea,” Dev said. “How was hers?”
“Active but otherwise uneventful, I’m told,” Bob said. “Ate a good dinner, and only needed two reads of Wuggie Norple to get to sleep tonight.”
“Great. Thanks,” Dev said, and headed back to Lola’s bedroom. He slipped into the darkness and found her engaged in her eternal war with her blankets, having knotted them around herself in such a way as to avoid actually getting any warmth out of them. Dev leaned over the bed, unwound the blankets somewhat and rearranged them, then bent over his daughter and just looked at her a moment, listening to her breathe. The silence, the moment of doing nothing but being there, was balm.
He yawned, keeping it silent: then kissed Lola night- night, straightened up, and headed out. A wave for Bob, out into the corridor, down to his own quarters: the thump of the door shutting behind him . . .
The weariness came down on Dev all at once. The living space was on nighttime lighting: Mirabel hadn’t waited for him. Dev sighed—why would she? She knew what his hours were like. He headed straight back for the bedroom, opened the door softly, went in.
The bed was empty.
He stared at it and for several moments simply wasn’t able to understand what he was seeing. “Miri?” he said.
Nothing.
After a moment Dev summoned up enough presence of mind to go over to the house phone and wave it awake. “Night concierge,” he said to it.
“Yes, Mr. Logan?” It was Ian, another of the household staff who couldn’t seem to get casual. But then Ian had been a butler once, and Dev supposed that butlering tended to leave too deep an impression of formality for a mere few years of other employment to erase.
“It’s okay, Ian,” said the voice from behind him. “He’s looking for me.”
Dev turned, saw the shape standing in the doorway, smiled wearily. “Sorry, Ian,” he said.
“No problem, Mr. Logan.”
Dev waved the phone back to sleep. “I was over in your office,” Mirabel said as she came in. She was wearing a large floppy Omnitopia T-shirt over her most beat-up jeans, and she was holding something in her hands. “And where have you been?”
“Oh, God,” Dev said, “don’t ask.” He sat down on the bed and dropped his head into his hands for a moment, then rubbed his face. “What a day. And it’s going to get worse.”
“You’re so right,” Mirabel said, sitting down next to him.