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29. Morning After
🕑 Added 2024-03-06 15:00:06 +0000 UTC“Oy! Levi!”
Lounging in bed, the dawn light gently warming his sheets, Levi lowered his phone. “What?”
Maury poked her head in the room. “You awake?”
“Yeah, just lazin’. What’s up?” Levi asked, yawning.
She nodded over her shoulder. “Fira’s here.”
“Damn, really?” he asked. Kicking the blankets out of the way, he jumped to his feet.
Maury frowned. “What were you doing, anyways? You’re not the chill-on-your-phone type. Watching porn?”
Levi glanced at his phone. A picture of Blasterman soaring through the sky sat over a table full of estimated stats. He shrugged. “Planning a murder.”
She grunted and retreated, clunking down the stairs. “One way or another, try not to do it in my house.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s a blog site. I visit it all the time, so do thousands of other people. It’s circumstantial evidence at best, and anyways, by the time I’d end up in court, Alpha would’ve killed me long ago. Fira’s really here?”
“Yeah. Knocked and everything, unlike someone.”
“Door opens for me. You can change that at any moment. It’s as easy as deleting my face from the door camera,” Levi pointed out, following her down the stairs.
Maury reached the bottom of the stairs and turned, putting a hand on the wall and lifting her leg to take her weight off her mechanical leg. “If I did, you’d just come in through the window, and windows cost money. Especially your favorite bay windows. God, those windows are expensive.”
“There are consequences to our actions,” Levi said, shrugging.
She hooked a brow in his direction. “Damn, so you do know it.”
Levi grinned. “I always know there’s consequences to my actions. I sometimes choose to ignore those consequences, but I know they exist.”
Maury shook her head. She stomped off. “Fira’s in the parlor. Pancakes?”
“Blueberry!”
He turned the corner from the stairs toward the front of the house. A broad bay window stretched across the front of the house, early morning light streaming into the parlor. Fine but dusty furniture sat neatly arranged on perfectly clean, if dusty, carpet. Fusty, old-fashioned upholstery clad the loveseat and armchair, and they sat atop clawed feet carved from fine wood. The chairs pointed away from the entryway, sitting around the window. Fira perched on the armchair, clearly uncomfortable, staring nervously at her feet.
Levi looked them over and snorted. “Where the hell did you find this shit? A closing sale at an old folks’ home?”
“Ask my last husband!” Maury shouted from the kitchen.
At the sound of Levi’s voice, Fira jumped up and whipped around, startled. “Where’d you come from?”
“Not the window, though Maury reminded me I should’ve,” Levi muttered.
“I heard that!” Maury shouted.
Fira nodded at him, then took a deep breath. “I haven’t forgiven you for last night.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Levi agreed.
She gave him a look, a little taken aback, but quickly swallowed it down. “But you’re still my best bet at navigating this city. I can’t trust the other supers, or the other hunters. I can’t trust you either—”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Levi agreed again.
“—but at least I’ve got a pretty good idea where you stand, and it’s not on the side of Alpha or the ability hunters, nor on the side of the…the Apostles of the End, or the truly evil bastards out there.”
Levi struck his chest. “I strike my own path!”
“Right. Which is dangerous, but at least I’m not being led around.”
He nodded. “If you want Alpha dead—or something snuck out from Alpha’s nose—it’s pretty much me or the ARL.”
“The ARL?” Fira wondered.
Levi waved his hand, grimacing. “Alpha Resistance League. Bunch of douchebags who think they’re so much better than everyone else because they oppose Alpha. They aren’t very good at it, and they haven’t made any progress in over a decade. Don’t even know if they’re active anymore, actually. Can’t recommend them. If you’re worried about getting led around, the ARL can lead around like no one else. One step forward, two steps backward, that’s their motto.”
Maury clumped up behind Levi, leaning over him. “Levi has a grudge against the ARL. They aren’t the worst, but you do have to keep an eye on their ulterior motives. They aren’t afraid to burn someone out to get ahead.”
“By which she means, kill them,” Levi interjected.
Fira’s eyes shot wide, brows flying up. She glanced at Maury.
Maury grunted. “He ain’t wrong. Pancakes? I got regular and blueberry, and still some batter if you want a different flavor. If not, I’m making more blueberries. You’ll have to get the syrup yourself, if you want it—it’s in the fridge.”
Fira glanced from the proffered platter to the two of them, then back again, struggling to take in all the information at once. At last, she grabbed a plain pancake and took a small bite. “Thank you.”
Another grunt. Maury offered the platter to Levi, and he snatched up two blueberry pancakes. With that, she stomped off, calling over her shoulder, “Plate’ll be in the kitchen if you want more.”
“Thanks,” Fira muttered after her.
“What’s on the docket today? I’ve got my own plans, so if you’ve got nothing concrete, I guess you can tag along,” Levi offered.
“Oh, uh, sure,” Fira said.
“I’ll warn you, my plans don’t have much to do with your brother, but then again, you never know when you’re going to stumble across something,” Levi said, folding a blueberry pancake in half and taking a big bite.
“No, I’ll come. It’s better than sitting still and doing nothing,” Fira said.
Cheeks full, Levi nodded. He licked his fingertips, then swallowed and jumped to his feet. “Right. Then let’s finish up breakfast and get moving. Time’s a-wasting!”
As they headed out the door, Maury leaned around the kitchen wall. “You gonna need me today? I had plans, but I can be home.”
Levi twisted his lips. “Probably not? Just planning to look around. I mean, if an opportunity arises, then it arises, but…”
“Give me a half-hour warning,” Maury said.
“Got it. No problem,” Levi agreed.
“A half-hour warning about what?” Fira asked.
Levi glanced at her, then grinned. “Nothing.”
She gave him a side-eyed look. “That face doesn’t say ‘nothing.’”
“Then, would ‘wait and see’ make you happy?” Levi asked.
Fira sighed. “I will anyways, won’t I.”
“Indeed!”
“Oh, don’t start that again.”
The two of them stepped out into the sun, and the daylight swallowed them up.
