i think maybe the kids need to be at the ritual. I ain't sure, but i'm also not sure the shit that lynch and i made for it is really gonna work. it's a shitty smeary amorphous spitfuck. best of times, magic is approximate.
[dr. chilton would be very mad he is cussing so much, but he used the word 'approximate.' treat please.]
hard not to notice most of the people betting on the conduits don't know jack shit about magic. they like their science, convenience, luck. human ingenuity against the fucking odds. honor. blah blah, woof woof.
but i know magic. and that's some of my > human ingenuity they're pitting against cosmic power. the rest of my human fuckin ingenuity says something different. you get me?
Once they return from Jeopardy, payment occurs in installations. A handsome sum. Mostly in cash, but a single good-sized diamond, too, sized just shy of being a paragon which is good, would have drawn too much attention, according to the expert gemologist who conducts the appraisal and immediately makes an offer that Kaz does not take.
Kavinsky accompanies him to the bank for the first major cash deposit. Slightly redundant, but he shows Kaz how to use the ATMs and supervises the electronic account creation, but otherwise stays out of the way. He doesn't comment that Kaz is putting less than half of his earnings into the account. Kavinsky offers to drive him home, then spends the whole trip performing a lackadaisical lecture about the importance of learning how to operate a stick shift, which Kaz isn't entirely sure is a flirtation or provocation of a different sort.
The final installment is accompanied by a parcel.
"I know what a gift is," Kaz tells him, evenly, cutting off Kavinsky who is definitely being provocative with his snobby, tedious explanation at that moment.
"Do you know what Christmas is?" Kavinsky asks.
Actually, Kaz does not. But he can figure it out based on context. So he says as much, then snatches away from the other young man, the silver parcel under his arm.
He doesn't open it until Christmas. Not for lack of curiosity, but because he doesn't need or want anything. In another world, Kaz Brekker survived on knives, hate, and table scraps; in this one, his apartment lodging and recent preponderance of personal funds leave him needing for nothing. (And as for wanting... well.) (Well.)
On the morning of the twenty fifth, he cuts the ribbon and peels the paper. Bedded in black charmeuse, there is a bottle of cologne. The label says: Sweet Little Thing, the stylized silhouette of a hooded girl inked in beside the elegant lettering.
Provocation. Kaz sneers. But he tries it on anyway.
The first note of toasted brown sugar dissipates almost instantly, burns up in a flare of spice and a steep grade of supple black leather, rose otto and myrrh. Inej was no sweet little thing. She was a knife fishing through the gap between a man's ribs; she was the silence between two heartbeats that did not know either of them might be the last. Honorable, in the only way Kaz understood. The scent intoxicates; redolent with the startling nakedness of her brown fingers, the touchable incense-black smoke of her trailing hair that he had not imagined imagining. Not sweet. Powerful.
Kaz blinks, catches his breath -- forcefully. And then he almost catches something else right at the end: tobacco and pepper and feverish dark. (A tattooed hand closing over the brown one that had pried into the cage around his heart, a white thumb straying toward his nipple.) But only almost. (Some thieves are harder to catch than others.)
It's like rolling over after a long, filthy dream, only to find an unfamiliar face smiling from the other pillow. He coughs. Screws the cap back onto bottle. Tells himself not to open it again.
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text; day of apocalypse.
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so, nothing.
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you heard about the ritual and shit?
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What's the job?
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[dr. chilton would be very mad he is cussing so much, but he used the word 'approximate.' treat please.]
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[ Time is money, Kavinsky. Also, probably imperative. ]
You've been here longer. You just hedging bets or you think everyone's gonna fuck things up if they ignore that part?
1/2
there's a robot dude who's been tracking their movements. we got a location.
[the other question takes
a minute—]
2/2
hard not to notice most of the people betting on the conduits don't know jack shit about magic. they like their science, convenience, luck. human ingenuity against the fucking odds. honor. blah blah, woof woof.
but i know magic. and that's some of my > human ingenuity they're pitting against cosmic power. the rest of my human fuckin ingenuity says something different. you get me?
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I need more information and I don't know how much of this we should be trading in writing. I'll do it. I like contingencies upon contingencies.
I know better than to think any of them can outsmart this kind of thing. As far as I understand, that just isn't how it works.
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[At least he has the courtesy to give Kavinsky a cross street to make hunting him down easier.]
not here;