“What?” Veronika and Lycan shouted in unison.
“Sunali can’t touch a dime,” Lorelei said. “It’s all in trust to the charity.”
“Why would he do that?” Lycan asked.
“He didn’t say,” Lorelei said.
“Because he felt shitty for leaving Sunali in the minus eighty all that time,” Veronika said. “This is his repressed way of saying he’s sorry, that he was wrong.”
Lorelei guffawed dryly. “Right. More likely he did it to torment us, leaving all that money just out of our reach.”
Veronika was reminded of something Kilo had said, the time she’d been at his deathbed. She burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Lorelei asked.
“‘I’m giving it all to my favorite charity.’”
“What?” Lorelei asked.
“That’s what Kilo said to Sunali. Don’t you remember?”
“No,” Lorelei said.
“This is good,” Veronika said. “You’re part of that charity. Holy shit, you could pull off any protest you dream up.” Veronika didn’t want to come right out and mention Lorelei’s idea—the march of the ten thousand bridesicles—in front of a thousand witnesses. If Sunali actually tried it (and now she had the money to do so), Veronika didn’t want to be hit with complicity fines.
Lorelei waved impatiently. “I guess.” She turned, looked up. “None of this is why I really pinged you, though. I came to tell you I’ll no longer be needing your services.”
Veronika tried not to show how stunned she was, but she knew it was written all over her face. Lorelei had just outed her, in front of a crowd, and she’d done it via screen.
“What services?” Lycan asked.
“Ask Veronika,” Lorelei said, and vanished.
“What services?” Lycan repeated.
Several hundred of Lorelei’s viewers stayed behind to watch.
“Wait. Give me a second.” Veronika tried to sort out what had just happened. Parsons must have decided it was time to shake things up. She thought she’d made herself too valuable for Parsons to throw her under the bus, but evidently she’d miscalculated. Maybe Parsons saw her as a threat; he might be afraid Lorelei would begin to rely more on her than on him. So it was time to out Veronika in dramatic fashion.
Then, for an encore, they would tell Nathan.
“Shit.” She opened a screen on Nathan. He was blocked—in the bathroom of Stain’s Coffee Shop. She turned to Lycan, blurted, “I have to go, I’m really sorry, I’ll explain later,” and took off toward the exit.
She headed toward the micro-T station, running as fast as she could, because having this conversation via screen would be very wrong. Come to think of it, Lorelei might be rude enough to fire Veronika via screen instead of IP, but she wouldn’t tell Nathan that Veronika had been coaching her via screen. She had to wait until she could see Nathan in person. Which meant Veronika needed to get to the coffee shop first. As she ran, Lorelei’s spin-off viewers were drifting effortlessly beside her. Her life was suddenly a spin-off of Lorelei’s—what a revolting prospect.
By the time she reached the micro-T station, she could barely breathe. Wouldn’t it be ironic if a second woman Nathan knew died while running?
She was almost to Stain’s when Nathan finally unblocked. She set a baffle to keep Lorelei’s followers from tracking her, then popped open a screen as Nathan exited the loo.
“Hey, I’m on my way to see you. Meet me halfway?”
Nathan seemed amused by her breathless condition. “No prob. Toward the micro-T station?”
“Right.”
“What’s going on? Why are you out of breath?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
Screens began popping up around Nathan—Lorelei’s viewers, guessing correctly that Veronika would go straight to Nathan. Still no sign of Lorelei, though.
Huffing hard, Veronika spotted Nathan up ahead, half a block from the coffee shop. “Is your vehicle around?” It was the closest location where they could escape Lorelei’s spin-off viewers.
Nathan nodded, gestured down Thirty-Fifth Street.
Still no sign of Lorelei. Maybe Lorelei was intentionally letting Veronika speak to Nathan first, to build tension in her grand performance.
“So what was important enough to get you to sprint? You know, you’re pretty quick.”
“I’m quick. Yes, thank you. That’s exactly what I am.” Nathan’s Chameleon opened and Veronika slid into the passenger seat. “Put up a block?” Nathan shrugged; the screens that had followed them right into the vehicle vanished.
“So here’s the thing,” Veronika began, as soon as they were alone. She was still out of breath, and the topic of conversation was doing nothing to calm her elevated heart rate. She took a deep breath, let it out. “Lorelei has been employing me as a coach on your face-to-faces with her.”
Nathan laughed. “That’d be the day. As if she needs a coach.”
“Nathan”—Veronika moved her face close to his—“I’m not joking. A lot of the things Lorelei said were lines I fed her.”
Nathan tilted his head slightly, as if trying to hear her better.
“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize my rapier wit.”
“You’re serious?” He laughed, but stiffly.
“Deadly serious. She asked me to do it, and I had reservations, but in the end, I didn’t see the harm, and she was willing to pay well.”
“She was willing to pay well,” Nathan parroted. He bit his thumbnail, thinking. “It didn’t occur to you that it might make me look pretty foolish, a dating coach out with someone who was making heavy use of a dating coach?” Nathan gestured at the screens hovering outside the one-way glass. “With a couple thousand people watching?”
“You know Lorelei did it just to ramp up the drama. That’s the price you pay for going out with a screen whore.”
“You could have said no. Evidently you don’t mind the drama all that much, either.” His tone was controlled, but he was angry. Veronika couldn’t remember ever seeing Nathan angry.
“She already has a full-time coach, so it wouldn’t have changed anything if I said no.”
Nathan blinked in surprise, waited for her to elaborate.
She’d been anticipating this moment, she realized; she knew it would come eventually, and in her fantasy it had played out just like in Cyrano de Bergerac. Nathan would recognize that it was the person who’d spoken the words that he loved, not the vapid package parroting them.
Veronika propped one foot on the dashboard. “Maybe I’m just tired of playing the role of the buddy. I thought it would be nice to play a different role, even from behind the scenes.”
Nathan sighed, rubbed the dark stubble on his cheek. “If you’re suggesting I’ve been playing with your emotions, I don’t think that’s fair. I’ve always been up-front with you. I’ve never messed with your head.”
“Yes, you have.”
The sun was low in the sky, casting a blinding circle of reflection on each vehicle parked along the street. The shadows of pedestrians stretched almost to the end of the block as they glided along.
In the distance, a long, lithe figure stepped out from a side street and headed in their direction, thronged by thousands of screens. “Oh, Christ.” Heads turned to watch this incredibly tall, incredibly popular woman. Who was she? She must be famous. Of course she was. If you had that many screens following you, you were de facto famous. And Lorelei knew it; she moved with the easy, confident grace of someone who was no longer striving to be famous, but simply was.
“Here she comes.”
“Here she comes,” Nathan agreed.
“Are you going to storm out of the car and confront her for making you look foolish, a dating coach going out with someone using not one but two dating coaches?” Veronika knew the answer, but wanted to make him say it.