Fear Her Wrath II: Crucible of Glass

Chapter 35

"You seem antsy," said Ben casually.

I stopped in the middle of the algebra problem I was working on and glared at him.

"I'm fine," I said. "Math is just annoying. Like, I understand it, it's just... frustrating. It's easier if you're—."

"Asian?" Ben suggested.

"I was gonna say 'in the Math track,' thank you very much. Anyways, it's not my fault you're... playing into a stereotype."

"By being ridiculously good-looking and good with numbers?"

"You are okay with numbers," I said, tapping my pencil impatiently on the open page of my textbook.

"Tell that to my straight As," said Ben. He leaned against the nearest dryer with self-satisfied smugness.

"I bet your mom wishes you had A-pluses across the board."

"Well, as I keep telling her, if I didn't have all these girls constantly begging for my attention—."

"Get over yourself. And like I said, I'm not antsy. Just... bored with math."

I sighed and looked out at the cold spring rain that was pattering against the windows of the laundromat and turning the skies prematurely dark. Doing laundry was just about the only way I could get out of the house, and Ben had agreed to spend my last day before freedom helping me prepare for an upcoming math test, while I literally aired my dirty laundry.

Okay, so he was supposed to be helping me study—in reality, Ben was spending most of his energy trying to get under my skin and into my head.

(That and pretending not to look while I moved my underwear to the dryer.)

"Come on, Maggs. You're antsy because you want to be out there investigating those Glassface heists and instead you're stuck here with me and your math homework and your smelly yoga pants."

I chewed my tongue, but didn't answer. He had said "heists" for a reason. Counting the theft of the Polish mob's weapons about a month ago, Glassface now had three to his name—the same glass-masked gang had raided an Imperium Shipping warehouse four days ago and made off with several crates vaguely marked "merchandise." It was drugs, of course. Everybody knew it was drugs, and that made the Marbrose underworld nervous. Word had passed among the dealers in the Fen that anyone who took dope from a new distributor would find themselves reposing with the scaly verbrates at the bottom of the Marbrose River. That the Montagnese family was worried that some of the dealers in the Fen could flip—or that Glassface could dump his entire stock at once, throwing the drug market into chaos—meant that things were getting serious, and meanwhile, I was completely helpless to do anything about it. Without my phone or laptop, I couldn't even do the boring online detective work that I usually loathed.

So, Ben was right—I was annoyed that things were happening in the Fen and Nightwrath was stuck with math homework and dirty laundry and his very unserious flirting. I would get my phone back first thing tomorrow, but every hour until then seemed to last a week.

"So what if I do?" I said. "I'm dying of boredom, Ben. What's wrong with wanting to be out there tracking down Glassface instead of wasting my time—."

"Hanging out with me?"

"I'm glad you're hanging out with me," I said wearily. "Really. But I'm way behind on everything. I've got so many loose ends to follow up, and none of them involve fricking algebra."

I looked back down at the unfinished math problem with loathing. Ben, however, wasn't done.

"Maggs, you've mostly been doing the bad guys' dirty work since Simon was arrested. Why does it matter if this Glassface guy—?"