The Gloaming Girls

EPISODE ONE (Part 4/6)

By two forty, I'm waiting outside the Olympic Oval, like Emory said, nursing my second cup of coffee, and trying to figure out whether I should have called Callia.

My thoughts keep drifting to the night before, and I catch myself blinking rapidly as the sun slides under a cloud. I stifle a yawn. It's probably better that I didn't call her, considering how thoroughly intoxicating I found her, and how it would definitely be a poor choice to see her again.

Still...

At two forty-five, the courtyard is empty.

Well, not empty, but empty of Emory. People are milling around, cutting across the courtyard, several lounging on the grass in the temperamental sunshine.

I text her.

Me:

This is important: where are you?

I wait for three minutes before I let myself get impatient. I text her again.

Me:

I don't even know what this dude looks like.

Emory hadn't struck me as the type to be late, but I imagine a person like her is full of surprises.

At two fifty, I give up.

I call Callia.

She picks up on the fourth ring.

"Kostaz," she says, "who's this?"

"Olyss, actually," I say.

"Ah." She says, not sounding either pleased or displeased. "Miss me already?"

Heat rushes to my face. "Actually, I need help with the necklace situation."

"Oh." Now she sounds disgruntled. "Alright."

"Where are you? And if it's not too much trouble, can you be at the Olympic Oval in ten minutes."

"Yeesh," Callia says. "And here I thought you weren't going to be the clingy type."

It's a joke, but it still stings. She has no way of knowing how much of a dissonant chord that strikes in me, so I wrinkle my nose and try to sound aloof when I say, "It's not for me. It's for my friend Marlee. And like I said. Only if it's not too much trouble."

Callia sighs. "Yeah, I can be there. Where are you? Main doors?"

"Yes," I say, and then I hang up.

Callia looks a lot less dangerous in the daylight, striding towards me within four minutes. She's wearing almost the same thing that she was last night—all black, a leather jacket—and it doesn't look quite as enticing away from the neon haze of the bar lights, but I'm struck at once by the way the sun catches on and lights up her hair, blazing and brilliant auburn.

"Afternoon," she says in greeting. "What are we doing?"

"Waiting for Haven," I tell her. "Emory was supposed to be here, and I think she had a plan, but it looks like she bailed."

Callia doesn't say anything, but her expression does: typical.

I make a note to file this away and ask Callia later what she knows about Emory. If there's a later.

She rubs her hands together. "What's the plan?"

I shrug. "I don't really have one yet."

She sighs, heavily.

"I don't really even know what he looks like, so there's that," I say. "I was hoping to... I don't know. Knock him out and steal it."

Callia stares at me.