Page 56 of A Barista's Guide to Love & Larceny
“I think we have a lot of points,” Katya said. “The more reasonable,betteridea is to plant an undetectable device inside OLabs tech—something that will give me access to their security system that I can’t get from out here.”
“Exactly,” Silva said. “Our working plan is for the two of you to get inside, then place the device where Miss Novak tells you.”
“I’m not totally sure where yet,” Katya said. “I’ll have our options figured out by then.”
“And if we do that,” Dani said, “you’ll be able to do the override Lily told us about?”
“Yeah,” Katya said. “Should be.” Dani couldn’t tell how much of her confidence was bluster and how much of it was real. She decided she didn’t want to know. “Once you’ve planted the device and I’ve gotten access, I’ll be able to shut everything down for a few seconds.That’s when Wyatt will port you out. I should be able to get everyone in and out on the night of the gala the same way,” she added. “You know, when we do this for real.”
Like this time wasn’t for real? It was all sounding rather precarious to Dani. But she swallowed the sour taste in her mouth and kept her misgivings to herself.
“And that’s it,” Silva said with a touch of pride. “We’ll be meeting off campus at nine on Wednesday evening and traveling to OneiroLabs together. I’ll send you a pin for the meeting point later tonight via our app. Any questions?”
Everyone looked at one another, then back at the professor. The mood among them was sagging now, knocked down several levels from its original high morale.
“Excellent,” Silva said briskly. “In that case, meeting dismissed.”
It was impossible for Dani to dismiss the looming reality of her upcoming task, though, and all the worry that came along with it. The only thing she had to distract her was the promise of Kass stopping by Quarter Cast that night, though she hadn’t heard from him since their brief quartzpad exchange on Friday. That wasn’t necessarily a cause for alarm—he had warned her he’d be busy over the weekend, after all.
When she arrived at the café, her first order of business was asking if any of the other baristas could take her Wednesday night shift; she couldn’t bear to call out, as Silva had suggested. After a little negotiation, Amelie agreed to come in at eight thirty and finish out the shift if Dani worked a double for her on Saturday. Not ideal in terms of completing literally any homework, but it was what it was.
Kass hadn’t specified when he’d be showing up tonight, so Dani kept herself occupied by cleaning the crust off the syrup bottles and trying not to get whiplash every time the door-ghost cried out.By midnight, she was starting to lose hope when she saw a familiar backpack-toting dog pad up to the door.
This time Kass fully shifted into human form before he stepped inside Quarter Cast, grinning when he saw Dani at the handoff plane. She grinned back, every worry temporarily gusted away by the gale-force wind that was her crush on him.
“Hey,” he said, and leaned across the plane to kiss her on the corner of her mouth once he reached her. It was awkward and perfect. “How are you?”
“Oh,” Dani said. The real answer to that question was off the table. “I’m all right, I guess. How was your family time?”
“Brutal,” Kass said. Brick red bled into Dani’s mind. “My dad really knows how to ruin a perfectly good weekend. He took me to this business thing with him and—” Kass bit down on the rest of the sentence and shook his head, the red fading as quickly as it had come. “You know what? I don’t want to talk about that. I’m here with you and I want to enjoy it. Are you busy right now?”
Dani shook her head. The rest of the syrup bottles could wait. She brewed them a French press with a new small-batch roast that had just come in and cut a cheese Danish in half. They spent the next two hours sipping their coffee, holding hands, and talking. Once closing time hit, Kass waited for Dani to lock up so he could walk her back to her apartment, cozied up together under his magic umbrella.
“I’ll see you soon, Dani Lionet,” he said before he kissed her goodbye at her front door. She fell into bed feeling almost tipsy with euphoria, forgetting for just a few brief hours about the long shadow of OneiroLabs and everything that awaited her.
Twenty
By Wednesday night, Dani’s body composition had fluctuated back to its usual balance of 90 percent anxiety, 10 percent coffee. Excruciatingly, Amelie didn’t show up at Quarter Cast to relieve her from her shift until 8:46—fourteen minutes before Dani was supposed to meet Silva and the rest of the crew nearby.
“Sorry I’m late,” Amelie said as she joined a wound-up Dani behind the bar. “There was some serious drama in our suite. Mel was all, like, disturbing my consecrated—”
“Hold that thought,” Dani said, already out of her apron and halfway to the breakroom. “Tell me next shift. Thanks so much again for covering!”
She made it as far as the street corner before she realized she’d forgotten where Silva told them to meet. She’d read the professor’s message earlier and knew she was supposed to be going in the direction of downtown, but the details had left her brain, and she hadn’t brought her quartzpad with her, so she couldn’t even check the location pin.
Dani was considering going back inside and asking Amelie if she could use her quartzpad to message McKenna when she glimpsed a flurry of turquoise movement out of the corner of her eye.
She looked up to see a crow land on the nearest streetlight. “Gingerbread!” she cried. “Thank the gods. I’ve never been so glad to see an omen of death in my life.”
He rasped back at her, skull rotating on his weird neck, then swooped down from the streetlight and flew north, drawing a clearline for Dani to copy. She invoked a silent blessing on McKenna for yet again sending her familiar to the rescue as she followed him down the sidewalk.
Gingerbread led her for two blocks, Dani’s nerves jangling with every step. Some part of her was still holding out hope that she’d get there and Silva would have changed her mind, decided to send someone else in instead. Dani said a quick prayer to Hecate as she rounded a corner and OneiroLabs emerged on the skyline like the prow of a cruise liner, its lights smeared in the drizzling rain. They were just a few streets away.
A jagged fingernail of a shiver stroked Dani’s spine. She wasn’t much of a seer, but she recognized a warning when she felt one.
She had no choice but to ignore it. Gingerbread had come to roost on top of a white van, the kind that TV stations used, situated at the curb in front of a public park. Much too large for a passenger vehicle and too sketchy to belong to a business, it had painted windows and a camera crane folded on the roof.
Dani advanced with the caution instilled by a lifelong wariness of unmarked vans, but as soon as she stepped onto the sidewalk next to it, the sliding door slammed open, and McKenna stuck her head out into the rain.
