Once Detective Flores left, I fled to the shower to wash away the grime from the run, concerns of truant gods, and unsettling talks with police detectives. Passing by the front room, I saw Lex on the couch out of the corner of my eye, and pressed my lips together in exasperation. I left it alone for now. One more thing to sort out later.

Once clean, I made ready to head out. When I talked with Bushra last night, we'd made plans to meet up and try to get some actual work done. I also hesitated to go into all the details of what Ben had said over the phone, so a face-to-face was good. Thankfully, because of the extra god hanging around, I'd suggested working in a local café instead of my house. That could have been an even bigger mess if Bushra had also run into Detective Flores here. I grabbed a lightweight puffy black coat against the morning chill, told Iter where I was going, and left them both on the couch. Another productive day of deity-ing and playing video games. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

The café was further down Park Street, almost near the residential portion of the road. It billed itself as a "coffee and tea garden", so I thought this might fit Bushra's tastes better. Plus, it tended to be active enough that two people conversing about work would be fine, but quiet enough that we didn't have to try to compete with the din. Bushra was already there when I arrived, a little white ceramic teapot in front of her with a matching white cup and saucer. She'd opted for a table in the front rather than in the garden out back, which worked well enough for me. The light from the window frontage was restrained, but comfortable. Her rather large laptop took up most of the rest of the surface area on her side of the table. I moved over and pulled up a chair.

"Sorry I made you wait," I greeted her. She finished taking a sip of her beverage and tried putting it down and nodding at the same time.

"No problem. I thought I'd get here and get set up first. Plus, I had to leave home before my parents caught me. It's not like I'm lying about going to work if our company idea pans out." She added defensively, then paused and added "Also, they did not like getting visited by the cops yesterday." She grimaced, and I didn't think it was the tea.

"The police visited you, too? There was a detective outside my home this morning." I pulled out my much older, lighter laptop, and connected it to the nearby power outlet Bushra had appropriated.

"Really? What did they want? They wouldn't tell my parents anything," Bushra inquired. "Once they found out I wasn't there, they left. I'm supposed to call them back or something." She made a face. "It's probably a good thing I wasn't there. I got an earful from my mom about it when I got home. I'd told them about what happened with Jon, so it was easy to say this was a follow-up. But they don't respond well to surprises like that."

"You remember last night I said Ben had insinuated the police were investigating the thefts? He might have been right. The detective was definitely probing at something. I think they're looking for an accomplice to the thefts." I paused, wondering how much to say. I decided to lay it all out. "They think it could be one or both of us."

Bushra's mouth was open, eyes wide, clearly stunned. "But why?" she finally got out. "We're the victims in all this. Jon even said so."

"I'm not sure, but they found some things that don't add up. The detective mentioned Jon's phone was missing, and that the security video was erased. What would it take to do that?" I asked offhandedly. It's not like I suspected Bushra or anything. At least, I was pretty sure. We hadn't known each other long, but while she put up a tough front, her youth peeked through here and there. Or maybe, because she was so fierce her inexperience and insecurity were more evident? But it had me wondering.

"Access," Bushra replied after a very brief pause, raising her cup of tea and taking another sip. "Those things have local storage, but save to the cloud at intervals. My parents got one last year. Hacking into one would be possible, I guess, but it would be a lot easier just to get the password to the account somehow. When my parents received theirs from my uncle, they asked for my help getting it configured. One of the things I did was wipe all my uncle's old data and reset the account. It was pretty easy, actually. Though it might be different for different manufacturers." She tilted her head in thought.

"Uh, maybe don't tell that story to the police if they ask you about it." Relaying something like that in front of that detective would be like showing a limp to a predator.

"Oh! Um, okay." Bushra swallowed, and looked down and away. Her forehead wrinkled and eyes widened.

I excused myself to get a beverage of my own from the counter. I ordered a lavender latte, a special they were running at the time. They gave me a number, and I went back to the table to wait.

"Actually, I'm kinda scared." Bushra confided as I sat back down. Her tone was light, but her body language was closed as she hunched over her teacup. "Was there really someone there when we arrived? Did they hurt Jon?" She hesitated, biting down on her lip. "What would they have done if we'd found them?" A saw a slight shudder run through her body, and she held the tea cup with both hands, as if trying to absorb its heat into herself. "I can't stop thinking about it."

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I reached out and pressed my hand lightly against the outside of hers on the cup. "Hey, it's okay. You're safe." I wasn't sure about the words as I said them, but it seemed something Bushra needed to hear. "And the police basically confirmed that there was no foul play." I told her what the detective had mentioned about the lack of drugs in Jon's system. "It's terrible," I added, "but Jon took his own life. I don't know who was there or why, but it wasn't murder or anything."

Bushra looked up at me finally, and gave a weak grin. "Thanks," she said, and put her cup down in a deliberate move. Then she took a deep breath and pulled her laptop towards her. "I tried to take a look back through the app to re-familiarize myself with the code. Some of this stuff I haven't touched since college." Her body shifted back to work mode, clearly trying to focus on something else.

"That's a good idea," I agreed, supporting her change of subject.

"You said you took some notes while you were testing the app and getting feedback. Can you send that to me?" She started typing away at her keyboard, eyes flickering back and forth across the screen.

"I have a summary, but I'll do you one better," I said, and pulled out a plastic notecard case. I hadn't used physical index cards in quite a while, but this was still a good method, if low tech. In some ways I liked this method better when working together in person. it wasn't always possible with distributed teams, but physical cards worked well for planning meetings.

"What's that?" Bushra asked.

"These are user story cards," flashing a grin. "Before there was software to capture and sort each of the individual pieces of feedback for prioritization, teams used index cards for each one." I tapped the box. "All the feedback has been collected in this box, and we can go though and assign a priority and story points, or level of effort to each one. Then we can use that to build out an initial roadmap or backlog for our work. Just like our agile planning sessions." We'd used agile development methodologies at Complyze, so I knew Bushra was familiar with them. It made sense to stick with what we knew. It was useful for breaking work down into pieces, and quickly add or deprioritize things as we learned what worked and what didn't. Maybe overkill with a single developer, but a good, lightweight way for the two of us to stay in sync.

Bushra had opened the case and was leafing through each card. "So old school," she murmured as she pulled one out. Her eyebrows raised. "This is pretty amazing. You did all this?" She looked closer, serious and intent. "Your handwriting is really beautiful."

"Uhm, yeah, that's Iter's handwriting." I had put Iter to work, since he was also able to see my Journal. It only took a couple of examples for Iter to get the hang of it. My craptastic scribble is not fit for human consumption. There are a number of reasons I went into tech as a career, but a part of me wonders if I did it mainly to avoid writing anything by hand. Though to be fair, Iter didn't hand-write them either. Instead, he simply held out his hand, and the ink began to form on the cards by itself. That was an experience to watch, and another weird, esoteric difference between divine power and magic in this magicless world that I couldn't make sense of.

Bushra looked at the card again, then back up at me. "So what's the deal with Iter, really? Mr. Swiss Not-A-Boyfriend." Her lips quirked, but her gaze was intent.

Now it was my turn to grimace. "Iter is someone I met recently. For various reasons, he's staying with me for a while." Wow, that sounded stupid even as I said it out loud.

Bushra frowned. "Someone you just met, and you invite them to stay with you." She said flatly, before letting out a short huff of air through her nose. "Is he a recruiter? I think he said something like that the other night." She leaned forward and put one elbow on the table, resting her chin in her hand.

"Something like that?" That seemed pretty close to the truth, actually. "Yes, he wanted to recruit me before, but that opportunity dried up before he could. He felt bad about it, and has been helping me out ever since."

"That's pretty dedicated for a recruiter, isn't it? You sure there isn't more to it from his side?" She smirked.

I laughed, "On no, nothing like that." The feeling of Iter's solid yet comforting frame wrapped around me in the kitchen popped into my brain. "At least, I don't think so" I frowned.

"Uh-huh," Bushra's smirk turned into a full on grin in response. Fortunately, my drink order was called, and I escaped to the counter to retrieve it. I returned to the table with the thick glass, and the scent of scalded milk, lavender, and espresso was intriguing. I took a sip to regain my balance, but it was still too hot and I burned my tongue.

"Also," Bushra added while I was dealing with the pain, "what's with the way he talks?"

"Hunh?" I asked, unprepared for that topic. Was something weird in the translation effect?

"Not how he talks, exactly. But its like the first time you meet him, you can't understand him at all. But then later, he's perfectly clear, like he's been talking that way the whole time?" Her brow furrowed as she struggled to describe it. "He was like that with Kris, too, yesterday."

"Maybe his accent?" I tried to brush it off, but Bushra wasn't having it.

"But that's part of it, his accent is perfect. Or rather, I don't hear any accent at all when he speaks."

I didn't have a way to explain it, so I made a non-committal noise and tried to take another taste of my drink with burnt tastebuds. I could smell the lavender, but didn't get much flavor from it.

"Well, it certainly wouldn't hurt to get a talented recruiter on our side. He probably has a lot of connections." Bushra shrugged, and went back to looking through the cards. I was a little relieved she'd dropped it, but also wondered what harm there would be in telling Bushra the truth. Aside from the whole appearing like an unhinged delusional lunatic thing.

Bushra suddenly sighed. "These are great," she said, looking though the cards "But I wish I'd been there. I always liked watching what people actually did with the app in labs. I learned the most from those sessions." Her shoulders slumped a little.

"Well, maybe after we get some work done, we can head over. The shop's just up the road. Not sure about the others, but Laci's likely to be there. His shop's slowest before school lets out." I'd also love to hear what he thinks now that some time has passed. I smiled across the table at Bushra. "You can ask him directly."

"That sounds fun!" Bushra smiled back. "Our first company outing!"