The next step was securing a ride. I flagged down someone on the road by running at the first sports car I saw racing down mainstreet. The dude screeched his brakes on, asking what the fuck I thought I was doing and I asked him what he was doing in my car. And then I clearly said ‘you’re driving my car and I’ll call the police if you don’t give it back.’
And he did give it back. Cause I was a God and I could do that.
It was evil, but we were also gonna have to get used to a little evil. Besides, he could, like, file a missing car report and get car insurance, right? After a little getting lost, I finally found my semi abandoned shopping cart still in an alley and loaded up my goods. Then I headed towards Bridgeport.
Once there, we began harassing the milling throng of college kids. ‘Hey where can we find Henry Miller? Or, uh, rather, do you know when he’ll next be on campus? Haha, actually wait, start over. Do you even know who Henry Miller is?’
“You can’t just keep asking every fuckhead on campus whether they know where he is,” Joni said, after my eighth attempt. “I mean, first of all, introducing him as ‘that guy who sells stolen goods, but you can’t tell anyone’ will work for a few hours, but then it’s just gonna cause chaos. You can’t just give Henry a rep for being the school fence. Some people actually look really down on stolen shit.”
“They do?” I mean, I know people on tv and stuff are always fussing about hot goods, but did the average person really care? “I mean, it’s not like we’re stealing from randos on the street or anything–”
Blair sniffed at this. I ignored her.
“These are just from a TechShack. Who’s gonna miss them?” Still, Joni’s words echoed a bit in my head. This was a prep school. The kids here might care. “Okay, so I don’t go around introducing Henry as the Bridgeport fence. How am I supposed to find him?”
“Maybe start by just asking who knows him?” Joni’s skinny eyebrows were still sky high. I watched them inch higher, wondering if she’d ever be able to grow them back out after her disaster trip to the cheap salon that had just opened in town. Ghosts probably didn’t grow hair. “I mean, if they know him, they’ll know him. I bet there are some people in here who know him by name.”
“Though don’t ask too too many people,” Blair said. “He’ll freak out if he thinks someone’s gunning for him.”
“Think smart, not a lot.” Christopher tapped his head.
Ask people but not too many people. Use his name but nothing identifying about him. Think but not too much. Man, to think the old God did this shit for fucking centuries. Probably. She was dressed in a toga, so I’d kinda assumed, but I suppose she might have been newish to the God thing.
Still. That was a can of worms I’d probably never have time to unpack, so instead I went back to the task at hand.
If I had to reduce the amount of thoughts I put into this whole thing, the best thing I could probably do was think about who knew Henry. And if I had to use the smallest number of thoughts to find them, I’d think about what kind of person would use Henry’s resources. Yeah he could be selling phones, but a small school like Bridgeport only had so many needs for that. Plus phones were easy for the manufacturer to brick if you stole them. Not that I knew from experience or anything.
No, the average student probably had their basics tended to. So that meant Henry’s clientele was narrower. There were a few options.
-Frat bros outfitting their digs with the most up to date entertainment systems. Potentially but Henry would need to sling some pretty big stuff, speakers and tvs and shit. Not particularly covert.
-Tech nerds looking for the bleeding edge of science.
I stopped my mental list there because, again, reducing thoughts. That was a lead. So the next thought was, where do I find the tech nerds? In my experience, they stayed inside a lot, so that wasn’t super helpful. What might draw them out? Clubs maybe? Video game clubs or something like that? Gamers always like their stupid rainbow keyboards and headsets with enormous earpads.
“Okay, do you suppose this place has a gaming club?” I asked out loud.
Joni’s eyebrows squinched over her eyes for a moment, before she nodded approvingly. “Smart.”
I flushed an embarrassing shade of prideful at this.
“Check your phone?” Christopher suggested. “You know, like, facebook or twitter or something, see if there’s some kinda, like, page for a Bridgeport Gaming club?”
A few taps later and some careful searching, and I had it. Not just the club (“guild”), but the names of the president, secretary, treasurer—
Treasurer. No doubt that would be the guy to buy all kinds of contraband to outfit his gamers guild thing.
And as luck would have it, the page even had the club office listed. I was on my way.
~~~
Step 1b: Coerce the gaming treasurer to give up the location of Henry Miller.
I cruised on up to the gamers' guild office, using some simple, non-troubling lies to squeeze past security and any card scanners. The door to the office was open, and as soon as I stepped in, I had an even better feeling about this whole thing.
“Office” wasn’t necessarily the best word for this place. It was more like a hangout spot. There were couches, the walls were decked with LEDs, there were two long desks with three computers on each. Sleek monitors, light-up keyboards, mouses with way more buttons than I’d ever seen on any mouse ever. No wires or cables connected these space-age-looking gadgets to each other. Along the walls of room, on glowing, lit-up desks, industrial-looking machines were surrounded by tiny armies of little grey monsters. I’d never seen a 3D printer before, I was pretty sure there was no other way for these guys to have spawned. The walls were plastered with enough sci-fi art, also lit up, also 3D, to make this whole place look like it was operating a good one thousand years in the future. Finally, in the corners, sleek-looking scanners were fixed to the wall. Either cameras or VR things, I wasn’t 100% sure. Either made sense. VR would fit in this souped-up ‘office’, but given there was multiple students’ tuitions worth of junk in here, security wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I let out a low whistle.
Bridgeport was loaded, but shelling out this much money just so the gamers felt cool? This had stolen shit written all over it.
I opened my mouth to ask Joni and Christopher their opinions, but thought better of it. My airpods may have reduced the odd stares I got from people in public, but there was only so much help they’d provide here if I opened my fat mouth and said “so what do you think? Look stolen to you?”
I didn’t need to anyway. Christopher was already all over the setups, ogling them, with Joni a half inch behind him, trying way harder to look unimpressed, even if I could see the way her eyes narrowed, darting over each piece of equipment.
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Nerds.
“Uh, can we help you?”
I looked up to find a surprisingly ordinary girl standing in front of me. She’d been lounging on one of the couches when I came in, talking to some of the other kids in the room, but had stood up when I entered.
Powder blue hoodie, jeans, blond hair in a ponytail, hipster glasses, really ordinary. I kinda expected someone weirder.
“Uh yeah. I’m looking for Henry Miller.”
Well done, fat mouth. At least I’d managed to keep it closed long enough to not look like I had schizophrenia, but that was kinda a meatheaded way to start this conversation.
The girl looked behind her, at the other two students. One, a heavyset guy with tired eyes just kinda shrugged. The other, a surprisingly tiny young man, swallowed hard before shaking his head quickly.
Damn. Not a lot of luck here.
“Ah.” I shifted my weight a bit, foot to foot. Could they tell I was too old for college? Could they tell I didn’t go here? “Well, uh, do you know anyone who might know him? Maybe he’s on your roster?”
“Uh.” The blond girl looked back at the heavier guy. “Tito, he sound familiar to you?”
“He doesn’t even go here, does he?” squeaked the smaller dude. “So, probably not.”
Shoot. Pipsqueak was right.
“Right,” I said.
The room hung in another awkward silence.
“Do you even go here?” the blond girl asked.
“Yeah.” The little guy hopped to his feet. “I mean, who even told you to come up to our office and accost us about a guy who doesn’t even go to the school?”
Shoot. I was losing my edge here.
“Uh.”
“Hey hey, chill a little, Noah.” The blond waved a hand. “No one’s accosting anyone.’
“I think he’s lying.” Blair propped her head up on her hands, resting her elbows on Noah’s head. “Just seems a little too hostile about a simple question.”
Blair was right. In fact, she was super right. Everything from his hostility to his comment about Henry ‘not even going here’ when a half second before, he’d claimed not to know Henry at all.
“Yeah, chill, Noah.” I mimicked the blond’s hand-waving motion. “Henry just asked me to stop by, talk to you about something. You want to hear this.” I cleared my throat before nodding my head out to the hall. “You want to hear this in private.”
The funniest thing about the whole Verity Tongue thing was how natural it always looked. No one had any magical dust flickering around their face, no one went deadpan, no ones’ eyes turned all swirly. They just acted like, duh, of course that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.
“Yeah yeah, all right.” He pulled his jacket on, one dressier than the blond chick’s, though still in Bridgeport’s powder blue colors. “So long as this is quick. We’re going over budget stuff.”
Budget stuff? A smirk crawled across my face. This dude was definitely the Treasurer. I’d been right.
Little Noah followed me out of the room, twitchy and agitated the whole time, shifting like he maybe had to pee. Once we got outside, he let out a big breath.
“You can’t do that to me,” he said, words hissing through his teeth with enough venom to get a fleck of spit on me. “Not in front of Brandi and Tito like that. Do you know how much I gotta–” he dropped his voice even lower. “Do you know what kind of accounting magic I have to pull to justify where we get all our gear? Like school’s don’t just dish out for that tech, not even Bridgeport. I don’t need Brandi going out and talking about how this weird chick in oversized clothes and… are those bloodstains?” He cut off suddenly at this. “Wait, who are you? What happened to Miller?”
Did I still have bloodstains on me? Probably, right? I hadn’t really changed my clothes after all, not between the car accident or falling down the hill. There was nothing on my face directly, but I knew my sweater had them. I shoulda grabbed some clothes during our heist.
“Naw, Henry’s fine,” I said. “And these aren’t blood stains. They’re, uh, mustard stains.”
He let out a breath. “Okay. Okay, you freaked me out for a sec.” The guy ran a hand through his mop of fluffy brown hair, immediately tangling his fingers in it. “Look, I just don’t want Brandi asking people who Henry Miller is and having someone say ‘oh isn’t he the guy that sells fucking stolen tech at the school?’”
I started to sweat.
“Not that anyone he actually deals to would just say that. I know I wouldn’t.” Noah took a steadying breath. “And no one else knows who he is, I guess.”
I could hear Joni berating me earlier, her words echoing in my head. “You can’t just give Henry a rep for being the school fence.”
“I know, I know, I’m getting worked up.” A pinched smile worked its way on his face. “It’s not like Miller’s got a reputation around the school for being a fence.
Now I felt like a real idiot. I wanted to apologize just for being stupid, but that wasn’t on the list of steps to take for this scheme. Protecting Noah’s interests wasn’t important here. We just needed to get Cara off the hook.
“Right.” I nodded. “You’re right. Anyway, I need you to get in touch with Henry and tell him–” wait, no. I couldn’t leave it up to Noah to sell this or Henry would pretty easily be able to override my lies. “No, I need you to get me in touch with Henry.” Did Verity Tongue work over the phone? Maybe we should test it. “Actually, double never mind. My phone is dead and I need to get in touch with Henry cause I’m you’re go-between and I’ve managed to get my hands on that dope technology you two have been talking about for months.”
Boom.
Noah’s big eyes lit up like a little kid on Christmas, and I could see the waves of tension roll off his shoulders as he rubbed his hands together, all goblin-like. “Oh thank god. Yes yes yes, finally.” He ran a hand through his hair for a moment, before remembering my request. “Here’s my phone. When can we get all that in? We’ve got a tournament coming up and this shit is gonna be huge.”
I had no idea what Noah thought he was getting. I also didn’t have any idea what Cara was giving. But again, neither was my problem, so I just took the phone, which already had Henry Miller’s number plugged in.
It rang a few times before Henry picked up.
“Hello?” a tired voice mumbled. Classic Henry.
“Hey Henry. You need to be at the bridge over Meadow Lane at 9 PM tonight for the big score you and Noah have been talking about for months.” I held my breath.
“The big what? The big… Noah… Noah from Bridgeport? At Mea…dow… Lane.” He sounded like he was being placed under a spell or something. I could hear the cogs in his head chewing up my sentence like someone had just dropped a toaster in a whole-ass factory’s worth of gears. “The… right. The big score. Meadow Lane. Bridge. 9 PM. Yeah. Yeah okay. Okay yeah sure.”
I looked up at Blair, an eyebrow raised. Blair was busy whooshing through Noah’s head, back and forth, smiling at him as she blew wind directly through his skull. Not a lot of help. And Joni and Christopher were still somehow inside the office.
Okay. So I wouldn’t have them to rely on when debating internally as to whether my spell had worked.
“All right,” I said again, for good measure. “You have to be at the Meadow Lane bridge at 9 PM.” But the line had gone dead.
“Right,” Noah said. He let out a breath and rubbed his hands together, either a show of eagerness or just letting off some nervous energy. “Right. Okay, should be good.”
“Yeah,” I said. I nodded, letting a hopefully confident smile cross my face. “Okay, good.”
“Aww, we gotta go now?” Blair asked, drifting away from Noah as he returned to the office. “I like these guys.”
I nodded before dropping my voice. “Get the others out here. We got like, four hours before the meetup, and I need to get some clean clothes.”
Blair perked up at this. “You mean we’re going to the actual heist?”
"Technically handoff," Christopher said, "but like, same diff." But even he looked interested to see how I'd respond.
I took a deep breath it. Time to commit.
“Obviously,” I said, letting the breath out slowly as Blair squealed with joy.
I mean, why not? I'd promised to help Cara out, so the last thing I wanted was to learn, three days later, that everyone involved had gone to jail or something. A jailbreak would be a lot harder to pull off “May as well see this through, make sure they actually pull it off. We got a whole lot of time to waste, being immortal and all. If it works, we get to see the fruits of our labor. If it doesn’t, we learn something.” I felt pretty smart, presenting this win-win, but honestly, I was just getting invested at this point. “What could go wrong?”