Josh stared at Luna. Luna leaned over the counter to read the printout.
INHUMAN EMBASSY · TEST RESULTSScreeningHUMAN, every testDwarf kitFLAGGED"He's a what?" Josh said.
"A dwarf." Solaris snorted, and had to stop for a second to get his face straight. "Congratulations."
"He's not a dwarf."
"No."
"Look at him."
"I did look at him." He turned the page around so she could see it, which helped nobody. "The dwarf kit is the only thing in this building that reads that low. It was built to. They had less essence in them than anything else we ever registered, so the artifacts got made better and better until they could find it, and now they're the most precise instruments we own."
"So it's wrong."
"It's the most accurate thing we have. That's the problem."
"He's short," Luna said.
"He's short," Solaris agreed. "He's not dwarf short."
"I'm five-six," Josh said.
"Yes."
"Could be an outlier, though," Luna said.
"Outliers, though. Which is why I ran ancestry." Solaris turned a page. "Nothing. Then I ran reincarnation."
Josh sat up. "You ran a—"
"She put it on the form." Solaris didn't look up. "Also nothing."
"So nothing's proved," Luna said.
"Nothing's proved." He put the printout down. "What I've got is that he's carrying essence. Minuscule. Barely there. And humans don't."
"Humans don't," Luna said.
"Not without standing next to one of us for a very long time. Generations of it." He looked up. "How long has he been near you?"
Luna checked the clock on the wall.
"Two hours."
"Right. So that's unexplained." He tapped the page twice. "And there's one more, and I'm not going to write it down well. It isn't that he had essence on him. It's how it sat. Essence doesn't do anything around people. It's weather. It's just there—"
He stopped, and went at it from somewhere else.
"It went toward him," he said. "Like it was fine with him."
"Is that good?" Josh said.
"I don't know what it is."
He didn't seem bothered.
"You're not going to look into it?"
"Look at him." Solaris nodded past her. Josh was leaning sideways to get a better angle on the chair with no seat in it. "I've been doing this a long time. Humans don't take it like that. They scream, or they argue, or they go quiet and go home and have a drink about it. He asked me what essence was." He shrugged. "I had him down as one of ours before he sat down. That's not evidence. Nobody's going to lose sleep over it either."
He stamped the form. The stamp was very loud.
"Two things are confirmed though."
Luna leaned in. Josh, who had followed maybe half of the last few minutes, noticed that, because bodies were the one thing he did notice.
"One. No reward."
Luna's face fell.
"...Right."
"Can't pay out on an unverified line. You know the rule." Solaris turned the form around and pushed it across the counter. "Two. He's your responsibility. Effective immediately."
"Mine?"
"You brought him in and he's undetermined and he's carrying. That makes him yours." He held out a pen. "He's a leak now, and you know how a leak gets closed. You kill him, which is paperwork, but it's easy paperwork. Or you pay to have the memory taken out of him."
"Sorry—" Josh's voice cracked. "Kill him?"
Nobody answered that.
"The wipe is a service," Solaris said. "It's priced like a service."
Luna looked at the counter.
"Yeah." He didn't make her say it out loud. "Third option, then. It isn't on the sheet, but it closes the same." He tapped the form where the line was. "You sit on it. You stay next to him until he dies, and you make sure nothing comes out of him before then. Leak's still there. It just doesn't go anywhere."
"Bright side," Solaris said, and he meant it. "Absorption like his, he'll probably turn. Properly, all the way over. And at that rate it'll be over pretty fast."
Luna took the pen.
"Pretty fast," she said.
"Sure. A lifetime, tops."
Luna's mouth went crooked. It was not a smile.
(Luna:A lifetime, tops. Listen to him. Like it's nothing.
Fifty years I've lived week to week. Every week, what's due, what I can sell, what I can go without. Fifty years of that, and these people talk about a lifetime like it's a weekend.)
She signed.
Josh watched her do it. She was taking this differently from everyone else in the room, and he couldn't say how.
"Great." Solaris peeled the carbon off. "Welcome to the file, little man."
INHUMAN EMBASSY · FILE COPYSubjectJoshTestsHuman. Dwarf kit flagged. Ancestry: nothing. Reincarnation: nothing.EssenceMinuscule. Carrying.StatusUNDETERMINEDRewardNoneResponsibleLunaJosh was looking at the take-a-number machine.
"Magic is real," he said.
Luna stared at him like he'd lost his mind.
"Sorry. Sorry, I know there was other information." He shook his head slowly, and he was grinning. "It's just. Magic is real. It's actually real."
✦ ✦ ✦
They got into the car.
Luna didn't start it. She hunched over the steering wheel, arms folded on top of it, and sighed.
"You are weird. And now, my responsibility." She turned her head sideways without lifting it off her arms. "So. When do you want to die?"
"I'd prefer to stay alive," Josh said. "I'm finally making enough money. I don't want to die just now."
"Money, you say." She sat straight up. "That works. How much are you making?"
"Ten k a month."
Luna turned in her seat to stare at him.
"Ten grand?! Wait, how?"
It's still growing."
"People can see all the comics for free." She sounded personally offended.
"Yeah, there's pirated stuff." Josh shrugged. "But most people pay."
She went quiet, thinking about that.
Then she held up her hand and let her fingers grow long, like tentacles, curling in the air.
"So," she said, like she'd said it many times before. "How much are you willing to pay if I satisfy you?"
"Prostitution? Really?" Josh pressed back against the door. "That's how you've survived?"
She shrugged. "I mean, cocaine helps a lot. People don't remember a thing."
"That's not the point. A woman is more honorable than to resort to prostitution."
Luna snorted.
"Says the guy who has been drawing my porn," she said, amused. "Look at you." She pointed at his lap. "Getting hard."
Josh shifted in his seat to hide his hard-on.
Then she stopped.
(Luna:Ten thousand dollars a month. Selling me.)
"Then again," she said slowly, "you're making ten grand a month selling my porn." She tilted her head. "Come on. I'll help you out."
"Help me out?" Josh blinked. "Can you draw?"
"Better than that." She leaned across the gearshift. "I'll show you what a shapeshifter really looks like."
That almost sent him over the edge. Her long fingers grazing the top of his ear on the way past actually did.
Josh's whole face went red.
Luna saw him go red, and realized she was turning him on. Then her face went red too.
Her fingers snapped back to normal.
"That's—"
"Yeah," Josh said.
Neither of them said anything.
She had signed a paper that kept her next to him until he died.