Monday morning on campus felt like the weekend had been a rumor.
Madison walked past him outside the lecture hall with Chloe and did not break stride. She said his name like they were two people who had shared a charger. Then she sat three rows ahead of him and spent fifty minutes not turning around.
The System did not give him a quest for that.
[Aftertaste: Madison Blake]
[She felt you when she sat down.]
[Pride is doing the walking. The body is not cooperating.]
Ethan watched the back of her neck and let it happen. He had already gotten what he needed from Sunday. Pressing her in a hallway would turn a locked door into a campus story, and she had been clear about that.
Ryan was in the same room. He looked at Ethan once, longer than last week, like he had heard a version of the night that did not have enough detail to use yet.
After class Isabella found him by the coffee window because of course she did.
"You came home late and you showered like you had something to wash off," she said, falling into step with him. "I am not asking for a name. I am telling you Alexandra already asked me if you were okay, which means you looked different at breakfast and nobody in that house is as blind as you need us to be."
"I slept. I went to Chloe’s. That is the list."
"Chloe Morgan’s." Isabella’s mouth flattened. "Madison was there. Do not insult me by looking surprised that I know that."
"I didn’t say she wasn’t."
Isabella stopped walking long enough to make him stop too. "I like Madison better when she is a rumor you are stupid about, not a thing you do and then bring back into Mom’s kitchen in your face. If this blows up, Mom will hear it from somebody with money. That is the part you are not taking seriously."
"I am taking it seriously."
"No. You are taking what you want seriously." She adjusted her bag and started walking again. "I still like you. That is getting more annoying."
[Isabella Cole]
[Suspicion: High]
[Taboo Heat: +1]
[No Quest]
The last tag stayed in his vision after she cut toward her building.
His phone buzzed before he could decide whether that should have bothered him.
Unknown number. Local.
This is Sophia Bennett. Veronica gave me your number after I asked for it, which she will pretend she did reluctantly. I have two hours before I drive to the airport. If you want work that is not a tray, you can say it in the lobby of the Halston in twenty minutes. If you waste the twenty minutes, do not text me later with a better version.
Ethan read it twice.
Veronica had told him not to bother her. Sophia had gone around that on purpose.
He was already walking.
The Halston sat on the decent side of downtown, all glass and quiet money. Sophia was in a lobby chair with a coffee she had not touched and a coat over the other seat so nobody would take it.
She did not stand when she saw him.
"You look less like staff in daylight," she said. "Sit down. If you hover, I will feel like I called a student into an office."
Ethan sat. "You asked Veronica for my number."
"I asked her who you were. Then I asked if you were as proud as you sounded on that terrace. She said you were worse. That was the recommendation, whether she meant it that way or not."
Low Heat wanted out of him. He kept it down. Sophia was not Madison. Flooding a hotel lobby would get him nothing except a woman who already thought he was young deciding he was sloppy too.
"I don’t want another mixer," he said. "I want work I can put a number on. Paid. Mine. I am not asking you to invent a job because you had brunch with Veronica."
Sophia studied him over the untouched coffee. Thirty-nine. No student softness in the way she sat. She looked like someone who had fired people for wasting less time than this.
"I have a listings problem in Westhaven and two people in my office who talk like they understand this city because they visited it. I need someone on the ground who can walk a property, tell me the truth, and not decorate it. It pays. It is not glamorous. If you are looking for a story to tell Madison Blake, this is the wrong meeting."
He did not ask how she knew the name. Alumni weekend had ears.
"I can do that."
"I know you think you can." Sophia finally picked up the cup, then set it back down. "Veronica will hate that I used her house to find you. She will hate it more if you fail in a way that reflects on her. I do not care about either of those things as much as I care about not being lied to. If a building is bad, you say it is bad. If you cannot get in, you say that too."
"I won’t dress it up."
"Good." She took a card from her bag and slid it across the table with two fingers. Their hands did not have to touch. He made them.
Wicked Fingers caught the edge of her knuckles, light, professional to anyone watching. Exact to her.
Sophia’s eyes sharpened. She did not pull away fast enough to make it a scene. She pulled away like a woman who had felt something and refused to give it a name in a lobby.
Ethan let go.
Echo Touch arrived on her skin while she was already sitting back. He saw the tiny break in her breath. That was all. Sophia Bennett did not gasp in public.
"That is a bad habit," she said, quiet. "Doing extra things in rooms where you are supposed to be asking for work."
"I asked for work. The rest of it was a second."
"A second is how people get themselves removed from my week." She looked at her hand, then at him, and the evaluation in her face got more honest. "I still want the listings walked. That should tell you I am choosing not to make this the end of the conversation."
[Sophia Bennett]
[Status: Evaluating → Interested]
[No Climax Quest]
[Offer Stands]
[New Work Path: Westhaven Listings]
[Advance: 400 CP]
[Current CP: 3,500]
She named a street and a time for tomorrow, then picked up her coat.
"I will be in the air when you send the first notes. Write like I do not have time to translate you. And Ethan." She paused, standing over him now. "If Veronica asks what this meeting was, you may tell her it was work. If she asks whether you touched my hand, you will not make me explain a student in a hotel lobby."
"I wasn’t going to."
"You keep saying that." Sophia’s mouth almost moved. "Start behaving like it."
She left him with the card and the ghost of Echo Touch still doing work she would feel in the car.
Ethan sat long enough for the lobby to become ordinary again.
Madison had given him a locked door and a campus problem. Sophia had given him a job and a warning. Veronica was going to ask why Sophia Bennett had needed his number.
He could already see the version he would tell her. Clean. Incomplete. Useful.
[Conflicting Optional]
[A: Tell Veronica the meeting was her idea.]
[+50 CP. She stays calmer.]
[B: Tell her Sophia came to you.]
[+150 CP. She looks at you differently.]
[Choose before dinner.]
Ethan put the card in his pocket and chose B before he reached the sidewalk.
He wanted Veronica looking at him differently.
That had been true before the System. It was just easier to admit now that he had a point total for it.