Gameboard of the Gods (Age of X, #1)(41)

“Oh,” Tessa breathed with pleasure, looking up from her pad Thai.

Justin followed her gaze to a commercial showing a model in a fuchsia party dress. “Look at that,” he said. “You’re a real girl after all. You want it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know how it would look.” Her Gemman wardrobe thus far had been ordered straight off the stream, consisting of everyday items in sensible colors. To everyone’s surprise, she’d taken to jeans right away, something Justin had been worried about after her lifetime of ankle-length skirts. He squinted at the address at the ad’s bottom.

“That’s right around the corner,” he said. “We can stop by after dinner.”

“No way,” said Cynthia. “I don’t want to go into that store. All those girls are half my age. It makes me feel like I’m clutching desperately at my youth.”

“Whatever you say, old lady. I’ll go with Tessa.”

“Yeah, because that’s not creepy at all.”

In the end, they decided to split up. Cynthia returned home with Quentin, and Justin took Tessa shopping. His sister wasn’t entirely off about the weirdness of being a thirtysomething guy in a teen girls’ clothing store, but it wasn’t like he was trying things on with her. He turned her over to a capable saleswoman, who was more than happy to show Tessa to the advertised dress…and many more.

Justin made himself comfortable on a purple bench near the dressing rooms. A screen on the wall flashed the day’s news stories. Cyn is wrong. Parenting’s not that hard as long as you have an open wallet, he told the ravens.

Horatio didn’t agree. Thank the gods you haven’t yet impregnated anyone.

I told you not to bring up any gods now that we’re back. I’m in enough trouble.

Not talking about something won’t make it go away, Horatio warned him.

His mental conversation was interrupted by the sight of a familiar face on the screen. His jaw nearly hit the floor. “Is that Lucian?” he asked aloud. The question was rhetorical, but a hovering saleswoman heard him.

“Lucian Darling? Of course it is.”

The volume was off, but a headline on the screen read: Consular Candidates Make Campaign Stops. Justin had to read it twice. “He’s…running for consul?”

The saleswoman, who’d seemed quite charmed by Justin when he came in, now looked at him like he was crazy. “How can you not know that?”

“Even I know that,” said Tessa, timidly stepping out in the pink dress.

“You live in front of the screen,” he said. He glanced back at the beaming senator as he shook hands with a crowd. “What the hell did he do to his hair? Are those highlights?”

“They’re hot,” said the saleswoman.

Justin didn’t dignify that with a response and instead tried to focus on Tessa and the dress. The bold color contrasted with her nervousness, but overall, the look transformed her. She looked like a typical Gemman girl.

“It’s cute,” he told her fondly. Tessa blushed with pleasure.

“Where would I wear this?” she asked.

“We’ll find a place,” he assured her. “Maybe the Feriae—the summer holidays.”

Or maybe a date, suggested Horatio slyly. Only a matter of time before boys come calling. Time to get a taste of your own medicine.

Shut up, Justin told him.

In the end, at Justin’s urging, Tessa ended up with two dresses. As the saleswoman wrapped them up, Justin asked Tessa, “Tell me about Lucian, media expert. Why is he running for consul?”

She looked startled but proved to be a diligent reporter. “Because he wants to run the country? I don’t know. But he’s on the news every day. He’s one of the most popular candidates. They make a lot of jokes about his name, and his big thing is that it’s time to progress into the next phase. He says the Age of Decline is over and that the Age of Renewal should be too, that it’s time for something bigger and greater. His campaign slogan is ‘Ushering in the New Age.’”

“Catchy. I knew that outstanding memory of yours would come in handy,” he told her.

Tessa smiled at him as she accepted the bag from the saleswoman. “His opponents give him a hard time about it not being specific enough. They call it ‘Darling’s Unknown Age’ and ‘Age of X.’ Do you know him?”

“He was my college roommate,” Justin said, still unable to believe this development. He’d always thought Lucian had gone into politics only to get wined and dined by lobbyists, a theory backed by Lucian’s having been on the most brainless senate committees available. How did one go from that to consul?

“You guys have the same smile, you know,” said Tessa after several moments of thought. “Did you guys practice with each other?”

Justin headed for the door. “He stole it from me.”


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His first task for SCI actually wasn’t a visit to the murder sites or even the religious groups he’d tagged as possible culprits. He’d meant what he said to Cornelia: He had someone he was certain could crack the video. If it really was faked. The problem was, his contact was being annoyingly uncooperative. Leo Chan was the best biotech engineer Justin had ever met, one Justin had eventually used exclusively because everyone else looked like an amateur in comparison. Apparently in the last four years, though, Leo had given up his government job for the private sector and relocated to Portland. Leo had been wary when Justin called, and refused the invitation to come up to Vancouver. That meant Justin had to go to Portland, since he wasn’t allowed to send that dangerous video through the stream. It had to be delivered in person.