Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(9)

Nervous. He was nervous. There was far too much riding on this cycle.

The girl had gone back to twisting her long dark hair in a rope, closing her eyes and murmuring the lyrics to a high-paced, techno abomination. Once he reached her, she turned her back, showing him the sweaty line that ran down her spine. He thought about using magic to get her attention, but he didn’t want to startle her. Besides, he was spent from the act of getting here. He tapped her shoulder.

She flicked her eyes open. “Nope.”

“Beg pardon?” he asked.

“I’m looking for someone to make out with,” she yelled over the heart-grabbing beat. “It isn’t you, pal.”

Merlin stumbled. He didn’t want to make out with her. His hands went up in a kind of surrender, and he backed right into Excalibur.

“Watch it,” she said, sweeping him aside and lofting the sword out of the dance floor.

She.

She lofted the sword.

“Arthur!” he cried, his teenage voice jerking around as much as his teenage hips.

“Still not interested,” the girl called out, her rejection saltier.

Merlin watched her tuck the long blade over her shoulder and inside the back of her shirt. “It really is different this time,” Merlin announced blankly. He held out his arm to her. “Would you mind pinching me? I do believe I’m stuck in a very troubling dream.”

She pinched him—hard—and his nerves forced him onto his tiptoes. “All right, I’m awake!” he shouted. “I’m awake!”





Dark Matter was swollen with music and shadows. The beat raged. The combination of sweat and perfume was intoxicating, and Ari’s body ached from too many days pent up on Error over the last three years.

Ordinarily, sneaking into a seedy club on a wayward moon would have been the highlight of her month, but Ari didn’t have enough credits to get even a minute of 60 percent oxygen, Mercer was infiltrating this colony in droves, and to be plain honest, she was furious with Kay. She might have risked too much on Heritage—and crashed them on Old Earth—but their parents were alive. Alive. And her brother didn’t want to even talk about finding a way to help them.

“It’s impossible,” he’d said. “Case closed.”

The last straw, however, was the squirmy, skinny boy yelling odd things at her.

“You’ve grown breasts!” he shouted, staring at her chest openly. His hair was a floppy, reddish mess, and his robe smacked of a religious affiliation or the worst hangover imaginable. He didn’t even seem worried that she was packing a sword.

“Not cool, friend. Move along.” She shoved past him at the same moment that half a dozen Mercer associates slunk through the doorway. Ari had to hand it to the people who hacked out an existence on this colony; they didn’t bow out of the way of the uniforms or the riot sticks. The associates, on the other hand, glanced around in a strict pattern—searching for Ari.

Did they know what she looked like? Or were they simply profiling for Ketchans? She’d been ducking cameras and keeping her face hidden her whole life, but it was no secret that Mercer had unorthodox ways to track people. When they grabbed the elbow of a brown-skinned, tall girl with dark hair and took a picture of her features to run facial recognition, Ari had to accept that Mercer knew more about her than a rubber knight suit could cover.

She ducked along the shadows of the wall and pointed at the first decent-looking human in sight, a dark-haired, razor-edged fluid by the alleyway exit. The one who had tried hitting on her earlier. “You,” she hollered over the music. “Come with me.”

The fluid pushed off the wall and shoved a triumphant thumbs-up at the person standing next to them. They left the club, entering the alley together, and Ari inhaled the cool, yet too thin, air and dropped the sword point-down in the gravel. She grabbed the pretty fluid and hauled them against the wall, mouth to mouth.

Interesting. They had a piercing on their lip she hadn’t noticed in the club.

Oh, and there was a second one on their tongue. Excellent.

In her mind, this person was also Ketchan. And they weren’t kissing beneath the thermal shades of a lunar colony dome, which blocked out the searing sunlight of the day and the solid freeze of night. They were on the red sands of Ketch, buffeted by sweet, dry winds while the siren birds wrote a melody for the sunset.

It was her usual daydream, her happy place.

The fluid’s hands roved down her chest, her belly, hooking into the lip of her pants just as someone entered the alleyway. Ari steeled herself for the congenial threat of a Mercer associate.

“I bet you think this is terribly clever, don’t you?”

Oh, gods, her gangly stalker was back.

“You have no idea what ‘no’ means, huh?” She turned around and was only surprised to find him staring at the sword.

“I wasn’t speaking to you. I was talking to Excalibur, but now that we’re on the subject of you, how did you come by it?”

“Found it.” Ari deflated. This guy had clearly come looking for his property, although how he was storing things on Old Earth was beside her. At least it seemed like she could beat him in a chase. He couldn’t have been older than her, and Ari’s legs were far longer. “Finders keepers,” she said, lifting the sword and her leg at the same time, about to make a sprint for it. But Ari froze on the spot. One knee hitched in the air. Looking as ridiculous as she felt.