Chapter 659 | What’s Your Setup, Mystery Man?

Chapter 659: 659 | What’s Your Setup, Mystery Man?

My phone buzzed. Sloane.

HOW WAS YOUR DAY

I typed back: Filed seventeen incident reports. Learned that Mrs. Petrosyan’s cat Boris has a bite force of approximately forty pounds per square inch. Ophelia deducted thirty-seven cute points for breathing too loud near her desk.

Her response came in twelve seconds.

I LOVE THAT YOU’RE KEEPING TRACK OF HER POINT SYSTEM

I’m losing badly.

GOOD. YOU DESERVE TO LOSE.

Another message, three seconds later.

MISS YOU.

I stared at those two words for longer than I should have. The bond between us hummed in my chest, warm and steady, and I could feel her on the other end of it, curled up in her dorm room with her phone and probably that ridiculous stuffed animal Koda had given her last month.

Miss you too.

THE CONVERSATION WITH HARDY WENT FINE BY THE WAY

I waited. She was typing, stopping, typing again.

SHE’S WEIRD BUT SHE’S NOT LYING ABOUT ANYTHING AND SHE ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT YOU WHICH IS ANNOYING BECAUSE I WANTED TO HATE HER

What did you two talk about?

NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. THAT WAS RULE THREE.

I smiled at the screen.

Yes ma’am.

DON’T MA’AM ME BELMONT I’M STILL ANGRY AT YOU

The bond pulsed with something that wasn’t anger at all, and we both knew it. I put the phone down and went back to the map.

Wednesday arrived with fog and the smell of rain that hadn’t fallen yet. Dralun sent me to check on a water heater complaint on Moss Street, which turned out to be a real water heater complaint for once, and I spent two hours holding a flashlight while a plumber named Jorge explained the difference between a pressure relief valve and a temperature relief valve in exhaustive detail. By the time I got back to Lin’s, Ophelia had decorated my desk with three new bat stickers and a tiny plastic skeleton holding a sign that said WORK HARDER.

"Cute."

"That’s the first cute thing you’ve said all week, Belmont, so I’m giving you two points." She was sitting on her desk with her legs crossed and her parasol closed beside her, scrolling through her phone with one finger. "You’re still at negative two hundred and nine, though, because the skeleton cost me four dollars and you haven’t thanked me for it yet."

"Thank you for the skeleton, Ophelia."

"You’re welcome. Minus one point for sounding sarcastic."

Dralun came down the stairs at seven-thirty, and his tail swept past my chair close enough to brush my ankle. He was wearing his vest and his boots, and he had a look on his face that I was starting to recognize as his I’m about to do something I won’t explain face.

"Going out, Belmont. Don’t file anything until I get back."

"Is this about the gas smell on Ninth again?"

"No." He stopped at the door and looked back at me. "This is about a stoop that needs a new railing bolt, and an old lady who won’t go to bed until she sees me install it."

He left. The door swung shut behind him. Ophelia made a noise that was either approval or indigestion, and she went back to her phone.

I waited.

At nine forty-five, I told Ophelia I was going for coffee. She told me to bring her back something with oat milk and at least two shots, and she threatened to dock points if I forgot the lavender. I said I would try. She said trying wasn’t good enough. I left before she could calculate the exact penalty for insufficient effort.

The Eastside at night was a different animal than the Eastside during the day. The streetlights were older here, throwing pools of orange that didn’t quite connect, and the shadows between them were deep enough to hide in. I walked three blocks east before I ducked into an alley behind a closed laundromat and pulled the Faceless Veil from inventory.

The mask settled against my skin with that soft click, and the world shifted. Not visually, but fundamentally. Lukas Belmont stopped existing for every scanner, every camera, every analysis-type Aspect in the city. The voice that came out of my mouth when I tested it was low and rough and belonged to someone who had spent decades on construction sites.

I climbed the fire escape of the laundromat building in four bounds and hit the roof running.

The Halverson Street bodega came into view at eleven fifty-two. The green awning was faded and torn at one corner, and the sign still said MIGUEL’S in letters that were starting to peel. The building next to it was three stories of old brick with a water tower on top that had been rusting since before I was born.

I landed on the water tower platform and crouched in the shadow of the tank. The Demigod trait had my heart rate steady and my breathing even, and the boots Dralun had given me made no sound on the metal grating.

She was already there.

Lamia crouched on the fire escape of the building across the street, her silhouette sharp against the orange glow of a distant streetlight. She had traded the aviator goggles for a simple black domino mask, and her hair was pulled back into a tight knot at the base of her skull. The neoprene suit was the same, safety pins and all, and her scales caught the light when she shifted her weight.

I dropped from the water tower to the roof of the bodega building, landing silent on the gravel. She heard it anyway. Her head snapped toward me, and her eyes went wide behind the mask before they went narrow.

"You’re early." Her voice was her real voice, fast and high and a little breathless. "The delivery window is midnight to twelve-fifteen, and it’s not even midnight yet."

"I wanted to see your setup."

"My setup is me, a roof, and a hairpin that weighs less than my phone." She stood up on the fire escape and put her hands on her hips. "What’s your setup, mystery man? Because last time I checked, you were a boy from the academy who shouldn’t be anywhere near this block."