"So, how did you know?"
It was a fair question, and a familiar one. Elias had asked it across a different desk, in a different tone, and Lucavion found himself more amused the second time than the first, which couldn't be a good sign.
'Twice now. I should have the answer printed on a card.'
"No one told me," he said. "I read about it."
Her vitality leaned toward him, careful and interested. There was no suspicion in it yet, only attention.
"Read where?"
It was the right question, and the honest answer had a bus in it.
He could see it without trying: a long, crowded box rolling through a city that did not exist here, thirty strangers swaying to the same lurch, a lit pane the size of his palm and his thumb scrolling it. A story, posted in installments, free to anyone with a signal and a commute. During his life on Earth he had read it standing up, one hand on the rail, grumbling at the male leads between stops. The title he kept behind his teeth.
