Just pick one!
“If I pick the wrong one, everyone dies.” Miriel focused on the bomb in front of her. Sweat beaded her temples. She tracked a green wire as it twisted and dove through the tangle of red, yellow, and white wires.
That one. She took a deep breath, then yanked the wire
Ethel sat with the other wallflowers and resisted the urge to deploy poison gas against the man swaggering toward her. Reginald Ashcroft was about to ask her to dance. Again.
Her father required her to speak with him occasionally on family business, but Ashcroft never failed to humiliate her in the process.
“It’s worse than we thought.” Ethel leaned over the ancient oak table and plucked a sweet, still warm tigernut ball from the tray. Her family’s favorite Egyptian chef had prepared it only a few hours ago… Well, technically four thousand years ago… in ancient Egypt. These were the perks of a crime family
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“Never let crime lords get bored,” Ethel instructed her cat, Fresco.
The fluffy feline blinked his blue eyes. “Why?” a robotic voice projected from the small box attached to his collar.
“They always want more.” Her brain pieced together the words as if she were setting type, her raspy voice printing them out once
I pop in an earbud and settle into my rideshare from O’Hare. The latest episode of my favorite podcast, Good Grieves, just dropped. I press play. “Ethel Grieves keeps a low profile compared to her more flamboyant siblings. She’s known for taking legitimate jobs, always under her real name, and resigning before she’s charged
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I’m a sucker for a sob story and a fuzzy face. These stinking adorable Pandeera pups blinking their big eyes at me are going to get my tail in the fire, I just know it.
Over the chatter of the pub, they tell me their hovership’s chargelink got sheared off while navigating through a
Phezz retrieved the last vial of poison from his belt. His mother had ceremoniously extracted the venomous substance from the tusks of his family’s herd of hairy and tortoise-like Jamjins for hunting. It seemed like a lifetime ago. During the peaceful times—before the Last Battle—before his brother activated the planet’s core defense
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Given his lifetime as a master chef of interplanetary travel, Gurfin knew there was always magic in his ingredients. But this time, he did not know, nor did he really care, where they would land after the wormhole eventually opened.
Some recipes required mastery—others he created simply to taste. The stew before him
“Phezz recognized you as soon as you stepped through the door. Called me next thing. Interdimensional travel is nice and fast.”
“I—”
A calloused hand cups her chin.
Vey blinks, too ashamed to meet her best friend’s eyes.
“Don’t you think you’ve been running long enough, Zhemi?”
“I betrayed you, Davis.” Betrayed them
I fell to my knees and stared at the hard tile beneath me. The man behind me released my wrists, and my arms dropped to my sides.
“Thank you for finding her, Zaivar,” a low voice said in front of me.
I glanced at the ticking wall clock. 1:16 a.m. It took him only
“Name?” I ask.
“Zai Witz.”
“With a Z?”
“With two Zs!”
I rub the cheap pencil eraser against my clipboard, then write in the Z I’d missed. The S is still faintly visible, but I’m guessing this paper will go in the wastebasket anyway.
“And, where did you say you were from again?”
Zai had a feeling he’d run into trouble tonight—he just didn’t know if it was the good kind or the bad. He pushed open the grime-encrusted doors of Randy’s Interstellar Roadhouse, releasing a wave of smoke, body odor, and honky-tonk music.
With a planetary alignment only days away, the H’don Galaxy was
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