Page 97 of Bitter’s Sweet

What exactly can you see?

The answer comes quickly.

Time sent. Routing. Carrier info. Approx source if available. Not your other messages. Not your photos. Nothing outgoing.

I glance toward the windows. Bitter is on the other side of the lot talking to Ghoul, too far away to see my screen. He could have told CSI yes.

Instead, he told him to ask me.

I type:

Okay. Metadata only.

CSI answers with a simple Copy.

A minute later another message appears.

Need phone for ten minutes when convenient. You can stay with it.

I smile despite myself.

Mercy notices. “What?”

“Nothing.”

She narrows her eyes. “You say nothing like Bitter.”

“Apparently it’s contagious.”

“God help us all.”

When CSI comes over, he does exactly what he said. I sit beside him while he plugs a small cable into my phone, and Bitter appears halfway through like the words Sweet and electronic device are enough to summon him from three counties away.

He looks at CSI. “She say yes?”

I answer before CSI can. “I did.”

Bitter looks at me, not the phone.

Me.

“All right.”

That is it. No taking over. No asking to see what CSI sees. No explaining my own decision back to me.

Something inside me settles.

I hate how much the little things matter. Maybe because the big things used to hurt so much.

The rest of the day moves in bursts of work and carnival noise. The festival is fully alive now, with tourists drifting through demonstrations, engines rolling past, children carrying fake bones, and somebody outside announcing race rules over a speaker that keeps squealing.

I help Junie demonstrate cosmetic color correction on a practice form. Mercy lets me do the wax portion after warning me not to get cocky. Petal handles visitors who ask whether the dead can feel makeup, and Lark convinces a tourist from Ohio that Sheriff the rooster is licensed by the state.

He is not.

I assume.

Razor sends nothing. No texts, no pictures, no threats.