We walked toward the hills. South Charleston was a pretty scummy city, on the whole, with the usual race, religion, and crime that being a city full of laborers brings, but when you walk toward the mountains, things get nicer, and emptier, quickly.

“Are you comfortable?” I asked her. She was wearing her jacket again and seemed better dressed for the cold than I did, but the cold didn’t bother me much.

Ironically, the more I was exposed to things in the long term, the less they hurt me.

I’d been drowned once, and when I finally built up the strength to break myself out of the chains around my feet, I could hold my breath for hours afterward. Still can, but drowning still feels like crap. In this case, I’d been stuck naked in a cave on the side of the mountain in winter, and after I walked down and got a shower, fresh clothes, and like 6 pizzas, I was much less affected by the cold.

The girl that had thrown me out of her plane even stiffed me. Of course, she’d gone to jail, so paying was difficult, but after she got out I planned to look her up. She owed me 15 grand for that little stunt, plus extra because she was never able to send a recovery chopper like she promised.

She nodded, “Yes. It’s cold, but I haven’t been south for a while. Kind of got used to it.”

“Okay. So now that Mary’s not around to hear, let’s talk pricing.” I said as we turned to go the long way around a nasty puddle of half-frozen sleet that had formed the night before last. By tomorrow morning, it would likely be frozen solid, but right now it was just waiting to wreck her five hundred-dollar suede Jimmy Choo boots.

“Is Mary your… Ummm… mother? Dependent?”

I shook my head, “Naww. Her grandmother sort of was, but she’s been gone a while. Mary knows I am a meta because of my eating habits, and knows I tend to come in all beat to hell occasionally. She also knows I am not a felon and occasionally work for the bad guys, but as far as she’s concerned I am just one of the thugs she serves that she’s cut a special deal. Well, that and she has noticed I don’t age.”

“You don’t age?” she asked repetitively.

I shook my head, “Not for as long as I have lived. I came here when I was 25ish, been here a few decades, and when I leave, I will still be 25ish.” I wouldn’t have shared this, but it might become important.

“Does that mean you are really immortal?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t really know. I mean, I have put myself through a lot. Most of them, like the car crusher, falling out of an airplane, and getting caught for three hours in a burning car at the bottom of the list, my friend Mickey has gotten tired of, but so far, nothing has been able to kill me yet. Not radiation, not poison, not disease, not cancer, Heck, I have been burned to a cinder lots of times, and… while I didn’t walk away, I certainly left eventually.”

I sighed. Yes, I was going to share the story that makes Mickey groan. “I even got sent through an incinerator once because I looked dead. It didn’t work, and it took me almost a week to dig myself out of the stupid grave they put me in. Did you know that they put dead bodies in big metal boxes now? Especially meta bodies?”

She nodded, “Vaults. So you are definitely a Meta then? Why do you keep calling yourself a non-meta?”

I shrugged, “Because I have almost zero energy signature. A really good meta sniffer could probably figure out I was borderline, but as far as I know, most meta detectors read me as baseline human.”

I grinned, “One of those magic types even thought I was dead for a while. Which is bullcrap, but he was all enthusiastic for a while until he realized I wasn’t a zombie or have death magic or anything. Not dead. I sleep, eat, pee, and have zero interest in blood or brains.”

I shook my head. “According to my last checkup, I could even have kids if I wanted, which most Metas can’t. Not that I am planning to… Been there, done that, done with it.”

Not strictly true, but I wasn’t going to have any kids I outlived anymore. Nothing sucks more than watching your own children gasp out their last breath, even at 77. It’s heartbreaking on a scale I couldn’t describe, even worse than losing your wife to cancer.

“Are you willing to tell me more about what he said? The Loas were weird the last time pop talked to them while I was around. I don’t totally believe in what he says they know, but I don’t disbelieve them either. He’s not your normal Meta. He was convinced he was going to die last year, and they were wrong, he’s alive and well.”

I chuckled, “I told him I wasn’t a vampire or zombie, but he kept trying to say I was a liquor.”

“A Liche?” she asked.

I nodded, “Right. The only licking I do is food or gi...umm… ice cream.” I amended hastily. She didn’t exactly look like an innocent princess, but that would have been rude.

“He said that the reason my skeleton is indestructible is that it’s a philosophy. But that’s kind of silly since they are very real and I haven’t found anything, let alone an existential question, that can break them yet.”

She seemed to turn a bit darker for a moment, and then replied, “Did he say philosophy? Or phylactery?”

I thought about it. God, it was like 1950-something. “Could have been either?” I didn’t hold much with that hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. I mean, sure, meta powers were totally magic.

You couldn’t cover yourself with fire without burning, or fly without wings, without something more than natural law behind it, but all the magic I had ever seen amounted to throwing fireballs, raising skeletons, and talking to shit no sane human should have wasted time talking to. I shivered a little at THAT particular memory.

She nodded slowly, “But otherwise, you are totally human, right?”

I smiled a little, “Yes, although I cannot tell you I am an immortal or you might want to sleep with me.”

She looked at me curiously, and I added, “An old movie. There can be only one, although I have yet to meet anyone that can take my head off.”

She nodded, “Oh, highlander. I remember that scene. It was kind of a weird reaction. I don’t think that she slept with him because he told her he was immortal, I mean, she already knew he was rich, a total badass with a sword, and decent-looking. I think she would have jumped him if he said he had superpowers. The whole older than hell thing isn’t really that attractive on a man.”

She smiled a little, “How old are you then?”

I grinned, “twenty-six.”

She shook her head, “No really. You said you have been eating at the diner for decades. How old are you really?”

I grinned, “Really, I am twenty-six. I was twenty-six when I got here, and I will be twenty-six for however long I last. I stopped aging at twenty-six, and everything since then has just been experience. I am very, very good at being a twenty-six-year-old.”

She laughed, and then I changed the subject slightly. “I hate to do this, but depending on things determines how we can handle my fees.”

She nodded gravely as we headed, ironically, toward the graveyard. “I am assuming about five grand a week for however long it goes on. I will pay for your food and lodging through a subsidiary so there will be no connection to me. On paper, you will be a marketing consultant for the company, but the company is a shell, attached to a shell, in a big circle.”

“Not an underwear model?” I said, feigning disappointment.

“No… do you want to be?” she said, “That might actually be easier, I have a line, and that would give us an excuse to have met and gotten to know each other. Plus I can still use the shell companies to support your fees. Unless you have experience as an agent or marketing consultant?”

I shook my head, “No, I have experience running mining machinery, cleaning up school children’s vomit, and teaching physical education.”

She beamed, “This will work out way better then! We can give you a small presence, maybe a couple of busses or a billboard or something, and instantly, instead of that weird guy that came out of nowhere, I am this predatory girl taking advantage of my kept model boyfriend. Kill two birds with one stone. It will also make it MUCH harder for one of the overly affectionate to disappear you quietly.”

I had just been joking, but she seemed to make a weird point. “Except for one problem.”

She seemed to be thinking hard as she walked. “What’s that?”

“My face,” I said, chuckling.

“What’s wrong with your face?”

I grinned, “I have seen male models’ faces. That’s not what I look like.”

She smiled evilly. “Two things. First off, in an underwear ad, how many girls think to look at the guy’s face? The second one is, you don’t have a male model face, no. You have a very masculine face. If you can grow a bit of a beard, just a short, neat one, you’d be ripping hearts in half.”

I shook my head, “I had a beard, it didn’t help.”

She chuckled, “Let me guess, you had a big, mighty, manly, lumberjack beard?”

I shook my head, “More like a big, manly, mighty beard that convinced airport security that I needed to be strip-searched for suitcase nukes.”

She tilted her head, “Trust me on this one. My clothing line is doing quite well, both the men’s and the women’s. With a short, neatly-trimmed beard, no one would question why I kept you around.”

I smiled slightly, “Oh, the last part is if I have to die valiantly defending you or get disintegrated in a moment of passion…”

She nodded, “Fifty Grand. Already in circulation. Low enough to avoid questions about money laundering, and high enough to help you get started. Not to mention, if you do grow a beard, you have the kind of face that will disappear without it.”

She shrugged, “You can disappear with more than enough to get started someplace else, and if you still use your same Darknet ID, You will absolutely get a glowing recommendation.

I thought for a moment, “I am liking this deal. You get a mook you can trust for a while, and I get a decent payday. The last question is, are you a Lesbian?”

She shook her head, looking confused, “No, why?”

I said, “because if I have to beard for you having a girlfriend, I would have to play things differently. I don’t think you would appreciate some guy snoring on the floor while you and someone else have fun times. As it is, I shouldn’t have any problems keeping my hands off, but at some point, we are going to have to test your disintegration.”

“Test it? Why?” she asked.

“Because so far, nothing has been able to kill me, not even disintegration from another cowl I used to work for… but nothing is certain. I don’t mind regrowing a finger or something if it turns out you can destroy my skeleton after all, but I’d hate for you to find out the hard way that your power is the first one that’s ever been able to do anything permanent.”

She looked startled, “Is that a possibility?”

I scratched my head as we turned and started walking back toward the diner. “I don’t know that it isn’t. To be honest, I have been around long enough that the idea of being dead doesn’t really bother me, I am more concerned about what it would do to you if we found out your disintegration was my kryptonite. Even if it is, there are still possibilities, but it’s best to be aware of them ahead of time.”

The sleet puddle we had passed before had grown larger, so I offered my hand to help her cross it, which she accepted. “I am surprised you are dressed like that. If any sort of stress or surprise could trigger you, aren’t you worried about wrecking that very expensive version of ‘don’t dress up’?”

She looked a little surprised, “This? This was the back of my closet junk. I mean, the clothes you cannot see are silk, so I wouldn’t be totally out of it, but I thought you meant for me to dress down, so I did.”

I laughed, “You probably need to shop downmarket then. I don’t know much about women’s fashion, but you’d be amazed at what you have to do to entertain yourself when you are spying out a haul for a week. Those boots alone are worth at least five hundred bucks, the Jacket’s probably a thousand, the jeans are a good three hundred bucks of showing off, not that I don’t appreciate it, and the shirt? By itself, it would look nice but not expensive, but with the rest of the clothes I am betting you paid at least six hundred on it.”

She nodded, “Yeah, but the boots are two seasons out, the jacket is last season, the jeans are what everyone is buying, and I only got the shirt because I liked it, not because it goes with any outfit.”

I chuckled and held up my arms. “Leather jacket. Sixty bucks at a consignment shop. Tee shirt, one dollar at the same shop. Jeans, twenty-two dollars at save-mart. Boots… US army surplus, my only real expense, one hundred eighty dollars.” I shrugged, “And I am one of the better-dressed people around here. If we need to blend, I might have to show you how not to stick out like a Faberge egg in a chicken coop.”

She nodded, “Yeah, I mean, I don’t dress like this all the time, but I left all of my normal clothes back at home.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Home?”

She nodded, “Yeah. Jamaica. But it got too hot for the family, so we moved to my pop’s yacht, but I got out of there when I could. If it were summer, I’d probably have found stuff better to blend, but this is what I had.”

I looked around quickly. I had not only brought up her clothing because of the pond but also because I had seen several rats hovering nearby. The human kind. Obviously, Naomi could defend herself, but street rats didn’t deserve to get melted for just picking on a gigantic glowing target.

But I had made it perfectly clear by taking her hand that she was either my target or my bitch, and that either way, someone was going to get something broken if they tried. I glared at one shadow that was looking at me, and he finally shrugged, turned, and strolled off across the street. Sure, I had threatened them, but I had also respected them as a threat, and that meant a lot around here.

“Do you have a car?” I asked her.

She nodded, “I hired someone. I normally would have just driven myself, but I didn’t know the area.” she smiled a little evilly, “Also, I wouldn’t have gotten to see how you dealt with the local wildlife. My little indiscretion was noted when I entered the diner, and I wanted to see if you noticed it.”

She smiled, “So do we have a deal? Or do you need to think about it and talk to the other recruiters?”

I smiled a little as she pulled out one of those damned pocket phones and started doing that weird keyboard thing. “For right now, we have a deal. I will send you a message if something else looks better, but the whole thing sounds like fun and profit.”

She chuckled and nodded, her car rounding the corner from where it had been parked in the diner’s lot. I pulled open the door for her, “Very well then. Assuming everything goes to plan, go ahead and work on your beard, and in two weeks I will send a guy out to make you a portfolio, and a week afterward I can fly you out to the boat so we can start on the plan.”

“Boat?” I asked.

She nodded, smiling secretively, “Yes, the boat. You aren’t afraid of boats?”

I shook my head, and she said “Ta ta” and blew me a kiss before pulling the door closed herself.

A boat? She had been acting like a spacey young pampered daughter, but in the last ten minutes, she had suddenly turned into the wickedly planning mastermind cowl, even without the mask.

This should be extremely interesting.