Winter’s skirt slid to the floor.
Veronika snapped her fingers in front of Rob’s face. “Over here, Rob.”
He dragged his eyes off Winter.
“I asked, what if one of the clients alerts Cryomed?”
“I say it’s worth the risk. Men have to start visiting her immediately, in numbers. Everyone who sees this is going to want to meet her.”
Veronika laughed. “Yeah, no kidding. You’ll be first in line. Do you think Winter would mind us showing this?”
“If you were in her position, would you mind?”
Veronika made a raspberry sound. “If I was in her position, the last thing that would save me is a clip of me getting naked.”
Rob clapped his hand over his eyes, laughed in spite of himself. “Not true. You’ve got a lot of sexy going on.”
Veronika blushed, fumbled to respond, then just gave up and vanished.
35
Veronika
The last thing Veronika added to the profile was the nudie clip. She shook her head as she inserted it, then spread the whole thing out, lining the various virtual pages up on her living room walls until they surrounded her, and examined them with a critical eye for aesthetic appeal.
They were beautiful. It was beautiful—a masterpiece. Quite a bit of it was pure fabrication, but as she’d told Rob, the point was to get butts in the seat next to Winter’s crèche. Enough butts in that seat, and the odds were someone would take a shine to her even if she wasn’t a rabid Pittsburgh Steelers fan like it said in her profile.
Veronika fired off the profile to the address Rob had provided, stood, stretched, checked the time, and cursed. This was going to be a long day. She put a complete block on incoming messages, muted the front-door buzzer, retracted her bed and bathroom, blacked out her windows, and dimmed the lights, all the time cursing Lorelei. Leave it to Lorelei to set up a spontaneous face-to-face and expect Veronika to drop everything.
She took a few deep breaths. “Here we go. Skintight.” She opened a cloaked screen beside Lorelei, who was gliding down Amyrta Boulevard in boots set to a five-inch lift, making her nearly seven feet tall. The boots were black, the rest of her outfit shades of violet. On Veronika the outfit would have looked hilarious, on Lorelei, well, Lorelei didn’t need help picking out clothes.
Hey, Cousin, Lorelei subvocalized. Ready for anything? Lorelei was swimming in screens. Veronika ran a count: seven hundred seventy-two viewers, and all she was doing at the moment was walking.
What’s the event? Veronika replied.
Drinking and dancing.
Of course. Veronika hated dancing. She decided she needed a drink herself.
Lorelei was dancing by herself, though two men danced nearby, clearly trying to work their way in. Veronika spotted Nathan winding through the crowd, just arriving. His gaze was fixed on Lorelei. When she raised a hand in greeting, he watched her dance a moment longer, then clutched his heart. Lorelei swung her neck, got her hair to flick in Nathan’s direction like a black whip.
This woman didn’t need Veronika’s help to lure a man. Of course, Veronika wasn’t there to help Lorelei get Nathan, she was there to help Lorelei land more viewers. She had nine hundred thirty-one viewers at the moment. Another sixty-nine, and sponsorships would kick in. She’d get automatic cash from Balmoral simply for wearing their boots, by Primera for wearing their system. Veronika was sure Lorelei wasn’t aiming for a thousand viewers, though—she was aiming for a million.
Lorelei danced toward Nathan; he strode confidently onto the dance floor, meeting her halfway. He didn’t begin dancing right away, only took Lorelei in for a moment, allowing her to be the center of attention before finally joining her.
Nathan was a great dancer—athletic, lithe yet masculine—but Veronika had already known that. As he wound around Lorelei, Veronika felt a crippling jolt of jealousy. He looked so beautiful out there. Deep down, Veronika realized, she’d always believed that in the end, it would be her and Nathan together. How could she ever have believed that?
Nathan and Lorelei finally left the dance floor and found a table.
So you must be pretty good at this, if you make a living at it, Veronika fed to Lorelei. Lorelei repeated the line with just the right tinge of playfulness.
“Me?” He waved it off. “Even my mom doesn’t find my face-to-faces worth watching.”
It’s a relief to know your mom isn’t watching. I’m not quite ready to meet your parents. Veronika laughed as she sent it. She could be so fucking clever when the words weren’t coming out of her own mouth.
Nathan burst out laughing when Lorelei delivered the line—a little too hard, in Veronika’s opinion. But Nathan wasn’t the only person in the bar who reacted to the line. Veronika noticed a slyly dressed man at the bar who smiled and nodded, though he seemed way too far away to have overheard. Maybe he was reacting to something a friend had said remotely, but Veronika didn’t think so. His waxed head, goggles, the total lack of creases on his rolled-up sleeves all screamed Director.
As she fed lines to Lorelei, Veronika watched the guy’s face, watched him subvocalize, watched him watching Lorelei and Nathan. It was him, it was Lorelei’s coach—there was no doubt in Veronika’s mind. She got a shot of his face, ran a search.
Name: Parsons Palmer
Profession: Freelance Director
“Got you,” Veronika said aloud to her dark apartment. She had no idea what good it did her to know who he was, but she felt great satisfaction in having spotted him.
Things were going swimmingly, thanks in no small part to her. Veronika checked the running conversational stats. So far sixty-eight percent of the conversation had been about Lorelei, so Veronika sent, Ask him to tell you more about himself.
“So, tell me more about you,” Lorelei said as she swirled a color stick in her absinthe. “I know what you do for a living, and that you live in Wilmington Park.”
Nathan shrugged. “Let’s see. I own a virtual apartment in Second Life.”
“The classic. Very nice.”
“Thank you. I have a dog named Riley, and every Christmas I work as a Santa in Macy’s.”
“You do not.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
Lorelei laughed as if she’d never heard anything so funny. She was coming up with some of her own lines, and they were serviceable, if not brilliant. Better than Veronika would have guessed.
Ask him if he likes to cook. When you knew everything about the target, this was too easy.
“Do you like to cook?” Lorelei asked.
Nathan leaned forward. “I love to cook. What about you?”
Lorelei shook her head. “No.”
Let’s elaborate, Veronika sent. Tell him this: “Opening the refrigerator is a humbling and confusing experience for me. My meals are mostly failures. I eat quickly, primarily to dispose of the evidence.”
Lorelei delivered the soliloquy. Veronika half expected Nathan to grow suspicious, to recognize the self-deprecating wit as classic Veronika, but Nathan beamed.
“I wish we hadn’t just eaten,” Nathan said. “Otherwise I’d invite you to my place and cook something for you.”
Veronika saw Parsons subvocalize something before taking a sip of his drink.