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Chapter Sixty-One

CARMINE

—Does your raven have the stake in it?

Only Luna would ask that. I tap the words, but they disappear and another screen appears.

“Fuck!” I sit with the device on my upturned palm like a child who can’t open a bag of cookies. “This is a different one.”

“What are you trying to do, boss?” Viaro tips his head to look at my screen. I feel like a moron when I explain it, and a bigger moron when he does. “Right, you swipe down to notifications, find it, tap, it opens the app, and bam.” He hands it back to me.

“Thank you.” I get up. “The sun is coming.”

“We have our old places, yes?” Ario folds into the chair then unfolds to stand.

“Yes.” I swipe for the keyboard, but it’s gone. The last device didn’t do that.

“It’s good to see you, capo.”

“Until dark.” I barely mutter our equivalent of good night before I’m in the hall, holding the phone like a veterinarian with a baby bird. I’m afraid to touch the wrong place because the screen could change and get me lost all over again.

The bathroom is done in green tiles and gold fixtures. The toilet lid I’m sitting on is green.

I tap and swipe until the text comes up. I’ve done this before, with Laro, and I can’t find the place in my brain where I stored how to do this.

—Does your raven have the stake in it?

What do I do? I can’t just think out loud in her direction. This magic device has rules.

I tap the message. Nothing happens, but the whole thing doesn’t disappear. That’s a step in the right direction.

There’s a paper airplane in the corner. It speaks directly to me. A three-dimensional thing I recognize, flattened to two. The whole idea is so clear.

“Clever,” I mumble, tapping it. A keyboard appears. “Ah.”

I type out my answer and take a chance on the upward arrow to the right.

—yes but its smaller a thread.

“Yes!” My voice echoes on the tiles. Dots appear on the left. My replies are on the right. Same as before. Nothing about this technology seems to stick.

—You mean as thin as a thread?

I poke each letter, one at a time. I get one wrong and decide one of these keys has to erase. I find it and give myself a silent fist pump.

—yes it doesn’t even hurt

how do you make capital letters

and the punctuation

—iphone or android?

—dont know

Is she laughing at me? I’d laugh at me.

—Try up arrow on the left

for caps. It’s so cute when

you don’t punctuate, I don’t

even want to tell you.

—i do not like not knowing

how this works

—It’s not like I know either.

—yes you do youre doing it

right now

—I know how to use it. I don’t

know how it works. Nobody does.

—how is that possible

—Do you know exactly how

your magic works? Like, the

exact structure of your little

intravenous colony? Or why

liminal water is uncrossable?

Why does your spit make me

come like an atom bomb?

—so you stay still long

enough to kill

—That’s backward. What’s

the exact mechanism? The

chemical structure? You don’t

know how your magic spit really

works, but you know how to

use it. I don’t know how my

magic internet works. But I

can make an appointment at the

DMV with it. I can order food

from anywhere and they’ll bring

it right to me.

—you can do that

No. That’s a statement. I want to ask a question. I tap everything, then get to 123, which should just be numbers. However…

“Aha!”

—?

—How do you not know this?

—this must be why you tipped the

Uber driver a hundred dollars.

—i don’t need to drive and i

don’t get hungry any more.

—but you can punctuate!

“Yes, my lovely bird, I can punctuate.”

My smile is so wide, my jaw hurts.