The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

Who else would we be counting?” Eilif demanded, and then paused. “Ah yes. Gideon.”

“Yes, Gideon.” How eminently exhausting. “Your son, remember?”

“GIVE ME MY SON,” Eilif said hotly, trembling now with fury. “I don’t like it. I don’t like you. Give him to me. Sweet Nicolás,” she murmured, with her melodic hell-purr of sirenic persuasion. “My darling, don’t you dream of riches?”

“Stop,” he said.

“But—”

“No.”

“But I want—”

“You can’t.”

“BUT HE’S MINE,” Eilif wailed, shuddering with temper before resolving to a juvenile sulk. “Fine, have him. I’ll be back,” she promised in her most simpering tone, and then she threw herself into the sink, swallowed up by the drain again.

“Varona, what the hell is going on in there?” came Libby’s voice from the corridor.

“Hell,” Nico confirmed. “But don’t worry, it’s been wrangled.” Or it would be soon.

“Whatever,” Libby muttered, the sound of her footsteps heading back to her room.

A quick text to Gideon—meet me in the usual spot? followed by a hasty everything’s fine!—ensured an early night.

“What did you do?” Gideon said the moment Nico sat up, resuming his place inside the jail cell of the Society’s subconscious wards. “Something interesting, I hope.”

“Bored, Sandman?” Nico asked him, stepping close to the bars.

Gideon shrugged.

“I guess,” he said. “There’s only so many books you can fall asleep reading.”

“Well, don’t watch too much television,” Nico said. “You always end up in the dangerous realms when you’ve been exposed to excessive violence and I’m sorry, but you’re just not very good with firearms.”

Gideon gave a theatrical sigh. “Stop scolding me, Nicky,” he said, “you’re not my mother.”

It was a joke, but Nico winced at the reminder. Gideon, catching it, abruptly froze.

“Oh no,” Gideon said, paling at once, and Nico sighed.

“It’s fine, Gideon, I have it handled, I prom-”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing, I told you, it’s f-”

“Nicolás,” Gideon said fiercely. “What did she say?”

So much for it’s fine, Nico thought. Not that he’d ever been very good at lying to Gideon.

“Nothing much, really,” he said. “She seems to… want you for something.”

“Yes, I know she does,” Gideon said, scrubbing tiredly at his cheek with one hand. “She always does eventually. I thought she had actually left me alone this time, but—”

He broke off, and again, Nico winced.

“You,” Gideon realized aloud, glaring at Nico. “You set up a ward against her without telling me, didn’t you?”