Fitting In Read online

  Robin was playing jacks with the kids when the locks disengaged again, and the door opened. He’d been playing by snapping his hands out to catch the jacks (the kids cried not fair, but one of the little hypocrites was telekinetic and the other had gecko palms), so he turned his head all the way round on his neck to face Jan when she emerged. The boy laughed, “Eww, gross!”

  Jan put her glasses on with one hand. “I’ll never understand the Merovingians. So much time worrying about the blood of Christ, when obviously organized religion is a Gray plot to prepare us for invasion.”

  “Were there cameras? Did you get the footage?”

  She grinned and held up a gleaming disc.

  * * *

  The next morning, when Mikhail came for Octavia, they were waiting.

  Octavia had covered the shop’s window with a tarp that didn’t keep out the dawn chill. Robin hunched deep in his coat, over his coffee. He didn’t look at Jan, seated against the other wall, scrawling red sharpie circles and arrows on the morning’s Times. A one-eared tabby cat sprawled on Octavia’s counter, very interested in his own dreams.

  “Good morning, Ms. Zargoza!” Robin heard Mikhail’s shark-toothed grin even though his back was to the man. “Is shame about the window. Dangerous neighborhood, I hear.”

  “Mikhail. It’s never been dangerous for me before.”

  “But nothing changes, no? Is New York! Have you taken chance to consider my offer?”

  “I’ve been considering it for two months, Mikhail. And after two months, the answer’s still no.”

  “Is a big mistake, Ms. Zargoza! I understand, is sentimental, I feel this way myself, I have been reluctant to part with old things because they belonged to my grandfather in this war or that. But we must move on, or else the world moves on around us. Especially in such dangerous places. A window today, who knows tomorrow?”

  “Is that a threat, Mikhail?”

  He faked shock, hands raised. Robin watched him in one of the mirrors Octavia hung to make the cramped shop feel bigger. “Is no threat. I hear same stories as everyone. Tracksuit men come to break windows, start fire. Jokertown is dangerous place, yes? And every day more dangerous.”

  “That’s funny, Mikhail.” The very tall man in the very long coat who ducked through the bakery’s front door wasn’t wearing a badge, but even without the two-cop escort his bearing screamed police. “We have surveillance footage that shows you meeting with the men who tried to torch Ms. Zargoza’s shop. Tracksuits and masks and everything. We paid them a visit, and one of them remembered where he put his tongue.”

  “Detective McTate.” Mikhail’s eyes narrowed, and he got very smiley and loose. “You have some honest mistake, I am sure.”

  “Not this time, Mikhail.” The rolled newspaper the tall man held compressed and sharpened into a paper blade. “Let’s do this the easy way.”

  Mikhail’s eyes flicked from McTate to his escort. The smile’s corners turned down, and the gleam in his eyes sharpened into hate. Then he moved, fast—not for McTate, but for Octavia.

  He didn’t make it. Robin slung out one arm and snared his fist before it could connect. Then Jan zapped him. Then the tabby cat tackled him, only it wasn’t a cat anymore, but a heavyset ginger cop, still missing an ear, but in ample possession of a fist.

  Police stuff followed after that. The three of them kept it together all the way through. Octavia only collapsed when the cops and Mikhail were gone. Jan hugged her, then glared at Robin until he, cautiously, stepped forward and joined the embrace.

  “I can’t believe it’s over,” she said when the tears were done. “I’ll have to fix the window. I don’t know where I’ll find the money for that. But people will keep coming. I’ll make it work.”

  “I’ll pay,” Robin said before it occurred to him to stop himself, and then there were more hugs, and violent thanks, and he couldn’t take it back.

  It was after the hugs and the tears and the free coffee, and back out on the sidewalk, that he confessed to Jan Chang, “I don’t know how I’m going to afford that window. I’m using my savings to cover my rent as it is.”

  “Move,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “The apartment upstairs from my place is reasonable. And Chowdown needs a roommate.”

  “Think you could put in a word with the landlord?”

  She laughed and punched him in the arm. It tingled. “Ruttiger, I am the landlord.”

  * * *

  He took the coffee to his office. There were eyes, yes, but he realized now they weren’t staring at him—watching only, with interest and approval. A gaggle of seventh graders trading Pokémon cards in the hallway stared open-mouthed as he walked past. He marched into his office, set the coffee down on his desk, and sat firmly on his chair—sure at last in his place, until the chair collapsed beneath him.

  His head hit the floor. His feet hit the desk.

  And, in a slow shuffling avalanche, Mount Paperwork collapsed onto his face.

  He began to laugh. It had been a long time since he laughed. His sides hurt. He gasped in a dusty papery breath that filled his whole body from his ankles to his fingertips. The paperwork rustled and crumpled around him like a nest.

  “Um, Mr. R?”

  He slung a long arm over his desk and pulled himself to his feet. “What’s up, Slade?”

  “I wanted to talk with you. You know. About.” Slade looked both ways as if afraid he’d been followed to the office, and mouthed: “Math.”

  About the Author

  MAX GLADSTONE went to Yale, where he wrote a short story that became a finalist in the Writers of the Future competition. He is the author of Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Max Gladstone

  Art copyright © 2018 by John Picacio