“Whoa,” I said nervously, putting up my hands. “Dad, I—”
A loud buzzing sound came to my rescue. Down in my jeans pocket, my phone was going off like a noise grenade, informing me that my lunch-turned-spirit-summoning break was over.
“I’ve got to go to work,” I said slowly, pushing myself up. “Why don’t you stay here and rest until—”
“You can’t leave,” he said, his voice dead calm even though his smoke was shaking wildly. “This is an emergency.”
“I don’t get a choice,” I told him. “I work for a god. They don’t tolerate tardiness.”
“Then take me with you,” he said, stepping closer. “We’re tied together, remember?”
As if I could forget. “What about your body?” I asked, trying another angle.
“What about it?” he shot back, pressing a transparent hand against his transparent chest. “Everything that is me is here in the smoke. I am here.” He looked over his shoulder at his pseudo-corpse. “My body’s been lying on your floor for eight weeks. It can handle one more afternoon. But I’m not leaving you, Opal. You’re my fire now.”
That was what the giant dragon god had said, wasn’t it?
“Fine,” I grumbled, stomping away to go grab my work bag from the living room. “You can come, but don’t get in my way. The DFZ’s already warned me about slacking off to care for you, and she’s not someone you want on your tail.”
My god could be surprisingly kind, but when it came to work, she was every bit as ruthless as any other DFZ employer. Family emergencies were no excuse. If I didn’t show up and do my job, I’d end up on the street before I could blink.
“I won’t be a burden,” he promised, looking affronted that I’d even thought such a thing. Then his face grew curious. “What manner of work does a city god require?”
“One very suited to my skills, actually,” I said, walking straight through him to grab the doorknob to my bedroom. I closed the flimsy door and my eyes at the same time, picturing the destination in my mind. When I had it good and clear, I opened the door again and marched through. The curse stretched as I went, the line of magic growing taut, and the smoke shadow of my father was jerked off his feet, yanked like a dog on a leash after me into the dark.
Chapter 3
When I opened the door from my apartment, the scene waiting for me on the other side was the same one I always saw: an empty city, floating in the dark.
Like Old Detroit, it was arranged into blocks, but these roads had never been driven on. The asphalt here was still new and black with fresh yellow paint that had never touched a tire. So far as I could tell, the roads were only there to divide the buildings into a grid for organization, which was good because there were a lot of them. Structures of every size and from every time period spread out in all directions, forming a ghost town of boarded-up shops and shuttered houses, failed banks and abandoned tenements, crumbling department stores and forgotten Masonic temples. Some of the dark structures were collapsing, others looked brand-new, but every single one of them was empty. Aside from the single orange streetlight shining above the intersection where my door appeared, there was no light anywhere. No sound or movement. Even the rats didn’t make it down here.
“What is this place?” the shade of my father whispered, looking nervously at the empty blackness above our heads.
“I’m not really sure,” I replied, setting my work bag down on the table that was usually next to my door, though sometimes it wasn’t. Despite the dead quiet, this place could be surprisingly energetic. The grid layout was always the same, but the buildings themselves changed all the time. It wasn’t unusual to open my door and see an entirely new skyline waiting for me, but what else could you expect from the private stash of a city that couldn’t stay still?
Fortunately for my sanity, today was a table day. A nice polished mahogany one that must have been someone’s showpiece dining table before it had been forgotten. I was unpacking my things carefully so as not to scratch the finish when my father walked his smoke body through the table to force me to look at him.
“How do you not know where we are?”
I rolled my eyes and slapped the pair of reinforced work gloves I’d just pulled out through his chest. “First rule of working for the DFZ: you must accept that space is flexible. Nothing in this city stays put. Even the Dragon Consulate moves around.”
“Yes, but I can still always reach it.” My father pointed up at the flat-black nothing that served as the sky here. “This is a ghost town floating in the void!”
“That’s not the void,” I said authoritatively. “My apartment is floating in the void, and if you looked out my windows, you’d know it’s way scarier than this.” I waved at the blankness. “What you’re seeing is just background, a courtesy curtain installed by the DFZ to hide the fact that this place doesn’t exist in a way non-divine brains can understand.”
My father scowled. “That’s surprisingly thoughtful of her.”
“Try practical,” I said with a snort, unpacking my magnifier set. “If that blackness wasn’t there, I’d be too busy having an existential crisis to do my job, and when it comes to the DFZ, nothing is more important than the job.”
And speaking of jobs, I was late for mine. Digging into my bag, I pulled out
