Not that I had a problem with that. I didn’t care how people got their kicks. I was pissed because this whole place was designed to rip off tourists who didn’t know better. Everything we found here was bound to be ten times more expensive than what you’d see anywhere else in the city at least. I might not use brothels, VR snuff parlors, or narcotic vending machines personally, but the ridiculous prices infuriated me on principle. The only good thing I could say about Loveland was that at least all the blinking neon and undulating, impossibly proportioned dancers shimmying through the street’s shared AR kept the gawking tourists too distracted to notice my dad and I popping out of an unsupported door in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Huh,” Sibyl said as the door sank back into the gum-covered pavement behind us. “Guess the restaurant got moved since that picture was taken.”
“You think?” I muttered, rubbing my spinning head.
My priestess powers were supposed to let me travel anywhere in the city. Before this, though, I’d only ever moved between places I knew. I’d thought a photo would be good enough, but I didn’t see the restaurant from the picture I’d memorized anywhere in the flashing lights. Had I screwed up and taken us to the wrong place entirely?
I was wondering if I should just go back to my apartment and start over when Sibyl placed a discreet arrow on the edge of my vision, the only part of my Augmented Reality field that I could see when I was using just my phone rather than my full goggles. When I turned to follow her indicator, my breath left me in a relieved rush. We’d come out facing the main drag of Loveland—what had once been known as 8 Mile Road—but just to the left was an alley that led back into the much quieter, much cheaper, side streets. The sort of tourists who flocked to Loveland didn’t like going off the brightly lit main trench, so the alley wasn’t even crowded, and at the very back of it, glowing like a treasure, was our destination.
“Good find,” I said, breaking into a grin. “Guess I’m not so bad at this priestess stuff after all!”
“What are you talking about?” my father demanded, moving his body away from the crowds of humans jostling past us. “This place is horrible. I thought we were supposed to be staying out of sight?”
“Relax,” I told him. “I hate it as much as you do, but Loveland is actually a great place for us. There’s not a dragon in the world who’d be caught dead in a seedy tourist trap like this, and look!” I pointed down the alley. “There’s our restaurant.”
My father turned his head to follow my hand, and what little color he had left drained from his face. At the end of the alley we’d emerged beside, nestled between a nail salon and a convenience store advertising coupon books for popular Loveland attractions, was a bustling restaurant with a huge, brightly painted, sombrero-and-chopsticks-festooned neon sign that read Los Hermanos Li’s Famous Dim Sum Nachos. All You Can Eat!
“You must be joking,” my father said.
“What’s there to joke about?” I asked, starting down the alley. “Fusion food is a DFZ classic, and the internet says it’s good.”
“I don’t care what the internet says,” Yong snapped, hobbling after me. “‘Dim Sum Nachos’ aren’t food. They’re an insult to two cultures.”
“It’s cheap and it’s all you can eat,” I countered. “Two critical components seeing how you’re a starving dragon and I’m still broke.”
He looked appalled. “Does the DFZ not pay you?”
“Being a priest is a calling, not a profession,” I said humbly. “Also, I’m doing this to work off a debt, so a salary would be kind of counter-productive. The city does give me free room and board, though, so it’s not as if I’m starving.”
“I noticed.” He looked down at me critically. “You’ve put on weight. Your mother won’t be pleased.”
“My mother can mind her own business,” I said, shoving the restaurant’s jingly door with both hands. “But I’ve been living on a whole-food vegan diet for two months. I don’t care what they’re fused with, I’m going to eat some damn nachos!”
The inside of the restaurant was every bit as tacky as I’d hoped when I’d first marked it to try months ago. It was also packed. The crowd looked like it was mostly locals, though. There were no backpacks or shopping bags from overpriced stores—the sure signs of a tourist—just shopkeepers and sex workers on break.
After two months in hiding, being around so many people made me nervous. As I’d just said to my dad, though, there was basically zero chance of meeting a dragon in a place like this. I was more worried about running into someone Nik and I had pissed off.
Loveland was directly below the hidden shopping-district-for-criminals he’d taken me to when we’d been looking for someone to hack Dr. Lyle’s hand. Other than his cyber-surgeon Rena, I didn’t think there was anyone up there who knew me by name, but we’d made quite the exit. So far as I knew, Nik hadn’t gone back since. If he’d been here with us, I was sure he’d have been even more paranoid than usual. That said, if Nik had been with us, we wouldn’t have come at all. He distrusted restaurants in general, but this place had
