I slipped onto a barstool, digging the few coins I had out of my bag before resting it on the floor. They were thick and heavy, and made of some metal we didn’t have on Earth and covered in markings I couldn’t identify. I’d never had to deal with money before, so the concept had seemed backward and old fashioned to me at first, but I’d been coming to the District for more than a year now and by this point was more than used to it.
It only took the bartender—a middle-aged but attractive Veilorian man—a moment to notice me, which was no big surprise. The fact that I was more than a head shorter than nearly everyone in the bar didn’t exactly help me blend in.
“What can I get you, sweetheart?” He had a slight accent, a lilt at the end of his words that only Veilorians who’d been born on their home planet of Veil possessed, and it made him sound exotic. Which, as a side effect, made him twice as attractive.
“Veilorian rum.”
His lips quirked up, and his amethyst eyes sparkled, but he didn’t move to get my drink. Even though he was trying to act casual—wiping the counter with a dingy rag that couldn’t possibly be clean—something in his eyes made me sit up straighter.
“I have to ask how old you are.” His smile stretched wider to reveal white teeth that, like all full-blooded Veilorians, were smaller than ours and slightly more pointed. “I’m a horrible judge of age when it comes to humans.”
My shoulders relaxed as I let out a laugh that shook my body. “I’m twenty-five.”
His dimples deepened, and he didn’t take his eyes off me as he reached for a glass. “It’s the height. You all look like kids to me.”
I might have been insulted if he hadn’t been smiling, but his words were too laidback, too easygoing and friendly to take offense.
“I understand,” I said. “The other day I mistook a ten-year-old Veilorian girl for an adult until I got a good look at her face.”
He set the glass in front of me, still grinning, and I took it with a nod of thanks, sliding three coins across the counter. That left seven, which wasn’t a lot. I’d need to find some other things around my house to trade at the market next week. With Ione now living in the District, I had a feeling I was going to be here a lot, and I didn’t want to run out of money.
I sipped the rum, which I’d heard tasted nothing like its human counterpart—I’d never had the stuff myself—as I scanned the bar. It wasn’t crowded, and the few Veilorians present talked in quiet groups throughout the room. I watched a couple who I guessed were on a date for a few minutes before turning my attention to the other tables. Two Veilorian girls about my age sat gossiping in the corner, while a few tables away a group of human male teenagers watched them with unconcealed curiosity. Based on the unsure way the boys held themselves, shifting and looking around constantly like they thought their parents might swoop in at any moment and catch them, I assumed it was their first time inside the District. I remembered the feeling well. The thrill of doing something I knew my mom wouldn’t approve of, as well as the excitement of seeing everything the walls had hidden from me for years.
I was still watching the boys when someone slid onto a stool at my side and said, “I didn’t expect to find you here.”
Johnson was already signaling to the bartender by the time I turned to face him. He was wearing civilian clothes, telling me he was no longer on duty, and it hit me for the first time just how young he was. Probably only a couple years older than me. He looked cuter out of uniform, too. Less severe.
“I could say the same about you,” I replied.
He gave me a disarmingly adorable smile, but there was a serious light in his eyes as well. “I decided to hang out for a bit. You know, wait until the crowd outside the gate gives up for the night.”
The bartender must have recognized Johnson, because he brought a glass of rum without being told.
“They’re still out there?” I asked.
“They are.” He lifted his glass and nodded to mine. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t thrilled about being stuck in here, but I’m warming to the idea.”
Without wanting to, I flushed.
Johnson clinked his glass against mine, and his smile widened. He held my gaze as we both lifted our drinks to our lips, neither of us blinking. The longer it went on, the more the hair on my scalp prickled. I’d never thought of him as anything but a guard until today—too focused on the aliens inside the fence to really pay much attention to the humans at the gate—but sitting beside him now, I found myself mulling over the last several months. How Johnson would tease me or compliment me when Ione and I went through the gate. How he would take extra time searching my bag in the beginning—before my visits became regular—the entire time chatting away. Had he been flirting with me? I hadn’t thought so before, but I was starting to think I’d been blind.
“No Ione tonight?” he said when I’d set my empty glass on the counter.
“Not tonight.” The bartender came over, and Johnson nodded to my glass, indicating he wanted to buy me a drink, and I once again flushed. “She and Rye had a family dinner. Or that’s what his cousin, Finn, told me, anyway.”
“Finn.” Johnson’s mouth turned down at the corners. “The halfling?”
The bartender didn’t look our way, but his shoulders did stiffen, telling me he’d heard the slur. This time when heat moved up
