She talks to angels?

  Gradie dropped through a swarm of crafts and spirits and glided over the shuffling skyliowards a waterfall and rainboed tower, like a ribbon of mirrss coated in soap-bubble iridesce, where the blinking light fshed o time.

  As he approached the side of the tower, he threw his arms a out and skidded on the air, knowing no other way to slow himself down. The iridest force field expanded and enveloped him and the gss slid apart. He dropped onto the baly and walked iill uo fight the native gravity of the office.

  Most of the team were already lounging on the ring of seats or at the bar, but Michael stood he front with a woman Gradie didn’t reize.

  “Wele Gradie,” he said. “How was your trip?”

  Despite the gentle golden light of the room, Michael looked like he was standing in a dark alley with only the radiant glow of streetlight boung off crete to keep him from being lost in darkness. His mention of the trip reminded Gradie of EP flying through the air, wind billowing her skirt, and he was gd the mask kept his smile a secret.

  “It was good. How do I learn to make the journey by myself?”

  “With practice, like all things. This is Kra, our speaker. I believe you’ve met”

  She was blonde and slightly tanned, with angled features just on the edge of youth. Her aqua blue dress shimmered with water-reflected light. Gradie was about to tell Michael that they had never met, when she spoke.

  “Wele to the team, Gradie.” It was the voice that had guided him to the light. She smiled and shook his hand.

  “Thanks.”

  Michael put his first two fiogether and a small silver orb appeared on them.

  “Here. Put it in your head.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a unicator. It will let you talk on our work.”

  Gradie took the small orb. It felt like he imagined a bead of liquid mercury might feel.

  “You said put it in my head?”

  “That’s the best pce to put it. Your mind naturally doesn’t have awareness of your brain. If you were to put it in your ear, your mind might decide that you feel it, that its unfortable, or that it only affects one ear. This way, you keep it without any issues.”

  Gradie nodded more to let Michael know to stop talking than to indicate any uanding. He pressed the orb to his forehead and imagi slipping through into his brain, and it did. There was a brief sensation of etal, then nothing.

  “EP. Say something owork, please,” Michael said.

  “Hi.” Her voice came through like she was right beside him, though not in any definite location, aone was pletely without emotion. Like she was activating a voice responsive appliance.

  “ you hear her?” Michael asked. Gradie had been standing like a statue, lost in thoughts of dripping waterfalls.

  “Yeah.”

  “To speak owork, you have to imagihe unicator activating,” Michael tinued. “Whatever mental imagery you want to use is up to you. Give it a try.”

  Gradie looked off into a er of the room and imagihe strange bead of liquid metal somewhere in his head molding into the shape of a small bowl.

  “Hi.” He thought, and imagihe silver bowl vibrating from his voice.

  “Got it,” EP said.

  Gradie pictured the bowl f bato an orb, and then closed a box around it food measure. Thoughts felt more liquid here, and ever since Kra had spoken to him, the fear of his inner voice leaking out into the world had him. He was thinking about what divided an inner image, like the unicator bead locked in a box in his mind, from the physical thought-things in the rest of the Otherworld, when a door opened in the wall.

  “All right, what do we got?” Philip walked in with a drink in one hand, an espresso sized steaming something that smelled of chocote and cardamom, and a cigar iher. Sam came in behind him, puffing on a hookah hose that disappeared into her pocket. When she exhaled, neon bubbles flooded out of her lips and popped in the air with a st like peach rings.

  “Where is Luke?” Michael asked.

  “He had to make a deposit, or a down payment or something,” said Philip. “Guy owes i on his i.”

  Luke!” Michael's voice was in Gradie’s head this time, loud and stern. He wondered if he could tweak the box to mute the unicator pletely.

  “Yea, boss, sorry. On my way.” Luke’s voice had more distao it. A haze that Gradie instantly matched with his personality.

  Gradie found a seat o the bar and watched Sam puff on the hookah. Lindsey was off in the er smoking a pipe like Aragorn, and she and Sam traded for a bit and whispered to each other about the fvors. Celeste sat nearby on a cushion of cloud, her dress like liquid mother of pearl molded to her body, leaning in to take the pipe from Sam. Philip must have noticed him staring, despite the mask.

  “You take that off in here.” He pointed his glowing cigar at Gradie’s fad he got a whiff of tobacd allspice.

  “Oh yeah.” He took it off with his hands and Philip shook his head.

  “No, I mean like get rid of it. Watch.” Philip swiped his hand over his fad a mask, like a blued steel hockey mask with rivets and deep gouges, appeared over his face. He swiped his hand again and it disappeared.

  “Where does it go?” Gradie asked. Philip looked to Michael for help.

  “We all have personal items we summon at will,” Michael said. “It helps to imagine a vault somewhere that no one else get to. Or if that’s too much, just imagi disappearing into your pocket.”

  Gradie looked at the mask and remembered how hard it had been to try and disappear the gun. Michael guessed where his mind was.

  “Don’t destroy it, just put it away.”

  Gradie hen after some thought, crumpled the mask in his hands like it was made of aluminum foil. Wheook his hands apart, it was gone.

  “That’s one way to do it,” Philip said. Gradie summo again, this time it unfurled like a sheet of foil from an infinitely small point in space, then snapped bato shape. He looked it over to see, or to prove to himself, that it had survived the process unged, then crumpled it bato whatever phantom zone he had got it out of.

  “Celeste keeps hers in her cleavage,” Sam said. Kra raised her eyebrohilip smirked into his cigar.

  “Ok,” Lindsey said smiling, trying to hand the hookah back.

  “Really. She puts everything in there. Oime we were on Sugarsands and she—”

  A door opened and Luke walked in. His mask, a smiling mardi gras in green and purple, dissolved off his fa a cloud of smoke.

  “Sorry boss. This guy—”

  “Don’t let it happen agai’s get started.”

  Michael motioo the windows and they disappeared behind falling darkness. Gradie’s chest fluttered as he dropped in the dark, and he uood instantly that they all had moved a great distance.

  His shoes struck a marble smooth floor with a sound that echoed and mixed with the others. Celeste’s heels, Sam’s sci-fi fts, Luke’s metal-capped cowboy boots. EP floated down from somewhere, soundlessly. They were glowing figures standing with him on a circur wafer of mirrored marble, floating in a darkhat gained an immense depth as stars flickered to life all around.

  A ninth figure walked out of the bck.

  “Yall ready to make me some money?” Again, her voice cshed with her visage. Liquid nebu skater dress and skin like molded moonlight, and of course those same neon eyes.

  A few of the team nodded or mumbled in agreement, Sam said “sure” in a drawn-out paione. Gradie just stood there.

  “God damn Michael,” Lucy said. “You gotta work on that esprit de corps.”

  “I’m ready to make you some cash, Lucy goosey!” Luke yelled.

  “That’s the spirit, but do not fug call me that!” she yelled, uo keep from smiling. Most of the team returned her smile and traded polite greetings. Philip even made a joke Gradie couldn’t hear that fred Lucy’s smile into a grin he would have never expected. EP even gave her a full on hug.

  It was like he had stepped into a house he didn’t belong in. The worst part was when she smiled at him, almost feebly, as if she knew he had been terrified of her. Instead of smiling back, he looked away, and instantly regretted it. Obviously, she had just been doing her job, and now that he was oeam, there was o rip into his buried memories or accuse him of not knowing what he was getting into. When he looked back at her, half a sed ter, she was carrying on with the team as if nothing had happened.

  Kra spoke through the ughter.

  “Let me introduce you to the man of the hour.” She flicked a light out of her hand and it exploded in the ter of the floor. A window, like a hole in space itself, opened on a man sitting in a lounge seat talking to a girl. He wore the military uniform of a nation that never existed and sipped va out of a bck marble goblet. He locked eyes with Gradie and the vision froze. Gradie k was a memory of someone who had seen the man iherworld.

  “His name is Paul.”

  Have you ever misjudged someone? Luows everyone's deepest secrets. Do you think that makes her love the team more, or less? ime, Gradie gets briefed on his first job as a Hardworlder, and learns how to hunt a Spirit. Episode: His Name is Paul.