Page 73 of Marked by the Demigod

AIMES (3:09 PM): No, he couldn’t come in cause of wards. He asked me who it was I was with.

The three dots appear and disappear four times.

KATYA GOVERNMENT (3:11 PM): Fuck.

AIMES (3:11 PM): Yeah. Told him a blond guy from Hawaii.

AIMES (3:15 PM): Is it safe for me to leave the hotel room?

Regardless of answer, she pushes herself up and sets herself up with her laptop at that little half desk half table thing that most hotels seem to have, and sketchy hotel with a mirror on the ceiling is no different.

* * *

By the timeTrixie gets out of her conference and comes back to the room, Aimes is buried up to her elbows in a new programming language that makes no sense. But things that make no sense is what she needs right now, and trying to figure out the pattern and the rhythm to it feels...good.

Trixie takes one look at her face, draws her eyebrows up, and gives her a hug. "Please tell me you haven't been hiding here all day."

She shakes her head, quick. "Just doing some afternoon coding, nothing too weird." Her voice sounds rough, even to herself.

Trixie regards her, long. "Let's go see some strippers."

"Just as long as we don't bang them." Aimes quips, shouldering her bag.

* * *

Her skin crawlsthe moment she walks out the room, but nothing seems to be up. It seems, it seems to be a normal hallway, the business card kicked down a few doors.

The back of her neck prickles when she sees a security guard, but he just nods at her as she passes. It could be nothing, it could be what he does to customers, but she hates it.

The walk down the Strip is more of a plodding along, with Trixie in high spirits and even higher heels, but the stares are at a minimum. It's such a sharp relief that Aimes really doesn't want to think about why it'd happen.

The strippers are fantastic, but a corner of her brain is just busy looking at the crowd, trying to spot someone watching her, trying to spot the surveillance that she feels down in her core must exist somewhere nearby

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