Page 12 of Princess For All

“You were impressive throwing up that new power you learned on the fly like that,” I praised. “Thanks for doing it for me.”

“Of course.” She cleared her throat nervously. “I’m sorry about the helicopter lessons thing. I really didn’t mean to accuse you. I’m just all over and—I’m not dealing well.”

“I think I’d be worried if you were,” I said after a minute. “This was all major on top of years of major. Thank you for explaining. I hope you take the time you need to process and handle this.” I snorted and gestured to where my da and Jamelle walked off. “Clearly, letting it all build and keeping quiet just leads to more shit later.”

“So I’m learning,” she whispered sadly, moving her feet along the patio as if nervous and trying to get energy out. “I don’t want my memories back. I think Aether’s right and it would break me. Except Darius went through all of that—I feel horrible it was all for nothing now.”

“I think he’ll worry he did something wrong and failed you again. It’s all I feel constantly.”

She nodded but didn’t seem to buy it. “But realizing that I won’t ever get my memories back has made me—there is stuff I would like to learn. And you don’t judge or make me feel stupid. I don’t always want to feel so damn behind.”

My heart filled with hope as she extended me a lifeline. “Anything. I’ll help you with anything I can, Inez.”

“Can you explain apps to me? What the popular ones were and how they worked?” she asked quietly. “I feel like it’s all people talk about now that we’re using phones more and talking about getting cell towers back up and I always feel so…”

“Of course.” I moved my hand over hers on the bench and gave it a squeeze. “But no one knew all of the apps. That was kind of the joke of them. Someone would ask if you were on whatever and people would ask what it was. Something was always popping up to take the place of the big ones and then dying off.”

She considered that a moment and nodded. “Then teach me the big ones. Or at least enough that I don’t always feel so lost.” She sniffled which killed my heart. “I’m so tired of being lost and feeling so behind.”

I was about to try to comfort her when she jumped to her feet and mumbled a goodnight before walking off.

“Fuck,” I whispered, scrubbing my neck hard enough that I definitely lost a layer of skin or two. I swallowed a sigh and looked up, praying to Aether to help my wife… And me.

Because I didn’t know shit about apps. I was probably the worst person to have asked.

But she’d asked me and I wasn’t going to waste this chance.

I went and grabbed a dozen jars of the moonshine we had that Inez liked and brought it over to Albuquerque, thanking my lucky stars when I saw a group of humans who looked in their late twenties sitting outside. I felt bad when they jumped at my suddenly being there. “I know this is going to sound extremely weird and—”

“Bro, there are zombies,” one guy drawled. “Years of zombies and all—whatever you are going to say isn’t that fucking weird.”

“And I think you have actual alcohol, so we’ll agree,” a woman chuckled as she tried to peer at what I was carrying.

“I do. My wife likes this, so I thought it would work well,” I said, sighing when they all just stared at me. “My wife wants me to teach her about apps, but I’m hundreds of years old and didn’t pay that much attention to them. But I want the excuse to spend time with her. So yes, I will give you alcohol if you teach me everything about smartphone apps so I can then teach her.”

“Weird, but definitely not weirder than zombies,” the guy chuckled after a long silence. “Yeah, sure, get us some phones with apps and we’ll show you.” He frowned when I did. “Bro, we need to show you stuff. It’s not going to make sense without that.”

Except we’d all been using “new” phones that we found in stores.

Then it hit me. I handed over the alcohol and told them I’d be back. I went and got the phones the twins had collected to get music off of for the coven. I made sure I had the right chargers and battery packs before I headed back.

They rolled with it and told me everything… Which was why I had to take notes.

After I went and got a notebook and pen.

And they had alotto say. Yeah, they were the right people to ask for sure. Especially when one of the guys said he’d actually worked for Facebook and could tell me the tech of it.

I did take his name down for later to give to the engineers because he clearly knew computers and coding.

But it worked and I felt ready. I was ready the next morning to suggest talking over lunch and we could go over one or two of them each time so she wasn’t overwhelmed.

And I got to draw out the amount of lunch dates I got from this.

Jamelle found me first and pulled me off to the side. “Inez won’t get out of bed.”

I did a double take. “She always wakes with the sun and—”

“It’s depression. She told everyone to fuck off and went back to bed. I’m just warning you because the others were asking what you talked about last night and your da set them straight that it was nothing, Inez asking you for help.”

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