I watched her enviously.
Must be nice.
“Is there a problem?” I asked, looking at the mage, who seemed the most clear headed. “Because we were told that you guys are experts on—”
The girl laughed. It was not a nice sound. “We’re all going to die,” she announced. And then she, too, raided my fridge.
This is why I stock crap beer, I thought. People always drink it all anyway, so why keep the good stuff? She came out with a can, looked for a place to sit down, didn’t find one and plopped back onto the floor where she’d been.
I eyed her warily.
“See,” I began.
“We aren’t experts in anything,” the dark mage said, starting beer number five. “It’s all bullshit.”
“Excuse me?” I blinked at him politely.
“It’s a living,” the bruiser agreed.
“What . . . is a living?”
“He had this thing,” the girl said, her voice tragic. She suddenly looked like she sounded, with her long, dark hair everywhere and her eyes huge and staring. She drank beer, and wiped the back of her hand over her mouth. “Zheng-zi, I mean. A tattoo, one of the magical kind, you know?”
I nodded.
“Well, Ranbir
had seen one like it before—”
“Who’s Ranbir?”
The dark mage lifted his beer can.
“That’s him,” the girl confirmed. “That’s my brother Jason,” she added, indicating the still unconscious dude on the floor. “I’m Sarah and that’s Ev. I mean, Evelyn.”
“Your name . . . is Evelyn?” I asked the bruiser, because I assumed that I’d misheard.
He sighed. “I get that a lot. It’s British. My mum was British.”
“Okay.”
“It’s usually pronounced Eev-lin,” he added helpfully. “Sarah keeps forgetting, because she usually just calls me Ev.”
“Uh huh.”
“You know, it used to be given more to boys than girls. It’s from the seventeenth century and means ‘desirable one.’ But I guess people thought that better fit a woman, and after a while—”
“I’ll give you a beer if you stop talking,” Ranbir offered.
Evelyn considered it.
He took the beer.
“Anyway,” Sarah said, eyeing them. “Zheng didn’t understand what he had. I was sort of surprised, as he’s triad—or he was, I don’t know about now—”
“He’s still triad,” Ranbir said. “It’s a lifelong thing.”
“Well, anyway, the triads all have tats, don’t they?” she asked, pushing messy hair out of her face. “So, I thought he’d know, but it was obvious that he didn’t.”