Goddess Unravelled

Hacker for Hire

Alice kept an eye out as her friends joined the end of the line. Maya was whispering to Gabriel, who looked irritated about something, and Altair was still glancing around with his hands shoved in his pockets. He looked casual, as if a book signing was the most natural place in the world for him to be.

Alice almost snickered, since the only thing he read were the occasional spy novel. She’d caught him reading “Witches” once, though he’d tried to play it off by saying he was just looking at witches in bikinis. He wasn’t exactly a big reader.

A group of ladies at the end of the line didn’t seem to mind. They were elbowing one another, and one of them, a tall brunette with what Alice could swear was a tail poking out from under the hem of her skirt, glanced back and nudged him. She said something to him, Alice couldn’t hear what it was from there. Altair just shrugged, and the woman turned back, clearly irriated.

Alice turned back to the front and pressed her lips together, trying not to smile too obviously. She was here to meet a blogger, not check out her own boyfriend. She shifted, holding the book out in front of her, straighten up a little. Could Bingo see the ribbon in her hair from wherever he was? She didn’t want to look around and make it obvious, but it didn’t seem like there were many men in the crowd.

Wait, Bingo had never even said he was a man. The thought was a startling one. She’d just assumed, which was a bit sexist of her. Why couldn’t a computer hacker be a woman? Now she was eyeing all the women around her suspiciously. Which one of them was it? Or maybe it was the ogre. No, that was ridiculous. She would have never said to meet in public. She was too obvious.

Alice made herself hold in a sigh. This was starting to get irritating.

There was a commotion behind her, someone was cursing, and Alice turned around, glancing back. She came eye to eye with a very large pair of glasses, which magnified a pair of wide blue eyes that blinked at her quizzically.

It was a woman about her height who had elbowed her way past people in line. She had a short, pixie like cut. She was cute, even if her glasses made her look a little bit like an owl, and she wore a sweater vest over a white-collared t-shirt and a pair of loose slacks. “I like your hair ribbon,” she said, and Alice thought she never seen anyone look so awkward.

So this was Bingo.

It would have been utterly stupid to say “Oh, you’re a woman.” All the same, Alice had to stop herself from blurting out just that. She’d been expecting a skinny computer geek wearing a bad tie, and she’d got….well, a skinny computer geek. Minus the tie.

“Hi,” Alice said, and then she went quiet. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might have a few more minutes left to stand in line to get their books signed, but it would look really strange if they jumped out of the line now. So they waited, and Alice scrambled for something to say.

“Did you bring your book?”

Bingo looked startled, which made her look even more owlish, and then she looked down at the book bag slung over her shoulder. “Uh—yes. It’s in here.”