“Who the hell is on our couch?”

  Hector sat up in bed to make eye contact with his angry wife, who gred at him from the door. “That’s Evelyn. She drank too much st night and couldn’t tell me her address.”

  Jen folded her arms. “She cims she is your ‘side chick’.”

  Hector sighed. “Yeah. That sounds like Evelyn.”

  “You know this Evelyn pretty good, do you?”

  “One of her many fws is that she talks too much,” Hector said.

  Evelyn’s shout came from the other end of the house. “I heard that!”

  “She also eavesdrops too much!”

  Jen’s face grew red. “I’m gd you think this is funny.”

  “She’s just a friend. And even if she wasn’t, you’d have no right to compin.” Hector hopped out of bed and squeezed past his wife, who remained frozen in pce. He stopped by the couch. “Want me to drop you off at your car now?”

  Evelyn jumped to her feet. “I might as well go home. It doesn’t look like that threesome with your old dy is going to happen.”

  Once they were in his car, she pulled out her phone. “Hey, Danielle, I need you to back me up if the ‘rents call around looking for me. I was at your pce st night. Yeah. It was a Negroni incident. Just two this time, but they were rge ones. I’ll tell you about it ter. Thanks a million, D.”

  “Does this kind of thing happen to you very often?”

  “I can’t hold my liquor,” Evelyn admitted. “When we have paying gigs, my girls police my drink choices like they’re the alcohol gestapo. They won’t even let me get an IPA. It’s light gers only.”

  “Do ‘Negroni incidents’ usually end with you waking up strange pces?”

  “Whoa there, Hector Thoreaux, don’t go getting preachy on me.”

  Hector shrugged. “It’s a concern. We are working together, after all.”

  “Hell yeah we are. The ‘save the world’ campaign.” Evelyn reclined the passenger seat and made herself comfortable. “Negroni incidents are pretty rare. Usually I end up crashing at Danielle’s or Megan’s. Or Brittney drives me home. That’s a disaster right there. Mom and Dad really enjoy when I come home wasted. They get a perfect excuse to criticize me.”

  “So you’re not an alcoholic?”

  Evelyn snorted. “If I was, my tolerance would be a little better, now wouldn’t it?”

  “Then just a binge drinker.”

  “I’ll accept your bel. You don’t seem pissed that I stirred up your wife.”

  Hector shrugged. “Maybe it’s petty of me, but I think she deserves the opportunity to know what betrayal feels like.”

  “Awesome. I accomplished my first good deed of the day already. Does that earn me enough Karma for a free breakfast? I know a pce close to where my car is parked.”

  “I don’t normally eat breakfast.”

  “Boo! Evie Tricks wants scrambled tofu and a fruit bowl.”

  “Maybe you could buy that yourself.”

  Evelyn opened her eyes. “I’m a freence editor for bloggers, Hector. Even if I worked more than three hours a day, I’d still have, like, barely any income. I’m rich in life experience, not money.”

  “You know, Evelyn, you are in many ways the exact opposite of me. I fired people with your work ethic regurly.”

  “At your warehouse job?”

  Hector thought back over their conversations. “Did I tell you about that?”

  “I knew that from my cyberstalking – I mean background check. Oh, I just realized something. I’m your boss, now.”

  “You are not my boss.”

  “I contracted you to save the world. It’s like a gender swapped Charlie’s Angels. I need to find a couple more dudes to set up my reverse harem situation.”

  Hector pulled into the parking lot. “We’re here.”

  “Definitely no breakfast?”

  “No breakfast,” Hector asserted.

  “We never discussed cultivation spots.”

  “Still no breakfast.”

  Evelyn brought her seat back to an upright position. “Then I’ll drop some wisdom on you right here. Stay away from areas with too many pnts. The life energy will dilute cosmic energy. Don’t do your realization process underground. Titans surround themselves with dense matter to collect substantial energy, so it wouldn’t be great for you.”

  “Should I look into hang gliding, then?”

  The girl looked up into the air through the windshield. “I think there might be too much spatial energy if you are surrounded by that much open space. We could try it, though.”

  Hector ughed. “Now you want me to pay for activities on top of meals?”

  “You need someone to bance you out, Hector. We obviously have a Yin and Yang dynamic. I don’t have enough focus, you don’t have enough spontaneity. Together, good things will happen.”

  “I need to hit the gym and spend some time cultivating. You tasked me with saving the world, remember? And Volithur started practicing body enhancement, so I have those experiences to draw on now.”

  Evelyn blinked. “Right. You go cultivate. I will look into your future today and see if we find a good cultivation spot. Give me your phone.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can put my number into it.”

  Hector pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Just tell me your number.”

  Evelyn pouted her lips. “You’re going to put ‘Evelyn’ as my name.”

  “We all have to make sacrifices for the ‘save the world’ campaign.”

  “To think I am being called to fall on my sword so early in the fight.” Evelyn put the back of her hand to her forehead as if she was about to faint.

  “Number?”

  She rattled off the requested information while continuing her swooning act. Hector pced a quick call to make sure she would have his number. As Evelyn entered his full name into the contact record, he held up his phone for her to see that he had entered ‘Evie Tricks’.

  “You are an officer and a gentleman, Hector Thoreaux.” Evelyn briefly tapped on her phone, which caused his to buzz. He opened the new text message to see an eggpnt emoji. When he looked up, Evelyn was grinning from ear to ear. “I’ll be in touch soon, monster killer.”

  Hector followed through on his pn for the day, driving to the gym to make up for the time he had taken off. The past few days had been far from optimal, so his lifts weren’t great, but the important thing was that he had stimuted his muscles. As important as fitness had been to him over the years, it would likely be even more important in the near future.

  Apparently he believed in the mission Evelyn had set out for him. He somehow had to save the world or, more likely, die in the attempt. If indeed an invasion of monsters would soon arrive to destroy the world, then death wasn’t optional, so he might as well go out fighting.

  When he arrived back home, Jen gave him the angry silent treatment, which didn’t bother Hector. He grabbed a quick shower, change of clothes, and brought up Google Maps on his phone. He needed a pce that had some elevation, was far from nature, and allowed loitering. After ten minutes of searching, he decided on a multi-level parking garage.

  Hector drove there, circled around the car ramp until he reached the open-to-air top level, and exited the vehicle to sit on the hood. As he began to pump his aura, he noticed that the cosmic energy density exceeded that of the rooftop bar by a slight bit. Call it an extra three percent, which meant this spot was roughly eight percent better than his house.

  Hours slowly passed until Hector’s stomach demanded lunch. He walked to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant and ordered a bowl of Pho. Then it was back to the garage to cultivate some more. Between his choice of location, his natural talent advantage, and the efforts he made to maximize the expanded volume of his aura, Hector was more than a little pleased with his efficiency. That didn’t at all make up for his absolute ck of resources, but it was certainly a start.

  More time passed. Hector grew hungry once more. He was considering whether he wanted to go home to eat or waste more money eating out when his phone rang. He picked up when he saw it was Evelyn. “Hey, what’s happening?”

  “Casino.”

  “Are you telling me to go to the casino?”

  “That’s where a future version of you said the cosmic energy was the ‘best in town’.”

  “I suppose I could eat dinner there while I check out the energy concentration.”

  “Can I come with?”

  “I’m not buying you dinner.”

  “But maybe a couple of drinks?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Easy there, big man. I was just joking around. Let me know how the casino works out.”

  “Will do, Evie.”

  “Aw, Hector, you called me Evie. That warms the empty spot where my heart should be.”

  “Goodbye, Evie.” He hung up before she could follow up with more of her quirkiness. The drive to the casino took twenty minutes and he was ready to eat as he found a seat at a burger pce in a corner of the chaotic space where the fshing lights, excited excmations, and tense bodies were minimally noticeable. He pced his order and sat down to cultivate.

  “Hmm… best yet. About ten percent better than my house.” Hector settled in for a slow meal to justify taking up a seat for several more hours.