In Death 22 - Memory in Death

them.”
    “That’s a little greedy, don’t you think?” Maxie turned, nodded toward the body splayed in the center
    of the room. “She hasn’t been put up yet.”
    “No, she can’t go up yet. She isn’t finished.”
    “Looks done to me. But here.” She tossed Eve a white sock weighed with credits. “Go ahead.”
    “That’s not the answer.”
    “Maybe you just haven’t asked the right question.”
    She found herself in the glass room with the children. The child she’d been sat on the floor and looked
    up at her with tired eyes.
    “I don’t have any presents. I don’t care.”
    “You can have this.” Eve crouched down, held out her badge. “You’ll need it.”
    “She has all the presents.”
    Eve looked through the glass and saw that gifts were piled now around the body. “Lot of good they’ll
    do her now.”
    “It’s one of us, you know.”
    Eve glanced back, studied the room full of little girls. Then looked into her own eyes. “Yes, I know.”
    “What will you do?”
    “Take the one who did it away. That’s what happens when you kill someone. You have to pay. There
    has to be payment.”
    The girl she’d been held up her hands, and they were smeared with blood. “Am I going, too?”
    “No.” And she felt it, even in the dream she knew was a dream, she felt the ache in her belly. “No,”
    she said again, “it’s different for you.”
    “But I can’t get out.”
    “You will one day.” She looked back through the glass, frowned. “Weren’t there more presents a
    minute ago?”
    “People steal.” The child hooked the bloodied badge on her shirt. “People are just no damn good.”
    Eve woke with a hard jolt, the dream already fading. It was weird, she thought, to have dreams where you talked to yourself.
    And the tree. She remembered the tree with the bodies draped like morbid tinsel. To comfort herself
    she turned, studied the tree in the window. She ran a hand over the sheet beside her, found it cool.
    It didn’t surprise her that Roarke was up before her, or that he’d been up long enough for the sheets
    to lose his warmth. But it did give her a shock to see that it was nearly eleven in the morning.
    She started to roll out of her own side, and saw the blinking memo cube on the nightstand. She switched in on, heard his voice.
    “Morning, darling Eve. I’m in the game room. Come play with me.”
    It made her smile. “Such a sap,” she murmured.
    She showered, dressed, grabbed coffee, then headed down. Proving, she decided, she was a sap, too.
    He had the main screen engaged, and it gave her yet another jolt to see herself up there, in a pitched
    and bloody battle. Why she was wielding a sword instead of a blaster, she couldn’t say.
    He fought back-to-back with her, as he had, she remembered, in reality. And there was Peabody, wounded, but still game. But what the hell was her partner wearing?
    More important, what was she wearing. It looked like some soft of leather deal more suited for
    S and M than swordplay.
    Iced, she decided, when she lopped off her opponent’s head. Moments later, Roarke dispatched his,
    and the comp announced he’d reached Level Eight.
    “I’m good,” she announced and crossed to him.
    “You are. And so am I.”
    She nodded at the paused screen. “What’s up with the outfits?”
    “Feeney added costume options. I’ve had an entertaining hour fiddling with wardrobe as well as taking over most of Europe and North America. How’d you sleep?”
    “Okay. Weird dream again. I can probably blame it on champagne, and the chocolate souffle I pigged
    out on at two in the morning.”
    “Why don’t you stretch out here with me? This game’s programmed for multiple players. You can try to invade my territories.”
    “Maybe later.” She ran an absent hand over his hair. “I’ve got this dream on my brain. Sometimes
    they’re supposed to mean stuff, right? There’s something in there. I’m not asking the right question,”
    she murmured. “What’s the right question?”
    Playtime, he decided, was over for now.
    “Why don’t we have a little brunch? You can talk it through.”
    “No, go ahead and play the game. I’m good with coffee.”
    “I slept in myself, didn’t get up until about nine.”
    “Has anyone looked outside, checked to see if the world is still spinning on its axis?”
    “At which time,” he continued dryly, “I had a workoutI had souffle, too. Then, before I came down here to enjoy one of my gifts, I