After the lesson ended, Ace and Leon went home to study for finals. Mona and Casey lingered at the Tower a little longer, talking to Replica about nothing in particular and playing with Gabby in the Teacher of Death's office, which looked like the interior of a library filled with shelves of books and maps and a gigantic desk and lots of leather chairs.
"When's Gabby's dad getting back, Replica?" asked Casey, yawning and leaning against a table, her feet kicked out in front of her. Gabby was sitting in her lap, wearing one of the old-fashioned white dresses that the Teacher favored, staring intently into space with her dark eyes.
"Teacher will be away until Thursday. Gabriella's going to be staying with a family friend who lives here in the Tower tonight and tomorrow. But he usually works overtime, so... I'm probably going to be watching her until pretty late," replied the young man with an easy smile, stretching his arms over his head and cracking his knuckles. "I think she might be getting sleepy soon, though. Do you want to go get dinner with us in the cafeteria?"
"I'd be happy to!" said Mona excitedly. "I'd just be ordering out anyway... and the food here is pretty good! What do you think, Casey?"
"That sounds fine," Casey said with a delicate shrug. "What do they have on Tuesdays, anyway?"
"They have this yummy pasta with cherry tomatoes in it that I really like! We can split it!"
"Mmm... I'll try it," said Casey absently, nodding. She didn't seem too interested.
"Okay! That settles it!" said Mona. "Let's go! The four of us are going to have a lovely dinner together!"
She took Gabby's hand in hers and pulled her out of Casey's lap with a little laugh. Replica hopped to his feet and opened the door with a gentlemanly bow. They filed out into the hallway, heading down the staircase to the cafeteria on the second floor.
The Tower of the Chosen was a lot quieter and less lively at dinnertime than it had been during the day. On their way down to dinner, they saw maybe five or six acolytes and two janitors pushing big carts full of garbage along the hall like overgrown dung beetles, and that was it. The cafeteria itself wasn't as busy as Mona expected, either. Only a fifth of the tables had anyone sitting at them, mostly solitary weirdos who looked either sad or angry, as well as some groups of people in business clothes who looked... normal, she guessed? Gabby's little hand trembled in Mona's at the sight, which prompted the teenager to pat her hand and squeeze it reassuringly to let her know everything was all right.
"It's so empty here," said Casey under her breath as they walked past a pair of disgruntled Chosen Ones in blue robes complaining about 'that rotten blonde girl and her cronies' while loudly tearing into a giant mound of fried chicken that they must have brought from outside, since the cafeteria wasn't serving anything with bones inside it. "It's not that late, right? It's only seven thirty."
"Most of the Chosen Ones start pretty early in the morning," Replica explained. He still hadn't buttoned up his shirt. "Security's the only division that has much of a reason to be around after eight at night. I think it's a good thing. We can make a bit of noise and have fun without bothering anyone."
"Oh yeah!" agreed Mona. "Let's try out a whole bunch of different types of food and make it into a game! Like, whoever gets the food Gabby likes the most wins! What do you guys say?"
"Hold on! I thought we were splitting that special pasta!" said Casey with annoyance, waving a menu she found in Mona's face like it meant something.
"Oops! I forgot! Umm... yeah, let's just get that!"
Replica relaxedly guided Gabby and his two students to a table near the window. It was well past dusk. Beyond the tall metal fence surrounding the Tower of the Chosen, scattered street lamps broke through the darkness in tiny, flickering pools of orange and yellow light, reflecting off puddles of stagnant water and casting strange patterns of shadows over the deserted concrete walkways and the crumbling brick alleys.
Replica ordered a salad and a beer for himself and bought Gabby a little plastic bowl filled with scraps of grilled chicken and some kind of vegetable mash with colorful peas, carrots, and corn. It didn't look very appetizing to Mona, but the little girl took to eating it with great enthusiasm, her dark eyes sparkling with delight as her spoon scooped up every last morsel of food. The two high school girls settled down with their big shared plate of pasta with tomatoes in cream sauce which came with a hunk of bread for each of them.
"So how old are you, Caseycasey?" asked Gabby as she looked across the dining room with a nervous look in her eye. She'd finished her meal before Casey and Mona were even halfway done with theirs.
"I'm eighteen. Same as Mona. Don't get confused just because I'm short, Gabbygabby," Casey said with a smile, patting the top of Gabby's tiny head affectionately. "How about you?"
"I'm nine, but... I'm almost ten. My birthday is coming up soon."
"Wow, really?" said Mona. "So you should be in the fourth grade, right?"
"Teacher homeschools her," interjected Replica. "She's getting a fantastic education. Right now she's learning to play the piano, how to do fractions, history, ethics..."
Gabby shook her head slowly, frowning.
"Homeschooling, huh? She has friends to play with and everything, right?" asked Casey in between bites of bread.
"My best friend is a caveman," said Gabby quietly. "He likes chocolate and strawberries and other stuff like that. There are a bunch of cavemen living on the twelfth floor... and sometimes I go and hang out with them, but I'm mostly just by myself."
"Hmm. Your friends are cavepeople? How cool!" said Mona, scraping off the last bits of pasta and cream sauce with her spoon. "You have quite the imagination, don't you?"
"She gets plenty of contact with other children," said Replica casually, sipping his beer. "There's a whole bunch of kids her age here at the Tower that all get together for group lessons and activities."
Gabby nodded.
"We learn prayers and things like that," she added softly, glancing at Casey shyly. "But we go out sometimes too. Ricky's dad Michael took us to the mall last week and we went up and down on the escalator. That was scary, 'cause it moved so fast."
"That's nice, Gabby," replied Casey with an understanding nod, setting down her half full glass of juice. "Where'd your dad go, anyway?"
Gabby looked at the ceiling for a moment, as if trying to remember something that was lost somewhere far away.
"My real dad... well, he's gone. But I still have one, kind of. Because the Teacher of Death is my dad now. He's at the Grand Temple with the Taboo Sage... the Taboo Sages. The Taboo Sages are dangerous and bad and they broke the rules... so they had to get punished and now they live in a special prison underground and nobody's allowed to visit them except my dad, and they can only talk to him with telepathy. It doesn't work too well, though, because he talks back to them through this special magic ring thing, and it's broken."
Gabby sighed, her face clouded with disappointment. Casey laughed. Mona rolled her eyes.
This kid came up with the craziest stuff!
