ARIA floated above a restaurant but not in any way the patrons below would be able to perceive. To their senses she did not exist in the air outside the building's third-floor windows and hovering twenty feet above its sloped clay-tile roof.
She was watching inside at a corner table near the window, three people sat.
Emma Reeves was the woman across from a man whose collar she'd already adjusted twice in the last fifteen minutes—a small, possessive gesture of a third date, pre-commitment phase, anxiety masking as affection.
The man was paying her the focused attention of someone who'd been told by a friend that this woman was the one and was now testing the hypothesis with the nervous diligence of a midlevel attorney trying to win a case in front of a judge he respected.
Ashley sat behind Emma. Not facing her. Angled out toward the room, the way a wing person sat when they were performing emotional support without being part of the conversation.
She was on her phone.
