Read Online The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) by Jess C Scott - Free Book Online

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handed her a wad of notes under the table, from one of the
envelopes.
    Chloe’s eyes widened, before her lips
quivered the slightest bit.
    “ Anya.” Her voice was tense
and hushed, as she shifted her gaze down and slowly shook her head.
They had been through this several times in the past.
    “ Just take it, Mom,” Anya
murmured, drawing her hand back when a cyclist gazed in at the
diner through the window, from the outside. “They pay you peanuts
here.”
    Anya looked at her mother with eyes that
knew too much. Chloe wasn’t lazy—she’d held three jobs at one
time—but money was always tight, and steady employment, hard to
come by. Anya was first in the family to attend college.
    “ You’re going to get caught
one day.” Anxiety was written all over Chloe’s pale, drawn face.
Moments like this made her wonder if she had ever inspired or
encouraged criminal activity in her daughter.
    “ They’ve failed ten times
already.” Anya put the cash in Chloe’s hand.
    “ I’m managing, Annie,”
Chloe said quietly. She took the money anyway. “I get by on what I
earn here.”
    Anya leaned forward, crossing one heel over
the other foot. “Rich folks just get richer—there’s no way for
people like us to catch up.”
    Anya resented the fact that honest, morally
sound people—like her and Leticia’s family members—weren’t rewarded
for their hard work ethic. If being a thief would lead to a better
life, so be it.
    Anya thought of the hooded man and the young
couple she had seen running off with their prized cans of beer.
Maybe they’d get bolder in future, and pull off a successful bank
heist. To Anya, that was more worthwhile than a string of petty
thefts.
    Her thoughts shifted to the elves, The
Velvet Underground…and what other secrets they could be hiding.
    “ What are you doing
tomorrow?”
    Anya stared at her mother with a vacant
expression. Anya didn’t want to cause her mother any more
distress.
    “ Shopping,” Anya lied,
lightly tapping her fingers on the tabletop. Maybe I’ll become a compulsive liar like Nin, too.
    “ How’s Leticia?” Chloe
liked Leticia, Anya’s best friend since junior high.
    “ Still sane, still happy.
We’re helping out with a school play.”
    Anya suddenly remembered there was a
rehearsal the next day—Anya and Leticia were stage hands, helping
with props and makeup. Anya had circled the date with a red pen, on
the calendar in her student diary. She had been too preoccupied
with overseeing a smooth transaction with the diamond orb.
    Chloe smiled. “Tell her I still think she
makes the best chocolate cookies.” She paused, not wanting to nag,
but not unconcerned, either. She smoothed down some of her frizzy
hair. “And…stay in school, okay?”
    The stout boss at the counter signaled to
Chloe, gruffly, with a grunt. She had to get back to work.
    “ I don’t like him.” Anya
shifted her eyes to Ashmore, then back to Chloe.
    “ He gives us free
meals.”
    “ Yeah…like, leftovers.”
Anya wondered why her mother was content being passive. “Remember,
I quit in a day, when I was here.” A brief succession of repeat
circumstances was precisely what had prompted Anya to take a shot
at trying something new. Like being a career criminal.
    “ Do you believe in…magic?”
Anya asked, out of the blue. The question caught her mother by
surprise. Chloe stood by her seat for a moment, looking at Anya’s
clear hazel-brown eyes. Anya tried to sound like she was taking a
trip down memory lane. “All those stories you told me, a long time
ago. King Arthur, Robin Hood—my favorite—”
    “ Yes, I know,” Anya’s
mother said with affection.
    “ Witches, faeries…” Anya
took a breath. “Elves. Did you believe in all of that?”
    “ Of course,” her mother
answered, with a sparkle in her eyes. Anya recognized the sparkle
from her childhood days, when Chloe would read to her. “I always
did. Good stories have a tendency to take you away to