"So what's your job?" I asked conversationally. Micus had a pretty nice apartment—couple paintings on the walls, a weird glass thing hanging from the ceiling in front of the window, and a huge piano in the room we sat in. If Aniss, who didn't seem to have a part-time job as far as I could tell, was rooming with him, he had to be a pretty nice earner.

"I sweet-talk Skrit Na," he said with an absolutely straight face.

I took that in, and he glanced at me as if to see if I was going to challenge him. Micus could joke when he felt like it, which was usually most of the time, but I thought that might be true. And even if it wasn't, I guessed it wasn't really any of my business.

"Oh hey Efdram!" Aniss walked into the living room. "Glad you could drag yourself away from your computer."

"Hey, I was stalled anyway," I said.

"Oh, I see where we rank," said Aniss.

It really was a we with them. They roomed together, half an hour from campus, so he drove her back and forth each day. I'd volunteered to drive her back up, and sometimes did after long study sessions turned into long hanging-out-and-talking sessions, but usually Micus did himself. If I didn't know any better I'd think they were brother and sister. But despite Micus' incessant teasing, there didn't seem to be any kind of "spark" between them—they never even held hands or whatever.

Which was perfectly fine by me.

"I mean, you rank plenty high," I said, and then pointed at Micus. "It's just throwing in this guy that drags you down."

I was a little scared, but he just grinned. "You're catching on."