The Last Adventure of Constance Verity Read Online Free PDF

haven’t met before. I travel a lot. Don’t spend much time at home. I’m Connie.”
    The neighbor squinted. “You look familiar. Are you famous?”
    â€œI won the lottery once,” replied Connie. It wasn’t a lie. She didn’t add that it led to her discovery of a lottery-fixing scheme and a shootout in a zeppelin. It just kept things simple.
    â€œOh, yeah. I’m Dana.”
    She appeared ordinary. A little too ordinary. Connie’s suspicions popped up. A lot of ordinary things in her life weren’t ordinary.
    Dana, whose hand had been out there for a few seconds, pulled it back. Connie reached for it.
    â€œSorry. I’m a little distracted. Connie.”
    They shook hands. She measured the handshake for anything suspicious. Spongy android flesh. Room-temperature undead. Too-hot lava person. An electrical zap. The pinprick of a hidden needle filled with poison. All the usual stuff.
    Dana’s cell rang. She turned her back on Connie.
    â€œI’m on my way. So what if I’m late? It’s a poetry slam. They’ll start without me. Yeah, yeah. I’ll miss out on a few of the clever capitalism/slavery metaphors shouted by people in quirky hats.”
    She ended the call and grunted.
    â€œPoetry slam?” said Connie.
    â€œIt’s a showcase of the self-important and the uninspired. Although once in a while, someone comes up with something good if you’re willing to wade through the bullshit. Or so I’m told. Hasn’t happened yet, but . . .”—she crossed her fingers—“but my boyfriend is a hipster, so I’m stuck.”
    â€œYou could always break up with him,” said Connie. “Thenagain, taking relationship advice from me is probably a bad idea.”
    â€œBelieve me. I’ve thought about it. But he’s actually very sweet. I go to his poetry slams. He doesn’t tell me I’m a pawn of the patriarchy for shaving my legs. Not often, anyway.”
    â€œSounds reasonable,” said Connie.
    â€œA girl learns to make compromises. It was nice meeting you.”
    Dana walked toward the elevator.
    Connie paused before the open door to her apartment.
    She called to Dana. “I’ve never been to a poetry slam.”
    â€œOh, it’s dreadful,” said Dana with a smile. “Not for the faint of heart.”
    Connie chuckled. “That’s one thing I’ve never been accused of.”

    The coffeehouse was the kind of place people who were too cool for Starbucks went, where they ordered the same sort of complicated, overpriced coffees they could get at Starbucks but at an even more overpriced cost with the assurances that the cow that the milk came from lived on a private farm where it was fed only the finest feed and massaged twice a day.
    Connie had never cared for coffee. She could drink it. After living off moldy bread and troll blood for a week, she could pretty much drink anything. Literally. A side effect of the blood was an immunity to all poisons, a talent that came in handy in her day-to-day life.
    She ordered an apple cider, and the barista glared likeshe’d asked for a bottle of freshly squeezed toddler brains.
    â€œWe have over two hundred varieties of coffee,” he said.
    â€œI don’t like coffee,” she replied.
    The barista steadied himself with two hands on the counter as if mortally wounded. “You just think that because you haven’t had good coffee.”
    â€œIf you don’t want people ordering the cider, why is it on the menu?”
    He ignored the question. “We have coffee that doesn’t taste very much like coffee.”
    â€œHow much is not very much?” she asked.
    He considered the question. “A little bit like coffee. But we can put chocolate into it. Whipped cream.”
    â€œYeah, I’ll have that, then,” she replied, “but without the coffee.”
    â€œWe have an artisan blend that