CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL
Jonathan Moeller
***
Description
My name is Nadia, and I'm a shadow agent of the High Queen of the Elves.
But for some reason, the High Queen wants me to attend the birthday party of an Elven noble.
Just in case there's trouble.
And it's just my luck there's going to be more trouble than either of us expect...
***
Cloak & Ghost: Rebel Cell
Copyright 2018 by Jonathan Moeller.
Smashwords Edition.
Cover images copyright © Brett Critchley | Dreamstime.com & RF License : STANDARD | Print & Web | Unlimited Digital Impressions, up to 250,000 Prints neostock-s022-liepa-contemporary-dress-247 - Original file (2808x5123 pixels) & RF License : STANDARD | Print & Web | Unlimited Digital Impressions, up to 250,000 Prints neostock-s029-emily-mystery-thriller-105 - Original file (2877x5045 pixels).
Ebook edition published December 2018.
All Rights Reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.
***
Chapter 1: A Regrettable Invitation
I spent most of the morning on the phone with Wisconsin’s department of revenue. This happened because my brother ate a fruit basket at my wedding.
Yeah. I should probably back up and explain.
My name’s Nadia Moran MacCormac, and when I got married two months ago, the High Queen herself attended my wedding. This was because she had recruited me as her shadow agent, and it was traditional for an Elven noble to present his or her bondsmen with a gift on the day of their marriage. Her assistant and new shadow agent Tythrilandria accompanied her, and Tyth gave me a fruit basket. Specifically, a fruit basket filled with rare Elven fruits that the Elves brought with them when they fled to Earth from Kalvarion.
My brother Russell ate most of it.
Except while he was eating it, he was talking to the High Queen. Most people would be overcome with nerves while talking to the supreme ruler of Earth and Kalvarion. Not Russell, though. He began speculating on how much money there was to be made by importing Elven fruits for sale on Earth. Previously, that was impossible, but since the Archons had been destroyed and the High Queen had reclaimed Kalvarion (long story), it was possible to trade with Kalvarion again through the Great Gate that Morvilind had opened near Milwaukee. And since Kalvarion needed a lot of rebuilding after three centuries of Archon destruction, Russell pointed out that selling Elven fruit on Earth would make a lot of money.
The High Queen agreed. Which meant she gave Russell the exclusive license to form a company dedicated to importing fruit from the Elven farmers of Kalvarion and selling it to humans on Earth.
Seriously. I don’t know why Tarlia did it. Maybe it was to throw her nobles off-guard. Maybe she did it to keep powerful, established human corporations in their place. Or perhaps it was a favor to me, or another way to put a string on me – continue serving as my shadow agent or I’ll crush your brother’s business, that kind of thing. Perhaps Tarlia knew that no matter how rich Russell became (and I suspected my brother had the drive and resilience to make a lot of money) he would be personally loyal to her. Or maybe she did it because she has a keen eye for talent and my brother impressed her.
Though knowing Tarlia, she did it for all those reasons and some I haven’t thought of yet.
The problem was, of course, that Russell was a year and a half away from graduating high school, which meant he was too young to form a legal corporation. I incorporated it for him, the ownership of the company shared between us, and he used the two and a half million dollars he had gotten from the Shadow Hunters after the defeat of the Rebels to kickstart the company. The kid was throwing himself into it with astonishing energy. Through the High Queen’s offices, he had made arrangements with some of the surviving farmers of Kalvarion, and he was negotiating with trucking companies and grocery stores.
And that was why I was on the phone with the Wisconsin department of revenue, growing ever more impatient and irritable.
Good God. I had no idea how much paperwork went into starting a business.
I mean, I had known, intellectually, but that’s a big difference from sitting there and filling out all the damn forms yourself. All the endless, endless forms. There’s a form, a long, complicated form, for everything. Then you need to have the separate company bank account, and tracking the quarterly taxes (even though we didn’t have any revenue yet), and all of that comes with, you guessed it, even more paperwork.
So that was how I wound up pacing in irritation through my husband’s condo in New York, cell phone to my ear and a growing headache behind my eyes.
“Your brother’s name is Roger Moran?” said the bored-sounding employee from the department of revenue.
“Russell Moran,” I said, all my years and years of self-control going into keeping my voice calm. “Russell. R-U-S-S-E-L-L.”
“Thank you,” said the woman. “And your name…I’m having trouble finding some of your records in the computer, Mrs. MacCormac.”
I bit back a sigh. The years I had spent as Kaethran Morvilind’s shadow agent were coming back to haunt me. I had spent a long time taking care not to create a paper trail of any kind. I had gotten so good at it that now that I was (technically) legitimate and trying to start a business, the lack of a paper trail was a problem.
“I’ve sent your department scans of my birth certificate, my driver’s license, and my marriage license,” I said. “Those should be attached to the file for the business licensure form.”
“Let me see…” There was about twenty seconds of furious clicking and typing in the background. “Ah, I see, they just came through. And both you and Russell Moran will have equal shares in the company?”
“Yes,” I said, relieved. Perhaps we were finally making progress.
“I’m just going to need a few more pieces of information…”
About fifty-five minutes later, the process was finally done. Moran Imports, a closely held private company with two shareholders, was filed as an official business entity with the state of Wisconsin. Of course, I would have to repeat the entire process with the federal government, but I hadn’t heard back on the paperwork yet. Maybe it would all go smoothly.
Ha. I knew better than that.
I left my cell phone on the table next to my laptop and paced around the dining room, rubbing my neck to work out the cramp from talking on the phone for so long. I stopped at the windows, gazing at the vista of Manhattan. Riordan’s condo was on the top floor of an expensive building, and he had a great view of the city. Though I suppose I should say that we had a great view of the city since it was technically our condo now that we were married, but it still felt like Riordan’s space. Not that I minded. I liked being in his space. But I was looking forward to going back to Milwaukee. We were going to buy a house there, or maybe build one, a place we would live together.
I suppose we could have moved into my old basement apartment in Milwaukee, but that had been a fairly dismal place that I had used mostly to store equipment, and we had enough money for a house.
Well, enough daydreaming. Back to the paperwork. I looked at the stack of forms next to my laptop, grimaced, and decided to get my workout in for the day first. I glanced at the front doo
r and wondered when Riordan would be home. Maybe I should text him and find out? No, that would be needy. He had thought his business might take a while. Riordan had a surprising amount of business interests in New York, and sometimes they needed personal intervention.
Besides, a workout sounded nice. A good way to burn off the frustration of having to fill out all those damned forms. In triplicate. Roger Moran, indeed!
I was wearing yoga pants and a sweater, so I went to the bedroom, traded the sweater for a sports bra and running shoes, and then went to the gym. Riordan had converted one of his condo’s bedrooms to a really nice gym. He had a full set of free weights and a pair of good treadmills. I started off with the weights, powering through several sets of deadlifts, squats, and bench presses. Once that was done, I was covered in sweat and had a pleasant burn in my shoulders and legs. I racked the weights, switched to the treadmill, and pounded out a six mile run.
When that was done, I smelled fairly ripe, my breath rasped in my throat, my heart thundered like a drum in my chest, and my legs felt tired and quivery. It was glorious. There’s nothing like the feeling after a vigorous workout. Especially for someone like me. My head is full of all kinds of horrifying memories, and if I’m alone with my thoughts for too long, sometimes they start turning back towards the Eternity Crucible, to the claws and fangs and death after death after death…
Nope. Don’t think about that.
Easier to do that after a workout.
Naturally, my phone started ringing.
I was doing my cool-down walk on the treadmill, and I had left my phone in the treadmill’s cupholder. The screen lit up as it rang, and I growled in annoyance and picked it up. I expected that one of the government agencies I’d sent paperwork had called back to gripe about a problem with the forms.
Instead, I grinned in surprise.
It was Russell.
I accepted the call and lifted the phone to my ear. “Gina’s Pizzeria, special today on anchovies.”
There was a bemused pause. But Russell was used to my (occasionally) odd sense of humor.
“You should really do that with a New York accent,” said Russell. God, it still startled me how deep his voice had gotten. But, then, he wasn’t the sickly little boy with frostfever that I remembered, not anymore. Though my memory of him had been frozen that way for nearly a century and a half…
Nope. Don’t start thinking along that line. If I started thinking about how old I was, then I started thinking about the Eternity Crucible.
“I don’t do accents,” I said. “That’s what the Masking spell is for.”
“You sound out of breath,” said Russell. “Is this a bad time?”
“What do you think I was doing?” I said.
There was a long pause, and I grinned to myself. Russell had been through a lot, had survived a lot, so he was wiser than someone his age had any right to be. Then again, he was still a teenage boy, and teenage boys often thought about one topic to the exclusion of all others. Russell was confident enough to talk about that particular subject without a hint of embarrassment but decent enough not to bring it up in casual conversation.
I could almost hear his brain creaking under the effort of refraining from an inappropriate joke.
“Cooking pizzas, no doubt,” said Russell. “If you really have a special on anchovies.”
I laughed. “Ha. Yes. Exactly. Let’s forget this import business and open a pizzeria out of Riordan’s condo.”
“That might be less paperwork,” said Russell.
“Probably not,” I said. “Riordan’s condo is in Manhattan. The New York City and State politicians are petty assholes on a power trip. There would be ten times as much paperwork to start a business here as there would be in Wisconsin.”
“That’s a good point,” said Russell. “Plus, I don’t think I’d want to live in New York. The last time I was there a bunch of people shot at me.”
“To be fair, that was an invading Rebel army and not native New Yorkers,” I said.
“A good point,” said Russell. He took a deep breath. “About that paperwork.” I could tell he was getting down to business. We could bullshit each other for hours once we really got going, but then, we were trying to start a company.
“Yeah?” I said. “Don’t tell me they were hassling you about the business license again?”
“No, no,” said Russell. “Nothing like that. No, I had a question about the profit/loss reporting form. Since we haven’t actually had any revenue yet, I…”
It turned out to be a simple question. I wasn’t an expert, but my training from Lord Morvilind’s shady retainers had given me a comprehensive knowledge on how to break the law about financial matters. Now that I was legitimate, sort of, it also meant I had a thorough knowledge of how to comply with the law about financial stuff. If this business idea actually worked, I could see the shape of how it would function once Russell became a legal adult. He would be the public face and the dealmaker since he liked talking to people and is extremely charming when he puts his mind to it. I would handle the details and the back end since I’m a loner of occasionally questionable sanity who doesn’t generally like people. It played to our respective strengths.
“Okay,” said Russell, once I had walked him through filling out the form. “Okay. I think that’s wrapped up.”
“Did you remember to initial on all seventeen pages?” I said. “They’ll reject it if it isn’t initialed on all seventeen pages.”
“Yup,” said Russell. “I’ll get it in the mail after school today. Hey, when do you think you and Riordan are coming back to Wisconsin?”
“Probably November,” I said. “It’s going to be hard to find a house in Milwaukee for a while. With the Great Gate there, all the traffic to and from Kalvarion is going through the city. Riordan mentioned that he bought some land before the prices started spiking up, but…”
In mid-sentence, the High Queen contacted me.
I wore two rings most of the time, one on each hand. My wedding ring was on my left hand. Well, it was usually on my left hand. Right now, it was sitting on my nightstand in the bedroom. My hands got slippery when I exercised, and I didn’t want to be one of those sitcom wives who dropped their wedding ring down the drain and had to call a plumber.
The ring on my right hand was invisible save to myself and a few other people, and I never took it off for long.
The ring was made from gold and set with a gem that looked like a ruby. It wasn’t – it was blood transmuted and crystallized into something harder than diamond. Specifically, my blood, the heart’s blood Lord Morvilind had taken from me the day I became his shadow agent. When the High Queen decided to punish Morvilind for the Sky Hammer near-catastrophe by taking his shadow agent, she had also claimed that vial of heart’s blood and made it into the ring.
It had benefits. The ring was invisible to anyone but Tarlia and her other shadow agents, meaning I could recognize her other agents on sight. The ring could also project the High Queen’s seal, which in theory I could use to command instant obedience from anyone on Earth if I thought it necessary. (In practice, given my extensive abilities with magical illusion, I think the High Queen only wanted me to use that in an emergency.) The ring also allowed me to review my memories with crystalline clarity. I never used that ability because I thought it was creepy. Finally, the ring let me communicate with Tarlia instantly and across any distance.
Of course, that had a flip side. I knew the ring let Tarlia find me anywhere, just as the vial of heart’s blood had allowed Morvilind to locate and summon me. I suspected it enabled her to look through my memories. Given how skilled she was with the mindtouch spell, she could probably do it without me realizing it. And, finally, I was pretty sure the ring would let her kill me from a distance if I betrayed her.
But that didn’t bother me as much as it could have.
Ashes and bones, the High Queen had told me. What she wanted was to keep humanity and the Elves from reducing themselv
es to ashes and bones, and I was going to help her do that. Besides, she had arranged to heal Russell’s frostfever, so I owed her.
“Nadia,” said the High Queen’s voice inside my skull. “This evening Baron Kaldmask of Brooklyn is holding his birthday party. You will attend this party. Observe anything unusual, and then report back to me.”
With that, the communication ended.
“Nadia?” said Russell. I realized that he had said my name three or four times.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “I was drinking some water. Just finished a run.”
“You tend to get dehydrated,” said Russell. “You should definitely drink a lot of water.”
“Thank you, Lucy,” I said. Lucy Marney was a nurse, so she tended to give me a lot of health advice whether I was in the mood to hear it or not. Her husband James was a doctor, but we sometimes snuck out together and smoked cigarettes. Lucy deigned not to notice. At least not while I was around.
“Well, she’s right about that,” said Russell. I heard a bell ring in the background. “Ah, I’ve got to get back to class. Compared to working on the company, school seems like a lot of nonsense.”
“You’ve only got to do both for another year,” I’ve said. “Especially if you graduate early.”
“And after all the stuff we did in Nevada and New York,” said Russell. “Kind of hard to go back to school after all that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean. No, wait, actually, I don’t.” I’d never been to high school since my formal schooling stopped at kindergarten when Morvilind recruited me as his shadow agent. Didn’t sound like I had missed out on much, though. It seemed like the purpose of school was to turn people into useful and productive subjects of the High Queen, while also imprinting them with lifelong loyalty and reverence for the Elves. It was something I didn’t share, which meant I could see it all around me, how people tensed up and started becoming angry the minute anyone said something that could be remotely elfophobic. “Though if what I see on TV is accurate, aren’t all high schools populated by a plucky band of multiethnic teenagers who have heartwarming adventures together?”
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