by Martha Carr
“I’m on the edge of my seat.”
Cheyenne stepped back and glanced at the wheelchair again. “Ready?”
“Almost.” Ember wiggled her eyebrows and nodded toward the front doors. “Let’s blow this joint, huh?”
A surprised laugh escaped the half-drow. When Cheyenne caught her friend’s questioning frown, she just said, “You’ll get why that’s funny in a few minutes. You ready to go?”
“Yep. Got my release papers and everything.” Ember winked, and Cheyenne figured out how to unlock the wheels before taking them both out into the sunshine and crisp autumn air.
The car chirped again before they approached, making Ember laugh again. “This is real.”
“Oh, yeah. Perfect timing, really.”
“You’re not just borrowing the car for a ‘Welcome home, Ember’ joyride?”
Cheyenne opened the passenger door and draped her arm over the top of it before shooting her friend a satisfied smile. “Cute.”
“Just checking.”
Once they got Ember situated in the front seat and her wheelchair folded up and stowed in the trunk, the halfling slipped behind the wheel again and started the engine. Heavy metal blasted through the speakers, and Ember lurched forward to turn the volume down to half. “Holy shit.”
Cheyenne buckled up, chuckling. “I’m having fun with it, okay? Low volume, no problem. Just don’t change the station.”
“Look at you.” Ember buckled up too and gazed around the brand-new car. “Buying us both a new set of wheels on the same day.”
“What?” The halfling tried to look surprised, maybe even a little confused.
“Uh-huh. You can cut the shit, Cheyenne. I know hospitals don’t send their patients home with top-of-the-line wheelchairs as a starter kit. Trust me. I saw this old guy with a cast on his leg being wheeled around this morning. Not the same gear.”
“Huh.” Fighting off a smile, the Goth chick turned her attention to pulling out of the parking lot and getting them the hell away from the hospital. She felt Ember staring at her but pretended not to.
“Thank you, Cheyenne.”
The halfling shot her friend a quick wink before she turned onto the street. “Guess it’s a lucky day for both of us.”
Chapter Forty-Two
“Wait a minute. Just back up.” Ember laughed when the Panamera chirped again in the parking lot of her apartment complex. “The guy wearing that bull’s head pendant looked human?”
Smirking, Cheyenne pushed her friend’s wheelchair down the outdoor hallway of the apartment on the ground floor. “Yeah. Probably some kind of illusion spell.”
Looking over her shoulder at her friend, the fae girl raised a joking eyebrow. “Listen to you. Girl doesn’t know shit about magicals and borders and spells before I got shot, and now she’s wheeling me to my front door talking about illusion spells and O’gúl loyalists.”
They stopped at the last door on the left, and Cheyenne bent to pull the spare key out from under her friend’s welcome mat. “What can I say, Em? It’s been an illuminating three weeks.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
The halfling unlocked the door, shoved it open, then stepped behind the chair again to wheel Ember inside. “For both of us, I bet. But look. Now you’re back home, and I’ll be here to help you get back on your feet. Yes, I mean that both ways—”
Cheyenne stopped when she looked up from wheeling her friend, and they both stared at Ember’s destroyed living room. The magicless fae laughed, then cut it short.
“Oh. Yeah.” The halfling stepped away from the chair to take in the smashed dishes and broken cupboard, the charred holes in the wall, the ripped-up couch still covered in loose feathers from throw pillows used as target practice. “Shit, Em. I totally forgot about the mess in here.”
“Yeah, me too.”
When she turned around to look at her friend with a grimace, Cheyenne only found an amused grin on Ember’s face. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I should’ve cleaned all this up. Some kinda welcome home, huh? You don’t need to deal with this—”
“Cheyenne.”
The halfling stopped. If she tells me to get out and leave her alone, that’s fair.
“First of all,” Ember said with a little chuckle, “quit apologizing. It’s just a crappy apartment. Okay, admittedly not as crappy as yours.” She chuckled, and Cheyenne laughed. “But seriously, I really don’t care. My lease is almost up anyway, and this place needed some serious renovations.” The fae girl glanced around the living room and shrugged. “You just gave them a head start.”
The halfling hissed a laugh. “At least I saved your TV.”
“What?”
Cheyenne pointed to the TV stand and Ember’s flatscreen. “Asshole orc almost took it down with him.”
“Well, thank you for saving the most valuable thing in my living room. I think. What happened to the guys who broke in here and started redecorating?”
“I, uh, I called in a cleaning crew.” The halfling snickered.
“I had no idea that was a thing.”
“It wasn’t. Until I made a call and got my own personal FRoE-agent body-removal team.”
Ember’s eyes widened. “There were FRoE agents in my apartment?”
Cheyenne wrinkled her nose and spread her arms. “Sorry?”
Laughing again, Ember glanced down at the wheels of her chair before reaching out to grab them and push herself forward. “Oh. Carpet’s gonna be a little hard to move on around here.”
“Hey, if your lease is almost up, it’s the perfect time to find a new apartment, right? One with no carpet.”
“Cheyenne, I can’t move into a new place with hardwood floors everywhere.” Ember raised her eyebrows and waved her hand at the living room. “I’m barely scraping by with this one.”
“Scratch ‘barely scraping by’ off the list, Em.” The halfling stepped behind the wheelchair again and pushed Ember toward the couch. Then she dropped onto it and nodded. “I wasn’t just being polite when I said I’d help you with everything after the hospital.”
The fae girl snorted. “You don’t do ‘just being polite.’”
“You really know me.”
They shared another laugh, then Ember shook her head. “I can’t piggy-back off you forever, Cheyenne. I appreciate all the help, but you have a bunch of other stuff going on, and I don’t want to drag you down—”
“Shut up.”
“What?”
Cheyenne grinned. “I just told you to shut up. Want me to say it again?”
Ember cocked her head and took a deep breath. She didn’t say anything, but her disbelieving smile made it clear that she was about to give in.
“Look, Em. Part of the reason you were in the hospital in the first place is because of me. Because I didn’t stand up when you asked me to.”
The fae girl snorted. “You’re not getting all mushy on me now, are you?”
“Not this time. But I’m serious. I’m the reason your apartment’s blown to pieces, too, and beyond that, you’re my best friend. I kinda need you around.” The halfling slapped the couch cushion beneath her and nodded. “So, if you start feeling like you don’t deserve my help or like you’re dragging me down, just remember I told you to shut up about it, and we’re good.”
Ember dipped her head and stared at her friend. “You’re really not gonna let me off the hook with this one, are you?”
“Not even a little. I’ll take care of it, Em. Like I said.” Cheyenne glanced around the living room one more time. “You should start looking for a place, huh? I’ll help you with the move too. Make sure it has hardwood floors.”
“That’s too much.” Ember shook her head.
“No, it’s not. Some asshole loyalist blew up my car this morning, and I bought a new Panamera for cash. Might as well start dipping into my inheritance, right? Didn’t even make a dent.”
“I’m pretty sure your inheritance wasn’t
intended to buy your newly disabled friend an updated apartment.”
“Em, I can use it for whatever I want. And this is what I wanna do. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
Ember tried to make her laugh sound irritated, but it didn’t quite work. “Oh, I know. But I had to at least try.”
“Okay. You tried and failed. Now get over it.” Cheyenne’s lips twitched into another smirk. “Besides, I’m not sure it’s safe for you to live here anymore. Whoever came after me saw me here at your place. They might come back.”
“And they know where you live now too, don’t they?”
That made the halfling pause, and she narrowed her eyes at the fae girl sitting in front of her. “Yeah. That’s a minor issue.”
“You know, if you’re gonna be helping me all the time with my PT and getting me back on my feet, hopefully literally, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we were roommates for a while.” Ember shrugged. “Just until I get the hang of this chair and doing everything on my own again.”
Cheyenne studied her friend’s hopeful eyes. She’s embarrassed about that part, too. “You really don’t want me to get you a brand-new apartment, do you?”
Laughing, Ember swept her hair away from her face with both hands. “Okay, I’m coming up with another excuse. So what? It makes sense, though. You won’t be driving all over the place to come help me. I’ll be right down the hall. I won’t feel weird about it if there’s something in it for you too—”
“There’ll be something in it for me anyway, Em.”
“This is the part where you shut up and let me finish.” Grinning, Ember pointed at her friend, and the halfling lifted both hands in surrender. “Good. The final point of my argument is you not living in the same place where some freak drew a symbol on your door in blood before blowing up your car with a bomb instead of magic. Which is a little confusing but doesn’t change the fact that I don’t think it’s safe for you to keep living in your dumpy apartment, either.”
Cheyenne opened her mouth to protest, then cocked her head. “You make an excellent argument.”
“I know.”
“And I can’t see any downsides, so okay.”
“Okay?”
The halfling pursed her lips and nodded. “Yeah. Okay, as in let’s start looking for a new place that has everything a drow halfling and her temporarily wheelchair-bound best friend might need to make this work. Stepping up in the world.”
“Ha. Get a new place to match that shiny new drowmobile you got parked outside.”
Cheyenne let herself laugh without holding back at that. “I really fucking love that car.”
“I can tell.” Ember dropped the overnight tote out of her lap and onto the floor, then rummaged around in her purse and pulled out her phone. “I’ll start looking. It’s what, not even three o’clock. If we find a good place fast enough, we can head out, go talk to the office, get something set up—”
Settling into the cushions, the halfling lifted her arm over the back of the couch and snorted.
Her friend looked at her with a self-conscious smile. “What?”
“I’m really into your enthusiasm, Em, but maybe we should hold off on running around Richmond for a new apartment until at least tomorrow, huh?”
“Why the hell would we do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you just got released after weeks in the hospital after, you know, coming kinda close to not making it back out again.”
Ember lowered her phone into her lap and shot her friend a knowing smile. “But I did. And I blame you for that one-hundred-percent.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll take the blame for saving your life.”
The girl snorted and sat there in the destroyed living room, letting the entire conversation sink in. Then Ember lifted her phone and wiggled it. “So, I start looking for apartments now, or…”
“You can look for whatever you want.” Cheyenne slapped her thighs, the chains around her wrists clinking, and pushed herself to her feet. “I’m gonna clean this place up as much as I can because I should’ve done that already. You don’t need to get those wheels stuck on a chunk of drywall or something.”
Ember laughed. “Okay. If I’m in your way, feel free to wheel me around the room. I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll be focused on finding the perfect apartment.”
“I don’t think that exists, Em.”
“Trust me, it does. And I’ll find it.” Ember pressed her lips together and eyed her friend as Cheyenne walked into the kitchen to start picking up huge chunks of splintered cabinet. “You might be ridiculously skilled with computers, Cheyenne, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have any tricks up our sleeves.”
The halfling stepped on the lever to open the trashcan and dumped a handful of wood and broken ceramic into the mostly empty trash bag. “Listen to you now. Pullin’ out all the surprise skills.”
Smirking, Ember just stared at her phone, her fingers flying across the screen as she typed. “At least one of us learned something in undergrad.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Cheyenne stayed at Ember’s apartment until a little after 9:30. They’d had a pizza delivered, then the halfling helped her friend get ready for bed and made sure the fae girl had everything she needed before she took off.
“Text me if anything comes up.” She stood in the doorway of Ember’s bedroom. Should I really be leaving her on her own? She doesn’t even know how to work that wheelchair.
Already curled up beneath the covers with her back facing the halfling, Ember stuck a hand out of the blankets and shot Cheyenne a thumbs-up without turning around. “I’m good. Nothing’s gonna happen while I’m sleeping.”
“You want me to come by in the morning before I head to class?”
“I’ll text you about that too,” Ember muttered. “Right now, I can’t tell if I’m still awake...or…”
Asleep. Got it.
Cheyenne turned off all the lights except for the standing lamp on the far side of the living room. The place still looked awful, but at least it wasn’t cluttered with broken pieces of wall and cabinet or feathers anymore. She’s a big girl. She’ll be fine. And if she’s not, I’ll be the first to know about it.
The halfling slipped quietly out the front door and locked it behind her. Ember’s spare key went into the front pocket of her black cargo pants, then she headed back out to her new car in the parking lot.
By the time she got home, Cheyenne was itching to drop in on the Borderlands forum. I don’t care what Rhynehart says. If those kids haven’t gotten back to their parents yet, I’m storming the compound.
Glen fired up, then the halfling pulled up her VPN and dove into the dark web. The Borderlands forum came up, and she didn’t notice how hard she’d been squeezing her mouse until she sighed in relief and loosened up a little.
There we go. Things are looking up.
The four newest topic threads were from magical parents letting their little dark-web community of friends know their kids had been brought home. The pinned topic serving as a single place for all the missing kid reports was still at the top, but a new announcement had been stuck at the top of the page.
Kids Are Coming Home – Check here for updates.
Cheyenne scrolled through the comments and smiled. Dozens of posts from relieved parents and supportive friends—as friendly as anyone could get on the dark web—filled the topic thread.
Looks like the FRoE still knows how to keep their word. At least with the important stuff.
She rapped her knuckles on the surface of her huge desk, then pulled up a private message to gu@rdi@n104. She wished Corian would change his avatar or give her another avenue for contacting him.
Shyhand71: This is me asking ahead of time. Trials tonight?
The reply came immediately.
gu@rdi@n104: Oh, so now you’re ready to listen?
Gritting her teeth, Cheyenne sat all the way back in her office chair and thought about the best response. Can�
��t blame him for being pissed.
Shyhand71: You know what? Neither one of us was wrong yesterday, but you made your point. I put the thing back on.
gu@rdi@n104: Good. If you can keep your head screwed on straight, I’m here.
Shyhand71: Be there in 20.
She closed out of the chat, got off the dark web, and shut down her VPN. Glen, though, stayed powered on. “Gotta keep you warmed up. When I get back, I’m checking to make sure every single kid is back where they belong.”
The halfling grabbed her backpack and stuffed the copper legacy box inside. It didn’t flash or grow warm or give her any indication that it had anything planned for her tonight. Not yet, anyway.
Before she left her apartment, she stripped the last paper towel off the roll on the counter, soaked it, and took it with her. The mostly smeared blood on the outside of her front door had dried to a dark-brown stain, which made it that much harder to scrub off. When it looked like all the other crummy, unmentionable stains on her apartment walls and in the hallway, Cheyenne shrugged and called it good. I just keep learning how to blend in, don’t I?
With everything locked up, she hurried down the hall toward the staircase. The thought of getting behind the wheel of her Panamera again made her smile.
* * *
The Panamera rolled silently down the street toward the house. For the first time since she’d tracked Corian down after his ridiculous scavenger hunt, there was someone standing out on the lawn in front of the house. “Who the hell just stands out—oh. Great.”
Her bright, clear headlights flashed over Corian standing on the grass, his human illusion back up and his human-looking arms folded. The halfling turned off the radio, but her chest still buzzed from the deep bass she’d adjusted in the souped-up sound system. She sat there longer than she had to, waiting to see if the Nightstalker would act on his anger before she had a chance to do or say anything. He didn’t move.
“This’ll be fun. Not.” She turned off the car before grabbing her backpack. Then she stepped out and quietly shut the door. Even the doors are in stealth mode. Love it.
