by Martha Carr
“Don’t pretend to know what I want, Sir.”
“I’m sure I couldn’t even imagine what goes on in that halfling head of yours. Might find things in there that’d make me lose that excellent BLT I enjoyed so much. But that’s my offer. One more operation, and you go with Rhynehart tomorrow. When it’s done, you get to go on your first ride-along with me.”
“Oh, joy.” It clearly wasn’t. Cheyenne held the man’s gaze and cocked her head. “How do I know you’re not gonna turn this deal around on me too?”
“You don’t.” Sir shrugged. “But we both want something, halfling, and we’re in this goddamn annoying situation where we’re the only two people who can give the other person what they want. I’m a fan of what you can do, don’t get me wrong. I’m just not a fan of you personally.”
The halfling scoffed and gave him a bitter smile. “We’re finally on the same page, then.”
“Great. Keep that phone on. You’ll get another call tomorrow.” Sir sat there with his thick, bushy eyebrows raised, staring at Cheyenne until the server returned with the receipt and his credit card. He thanked her, signed the receipt, and glanced at Rhynehart without another word. Then he pressed his hands on the table and pushed himself up and out of the booth. His footsteps clicked across the sticky diner floor, echoing in Cheyenne’s ears almost louder than the clink and hiss of Roger working at the grill. When he thought he was out of earshot, she heard him mutter, “This goddamn heartburn.”
She smirked when she heard it, and apparently Rhynehart thought it was aimed at him. “What’s so funny?”
“He’s gonna have a rough night. Probably all the mayonnaise.”
The man’s eyebrows flicked together, and he pointed at the empty plate in front of him. “Can’t find extra-crispy fries like that anywhere else.”
Rhynehart slid out of the booth, and Cheyenne grudgingly followed. Not that she wanted to stay in this diner any longer, but because this was the part where she had to endure another car ride in the passenger seat of the man’s Jeep. Sitting next to him.
“Thanks, Roger.” Rhynehart raised a hand as they passed the cook behind the counter.
“Later, Charlie. Don’t take so long to come back, yeah?” The cook nodded at Cheyenne too as she shuffled behind the FRoE operative, and all she could do was raise her eyebrows at him.
She wasn’t friends with any of these people, and she didn’t have to be. I bet Roger the cook and Grace the server don’t know jack about who he is or what he does. Of course, they like him.
“All right.” Rhynehart clapped his hands and walked around the Jeep. “Just taking you right back to the mall?”
“Unless you towed my car somewhere else without me knowing, then yeah.” The halfling jerked open the passenger-side door and slipped into the seat.
He started the engine. “You know what? I think I’ll feel better too once I drop you off. It’s not like you’ve been all lollipops and rainbows since we met, but you’re just a little too salty today.”
She strapped on her seatbelt and slowly turned to shoot him a blank stare. “Can you blame me?”
Cocking his head, Rhynehart pulled them out of the diner parking lot and shrugged. “Not really, rookie. Can’t really blame you for anything you’ve done. Maybe especially today.”
Cheyenne decided to go ahead and leave it at that. She wasn’t about to thank the guy, but at least she didn’t feel compelled to make things any more strained between them. Today, she’d made the choice to go against all her instincts and work with the FRoE on one more mission—at least, what she’d thought was one more. And today, she’d seen the worst side of the magicals who’d left their home to cross the Border and take advantage of those who were here to make a better life for themselves, if anything anyone had told her could be believed.
Trees and cars and highway signs rushed past them as Rhynehart took the Jeep back down the freeway toward the strip mall. Cheyenne dropped her head against the headrest and stared out the window.
When I’m done playing Sir’s stupid game, I’ll be sitting face to face with L’zar Verdys himself. That guy’s got a lot to answer for too.
Chapter Seventeen
When she finally got back to her apartment that night—in her own car, alone, with all her stuff intact—Cheyenne dropped her backpack on the floor by the kitchen’s half-wall and headed straight for Glen. “Please tell me there’s some progress after the day I’ve had.”
Her main monitor blinked on, and of course, she had to go through the steps of logging onto servers and checking for messages before she found anything. And she definitely found something.
“Hey, no way!” The message had come straight from Todd on the Y2Kickass server, and she had to read it twice to make sure it said what she thought it did.
T-rexifus088L: You’re one lucky hacker chick today, C. I reached out to our friends and asked for favors. No one’s willing to take your money, so I guess you can shove that offer. But DeathCage4Birdie said she’d take a look. Thought the double-encrypted file you sent over looked like something she’d seen before. You remember the kid, right? She came in right after GRND0 bid us all adieu. Kinda reminds me of you when the old man first brought you aboard. Not as fast. Not as creative around sharp edges. But she only took ten hours for this little pet project, and I think she just decrypted the whole thing for you because she could, and it was something to do. So that’s attached. Hope it means something to you.
Oh, and DeathCage4Birdie said all she wants in return is a favor to call in later. Go figure, right? Not like we’re not already open to calling in favors in this cozy little group, but she was pretty damn specific that the favor came from you. I think you just turned into somebody’s role model. Enjoy.
“Great. Everybody who looks up to me has no idea who I am.”
Still, Cheyenne couldn’t help but be impressed that this new girl DeathCage had jumped right on the call for help and decrypted the entire file from gu@rdi@n104 without asking any questions. It was a decent gesture, even if it wasn’t free.
When the halfling clicked on the clean file and brought the whole thing up on her monitor, though, it wasn’t anywhere close to a satisfying discovery. “What the hell is this?”
She didn’t know what she’d expected to find, but it sure wasn’t a map. Not a normal map, either. It looked like Richmond. It even said Richmond, Virginia on the top, but all the lines were wrong. They weren’t street names or highways or the regular layout of the city she’d gotten to know pretty well over the last four and a half years. Some of the red lines crossed through the skatepark where Ember had been shot and the row of bars on East Clay Street, including Gnarly’s Pub. Blue lines crossed and intersected at various points on the VCU campus. Dotted black lines went down a few streets, disappeared, and picked back up again half a dozen blocks away.
The key at the top didn’t make any sense, either. Instead of cardinal directions, the compass was labeled Truth, Hidden, Missed, and the last one was just a question mark. In the bottom left-hand corner of the map was a bunch of tiny print even the halfling’s better-than-good eyesight couldn’t make out. She zoomed in until the words were big enough for her to read the first line: If you want a little somethin’ for your troubles, better think outside the map and take a hint.
gu@rdi@n104’s officially a total psycho. Wrinkling her nose, Cheyenne scrolled up to start reading the rest of the apparent directions at the bottom of the map. Then someone knocked on her door.
She pushed herself away from her long desk, the executive office chair beneath her rolling backward across the plastic mat. Her hands gripped the armrests, and she stared at the front door of her apartment. In almost four years of living here, no one had ever knocked on her door. I don’t even order delivery. What the hell?
The knock came again—polite and quick, but a little louder this time. The halfling froze, then she heard the whispering on the other side of the door.
“Maybe she isn’t home. We shouldn’t
be bothering her if she isn’t home.”
“I’m telling you, R’mahr, I saw her from the front window. Walking right out of that…thing. With the wheels.”
“A car, Maji.”
“Oh, yes. Thank you, Bryl. Try again.”
“What if she doesn’t want to be bothered? We should respect her—”
“Knock on the door, or you’ll be cooking your own borshni for the next week.”
Another brisk, succinct knock came at the door, and Cheyenne frowned. It’s like these trolls want to be disappointed.
The halfling got up out of her chair and moved quickly toward the front door.
“Yadje, maybe you only saw her—”
When Cheyenne opened the door, the trolls stopped bickering and whipped their heads toward her to flash wide, crooked grins.
“Cheyenne.” R’mahr’s dark-purple cheeks seemed to get darker than the rest of him. “Hello.”
The halfling raised her eyebrows and glanced from one of her neighbors to the next. Little Bryl didn’t cling to either of her parents this time but instead stared intently at the drow halfling on the other side of the door, a basket covered in bright-orange squares of cloth weighing down her arms. “Uh, hi. Everything okay?”
Yadje smiled a little wider, taking in the sight of the very human-looking young woman with pale skin and black hair standing in the doorway. Her gaze settled on Cheyenne’s upper arm. “You’re not wearing the armband.”
“Oh.” Cheyenne glanced at her own arm, then remembered how much of herself she hadn’t explained to her neighbors earlier that morning. “No. It helped a lot, so thanks. I just put it away to keep it safe. You came back to get it, right?”
“Oh, no. Please.” R’mahr waved her off. “You keep it for as long as you need.”
“I only needed it to drag that orc out of your living room. Hold on. Lemme get it.” The halfling turned away from the door, paused, then stuck her head out into the hall and glanced in either direction. “Should you guys be standing out here without…you know. Your illusion spells, or whatever?”
“Our own…oh.” R’mahr chuckled and shook his head. “That’s very good, Cheyenne.”
“She doesn’t know.” Yadje turned toward her husband and cocked her head. “And she doesn’t need it.”
“Oh, if she wants to keep it a little longer, Yadje, let her.”
“I didn’t say she doesn’t want it. I said she doesn’t need it.” Yadje stared at her husband with wide eyes and gestured at Cheyenne. “And she doesn’t know about illusions.”
“She doesn’t…no, no. Now, don’t talk to me in riddles in front of our neighbor. You know I don’t like having to guess—”
“We’re wearing them.” As soon as Bryl spoke, her parents stopped their argument and glanced down at her with self-conscious smiles.
“Okay.” Cheyenne smiled at the troll kid, suddenly very aware of how much younger Bryl was than the kid they’d found in that church. And he had been young too. The halfling blinked and looked back at R’mahr and Yadje. “I feel like I’m missing something here.”
“Illusions,” Bryl answered for all three of them. “Ours are made for friends to see us and everyone else to see…not us. Not really.”
“Right.” The halfling nodded. “That makes sense.”
“But you didn’t know this.” Yadje shot her a quick frown, part curiosity and part intense skepticism. “And you’re not wearing the armband.”
“Yeah, you pointed that out. So I’ll just go get that real fast.” One more time, the halfling turned from the door, then stopped awkwardly. “You guys are welcome to come inside if you want.”
Bryl grinned and peered around Cheyenne at the huge desk covered in blinking lights and monitors and keyboards and whirring fans inside the halfling’s custom towers. R’mahr nodded vigorously. “That would be excellent—”
“No.” His wife smacked his arm, and he went from nodding profusely to vigorously shaking his head. “That’s not how we offer gifts. We’ll wait.”
“Of course.” R’mahr cleared his throat, then shared a knowing glance with his daughter. The child giggled and shook her head, trying to hide her expression by nearly burying her face in the basket she held.
Completely caught off-guard, Cheyenne turned awkwardly toward her backpack against the half-wall, acutely aware of the three trolls standing in her doorway and watching her grab the armband they’d lent her. She got it out quickly enough and almost jogged back to the door. “Here you go. Thanks for letting me use it. Definitely drew a lot less attention to myself that way.”
Yadje smiled and held out her hand for the halfling to drop the intricately crafted copper armband into her palm. She held it in both hands and turned it over, then looked up again, her blatant curiosity bursting out all at once. “What are you?”
Chapter Eighteen
“Now you just…now wait just a minute,” R’mahr stammered, ogling his wife as his mouth opened and closed without any other sound.
Cheyenne smiled back at the female troll and nodded. “Finally, somebody’s asking an up-front question.”
“Cheyenne, I apologize for my wife’s disrespect.” R’mahr wrung his hands and bobbed his head. “Yadje tends to push too far for the sake of knowledge, a trait she’s passed down to our Bryl. Please, don’t hold this against us. We can forget this ever happened. Bryl, hand it over. Then we’ll go home.”
Why is he so terrified?
Despite R’mahr’s bumbling and backpedaling, the half-drow couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. “Don’t worry about it, R’mahr. Seriously. It’s not a hard question to answer. Most people who don’t already know won’t just come right out and ask.”
“Did you hear that?” R’mahr hissed at his wife. “Most people don’t ask.”
Yadje scoffed and waved him off. “You worry about every little thing. What is this supposed to teach our child, hmm?”
Cheyenne looked down at Bryl again and shrugged. “You wanna take a guess?”
The child’s eyes grew wide, and her teeth—much straighter than her parents’ but still with the crookedness normal for trolls—flashed under the hallway light. “You’re a phér móre, aren’t you?”
“Uh…” I really need to brush up on my Ambar’ogúlish. Or whatever language people keep throwing at me.
“A phér móre!” R’mahr laughed, although it still sounded incredibly nervous. “Don’t insult her, Bryl. That’s nothing more than myth and fireside stories from the reservation. Cheyenne has much better things to do with her time than entertain myths.”
Cheyenne wiggled her eyebrows. “Phér móre. If that translates to ‘halfling’ over here, then you nailed it, kid.”
Bryl gasped in wonder, her mouth falling open. Her father choked, patting down his bright-blue t-shirt that looked a size or two too big. Yadje lifted her chin and gazed at Cheyenne with a renewed excitement behind her scarlet eyes. “I knew it.”
“You did not,” R’mahr whispered. “How could that thought even enter your head?”
“It entered our daughter’s, cin naeg. You’re the only one who thinks as slowly as a giant slug.”
“What?” The male troll looked baffled, blinking furiously. Then he rubbed a purple hand over his pale-pink hair, unbraided and not quite as long as his wife’s, and looked at Cheyenne again. “Is this true?”
“Yep.” The halfling shrugged and gave the family a smile that felt strained and unsure. “No armband, no illusion spell. Just half-human.”
“And half-drow,” Yadje added with way too much enthusiasm.
“Right. After this morning, I guess that part was pretty obvious, huh?” Taking in the looks of awe, admiration, curiosity, and shock—the last coming from R’mahr—Cheyenne couldn’t help but wonder what telling other magicals straight off the reservations about her mixed heritage meant for her. “Is that, like, frowned upon? Or something?”
“Oh, of all the—” R’mahr clapped both hands to his head and gaped at he
r. “How can you even ask that? Please, my wife’s curiosity does not come from a place of fear, I can promise you that. Or rejection.”
“I…okay. I didn’t think it did.”
“It is most certainly not frowned upon, phér móre.” Yadje thumped the metal armband against her husband’s chest, which he took without the ability to argue, and reached out both hands toward Cheyenne. When the halfling just stared at those violet hands opening toward her, Yadje nodded in invitation. The half-drow slowly took the troll’s hands and was surprised by the strength and gentleness in them at the same time. “You cannot know how much this means to hear you say this is what you are. To O’gúleesh, Cheyenne, a phér móre brings hope. Two worlds overlap at the Borders, and you are living proof that full peace can be made between us. That life can endure on either side. Maybe even love.”
Cheyenne didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that she had not been conceived in love or for any attempt to bring two worlds together. L’zar didn’t love my mom. He just took everything she had for one night and left her to pull it back together on her own.
Yadje was looking at her with such open adoration, waiting for a reply to her little speech. The halfling had to say something. “Well, it’s good to have hope, then, I guess.”
“If we have nothing else, hope must always endure.” Yadje squeezed the halfling’s hands and finally released them, looking like she’d just realized she was standing in the presence of a god.
Or a demigod, and I’m not either of those.
“Bryl.” Yadje turned loving eyes on her daughter, who’d been standing there with a ridiculous amount of patience. The kid couldn’t have been older than five or six, at least going by human years. “It’s your turn.”
