by Martha Carr
Weird. Every O’gúleesh on the other side knew the second I slapped that coin down on the altar, and no one over here has a clue.
She scrolled down the main page to check the topic titles over the last three days and found nothing. Sitting back, she frowned at the screen and drummed her fingers on the armrests. I guess that means information isn’t getting across the Border. Makes sense if the Crown suddenly had all her magical assets frozen—no way for the loyalists over here to get a whiff of what happened.
“Shit.”
“Found something already?” Ember called up to her.
“It’s what I’m not finding. I don’t think anyone over here knows what we did.”
“Huh. You’re not usually upset about your secrets staying secret.”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t a secret.” Cheyenne wheeled her chair toward the iron railing to peer through the bars at her friend. “I’m mostly talking about the Crown loyalists, Em. If they think Ba’rael’s still living’ it up in Hangivol with all her magic intact, it’s business as usual for them over here.”
Ember’s eyes widened. “Meaning all the war machines are still up and running.”
“Or about to be, yeah.”
“Shit.”
“Yep.” Cheyenne took a deep breath and rolled back toward the wobbly office desk to get back to work. It all starts and ends with this uncle, doesn’t it? Find him, and we find a way to cut out the rest of the war machines.
Her monitor quacked, and a notification for a new email rose on the bottom corner of her screen.
“Did your computer just quack at you?”
“Yep. Best way to interrupt my focus, other than everyone else’s questions.” Cheyenne shrugged. “I didn’t mean you. Sorry.”
“No problem. I won’t keep distracting you.”
Frowning, Cheyenne opened her personal email and found a new message from [email protected] titled: ‘Is This Enough?’
Who the hell is that?
She clicked the email and laughed as she read the message.
I figured you’re more likely to check your personal email, so I sent this to both. And I’m holding you to your offer of bonus points if you were serious about that part. If this wasn’t what you wanted, let me know.
—Tori
“Tori?” Cheyenne scrolled all the way to the bottom and found a picture of the girl with the half-shaved head in the email signature. “Huh. Touché.”
She kept scrolling and opened the massive compressed attachment. It took thirty seconds for her system to unzip the files, but then they opened one right after the other in overlapping boxes all over the screen.
Cheyenne’s eyes widened, and she grinned as the activator pulled up everything she wanted to know without her needing to read a single line of what was in the files. “Way to go, Tori.”
Chapter Fifty
“Nope. Nope. Interesting, but no.” Cheyenne clicked the boxes closed one by one, her eyes darting frantically back and forth as she picked up bits of information flagged by her activator, only to read the files and find them useless.
Come on, Tori. If you want those bonus points, you have to find something worth it.
A burst of green light flared when the activator illuminated a long line of code that didn’t match any of the open files. Squinting, Cheyenne clicked out of all of them until the screen flashed green again. Buried beneath everything else she’d wasted time reading was the only encrypted file in her student’s attachment. She ran her decryption program, which prompted her for a password.
The activator lined up the letters of the password superimposed in her vision over the prompt, and she snorted. “Oh, that’s cute.”
But of course, she typed in the password: Say_Please.
The contents of the encrypted file practically exploded all over her screen, and the activator flashed wildly to the pieces it knew she was looking for.
Gotta love tech synced with magic. This thing can literally read my mind.
Most of the decrypted files were images. Cheyenne flipped through them one by one. Matthew Thomas sitting at an executive desk, Matthew Thomas with a blonde woman, Matthew Thomas with a brunette woman, Matthew Thomas standing in front of a brand-new elementary school surrounded by hundreds of grinning kids.
She snorted. Close.
The next image made her freeze.
Her cyber-guru neighbor stood on the front steps of a huge stone house that rivaled Bianca Summerlin’s. Beside him stood a tall, thin man in military uniform, clean-shaven and at least twenty-five years older. Cheyenne’s gaze flicked at the caption: Matthew Thomas and his maternal uncle, Colonel Les Thomas, 2019.
But she didn’t need the caption to know who his uncle was. “No fucking way.”
Ember paused her show. “Oh, my God, is it Sir?”
“No. Oh, Jesus.”
“Cheyenne, you’re killin’ me.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna kill someone, all right.”
“Seriously.”
“Colonel Les Thomas.” Cheyenne shoved her chair away from her desk and leaped to her feet. “One of Major Sir Carson’s superior officers.”
“What?”
“Not a benefactor of the FRoE, Em. He’s running it.”
“Okay, wait.” With a flash of purple light, Ember swung her legs off the couch and floated off the cushions to hover in the living room, craning her neck up at the mini-loft. “Did you find a list of FRoE officers?”
“No, but I’ve seen this man before, in person.” Cheyenne stormed down the iron stairs, her drow magic flaring at the base of her spine and taking over a second before her feet reached the floor. I’m gonna wring that cursing bastard’s thick neck.
“What do you mean? Where?”
“When they interrogated me, Em. In front of Sir. The day everyone heard L’zar Verdys escaped from Chateau D’rahl again, and they thought it would be a great big help to ask his daughter where he is.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Ember floated after the halfling and pulled up short when Cheyenne reached the kitchen island and spun. “Matthew’s uncle interrogated you?”
“No, he didn’t say a word. I know that’s the same guy, Em. Plenty of officers in that meeting and one of them is the same asshole who’s been feeding the Crown loyalists all this—” She shook her fists and stormed across the apartment. “Goddammit!”
“Okay, don’t bite my head off or anything, but I’m still kinda lost.”
“They’ve been playing me this whole time!” Purple sparks crackled across Cheyenne’s fingertips. “They’ve been in on this deal between Combined Reality and the loyalists for years. Every single step, everything I’ve done, the FRoE’s been watching. Not to keep me in line, but to fucking help her!”
Ember bit her lip. “Her as in—”
“Ba’rael, Em!” Cheyenne whirled again and barely noticed her friend’s surprised gaze as Ember backed away. “No wonder those bulls-head assholes kept finding me everywhere. The FRoE had their eyes on me and fed everything back to the loyalists. They didn’t do a fucking thing to step in ‘cause they were in on it too!”
“That’s bad news.” Ember watched her friend pacing and eyed the purple sparks flaring across the halfling’s skin. “And you need to calm down.”
“I’m calm,” Cheyenne growled and paced away again.
“No, actually, you’re dripping drow sparks on the rug.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see this!”
“Cheyenne.”
“I’m fucking calm!” A burst of crackling purple sprayed from Cheyenne’s hand when she whirled again. It smashed into the rug, consuming the black fibers along the entire edge in a puff of flame and producing an instant stink of burning fabric and plastic.
Ember reached toward the burning rug and clenched her fist. The fire snuffed out, but the burnt smell thickened with a few more wisps of black smoke. “Come on, Cheyenne.”
“Damnit.” The halfling stared at the rug and forced her loud, fast brea
thing into something resembling sanity. “Sorry.”
“I don’t give a shit about the rug.” Ember studied her friend’s face. “You’re paying for it. I’ll order a new one.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Okay.”
“Okay. You went revenge mode, and then you snapped out of it, so what’s next?”
With another snarl, Cheyenne clenched her fists. “I’m gonna cut out the rot.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Ember floated smoothly across the floor, took her friend by the shoulders, and shook her. “You. Can’t. Go. On. A. Killing. Spree. Do you understand me?”
“Let go.”
“No.”
A deep purple light flared behind the halfling’s eyes. “Get out of my way, Ember.”
The fae’s hand slapped Cheyenne’s cheek and whipped her head to the side. Cheyenne growled and stared at the floor.
“Shit.” Ember floated backward and shook out her hand. “Forget listening to me, Cheyenne. Listen to yourself. Do you have any idea what just came out of your mouth?”
Cheyenne closed her eyes and focused on pulling her magic back under control. “I told you to get out of my way.”
“Before that, you crazy idiot.”
The halfling looked up at her friend and blinked. “What?”
“You said you’re gonna ‘cut out the rot.’ Ring any bells?”
Cheyenne swallowed. Those aren’t my words. “Did I say that?”
“Oh, yeah. You were this close to bursting into black fire and calling yourself the new drow prophecy. You need to calm down and think about what you’re doing.”
“You’re right. Totally right, Em.” Cheyenne turned and ran a hand through her hair, scanning the walls of their apartment like she’d find the right answer there. “I have to be thinking clearly. Be prepared before I do anything else. And thanks for slapping me. Again.”
“Sure.” Ember shook out her hand again. “If that’s all it takes to pull a drow out of going homicidal, I’m honestly surprised I’ve never seen someone slap L’zar in the face.”
“So far, I think Bianca Summerlin’s the only one who’s done that and lived.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot all about that.”
“I wish I could.” Biting her lip, Cheyenne looked up at the mini-loft again and nodded. “Good thing I have you around to get me back on track.”
“I mean, it’s in the job description, isn’t it? Your Nós Aní conscience and everything. What are you doing?”
“Making a call.” Cheyenne pressed the send button and lifted her phone to her ear. “To the FRoE asshole who thinks he’s better than everyone else. Sir’s my only access point to Colonel Thomas right now, and I’m gonna use him. See how he likes it.”
“Uh-huh.” Ember folded her arms and waited.
The phone rang over and over, then stopped with a click and beeped, presumably to leave a message. “Of course he’s not answering. I can work around that.”
The halfling’s feet pounded back up the iron stairs to the mini-loft, and she didn’t bother to sit in her chair before pulling up every command the activator suggested. Her search for Major Guy “Sir” Carson’s personal details took her two minutes flat. Of course, his first name’s Guy. Here we go. Personal phone number. P.O. Box. Home address. If you don’t wanna answer my calls, that’s fine, but I’m not fucking around anymore, Major.
She pushed away from her desk and ran back down the stairs again.
“Cheyenne.”
“My head’s clear and I’m prepared, Em. Nothing to worry about anymore.”
“Where are you going?”
Cheyenne opened the front door and turned around to shrug at her friend. “I’m going to get answers. Depending on what Sir decides to tell me, I haven’t figured out what I’m gonna do to him yet, but I’m a ‘wait for inspiration to strike’ kinda drow.”
The front door slammed shut, and Ember let out a long, heavy sigh. “Be careful. We all still have to be careful.” She floated around the back of the couch and paused in front of the burned edge of the rug. “I guess I’m the one putting out drow fires. There are worse things, like not replacing this rug.”
Chapter Fifty-One
At first, Cheyenne thought it would be a good idea to get in her beat-up Panamera and drive to DC to give herself time to cool down and form a plan. But she only got two miles up the highway before she realized she wouldn’t be calming down anytime soon.
Not until I let him have it. Sir’s been jerking me around for way too long, and I’m done holding back.
She pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store she never shopped at, grimaced at the warbling chirp of the alarm system when she locked the doors, and stalked toward the back of the building. Two seconds later, a blur of purple-gray, black, and white streaked across the lot and headed north toward the nation’s capital. A deafening crack followed a second later and scattered fall leaves all over the pavement and the grass around the parking lot.
Cheyenne pushed herself faster than she’d realized she could go in drow speed. Glinting cars, headlights, taillights, trees and leaves, and asphalt—all of it streamed past her in one giant streak of indecipherable color. She didn’t stop, even to catch her breath, until she reached DC’s city limits, but it wasn’t because she was tired.
The activator flashed in her vision and lit up with a large yellow arrow on her left. When the halfling dropped out of drow speed in a burst of wind and spiraling leaves, she looked left and found herself on the street she’d noted on the map of the city she’d pulled up before leaving her apartment.
My activator comes with built-in navigation. There’s no reason to take this thing off.
A forest-green sedan honked at her as it sped down the road. Cheyenne darted into drow speed again and followed the activator’s directional prompts to Major Carson’s home. The shockwave of her departure made the driver of the green sedan lay off the horn and grab the steering wheel instead. The wheels spun, and he skidded to a squealing stop with two tires up on the sidewalk.
Cheyenne darted down side streets and through one residential neighborhood after the other until the activator zeroed in on the address she wanted. She dropped into normal speed again with another sharp crack, pulling her magic back to slip into human form as she jogged toward his driveway.
Look at that—cute little suburban cookie-cutter. I took the man for a cabin-in-the-woods kinda guy. Wonder how he gets along with the neighbors?
She hurried across the lawn. The huge dogwood tree and the hedges around the yard provided the perfect cover from the street, and she let herself slip back into drow form before focusing her gaze on the house. Gold light flashed around the walls, and she stopped. That’s not the activator.
Cheyenne stared through the walls, seeing the hazy layout of the inside of Major Carson’s house without having to close her eyes or touch a wall. About damn time my drow sight leveled up.
A quick scan of Sir’s home showed no shimmering lights around humanoid bodies. No cars in the garage. Blinking quickly to clear the x-ray drow vision, Cheyenne looked back toward the road and the driveway-sized sliver of it visible on the other side of the hedges. I can wait. Especially for something this worth it.
Ten minutes later, a beige Toyota Camry slowed on the quiet neighborhood street and turned into the driveway. Cheyenne hid behind the huge tree, silent as she watched the driver’s side door open and Guy Carson step out of his vehicle. For the first time since she’d met him when she was strapped to a hospital bed with dampening cuffs at the FRoE compound, Sir wasn’t in his military fatigues. No uniform, just a pair of bright blue Levi’s and a maroon polo.
She forced herself not to laugh when she glanced at his shoes. White New Balances. Are you kidding me? He’s taking this whole fake-civilian-life act over the top.
With his arms full of paper grocery bags, Sir stepped onto his front porch, keys jingling. He didn’t see the two golden eyes glowing at him from behind the tree in his front yard. He unlocked the do
or, opened it, and took two steps into the house.
Cheyenne made her move.
She darted across the yard and up the porch stairs in a blur. By the time Sir heard the noise and turned around, she’d dropped back into real-time so she could slam the door shut behind her without splintering it into a million pieces.
His keys and all the bags of groceries toppled from his hands and hit the floor. “Holy fucking rhino shit!”
“Almost,” Cheyenne growled and snatched the front of his maroon shirt before slamming him against the opposite wall of the entryway. Her face stopped two inches from his, and she snarled, “We need to talk.”
“You.” The man’s salt-and-pepper mustache bristled as he pressed his lips together in rage. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She thumped him against the wall again, not hard enough to hurt him but hard enough to make her point. Maybe even a little harder. “I’m the one asking questions! And you’re gonna answer every fucking one of them if you want to leave this little chat with any of your limbs still attached to your body. No bullshit. Got it?”
His dark, beady gaze flickered from one of her golden eyes to the other. “You found me.”
“I can find anyone. Now you know.”
For a second, she thought the man was having a heart attack. His eyes bulged from his head, his face turned its usual deep crimson in rage, and he shook beneath the fist clenched around his shirt.
Cheyenne loosened her grip a little. He’s helpless. No phone, no dampening gear, no brain-washed agents to do all the dirty work for him. I guess rage and terror look the same on this guy.
He finally managed to snarl, “Let go of me.”
She thumped him against the wall again and raised her other hand between them in a warning threat, purple sparks dancing across her fingers. “Not until you tell me everything you know about Colonel Les Thomas.”
“What?” Sir sneered at her. “You’ve lost your goddamn mind, halfling. Barging into my home like this and threatening to…what? Barbeque me with those cute little sparks?”
