by Martha Carr
“Kind of, but instead of turning off my magic, I need something that’ll keep me looking like a human if I have to use magic.” Cheyenne widened her eyes and thumped her head back down on the cushion. “I don’t think I can convince them to close their eyes and meditate again just so they don’t see me looking like a drow.”
“You made them meditate?” Ember dropped her hand with the remote into her lap and stared at her friend. “In an Advanced Programming class?”
“Hey, I had to come up with something. It was either that or let that spy-fly thing buzz right out of there again to take what it saw back to its masters. Obviously, whoever’s controlling the machines knew enough about me to look for me on campus. I have a hard time believing they won’t try it again.”
“Huh. Yeah, I can make you a charm for that.”
“Thank you.”
“Any objections to Modern Family?”
Cheyenne chuckled and waved a hand at the massive flatscreen. “Do your thing. I’ll just veg out with you.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
The next morning, Cheyenne shuffled out of her bedroom, rubbing her cheeks and trying to focus her vision on her way to the bathroom. She stopped when she saw Ember sitting at the end of the coffee table with three different pages of the spellbook laid out in front of her. “Have you been sitting there all night?”
“What? Oh.” Ember yawned, shook her head, and blinked quickly. “Nope. Woke up early for a head start, I guess.”
“On that illusion charm for me?”
“Yep. I’m pretty sure if I stick all these spells together, it’ll pretty much do what you want.”
Cheyenne shook her head and continued toward the bathroom. “I don’t know how you can look at that stuff and put it together in your head.”
“Are you serious? It’s just like adding a few layers of code to something, or extra levels to a stylesheet. Just with magic.”
“Agree to disagree. But I seriously appreciate that you know what you’re doing.” The halfling stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
The second she stepped back out again, Ember grinned and lifted her hand. “Tada!”
“What?”
Ember wiggled the earrings dangling from her fingers and raised her eyebrows. “Your custom illusion charm.”
Cheyenne barked out a laugh. “And you chose those earrings?”
“What? Come on, they’re fun.”
“I thought purple was your color, but okay.”
Ember playfully rolled her eyes and looked at the two-inch earrings, which sparkled when she shook them again. “Well, I turned them into the charm you wanted, so this is what you get. You’re welcome.”
“Thanks, Em.” Cheyenne held out her hand, and the earrings dropped into her open palm. “Purple and sparkly.”
“Just shut up and put them on. If you’re that worried about a pair of earrings cramping your style, don’t put your hair up, and no one will see.”
“This is ironic.” Cheyenne removed the silver studs from her earlobes and slipped the charmed earrings into place. “It’s always something with the ears.”
“Yeah, because hiding pointy drow ears so people don’t notice you’re a halfling is totally the same thing as hiding a pair of sparkly earrings? You think people won’t take your Gothness seriously if they see you wearing those?”
“No. I just don’t do dangly and sparkly, but it’s fine. Look, I put them on.”
“Uh-huh.” Ember folded her arms and watched Cheyenne unconsciously pull her black-dyed hair around her face to hide her ears. “The only thing that matters is if they work, so go.”
“Right.” Cheyenne drew her drow magic into being, the hot rush of it racing up from the base of her spine. She gazed at her hands, which were still as pale and human-looking as ever. “Feels like when I was wearing that pendant.”
“Seriously, try some magic. Something small, though. You know, in case I missed a piece of the charm.”
“You’re not sure about this?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’m just saying.” Ember shrugged, watching Cheyenne’s open palms in expectation. “Go.”
Cheyenne conjured a burst of purple sparks at her fingertips and grinned. “That’s nothing like wearing the pendant.”
“No, it’s not.” Rubbing her hands together, Ember nodded. “Okay, try something else.”
The purple sparks flared in Cheyenne’s hand before she replaced them with a sparking orb of black energy. The magic hissed in her palm, illuminating her pale, human-looking face with black and purple light. “This is weird.”
“Yeah, but it’s so cool. It looks like I just mastered combining three spells into your tailored illusion charm.” The fae girl slapped the armrests of her chair. “You are one lucky halfling, you know that?”
“Compared to a few weeks ago, yeah. I’d say I have it pretty good.” Cheyenne snuffed out the energy sphere. “Seriously, Em, thanks. This’ll make things much easier.”
“It better. You can pay me back by making coffee.”
“Ha. Deal.” Cheyenne headed for the kitchen but stopped when she heard her phone buzzing in her bedroom. “Crap.”
“What?”
“Phone call. Then I’ll make coffee. Promise.” The halfling skirted around the furniture toward her room.
“I’m constantly surprised that you can hear half the stuff you hear.”
“It’s a gift and a curse,” Cheyenne called as she darted through the door and snatched her phone off the bedside table to answer the call. “Corian. Hey.”
“Turns out the business owner you’re covering for gave us mostly good information.”
“Shit.” She spun and paced across her bedroom. “What happened?”
“We hit all three addresses last night. Whoever this guy is, he needs to update his records because the first place had been demolished.”
“What about the others?”
Corian said, “Not that much better. We found a few pieces of gear left behind, but everything else had been packed up and shipped somewhere else. No clue where that is. And apparently, Syno thought it’d be super-hilarious to rig the place with a bunch of traps.”
“You were attacked.”
“Yup. A few wards that were easy enough to tear down and a handful of machines. They didn’t put up much of a fight, though. Persh’al thinks they were programmed to respond to anyone entering the building. It didn’t look like they had an active feed sending anything back to whoever’s handling them, but we don’t know for sure. And I’m not sure I’m a fan of that extra nugget of info you sent with that text about this company owner’s affiliation with your other friends in black.”
Yeah, that’s one name for the FRoE. “He said it was his uncle.”
“Either way, if the connection between that organization and Syno runs any deeper than a one-time business transaction a few years ago, it’ll make things that much more difficult for us. We need to try again.”
“We do. And we’ll try again after I’m done teaching my class this morning.”
“Cheyenne!”
“Nope. I’m not telling you where the company owner lives and leaving you to handle it your way when I’m not around. I’ve seen what happens to magicals when you ‘try again,’ and I seriously wanna avoid that this time. We’ll go talk to him together when I get back.”
“What if he still doesn’t give us what we need?”
“Then we’ll take a different tack, sure. But that’s not gonna be the first or even second option, okay?”
There was a long pause on the line, followed by Corian’s soft chuckle. “You’re getting a lot better at this.”
“At what?”
“Responding instead of reacting. It’s good to see. Call me when you get home after your class, Professor Summerlin.”
“Whatever.” With a snort, Cheyenne ended the call and went to her dresser to dig around for a change of clothes.
Ember stopped in the doorway. “What happened?”
<
br /> “Apparently, Syno thought it was a good time to clear out his buildings and set a bunch of traps for anyone wanting to snoop around the place.”
“That’s not good.”
“Nope.” Cheyenne changed quickly, tugged her hair out from under the collar of a plain black t-shirt, and crossed her room again to search through the pockets of the pants she’d worn a few days before. “So when I get back from teaching, we’re gonna go pay Matthew another visit.”
“Wait, Corian doesn’t think Matthew lied to us, does he?”
“No, he said the information was mostly good. Just not good enough.” Cheyenne found the folded slip of paper and unfolded it, dropping her pants back onto the floor. “But the timing does seem a little too perfect.”
“Matthew wouldn’t have called Syno to warn him. He said he didn’t like the guy.”
With a shrug, Cheyenne picked up her phone again and dialed the number written on the piece of paper. “I hope not, Em. But there’s no way to know until we go talk to Matthew again.”
“I’m coming too.”
Looking up from her phone, the halfling met the fae girl’s gaze and nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Okay. Good.” Ember nodded at the paper in Cheyenne’s hand. “What’s that?”
“Maleshi’s number. All this time and she just gave me her number a few days ago.”
“What would she know about this?”
“No clue. I’m just hoping she’ll be able to keep an eye on Corian so he doesn’t try to find Matthew before I’m back. I wouldn’t put it past him to do that.”
“Huh.” Ember wheeled away from the doorway, frowning. “I’ll go make coffee.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t have anything else to do right now, and I need caffeine.”
As Ember headed into the kitchen, Cheyenne sent the call through to Maleshi and waited for an answer.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Cheyenne.”
“Oh.” Maleshi cleared her throat. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing immediate. Did you hear about this Syno guy with—”
“Control over a few war machines and a business deal with someone who apparently lives in your apartment building? Yeah, kid. I heard all about it. Got one hell of an earful from Corian.”
“Yeah, he was ready to bash in a few heads last night.” Cheyenne headed out of her bedroom and closed the door behind her. “At least I calmed him down enough so he could go check into those buildings instead.”
“Did you call me to chat about this, or is there something else?”
Okay, abrupt and to the point. Got it. “I just wanted to know if you’d heard about what’s happening, or any other information. And, I don’t know, maybe you’ll be better at convincing Corian not to go barging through apartment doors over here looking for this guy anyway.”
“Well, if he told you he wasn’t going to do that, I’d be seriously surprised if he went back on his word. Not his style, despite what you might think about the way we handle people who get in our way.”
Cheyenne said, “Okay. So what’s next?”
“Besides regrouping later to get better information?” The line filled with rustling and the quick zip of Maleshi closing her briefcase. “I’m going to teach my classes today just like any other Friday, Cheyenne. You should do the same. We’re playing the game on both sides right now, seeing as your top-secret friends might be more involved in this than any of us gave them credit for.”
“I know, but we haven’t figured that out yet.”
“That doesn’t mean we don’t have to be careful. Any slip-up on our part that might let this Syno or that scaly taratas or whoever else know we’re on to them before it’s time is a dangerous mistake we can’t afford to make. So get to campus, teach your class, and we’ll go from there.”
“Right. Good thing I was planning on showing up there.”
“That’s an excellent choice, seeing as it’ll keep you enrolled in the graduate program.” Maleshi’s light chuckle carried through the line.
“All right. I guess I’ll talk to you later.”
“Yep.” The nightstalker IT professor hung up without another word, and Cheyenne slipped her phone into her back pocket.
“Any powerful insights from the general?” Ember called from the kitchen as the scent of brewing coffee hit the halfling’s enhanced sense of smell.
“Pretty much the same thing. Wait. Keep waiting. Keep things running business-as-usual until we have more information and no other choice but to do something immediately.”
“And that includes her?”
“Yep.” Cheyenne lifted her backpack off the floor beside the couch and set it on the armrest to make sure she had everything she needed. “Even with O’gúl war machines tearing through the place and new portals popping up everywhere, General Hi’et is reporting for duty as a college professor.”
Ember snorted, poured the first cup of coffee, and waited for the rest of it to keep brewing. “She sure did pick one of the last professions you’d expect of an O’gúleesh legend.”
“It makes sense, though.” Cheyenne gratefully took the first mug of coffee when Ember offered it. “She knows how O’gúl tech works over there. And after seeing what their stuff can do on the other side, yeah. Using human cutting-edge technology feels like playing with baby toys. Hey, good coffee. Thanks.”
“Yep.”
Cheyenne rifled through the pantry. “We need groceries.”
“I’ll just do a grocery delivery thing. Anything specific you want?”
“Just food.” The halfling took another sip of coffee and glanced at the clock above the stove. “Shit, I gotta go.”
“Forty-five minutes early?”
“I’m not gonna stand up and lecture to a bunch of skeptical undergrads on an empty stomach. Gotta factor in time for breakfast. That was a lot easier when I lived down the street from a gas station, come to think of it.” She took three large gulps of the steaming coffee, then set the mug on the counter and went to grab her backpack.
Ember glanced at the still-brewing coffee, then snatched Cheyenne’s half-full mug and got started on that. “Please tell me that’s the only thing you miss about your old place.”
“It’s not, actually.” The halfling grabbed her fancy new trench coat out of the closet by the front door and shrugged it on. “I had better neighbors over there too.”
After gulping down the hot coffee to keep from spraying it all over the kitchen, Ember winced and laughed at the same time. “Fair enough.”
“Speaking of neighbors.” Cheyenne shrugged on her backpack and pointed at her friend. “Don’t even think about paying Matthew another visit without me being there.”
“Please.” Ember rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to be alone with him right now. Or at all, honestly. See you later.”
“Yeah.” Cheyenne slipped through the front door and locked it behind her. Before she headed down the hall toward the elevators, she cast a quick glance at Matthew Thomas’ front door and frowned. We’ll be back soon enough.
Chapter Seventy-Three
She ate a breakfast burrito from a gas station on the drive to the VCU campus. By the time she pulled into the student lot and headed down the path toward the Computer Sciences building, Cheyenne still wasn’t convinced it was a good idea to be here. We should be talking to Matthew right now. Moving as fast as we can to bust those control centers. This is gonna get out of hand. I can feel it.
She kept her head down and walked quickly, occasionally glancing up when a student shouted in surprise or laughed too loudly or ran too close in front of her on the walkway. Something’s wrong. Why can’t I pin it down?
When she reached the front door of the Computer Sciences building and grabbed the handle, a tingle of itching energy raced across the back of her neck and along her shoulders. Cheyenne turned and scanned the grass and the neighboring buildings, then jerked open the door and slipped inside. Ju
st keep paying attention. That itch means something.
Getting to the empty classroom where she taught her Advanced Programming class ten minutes early didn’t help the feeling of impending wrongness. Cheyenne pulled out her laptop and checked her email for something to do, but the only emails she had were from the students who’d turned their work in early for the week. She snorted and shut her laptop. “Overachievers.”
The tingling energy raced across her neck and shoulders again, pulsing. She grabbed her backpack, pulled the activator out of the front pocket, changed to her drow form, and stuck it behind her ear. The sharp pinch made her eyelids flutter, then she gazed around the empty classroom and sat back in the chair behind her desk. Nothing lighting up with this thing, so at least there’s that. I sure as hell better be able to see what’s happening. If it even does.
“Morning.”
Cheyenne glanced quickly at the classroom door and switched back to her human form as the first two students stepped inside. “Hey.”
“TGIF, right?” The first girl who’d spoken let out a nasal giggle that ended in a snort. Her smile died when Cheyenne went back to gazing around the empty classroom. “Okay.”
The undergrad students taking Maleshi’s Advanced Programming class filtered quickly into the room, and at 10:31 a.m., Cheyenne stood from the chair behind the desk and nodded at the last kid to come inside. “Can you grab the door?”
“Oh. Yeah.” The kid, who had a shaggy mop of dirty-blond hair, spun quickly and did as she asked before taking a seat.
I’m still calling them kids. They’re only a year younger than me, if that.
“Okay. This is it. Just a regular class on a Friday morning.” Cheyenne’s eyes darted toward the door when the shadow of someone passing in the hall flickered across the narrow window. “Some of you are still working on the last tiny assignment from Wednesday, right?”
Her students nodded slowly, wondering what was up with their odd new instructor and sharing a round of confused glances.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She slid her laptop aside on the desk and sat again. “Whoever hasn’t finished that up yet, go ahead and take the rest of this class to do that. If you have any questions, I’m right here.”