by Martha Carr
“This is what happens when you screw around with the wrong magicals, okay?” Ember pointed at Cheyenne and the nightstalkers without turning around to look. “They checked out that name you gave us—Syno. Turns out, the guy set traps at his locations and didn’t leave a whole lot behind for us to work with.”
“What?”
“He’s gone, Matthew. And all his gear and his tech and the machines you helped him power with your fancy little program are gone too. That makes it look a lot like someone tipped him off about having visitors.”
“Ember, I swear to you, I didn’t say a word to Syno. I gave you that information to help.”
“Well, it wasn’t very helpful. It was the opposite of helpful.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand because you don’t stop talking!” Ember thrust a pink-tinged finger at him and leaned forward in her chair as she gazed at him. “Shut your mouth and listen.”
Maleshi looked slowly over her shoulder at Cheyenne and raised her eyebrows, and the halfling shrugged. Ember’s badass is showing. Maybe we didn’t need backup.
“You wasted our time with one name that didn’t get us anywhere, and you put thousands of innocent people at risk because you’re worried about incurring losses. Two of those machines running on your programs showed up at VCU this morning.”
Matthew stopped holding his breath and started panting. “What?”
“Yeah. Popped right out of the ground for everyone to see and started attacking people.”
Cheyenne forced herself not to laugh. Technically just Maleshi and me, but points for stretching the truth.
“The only reason no one got hurt or killed in what they all think was a random and unexplainable earthquake was that Cheyenne was there to stop it.” Ember grabbed the wheels and moved toward him until her knee bumped his sock. “We were nice last time. You need to give us the names of every single magical client you have who’s been paying you for programs, software, tech support, supplies, or whatever the hell else you give them. All their information. Everything. And just in case you don’t think I’m dead serious about this, take another good look at the nightstalkers standing behind me.”
Maleshi grinned when Matthew’s blue eyes settled on her. On cue, she lifted a hand tufted with black fur, and her glinting, blade-like claws shot out with a slicing hiss.
“What the fuck?” He stared at the deadly weapons and swallowed thickly. “You wouldn’t just let that thing attack me.”
“Not sure who you’re calling ‘thing,’” Maleshi tilted her head. “But I promise you I don’t need Ember’s permission for anything. I am here to back her up, though.”
“This is insane.” Matthew’s foot slipped off the rung of the chair as he tried to push himself farther against the backrest. “You’re strong-arming me. That’s what this is, right? Hey, it’s not the first time you people have tried something like this. Hell, it is definitely the scariest.” He swallowed again and cleared his throat. “I can’t in good conscience just give up that kind of sensitive information, not without proof.”
Maleshi let out a low whistle. “Somebody’s got their priorities mixed up.”
With his hands clasped behind his back, Corian dipped his head toward Matthew and muttered, “We can change that.”
“I said no.” Cheyenne pointed at the nightstalker man before stepping into the dining room. “You want proof, Matthew? Sure. I’ll give you proof. Where’s your computer?”
“My what?”
“Come on, don’t make me explain to you what a computer is.” She pulled the activator coil from her pocket and stuck it behind her ear. Her eyelids fluttered as the tech synced with her magic and her vision, then looked around his apartment. She didn’t need the activator’s blinking lights to tell her that was his laptop sitting on the granite-topped island in the kitchen, but she couldn’t mistake it for anything else.
Matthew tried to slide off the chair. “Wait, wait, wait.”
“Sit!” Ember pointed at him, and purple light burst from her fingertip.
Matthew choked and scrambled back up in the chair again. “Cheyenne, seriously. You can’t just show up in my apartment and start going through my things. This is a huge violation of personal space. Privacy. Basic rights. Hell, this is illegal.”
“Yeah, what you’re doing should be too. Too bad nobody knows anything about it, huh?” Cheyenne stepped around the kitchen island, her shoes crunching on the shattered glass in front of the sink, and opened his laptop.
“You might as well stop right there. I’ll give you what you want if you can prove those other magic people used my system to threaten the school. Otherwise, you won’t get anywhere with my computer. I’ve got passwords on everything.”
The halfling looked up from the black screen as it cycled on and shot him a deadpan stare. “Please. You can’t keep me out.”
“This is ridiculous!” Matthew tried to go after her again before remembering the fae’s finger pointed at his face and the nightstalker woman’s deadly claws still extended from her fingertips. “What do you think you’re gonna find in there, huh?”
“Your proof.” Cheyenne studied the log-in screen, her eyes darting back and forth as the activator fed her what she needed to sign into Matthew Thomas’ private laptop. If I could take a screenshot of code, I better be able to pull up a lot more than that. The log-in screen disappeared, replaced by his desktop screen and the background image. “Oh, hey. Good-lookin’ dog.”
“Yeah, she’s my mom’s. Wait a minute.” Matthew’s eyes bulged. “How did you—”
“Shh.” Cheyenne held up a finger for him to wait. Her activator prompted her with every command she needed, and it only took a second of thought before the tech piece pulled up a mostly circular view in her vision of the grass right outside the Computer Sciences building on campus. It was a still frame, but the tips of both tunnel machines’ spiraling noses were unmistakable. “Oh, yeah, here we go.”
“What are you talking about?” Matthew’s voice broke. “What are you doing? Hey, what is she doing?”
“Relax, will ya?” Maleshi shot him a playful frown. “If she’s not throwing attack spells at your face, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
His mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
Cheyenne grinned when the activator prompted her with the option to download the video of her fight with the war machines onto Matthew’s laptop. I knew it. This thing does it all. She accepted the prompt and had to log in again with an access code on the laptop, also provided by the activator, and hit download.
“All right, neighbor.” She slid the laptop off the counter and carried it toward the table. Wiggling her eyebrows, she set the laptop down and snorted when he flinched away from her. “I did not expect you to get this jumpy. Just hit play and everything will be perfectly clear.”
“What?” He glanced at the screen and the still frame at the beginning of the video. “Did you just download something?”
“Clearly.”
“Great. I’m gonna have to run a system scan after this. Do you know how much valuable and sensitive information is on this laptop? Jesus. And you just took some random file and stuck it on my—ah!” He jerked away when Cheyenne leaned toward him, and she gave him a warning look before stabbing her finger down on the space bar.
“Watch the damn video, Matthew.”
Slowly, he focused on the circular view of Cheyenne’s fight with the war machines and the sprouting portal ridge. She’d scrubbed the audio on purpose, but it didn’t matter. Everything Cheyenne had seen less than an hour before played out exactly as she remembered it on the thirteen-inch laptop screen.
Matthew’s mouth fell open when a slashing, whirling Maleshi Hi’et came into view, complete with her four-inch claws and sparks bursting from the black metal diggers.
Corian leaned toward the general and muttered, “Did you know she was recording that?”
“No, Corian. I don’t generally ask i
f a drow halfling plans on recording an emergency response to something like that.” Maleshi squinted. “My guess is the activator.”
“Didn’t have that feature last time I used one.”
She snorted. “The last piece of O’gúl tech you used was as much of a dinosaur as you are.”
The recording ended with the final sputtering explosion of the last machine that ended the magical battle. Cheyenne propped her forearm on the dining room table and leaned on it. “There you go, man. Proof.”
Matthew cleared his throat. “I don’t believe it.”
Ember shook herself out of her awe after watching the whole thing and folded her arms. “You need to start believing it right now, and then you need to give us those names.”
“No, I had no idea this is what my system was being used for. This isn’t what they told me.”
“You mean, the O’gúl loyalists smuggling war machine parts over the Border, demanding to do business with you and refusing to take no for an answer were supposed to be the good guys? They did a number on you, didn’t they?”
“They told me it was to help the other ones.” Matthew scrunched up his face. “The other magicals.”
“Dude.”
He spun in the chair and looked down at Ember. “I am so sorry.”
“Stop apologizing and give us what we need to stop this from happening again.” The fae girl nodded. “That’s the only thing that matters right now.”
“Yeah. Okay, yeah. I can’t believe this.” Shaking his head, Matthew pulled his laptop closer and started clicking through files to get to the information he wanted. “I mean, I don’t believe everything I see in recordings like that until I’ve had a chance to go through the data and look for tampering. You know, like video editing.”
“I’m well aware of what you mean.” Cheyenne glanced at Maleshi and Corian. Corian glanced away and turned to study the rest of Matthew’s apartment so he wouldn’t laugh.
“But that she was in there.” Matthew gestured at Maleshi without looking away from his screen. “You can’t doctor something like that.”
“Well, feel free to pick apart that video file all you want.” Cheyenne drummed her fingers on the table. “You won’t find anything.”
“I know, I know. I believe you.” He opened a file and scanned through it. “Who am I sending this to?”
Corian stepped forward and set his cell phone on the table beside the laptop. “That server address, if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah. No problem.” Matthew’s fingers flew across the keyboard, and in under a minute, he jerked his hands away from the laptop and leaned back. “There. It’s in there. Everything I have, I promise.”
Ember shrugged when he looked at her. “You understand why we can’t just take your word for it without checking.”
“Absolutely. You guys go do what you have to do. I’ll deal with this on my end too.”
“By doing what?” Corian took his phone back and slipped it into his pocket.
“I can shut the whole thing down. Scrap the project. At the very least, deactivate the whole thing and archive it.” Matthew lifted both hands and shook his head. “I don’t want anything to do with it at this point.”
“That’s good to hear.” Cheyenne nudged her fist against his shoulder and nodded. “Thanks for not making this as hard as it could’ve been.”
He glanced at Maleshi’s claws and swallowed. “Uh-huh.”
The general chuckled. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m not the one you have to worry about.”
“Yeah, it’s a good thing we didn’t bring Lumil along,” Cheyenne added. “She would’ve been so disappointed.”
“Thank you for your time, Matthew.” Corian nodded and stepped away from the table to summon another portal.
Cheyenne and Maleshi walked with him and waited for the doorway of dark light to open. Matthew glanced at Ember and finally got the guts to slide off the chair. “Ember, I had no idea.”
“Not right now. I’m waiting to find out whether you’re lying about it all over again.”
“I didn’t know it was this serious.”
“We already had this conversation.” Ember wheeled toward the other magicals and didn’t look back. “I don’t wanna have it again. Ever. If we don’t show up in your living room in the next few days, it’s pretty safe to say we got everything we needed. Thanks.”
Corian’s portal opened, and the nightstalkers stepped aside to let the fae girl wheel through and back into her apartment. Maleshi looked at Matthew and gave him a quick wink before disappearing. Corian didn’t bother to say anything before he stepped through, and Cheyenne paused to point at her neighbor. “You can keep that video, but I’d be careful about letting anyone else see it. We can call a truce if you want.”
“Yeah.” Matthew nodded vacantly. “I’m cool with that.”
“Sweet.” The halfling stepped through the portal behind her friends, and the dark light shrank in midair.
Matthew stared at the empty space in his living room where they’d all just been standing and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m done taking clients on family recommendation. That’s for damn sure.”
Chapter Seventy-Nine
“Okay.” Cheyenne spun to face the nightstalkers and spread her arms. “So, we wait for Persh’al to tell us where to go next, and then we hit hard. How long does that usually take?”
“Persh’al’s fast, so we’ll know where to start by the end of the day.” Corian chuckled. “He’s not happy that you cracked that tech from the last machine in less than twenty-four hours, but it won’t stop him from getting the job done on his end. But you need to wait for my call, got it? We have to be careful now.”
“Right. I’ll wait for your call, and then I’ll go in with you.”
“No. I’m talking about the call when it’s time to make the crossing again.”
“What?” Cheyenne frowned. “When’s that gonna be?”
“No clue. Waiting for L’zar.”
“So, I’m out of the game now with these war machines? Just like that?”
The nightstalker shrugged. “Sorry, kid.”
“No, no. That’s not how this works.” She snatched the activator coil from behind her ear and shoved it into her coat pocket. “I’m not the drow puppet who gets to fight off all the things coming after me just so I can wait around for everyone else who thinks they’re smarter than me to get the rest of the job done afterward. I’m in this, Corian. I signed up. Made the crossing and everything.”
“Yes, you did.”
“And you’re the one who told me not to keep sitting on the sidelines and to get involved.”
He dipped his head. “I did. And now I’m telling you to wait for my call.”
“Unbelievable.”
“L’zar’s almost ready to move. I can’t tell you exactly when, but I know it’ll be soon, and when he is ready, we need to make sure you’re not busy fighting off something else coming for you. As far as we know, the loyalists controlling those machines aren’t yet aware that you and Ember live in the same apartment. The wards we put up keep their systems from tracing anything back to you as long as you’re here inside those wards. We need you to stay put.”
“’Stay put.’ What does that even mean?”
Corian was too busy conjuring another portal to answer her immediately. When he did, he raised his eyebrows and shrugged, one tufted ear twitching. “It means you stay in your apartment until you hear from me. As I understand it, you don’t have any other obligations until Monday morning—assuming your school is up and running again after today’s little incident, of course.”
Cheyenne glared at him. “And what happens if L’zar’s not ready to move before Monday?”
“Well, if that’s the case, we’ll reassess things when we get there. This is the safest place for you right now. Just get comfy.” Without another word, Corian walked through his portal and disappeared.
Maleshi paused and gave Cheyenne a sympathetic smil
e. “You know he’s right, and no, that doesn’t mean you have to be happy about it. We’re almost ready, kid. This close to the final step, things have a tendency to get dicey. So be ready.”
“I’ve been ready.”
“I know.” Maleshi nodded at Ember and vanished through the portal two seconds before it popped out of existence.
Cheyenne clenched her fists and leaned against the back of the couch.
Ember rubbed her forehead. “I didn’t expect them to put you on house arrest after what happened this morning. I mean, at least it’s a great apartment with a giant TV.”
Shaking her head, Cheyenne stepped around the couch and headed for the stairs to the mini loft. “I didn’t spend the first eighteen years of my life cooped up on Bianca Summerlin’s estate just so I could let a couple two-legged cats imprison me in my own apartment.”
“Right.” Ember snorted. “Couldn’t’ve said it better myself.”
“I don’t get why they can’t just tell me what L’zar’s trying to do. How much readier can we be? I mean, besides the whole part about having to go take down a cache of activated war machines.” Cheyenne walked quickly up the iron stairs and sat in the chair in front of her wobbly desk.
“Sounds like they just wanna keep you safe.”
“Yeah, that’s obvious.”
“Well, think about it. They’ve been fighting this fight against the Crown for hundreds of years, and then you come along, and you’re half-human. That on its own is enough to make things even more complicated.”
Cheyenne leaned sideways and met her friend’s gaze through the iron bars of the mini-loft’s rail. “You’re telling me things I already know, Em. I’m hardly the most complicated variable in this whole thing.”
“Ha.” Ember wiped the smile off her face and cleared her throat. “Not being the most complicated doesn’t make the situation less complicated. They don’t wanna lose you before they get the chance to use you.”
“Yeah, I get it.” The halfling slumped in her chair and stared at the monitor’s power button. “And I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t end up getting into a whole bunch of trouble every time I go out to do something completely unrelated. So, full disclosure, I’m gonna sit here and sulk for ten minutes. When that’s over, I guess we should have someone else do our grocery shopping and bring it on up, I guess.”