Gremlin Night
Page 20
“Did you tell my partner?” I blurted.
Dara narrowed her eyes. “You mean, did I tell me about your using blood magic, or tell him about the mana snake?”
“Yes,” I replied, but there was no sarcasm in my voice.
“No. What good would that do?”
“It could make things pretty hot for me,” I said.
She shrugged. “True, but then we’d lose our hold over you.”
Our hold over you. The words settled over me like a shroud, and I shuddered.
“Gee, thanks,” I said.
“You are a valuable asset. You’ll thank me, in the long run.”
“You’re a nasty piece of work,” I replied.
She shrugged again. “Being one goes with the work.”
I was going to let sleeping mana snakes lie, but right then the most important thing wasn’t that, it wasn’t even if I still had a job, it was, what had just happened.
“A sacrifice, for her. Who is her?” I asked.
“I don’t know that, either,” Dara said. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said.
She stood and joined Riley and two of her team. Riley looked none the worse for wear, and his own suit unburnt. Magic had been used, of course.
I went over to join Tully. “We made it,” I said. “We stopped the bad guy.”
He looked at me, face expressionless. “Are you off the blood magic, permanently?”
I looked down at my hands, then back into his eyes. “For real.”
“I hope so, I really do,” he said. “Because if you aren’t, I’ll have to report you.”
“Fair enough.” I forced a grin, trying to change the subject. “Hey, way to pull out a win.”
“But what about the bad guy behind the bad guy?” He asked, and I sensed, behind his mask, that he might actually have been happy to see me, even if he was very unhappy with me.
That was a start.
Thank you for reading Gremlin Night. Find out what happens to Liz and Tully next in Goblin Day.
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed Gremlin Night. Liz and Tully have been living in my head for a long while. I wrote the prequel, “Siloed,” a few years ago, before I began work on what became my first series, The Empowered.
But Liz wouldn’t leave me alone, so, after I wrote the fourth Empowered novel, Empowered: Rebel, I finally listened and began work on Gremlin Night. Goblin Day followed, and there will be at least one more novel after that.
If you’d like to stay in touch and keep up-to-date, please join my reader group. I’ll send you the prequel to Gremlin Night, “Siloed.”
Thanks so much for reading!
Dale
Acknowledgments
I couldn’t have written Gremlin Night without the kind assistance and support of a lot of wonderful people.
My dear friends and fellow authors, Tori Centanni and Anthony Pryor; my writer’s group the Masked Hucksters, Jennifer Willis, Rebecca Stefoff, and Wendy Wagner; my beta readers, which include my wife LeAnn, Vic, Tori, Greg, Cindy, Ann, and Mark; my editor Phyllis Radford; and once more, my wife, LeAnn.
About the Author
Dale Ivan Smith got caught sneaking off to the school library when he was in grade school, so naturally he wound up being a librarian. He’s been writing fiction all his life, proof that sometimes the things that matter take a lot of time to reach.
He’s written The Empowered series, the space opera novel Spice Crimes, and is currently working on the urban fantasy series, Agents of Sorcery.