by M. J. Scott
Wicked Games
M.J. Scott
emscott enterprises
Contents
Acknowledgments
Free Sneak Peek
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
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About the Author
Also by M.J. Scott
Excerpt from The Shattered Court
Copyright © 2018 by M.J. Scott
Excerpt from Shadow Kin © 2018 by M.J. Scott
All rights reserved.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published by emscott enterprises.
Created with Vellum
For my darling Dad.
This is the first book of mine he never got to see and I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to that.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Sarah for reading and to the magnificent Lulus for always cheering me on and always being their for me. This year has been a tough one and I couldn’t have gotten this far without all the love from many many people. Smooches to you all. Extra smooches to my Mum. And extra belleh rubs to Callie and Vesper for all the snuggles and purrs.
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Chapter One
My mother was a wicked witch.
An ill-wisher, a doer of dark deeds.
Trading in false hopes, broken hearts, and the not-so-pretty side of human emotion and gullibility.
She liked me to be seen and not heard. She liked magic that served her best interests. And she liked her men tall, pretty, and well acquainted with sinning.
She would’ve liked the guy standing next to me.
Even if he was a simulation.
He looked like he knew all about being bad. In all the good senses of the word. Tall, dark-haired, and sculpted by a perfectionist. But avatars—skins—can look like anything you want. In real life, he—or she—was just as likely to be a toad as a prince.
I turned back to the game menu, raising my avatar's hand to flick through options. Pretty or not, I hadn't expected company in Nightruns. The game was old. Several gens old. Uncool.
I'd retreated here for that precise reason, hiding out from Nat's coaxing to join her and her team in the latest Phobos offering.
I'd wanted peace and quiet. Time to think.
Which, yes, meant more fool me for coming out in the first place. But Nat was never easy to resist. Though she did know better than to ask me to play any game with magic. I'd known the real thing and seen what it could do; I had no desire to relive it virtually.
But tonight I had no desire to stumble after her and her friends in an unknown game. Nat was a pro. I wasn't. There'd be hundreds of thousands tuned in to the game stream. I didn't want to hold Nat back, nor did I want to sit around and watch her on the screens. So I'd headed for the more obscure parts of the club's catalog.
"You like classics?"
The question startled me. I twisted toward my companion. He studied me with improbably blue eyes, making me wonder again about the real face of whoever was running this skin. "Sorry?"
"Classics?" He gestured at the menu shimmering in the air. "Everyone here tonight seems to be trying to get a slot in the Phobos launch, yet here you are, back in the dark ages."
His voice, like the eyes and the body, was too good to be true, deep and slightly roughened.
Definitely overcompensating. Still, that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy the scenery, given it was so nicely packaged in tight black clothes that hugged every pixel. "Newer isn't everything. Anyway, I'm not much of a gamer."
The avatar raised one dark eyebrow. "What brings a non-gamer to Decker's?"
"I'm with friends. They're pros." And could get me comped on the entry fee and game price, which was how my currently slender credit balance could withstand playing in a club like this.
He nodded. "Ranked?"
I shrugged. "Some." I didn't want to get into a boring conversation about the leagues and rankings and upcoming competitions. If he was a game-head, then I'd find somewhere else to hide out. I reached toward the menu in case I needed the exit fast.
"Made a decision?"
I pulled back. "No."
"How about Kingmaker? The palace run? If you feel like company, that is?" One brow quirked a challenge onto that perfect face.
I hesitated. The palace run was my favorite level of Kingmaker, full of the sorts of traps and logic puzzles I enjoyed. Zero magic. I'd been planning on tackling it alone, but a bit of competition could spice things up. Besides, it might be fun to beat pretty boy. "Pairs or head-to-head?"
He smiled, and I had to give points to whoever had designed his skin—the avatar was an advanced lesson in sheer male beauty. I smiled back before I could stop myself.
"Competition is always more fun." He ushered me toward the menu. "Ladies first."
"First to the crown jewels?" I asked, dialing the time to night. Moonlight made playing sneak thief more fun.
He nodded. "I'll be waiting for you."
"We'll see about that," I muttered, then pressed Go.
The walls of the palace shimmered into view and I flung myself into a run, heading for the first challenge point. Pretty boy dropped out of sight behind me. I smiled and then sped up, sinking into the moment, losing myself in the game, enjoying the familiarity, even if the simulation didn't feel entirely real at times and the ageing graphics had a tendency to flicker at disconcerting moments.
My breath sang in my ears as I traversed the darkened corridors, climbing balconies, solving the puzzles guarding each new stage, and dodging guards. Occasionally I caught glimpses of my opponent, muscles rippling under the sleek black shirt and pants as he vaulted over an obstacle or stretched for a handhold.
He was doing pretty well—okay, really well—but I thought I had him. If I was reading his route right, he was taking the long way around. He was toast.
Or so I thought, until I dropped onto the balcony above the throne room, creeping carefully through the line of booby-trapped gilt chairs, to find him leaning against the railing looking down at the sumptuous room below with the well-satisfied expression of a king surveying his domain. His avatar didn't even look rumpled. Maybe he didn't like the realism of sweat and heavy breathing, but Nat had built the skin I wore and she was a purist. I knew it showed every inch of effort I'd put into my route. I stopped myself from reaching up to smooth my hair back.
"I wondered where you'd got to," he said with another damnably perfect smile.
I bit back an annoyed retort and looked down at the throne. The crown and scepter we were supposedly here to steal still glittered against the black velvet seat. "Too scared to make the drop?"
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you, Ms. Lachlan."
"How do you know my name?" Alarm prickled my spine, and I backed up a step.
"Easy." He lifted his
hands from the railing, holding them out palms forward. "I don't mean any harm."
"How do you know my name?" I repeated, flexing my hand. One quick slap of the release button—the virtual reality equivalent of a safe word—and I'd be out of there.
"Your reputation precedes you," he said. "I've been hearing the names Maggie Lachlan and TechWitch a lot lately."
My mouth dropped open. "You want to talk business?"
"Does that surprise you?"
"Most people just make an appointment," I pointed out.
"I like to know who I'm dealing with. Besides, this is more fun." He hit me with the smile again.
I found it a little less perfect on the face of a mysterious stalker. "I like to know who I'm dealing with too," I said, letting my tone frost a little. "So you've got about five seconds to tell me your name or I'm out."
"Sorry. Where are my manners?" He held out a hand. "I'm Damon Riley."
I sat down on one of the spindly gilt chairs with a thump. It squealed a protest, but I didn't care.
"Game halt." Damon snapped his fingers and the balcony disappeared. The lobby reformed around us, my chair morphing into a plain black cube.
"The Damon Riley?" I asked, more to myself than to him.
Those wickedly blue eyes twinkled. Their effect was even more annoying when I realized—having, like everyone else on the planet, seen his picture many times in almost every form of media—that the shade was close to the real thing. His avatar was nudged a little from reality, just enough to hide his identity, I guessed, but not too far.
"Yes. You know who I am," he replied.
It was more a statement than a question. I wondered briefly what he would do if I said no. Probably leave. Unless you were a hermit or otherwise out of touch with the world, you knew who Damon Riley was. "Sure. You own Righteous."
Somehow I managed to sound casual, as if I regularly had people who made world's richest insert-noun-of-choice-here lists come looking for me in game clubs.
His mouth curved again. "I thought you said you weren't much of a gamer?" He sounded amused.
I realized why. Most people would’ve said Riley Arts. Only the hard-core fans called his company Righteous. "Like I said, I know some pros."
Pros whose heads would explode if they knew who I was talking to. I pictured Nat's expression when I told her I'd played against Damon Riley. Exploding heads would just be the start.
The gamers called the company Righteous because it was. Riley's games were the best. No argument. He was the man who'd developed Sorcerer's Apprentice, the must-have game of all time. Almost a cult. It had made him his first million or fifty.
Since then, he hadn't looked back. Riley Arts did both games and game-tech now. Their latest home virtual reality console had sold out worldwide approximately two hours after its release. The games usually took less than that.
"Right." He rested against the railing, stretching out his long legs. "That would be Ms. Marcos and her crew?"
I nodded, my brain trying to catch up with what was happening.
Damon Riley. I didn't have the foggiest idea why someone like him would be coming to me for help. I didn't usually work with his sort of company. My somewhat specialized skills were generally more in demand by boring industries that lacked their own tech gods. Riley Arts had to have more computer geeks per square foot than almost any other company in the world. Why on earth would he want me?
"Yes, Nat's my roommate. Call me Maggie," I added. Ms. Lachlan always made me nervous. Every time the police had knocked on our door in my childhood, they were looking for 'Ms. Lachlan.' Back then, it had been my mother who wore the name, not me, but the sound of it still made me twitch somewhere deep in my gut.
"Of course."
The muscles along the back of my jaw clamped down. I recognized that cool, self-assured tone. Every rich kid who'd ever made my life hell in any of the twenty or thirty schools I'd passed through sounded like that. Like they could snap their fingers and life would provide whatever they needed.
My experience was more like snap your fingers all day long but life would still hand you whatever the hell it wanted and laugh as it knocked you on your ass.
I forced myself to relax. Working for Riley Arts would be great for my career, no matter how aggravating Damon Riley himself turned out to be. "I guess that's enough of tiresome small talk. Which brings me back to why you're here."
"Your name was brought to my attention."
He waved a hand and a cube like the one under my virtual butt rose out of the featureless white floor. He took a seat, pushing back the sleeves of the shirt. I caught a glimpse of gold on the underside of his right wrist.
An interface chip.
Nice. Better than nice. Covetable, cutting-edge technology. Still almost exclusively the domain of the power players of the virtual entertainment industry. Of which Damon was indisputably king. No wonder he had one, even on his avatar.
Nat had a chip, courtesy of a tournament win a few months back. Me, I couldn't begin to afford one. Even if I could—and I'd had my moments of tech lust drooling over the specs—I wasn't sure I wanted one. The thought of something plugging straight into my central nervous system made me, well, nervous.
Luckily my clients didn't yet expect me to have one. By the time they did, I figured the tech would be tested enough to overcome my instinctive caution and I might be able to afford it.
Of course, if Damon Riley hired me, I'd be able to afford several of the damn things and still have enough left over for my other, more pressing expenses.
"Who gave you my name?" I gave him my best “hey, give me a job” smile. He smiled back, and my pulse hitched.
Just an avatar. Yes, in real life he was plenty pretty too. Not quite as sleekly perfect as the skin, but it wasn't too much of an exaggeration. The real man was tall and dark and built too. But in real life, if I played this right, he'd be a client. Maggie's rules of life included a strict no-lusting-after-the-paycheck clause.
Especially no lusting after the way-too-sure-of-himself paycheck.
He leaned forward, and I mirrored his action automatically. Damn.
"Like I said, I've been hearing your name a lot lately."
"And you also heard I was friends with Nat?"
His eyes twinkled. "No, I'm afraid that was something my team dug up."
"You had me investigated?" My jaw twinged again, and several muscles in my back joined in the protest. Twinkles and sinner's smiles be damned, I didn't like people poking around in my business.
"I believe in thorough preparation," he added, not sounding even the slightest bit apologetic.
Paycheck, I reminded myself as my teeth ground a little tighter. "Mr. Riley, you can be as prepared as you like, but unless you tell me what the problem is, I can't help you."
His eyes narrowed. "Who says I have a problem?"
"Maybe the fact that you've hunted me down in a club on a night off and took the trouble to meet me anonymously?"
"Maybe I was just curious to meet the woman who calls herself a TechWitch."
"TechWitch is a business name, not a description. Marketing. Something you understand very well, if the evidence is to be believed."
I didn't like the name. It was something one of my earliest clients had said in recommending me, and it had stuck. It was, like I said, good marketing, nothing more, which was why I'd kept it. And I was sure Riley's investigators had told him as much. He was beating around the bush. Or lying. Or maybe both. Growing up with Sara—my mother—had left me with a well-honed bullshit meter, and the needle was starting to waver.
"So you don't claim supernatural abilities?"
I frowned. Was he serious? Or still trying to avoid getting to the point? "Not at all. I'm very, very good at my job, but that doesn't require magic. As I'm sure you know."
Sara's laughter echoed in my head. How could anyone think I had power? My mother's disappointment—or disgust, rather—had been perfectly clear when I failed to show any signs
of power after I turned thirteen. Overnight I became strictly an annoyance and a burden to her, not that she would’ve won any mother of the year awards before then. I was spared knowing just what she might’ve eventually done about that burden when she died a few months later.
"Why? Did you want a witch?"
His face went still. "No. No. Just the opposite, in fact."
Some of the tension riding my gut eased even as my curiosity piqued. Damon Riley wasn't a fan of magic either? One point in his favor. Though he was happy enough to include it in his games, so obviously it wasn't completely a no-go. "So what do you want? You do know what I do, right?" I threw his words back at him.
"Yes. The term 'computer whisperer' was mentioned."
I didn't let myself groan. I'd been dumb enough to give the interview to the tech reporter who'd coined that little term. I lived with it, but I didn't have to like it. "That's not the term I'd use."
"What would you use?"
"Troubleshooter, usually. Do you have some trouble that needs shooting?" I cocked my head, waiting for the inevitable questions.
Troubleshooter was a simplification. I was more a cross between cyber engineer and cyber therapist.
I found the problems that technically shouldn't exist. The systems that just didn’t seem to like each other. Pieces of code that, in isolation, should’ve worked perfectly but caused unforeseen complications and glitches when put together with other pieces in adjacent systems.
Despite the cold hard facts that computers were machines and had no feelings, I knew from experience that they did get moody. True, by any test yet devised, no one had yet created a true artificial intelligence. But as each generation of cyber tech became more complicated, more powerful, more autonomous, and we humans generated more and more data to feed them, the systems became . . . touchier. And I, God knew why, had the knack of soothing them. Untangling the knots no one else thought were there.