Poison Tree

ceiling light. Next to the bed were six bottles of water, still sealed, and an unopened box of cinnamon-swirl breakfast bars.

Her body still ached, but in a tolerable way, as if she were getting over the u, not recovering from a puncture wound, an explosion, and a beating.

A moment of panic gripped her, and she dragged her sheets aside to check that both legs were still rmly attached. The leg of her jeans had been cut o above her newly injured knee. The ragged edge of denim and the threads hanging down had been stained with blood, but the skin itself was intact. She bent the knee experimentally and found that it was stiff but functional, with a shiny new scar just above her kneecap.

She stood cautiously, testing her ability to move. Obviously a witch had been here, but what kind of witch? On whose side?

Her stomach rumbled, and her mouth was bone dry, but no matter how carefully someone had set them out, she wasn’t going to help herself to food and water until she knew where she was.

She continued to explore and found a change of clothes on the kitchen counter, a cell phone with a single phone number saved in the contacts list, and, so much more important, all her rank-weapons, with the addition of sheaths for the knives.

The focus on the knives was a good clue about where she was, so she dialed the phone and was rewarded with Ravyn’s sleepy drawl. “Yo. You’re awake.”

“So it seems. Why?”

“You wrecked your stolen car,” Ravyn said. “I had to do some quick work to keep you from waking up with a cop by your side. I think I’ve o cially ful lled my debt to Christian, but the asshole’s cell phone was blown up and I don’t have another number for him. The witch who worked on you says you should eat and drink when you wake up, or you’ll fry your systems and all her work will be wasted.”

“Christian’s okay?”

“Last I heard. Now I’m going back to bed. There are keys in the fridge.”

“Why the fridge?”

“Because I wanted you to call before you split,” Ravyn answered. She yawned and then said, “Look, I’m not normally in the business of protecting people, but Kral crossed some lines to get to you, and I owe the leader of Frost a favor for getting him blown up, so you’re clear to use the safe house as long as you need it. Also, I don’t control members’ decisions, but I’ve strongly suggested to my guild that the number against you is crap. So, I’m done.

Have a good day.”

She hung up, leaving Alysia shaking her head at the phone. Alysia hadn’t known Ravyn well before, but she suspected the burgundy-haired mercenary was going to be an interesting leader.

As assured as she possibly could be that she wasn’t going to be poisoned, Alysia double-

checked all the packages and seals for any evidence of tampering and then downed two of the energy bars and a bottle of water while she made some phone calls and got the keys from the fridge.

She left messages at the two numbers she knew for Christian, giving him the number of the phone Ravyn had left her and asking him to call. She had half dialed Lynzi before she thought better of it. Until she was sure Kral was o her tail, she didn’t want him to have any reason to believe SingleEarth could be used to track her down.

Underneath the keys in the crisper, she found a map marking the location of the safe house and the nearby Crimson guild hall.

The map was good to have because it showed her where she was, but Crimson wasn’t her goal. Her goal was a ranchstyle house set well back from the hubbub of the nearest town or major road and surrounded by the forest that seemed to fill so much of New England.

Christian was a city boy at heart, but when it came to his own home, he knew the value of privacy.

His home. Alysia couldn’t a ord to think of it as hers, even if she had lived there for almost four years. She couldn’t automatically assume that she still had any right to it.

Alysia frowned at the sight of the car in the driveway. The shiny silver Prius didn’t look like something Christian would drive, unless he had bought it as part of a cover or

“borrowed” it in a pinch.

Maybe he sold the house, she thought as she walked up to the front door.

Was some white-picket-fence family playing house in the place where she and Christian had trained together, the place she had come home to after a fight, tired and triumphant?

It was past a normal dinner hour, but not so late that most people would be angry at being disturbed, so Alysia rang the bell. When no one answered, she walked around the one-story home, trying to keep out of sight of the large-paned windows facing the backyard just in case someone was inside. At the sliding glass door to the backyard she paused again, this time to listen. Anyone there?

She thought she heard movement, so before breaking in, she tried knocking again.

A kid came to the door. He didn’t open it, but he pushed the curtains aside to peer out.

He did sel it, she thought, before the kid met her gaze with his own direct stare and she realized who he was. She hadn’t seen him long, but she was sure this was the kid who had saved her life at SingleEarth.

A second boy trotted up, wide-eyed and curious, but the older tiger turned, snapped something to him, and then dropped the curtain and walked away.

Don’t jump to conclusions, she tried to tell herself as she limped back to her car. She was breathing heavily by the time she reached it, and her knee was aching. She hadn’t intended to do this much running around. But, Christian, why are your ex-girlfriend’s adopted kids in your house?

It didn’t take long to pop the lock on the Prius and nd Sarik’s registration in the glove box. They had dropped her car o and taken one of his, probably to avoid bringing her nice, legal, shiny lease to Onyx, which was almost certainly where they were.

I was right.

Maybe she would head to Crimson after all. Frost was Christian’s guild, but it was also the guild whose members were most likely to accept a capture. Very few Crimson members had any interest in kidnappings—in fact, the o er of such a job usually o ended them—

and Crimson’s guild leader seemed to be no friend of Kral’s these days. Alysia could get more information there.

Arriving at the Crimson guild hall, however, felt oddly surreal. It didn’t have the same sentiment as Frost, or even Onyx; she had joined mostly because it was challenging, not because she t their normal pro le. She could do some subterfuge when she wanted to, but she didn’t like the old-money attitude that Crimson tried to maintain.

The Crimson guild hall was located at the back of a good old-fashioned ranch sitting on seven acres of land, complete with a pair of horses and a bevy of barn cats. There were multiple buildings, but the main training area was inside the larger of two barns—the smaller, of course, was for the horses. The training hall was soundproof and looked nothing like a barn on the inside; instead of a hayloft, it had a ladder that led to the weapons storeroom.

Alysia was halfway up the ladder when someone called her name. It took a moment, but she was able to recall that the woman’s name was Yasmin. She had trained and competed to join the guild around the same time Alysia and Christian had.

“Nice to see you’re not dead,” Yasmin remarked.

“You too,” Alysia replied sincerely. “How has it been here? How long has Ravyn been in charge?”

“Adam had a job get rougher than he was ready for,” Yasmin said, referring to the man who had been the leader of Crimson when Alysia had left the guild.

Alysia wasn’t disappointed to learn he was gone, since with Christian in charge of Frost, that meant two of the three leaders who had hated her and tried to kill her were out of the picture.

“I do not know many details, but I do not believe his mind fully recovered. He did badly at last year’s challenge. Two others beat him by miles. Ravyn won after a tiebreaker.”

“I’d have thought Christian would have tried to take it by now.” It was probably a comment better directed to