Yeah, fuck you, Yulia. You were just a blip in my badass career. Let’s see you try your ice magic shit on them.
Ghosts and Ice Witches made for annoying and exciting jobs, but Shay looked forward to visiting Alison at the new school and seeing how well she was adapting. She’d decided against telling Brownstone about any of her recent adventures or even her new tomb raider in training, just yet.
He didn’t need to know about her failure, and the Catholic bounty hunter might take issue with her fucking with ghosts rather than bringing in a bunch of priests to do Last Rites.
She didn’t feel any guilt. She was just doing a job. If the Church wanted to handle the house, that was on them.
It was Parents’ Weekend at Alison’s school, and she was going to enjoy it.
The girl waved happily from a table in the lunchroom as Shay and Brownstone maneuvered through the thick crowd of kids and parents.
“Look at this place,” Brownstone exclaimed, gazing at all the elegant wooden tables and booths. “This looks more like a fancy restaurant than a school cafeteria.”
When the pair got to the table, Alison got up and hugged them.
After they sat down Shay glanced around, taking in everything. The contrast between a magic school centered around teens and her experiences with deadly magic on her job stuck out in her mind. The implications of the place weren’t lost on her either.
Just because a kid studied magic at the School of Necessary Magic didn’t mean they’d grow up to be a good person, any more than all the asshole politicians who went to college at some fancy private school grew up to be good people. A future Snegurka might be already there.
The tomb raider shook her head, not wanting Alison to look into her soul and see any of her dark thoughts. As if raising a teenager with hormones wasn’t tricky enough. Now they could see your soul or predict your future.
After they’d talked about Alison’s classes and her friends, Shay poked Brownstone with her elbow. “Don’t put your baggage on her. And give Alison her present already.”
After all, they’d both worked hard for it, including the recovery of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade. Once Brownstone explained what the Professor was offering him, Shay’s respect for the man grew even more. He’d found a way to be overprotective and stylish at the same time.
Brownstone pulled out the jewelry box and opened it, revealing a jeweled pendant on a silver chain.
“The magic coming off of it! It’s beautiful,” Alison exclaimed.
“And functional.”
“Huh?”
“It’s called an ‘Aegis Pendant.’ It’s a kind of shield. You activate it by wanting to be protected and saying ‘Aegis aeon.’ Once you do that, it’ll form a magic shell right around your body.”
“I love it,” Alison replied. She hopped up and rushed over to pull him into a hug as tears ran down her cheeks.
Brownstone blinked. “Why are you crying if you like it?” Alison just looked at him and Shay rolled her eyes.
After a few moments, the girl hurried off to show her friends.
Shay shook her head. “You’re a damn enigma, Brownstone.”
“Huh?”
“Clueless one second, wise the next.”
Chapter Twelve
As her own boss, Shay could take a vacation whenever she wanted. A week after visiting Alison at the school, she’d still avoided taking on any new jobs. It was even nice to take Lily out shopping for some new clothes and some decent pizza, leaving Peyton behind to play with the new oven.
Pounding out so many in a row might have done wonders for her reputation, even with the loss of the magic beans, but the tomb raiding world wouldn’t fall under the control of Snegurka just because Shay didn’t take on a job every other day.
Running herself ragged also increased the chance she’d make a mistake. She was still wondering if taking Lily with her was an asset or a mistake.
As annoying as the Antarctica situation had been, she hadn’t screwed anything up. She’d just not gotten there in time. It didn’t make the burn go away completely, but it dulled it.
The tomb raider sighed as she sat down at a table in Warehouse Four with several piles of books in front of her. She wasn’t sure about what irritated her more—that Yulia had snagged the beans before she had, or that the woman held her in such contempt that she hadn’t finished her off.
You’re gonna regret letting me go, bitch.
Shay shook her head. She wasn’t going to worry about that for now. Today’s little background research session was a follow-up to an already successful—if not particularly profitable—raid. She’d been practically living in Warehouse Four for the last few days, occasionally checking on Lily.
The stone she’d recovered from Mexico sat on the table next to her. Now that she’d had time to catch her breath, she had thrown herself into good old-fashioned research to figure out what the hell the thing was.
Something caused it to be worth the life of a tomb raider and special enough that some weird possessed elf didn’t want to give it up.
Peyton was still looking into the stone, but she’d told him not to prioritize the work. He was more useful to her keeping an eye on the net and Lily was more than eager to help him. If Yulia surfaced Shay wanted to know right away, so she could roast the ice bitch.
Her internet searches into the stone and its symbols had proven useless so far, so she decided to just hit book after book in hopes that she might find something. A lot of accumulated knowledge still hadn’t made it online, so she hadn’t been worried that she’d not found anything in her initial checks.
What did trouble her was the lack of information now that she’d dived into her rare book
