“Right. Try in or around the Richmond area. Localized there, most likely.”
Cheyenne almost lurched out of her chair but managed to hold everything together long enough to calm herself. Nightstalker. That has to be what Mattie Bergmann is. I knew he was looking at me weird when I mentioned my other trainer. Now he’s trying to find me without actually finding me.
She kept her eyes closed and listened to French’s fingers flying across the keyboard. “I’m not pulling anything up, man. Sorry.”
“Huh. Yeah, no worries.” Rhynehart rapped his knuckles on the countertop and leaned back. “Figured it was a longshot.”
“Yeah, those cats on two legs are hard to pin down.”
Cheyenne heard Rhynehart turn—probably to look at her—but she kept her eyes closed and focused on deep breathing.
There’s no way I can trick him into thinking I’m asleep. But he might buy I’m tired and cranky and in too much pain to care about anything else. All sorta true.
The conversation lost her after that as Rhynehart dove into answering a bunch of standard questions and filling out whatever kind of report both the FRoE and Rez 38 required after this Q’orr-capturing episode.
“Did you find anything of value in Q’orr’s house?” French asked. Another standard question, but this time, Rhynehart paused.
“Uh, hey, Blakely?”
“Yeah?” Cheyenne’s eyes fluttered open, stinging now because the pain in her arm was too much.
“Anything of value in that POS’s run-down hut?”
She shrugged. “If there was, it’s gone now.”
French raised his eyebrows. “Why’d she say that?”
Rhynehart cleared his throat and stepped aside, gesturing for Cheyenne to continue answering the questions meant for him.
The drow halfling met French’s gaze and shrugged.
“She took down Q’orr, and his house with him.”
“She did?” French leaned toward Rhynehart. “She brought that asshole in?”
“More like she brought him out, but yeah.”
“How the hell?”
“Halfling, man.”
“Funny. Can’t put my finger on what that other half might be.”
Rhynehart rubbed his fingers over his lips and muttered, “Drow.”
French’s eyes almost popped out of his head. He examined Cheyenne. “No shit?”
She lifted her hand and shot him a dismissive wave. “Yep. Thanks.”
“Huh. Oh, hey. Healer’s in.”
That got Cheyenne’s attention. She opened her eyes to look for this Sha’gron who had been called to her aid. Her gaze landed on the troll she’d seen in Q3—the woman with turquoise bindings in her long red braids laced with feathers who’d raised the copper bowl toward the drow halfling.
“This the one?”
Rhynehart nodded. “That’s her. Got some kinda black substance on her shoulder. Burned all the way through.”
“Ah.” Sha’gron held Cheyenne’s gaze as she approached and sat in the chair beside the halfling. “Let’s take a look.”
Cheyenne nodded and let the healer poke and prod her wounded shoulder. She sucked in a breath when the troll applied more pressure than seemed necessary.
“All right.” Sha’gron reached into a huge pocket sewn on the outside of her brightly-colored dress and pulled out what looked like a shriveled green onion. “Chew on that. Don’t swallow it. And look at something over there?”
“Why over there?”
The troll spread her arms and made a comically clueless face. “For some reason, it hurts more if you watch. So I suggest you don’t.”
“Great.” Cheyenne puffed out a sigh and settled her gaze on Rhynehart. She stuck the withered green onion thing in her mouth—it tasted weirdly like Big Red gum—and chewed. It made her mouth tingle, but that was it. Go figure.
The man leaned back against the counter and folded his arms with a smirk. The halfling felt a sharp pressure in the open sores on her shoulder, then Rhynehart glanced at the troll’s handiwork on the wounded halfling and grimaced.
“What? Ah!”
The healer had her entire finger wiggling around in the hole burned into Cheyenne’s flesh. “I told you to look somewhere else. I’m almost done.”
“Jesus!” Cheyenne shot Rhynehart a wide-eyed look of shock and disgust, then clenched her eyes shut and focused on not going full drow so she could throw Sha’gron across the tiny lobby of the reservation prison.
Sure enough, the healer pulled her finger out of Cheyenne’s open sores and nodded. Rhynehart waved at French, who handed over a box of Kleenex that made it from the FRoE operative to Sha’gron. The troll snatched three tissues out of the box, gazing the whole time at Cheyenne’s arm from different angles as she wiped the halfling’s blood off her hands. Then she cupped her hand under Cheyenne’s mouth. “Spit.”
Not willing to argue, the half-drow pushed the weird dried root of cinnamon-flavored whatever out of her mouth. Sha’gron stared at it in her palm, then nodded and stuck it back into the outside pocket of her dress.
“So. Don’t wash it. Don’t put anything in it. Whatever happened to get that nasty wound in your shoulder, don’t do it again.” The troll healer pushed to her feet, clapped her hands, and glanced at Rhynehart and French. “Anything else?”
“I…think that’ll do it,” Rhynehart muttered.
“Thanks, Healer.” French nodded at the troll, who examined him before shooting Cheyenne a quick wink. She turned on her heel and left.
The drow halfling raised a brow at the FRoE operative. “Don’t wash it?”
“Medicine for magicals, right?” He snickered, but his smile faded when Cheyenne didn’t think it was amusing. “Nah. She didn’t mean forever. How’s it feel?”
“Like someone went digging for gold in there with their bare hands.”
French snorted and turned his attention to the computer monitor in front of him, shaking his head.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
They left their magic-dampening vests and Rhynehart’s gloves on the red plastic chairs in the waiting room before stepping outside into the afternoon light in Rez 38’s Q1. Cheyenne’s shoulder began to feel much better, although the troll healer’s words repeated in her mind: It hurts more if you watch.
All the commotion surrounding the unconscious Q’orr finally being brought out of his black-magic house and into the Q1 detention center had mostly settled down by the time the drow halfling and the FRoE operative made their way back through the black and dark-gray outbuildings toward the entrance.
“What the heck was
