The halfling could have stayed there under the steaming water for the rest of the night—or at least until the hot water ran out—but she had to be at her mom’s in Henry County at 5:30. Lack of punctuality was on Bianca’s list of reasons to get aggravated. As far as her daughter knew, people went out of their way to be early when meeting with the woman.
She blow-dried her hair, and before pulling it all back into a tight, severe bun, she stopped. “I don’t have any excuse for accidental pointy ears anymore, do I?”
She turned her head from side to side in the mirror, shrugged, and left her hair hanging over her shoulders. All I have to do is think of the deer and the woods. If I could manage not to blast into drow form when the FRoE training room was spitting green darts at me, I think I can handle my mom for an hour or two.
Cheyenne applied her makeup the way she preferred it for the first time in the last six days. This morning she’d been in a hurry to make it to class, but now she brushed on the slightly-paler-than-the-rest-of-her foundation and an extra coat of thick black eyeliner and dark eye shadow. The black lipstick seemed like a little too much for another meeting with her mom to talk about the man neither of them knew as anything other than Cheyenne’s absent father. She settled for the only other color she had—a deep, almost black maroon—then slipped into a black t-shirt with a skull and crossbones on the front with sleeves long enough to hide her wounded shoulder and pair of loose black pants. They weren’t particularly Goth-looking other than the color, but she was going for comfort more than a statement at this point.
“At least they’re not yoga pants.”
She wrapped the coiled chains she used as bracelets around her wrists again, nodded at herself in the mirror, and went to get her shoes, backpack, and keys. She stuck both phones into the backpack’s front pocket and hurried out the door a few minutes before 4:45.
If I drive like I mean it, I can get there in plenty of time. There’s no way I’m running again any time soon.
Halfway between the exit of her apartment building and her peeling gray car, another prickling tingle crawled up the back of her neck. The drow halfling glanced around the parking lot, trying to find the owner of the pair of eyes she’d been feeling on her for a week now, give or take five days while unconscious in FRoE custody.
I’m getting seriously fed up with this. And now whoever it is, knows where I live.
A woman in her mid-thirties who lived on the first floor ushered her two kids under five across the parking lot. The man Cheyenne thought lived directly beneath her walked his Australian Shepherd across the parking lot. Another man in a baseball cap passed her on the sidewalk across the parking lot, his chin bent almost all the way to his chest as he stared at the cell phone in his hand.
The half-drow squinted at him as she headed toward her car, but the man didn’t look up once as he strolled down the sidewalk.
The guy I saw in the gas station after that little shootout wore a hat like that. If he looks up from that stupid phone, I’ll know if it’s him.
But he didn’t. Cheyenne reached her car and unlocked the driver’s door, but she watched him as he crossed the street beside her apartment complex and kept walking. I swear, if he’s around the next time I feel somebody’s watching me, I’m saying something.
Part of her wished that would happen so she could figure out who the hell had been following her between home and the gas station and the VCU campus. The other part of her wished it would stop, regardless of whether she found out who it was. Everything else on her plate right now felt a lot more important and a lot more dangerous if she left it unaddressed.
“I can’t ever focus on one thing at a time, can I?” She got behind the wheel, slid her backpack onto the passenger seat, and started the engine. “Guess I got that from Mom too.”
Chapter Sixty
The drive to Henry County was uneventful and totally boring, including the unusually small amount of traffic she hit on her way out of the city. Halfway there, Cheyenne remembered the FRoE burner phone. She’d put it on silent in Hersh’s class that morning. She yanked it out of her backpack, double-checked that there were no missed calls, and turned the ringer on.
“Don’t wanna give them another reason to come after me. At least I know Mattie didn’t have all the facts straight about the FRoE and halflings. Either those people are keeping me around because I am the only person who can handle the crap they won’t touch, or they’re trying to stick me in the worst situation possible to see if I’m worth it.”
At 5:29 p.m. on the dot, Cheyenne’s car crunched across the gravel drive in front of her childhood home. The vast “farmhouse” was more of a lodge in the middle of nowhere. Bianca’s parents had left the entire farm property to her after they’d died within weeks of each other in March of 2000, two months after Bianca’d discovered she’d be passing the legacy on.
The place was huge, airy, and sometimes empty-feeling, with its immaculate interior decorating and something always going on—visitors in the forms of dignitaries, politicians, CEOs, and countless others. But it was home. Or, at least, it had been until Cheyenne didn’t have any more days to count down until she moved out.
A sleek black Lexus was parked to the right of the broad stone steps leading up to the front porch.
