* * *
After a twenty-minute drive across town, Cheyenne parked a block away from the building she’d traced. At 7:00 p.m., the sun had almost set, and the street was completely empty. It’s not Stony Point.
She locked her Ford Focus and slid a fingernail beneath a piece of chipped, matte-gray paint she hadn’t bothered to redo since she’d bought the thing. Then she stepped onto the sidewalk and made her way toward this goblin business.
When she reached the address with the number on the front of the building, she stared at the marquee over the front door—Robe Up, Dress Down. Her mouth twitched into a smirk.
What are goblins doing with a consignment boutique? Different strokes, I guess.
She stepped up to the front door, shaking her head, and pulled on the handle. It was locked. The hours of operation on the front window listed 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., but she could tell someone was inside. The lights were on, and Cheyenne might have been the only person around, magical or otherwise, who could hear tense voices coming from somewhere in the building. They were muted, but it sounded like whoever they were had anger issues to rival hers. Yeah, when I was twelve, maybe.
The half-drow cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her face against the window. The front room was unoccupied. Knocking on the door wouldn’t get her anywhere, either, so she stepped back, glanced up and down the street, and headed around the side toward the back.
The narrow road between buildings led to a rear parking area lit by a streetlamp that blinked on as soon as Cheyenne stepped behind the building. She froze at the sudden light, then reminded herself that was what streetlights did when it got dark. Sticking her hands into her pockets, she gave the two pickups parked behind Robe Up a quick, sweeping glance. One of them with the business logo printed on the side in bright pink. If I knew any goblin clichés, I’d still say that breaks ‘em.
A dark-gray van sat on the other side of the parking lot, far enough away to be separated from the trucks but close enough to belong to someone inside any of these commercial buildings. The air smelled like magic in a way Cheyenne didn’t recognize. Something was off.
“You can’t do this!” The shout came from the goblin business, all right.
Cheyenne turned toward the back door. Someone hadn’t shut it all the way.
She heard a thump, followed by a muted growl. “That’s not what we agreed! You said we— Hey! What are you doing?”
That must be what goblins versus orcs sounds like. Cheyenne padded to the cracked back door, slipping around the pool of light from the streetlamp. She pressed her hand against the wall.
When she closed her eyes, she applied the same trick she’d been using for ten years to spy on her mom’s consultations in her private office at home. Now her ability granted Cheyenne sight within the building. Four figures lit up in her mind’s eye in different wavering colors, one of them blue, the other three a dark, muddy green. The three circled the blue guy, their height and bulk overshadowing their target.
Or victim. Please let these be the orcs from last night.
Heat flared at the base of her spine and drowned out the breeze on her skin, the glow of the streetlamp behind her, and the low, thick voices from inside. All she felt was that burning, tingling flame licking its way up her spine. Cheyenne’s fingers brushed a small, cold object in her pocket—the four-pointed star Professor Bergmann had made from Cheyenne’s accidental magic.
A souvenir.
She closed her fist around the trinket and thought about her brief and frustrating training session with Mattie. Feel it. Check. That’s the easy part.
Her breath quickened. Embrace it.
She thought of Ember on the concrete of the skatepark and in the hospital bed connected to monitors. Her skin prickled, the heat spreading over her shoulders and down her arms and climbing up her neck.
Hold it. Stay in my angry place.
Somewhere behind her, a car door opened, then another. Boots crunched on loose, scattered gravel on the asphalt, then two doors shut.
Yeah, I got it.
“Valdu,” a gruff voice muttered at the other end of the parking lot.
“I told you to wait in the van and let me handle this.” That voice came from inside.
“There’s someone out back.”
“Well, get rid of him and stay the hell outside until I’m done!”
Cheyenne’s eyes flew open, and she peeped over her shoulder to see a huge orc in a business suit and a creepy smaller guy with blue skin and a long, pointed nose. They headed straight for her. When they saw her face—the dark-gray skin, white hair, and golden glow behind her eyes—the pair paused. They both blinked in surprise before exchanging hesitant glances.
Screw this. I’m taking these orcs down.
The half-drow, who now looked full drow and pissed, sneered at the magicals before she whirled toward the rear door and kicked it wide open.
Chapter Seventeen
The door burst open and cracked against the inside wall as Cheyenne stormed inside.
“Hey!” the orc from the lot shouted from behind her.
Inside, an orc turned his head and snarled. “We’re closed. Can’t you see?”
The orc who’d been messing with the goblin owner of the shop—and now had his fists around most of the guy’s shirt collar—didn’t take his hands away from the terrified magical with blue skin. “Come back tomorrow.”
“I’m here now.” Cheyenne spread her arms, and a hissing spiral of sparks churned in her palms. “Where’s Durg?”
The biggest orc turned from the goblin to look at her. “Who the hell are you?”
“Tell me where he is!” Her sparks flared higher, and then the orc and the blue-skinned guy with orange eyes burst through the open back door.
“Don’t move.”
Cheyenne heard them breathing behind her, punctured by a crackle through the air and a burst of magic she felt on her skin while it was
