Somebody doesn’t want people digging around in their sandbox.
Cheyenne clicked on the first result and opened it.
Too bad. I’m digging anyway.
The first file didn’t make much sense on its own, but it contained cross-references with the second and more with the third and fourth. Reading them one right after the other felt like a transcript of a private message someone had split and rearranged. Cheyenne reassembled them as best she could, layering one over the other to find common phrases.
They had embedded the conversation with un-closed code lines, chopped somewhere before the end. Which meant the other end—and the rest of the conversation in any order that made sense—was still in the files.
It took her an hour to run the series of overlapping tests to find which severed end of code matched the other. At least I know I have the glass slipper and the foot in the same place. Probably.
When the pieces clicked into place, another notification quacked on her screen, and a bright-red warning message popped up in the center.
Unauthorized Access Detected.
“No. Ya think?” Cheyenne cloaked her trail and cut a few corners around the security wall. She didn’t override the system so much as made it think she was part of it, and then she was past the last bit of encrypted security and could read the combined conversation.
“Jesus.” It came out as a whisper while Cheyenne read the document she’d dug up and assembled. It discussed four locations and four people, all operating on behalf of the FRoE, whatever that meant. The document outlined a series of operations over the last six months by magicals smuggling other races over the Border and bypassing the reservations. She uncovered surveillance and cataloging records of magicals who came across, and the ways they blended in with the humans on this side. Lists of businesses. Lists of families. Account balances and debts owed to this trafficking organization. Locations squeezed for protection money. New targets made of a dozen magicals and their businesses across the country, all of whom had been on this side, living with humans, for years—decades, even.
The most interesting part was the detailed instructions for avoiding FRoE detection and slipping under the radar of an organization created to regulate the magicals on this side and keep them in line. Hotspots of FRoE activity and where the magical-policing agency had overlooked its own blind spots.
“Illegal magical network.” Cheyenne blinked in raw amazement at her discovery and leaned toward her monitor. “How long have these people been doing this?”
She read over the detailed lists and the gathered information three times before she found a reference to the next operation on the network’s list of scheduled “meetings.” It was easy to miss when they referred to it as “an on-site update with real-time communication.” What the hell? They weren’t talking about software or servers at that point. They were talking about meeting in person to make some kind of nefarious deal.
Tomorrow night.
Cheyenne leaned back in her chair and rubbed her face. “Jesus. I need to find out who’s gonna be there.”
All the hints and vague descriptions pointed to something big. Not only big, but harmful to a lot of magicals with established lives on this side. Beyond that, she knew if she could tap into this network and find their databases beyond a few conversational updates and operating plans, she’d find Durg. The whole thing stank as much as the orc who’d shot Ember.
If I don’t find him, I can at least keep this deal from being made and help who knows how many magicals by crashing their giant party.
Cheyenne set up bloodhound programs to sniff out the actual IP addresses from all four pieces of this messed-up correspondence, then she pulled the encoded location sites from the list and ran those through a decoder that would match them with corresponding GPS coordinates.
“This hole keeps getting deeper.” The halfling stood, double-checked everything was set up to do the heavy lifting, and nodded. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. It’s just gonna take a minute.” She stretched her arms overhead, then made a sour face and sniffed her armpit. “Gross. Time for a shower.”
* * *
She passed the time after her hot shower by practicing her shifts from human to drow and back again. The first one was easier now with every attempt, but the cooldown was still a big issue. Cheyenne stood in front of her bathroom mirror with a towel wrapped around her, staring at the reflection of her purple-gray face and golden eyes flashing in the vanity lighting.
“I found the trick to letting this part out.” Her skin tingled with heat and magic. “So, what’s the trick to calming down?”
What an oxymoron of an assumption—that humans were calmer than anything non-human. Calmer than magicals. It was likely true only because humans had no idea these Borders letting magical beings into their world even existed.
Think of something. Cheyenne brushed her still-wet, bone-white drow hair away from her face and ignored her pointed ears. Something that makes this go away.
With a deep breath, she stared into the mirror and found herself thinking of the Virginia woods around her mom’s twenty-acre plot of land. Their family’s plot of land. All the maples and the rivers, the wildflowers bursting across the meadow in violet, yellow, red, and white. She thought of the family of deer she’d found in the thicket just over the hill behind the farm. Two fawns and their mother, lying in the dappled sunlight coming through the leaves. She’d been so quiet, moving through the woods on bare feet because it
