Chapter Two
L’zar glanced at the clock on the bedside table: 3:27 a.m. Beside him in the king-sized bed with one-thousand-thread-count sheets, Bianca Summerlin lay motionless in sleep, her dark curls spilling in a tangled array on her pillow. The drow brushed a lock of hair away from her cheek, the sight of his human-colored skin against hers bringing him a momentary twinge of discomfort.
She sighed in her sleep, and he leaned and pressed a soft kiss against the corner of her mouth. “I found you for a reason, Bianca,” he whispered. “I hope you remember that. And I’m sorry for how long you’ll have to wait before you discover what that reason is. I’ll be waiting too.”
The corner of her mouth upturned in a dream-induced smile. The drow thief caressed her curls one final time, then slid from beneath the sheets and dressed. He was quick and silent, still full of energy despite having lain awake beside her for an hour until she drifted off into a heavy sleep.
He stopped at the minibar and mouthed a summons under his breath. A pale, shimmering light flared at his fingertips. When it faded, a copper-coated puzzle box covered in drow runes rested snugly in his palm. He placed it with an uncharacteristic tenderness beside Bianca’s small black purse atop the minibar. He tapped the top of the box, and a wave of light spread from his fingertip around the trinket, then faded.
He nodded. “When it’s time, you’ll know what to do with this. Both of you will know.”
With a parting glance at the beginning of his destiny lying in the hotel suite, L’zar placed a hand on the door and closed his eyes. Magically peeping through it, he spied no one about in the hallway, which was just as well. He muttered another spell and phased through the door, opting not to risk waking her by leaving the traditional way. Outside the suite, L’zar straightened the lapel of his illusionary suit and made for the elevator.
Now that he’d done his part, that tingling, pulsing tug on his being had gone. The drow moved through the streets of D.C. to a less frequented part of the city outside Capitol Heights. A cab might have given him a chance to relax and let someone else take the wheel for twenty minutes, but he wasn’t finished.
And I can’t let anyone see me until I’m ready to go back, even like this.
The abandoned warehouse on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue hadn’t changed in twenty-six years. He hoped the inside hadn’t changed, either.
When he reached the unmarked side door, L’zar’s fingers moved in another complicated pattern until his spell illuminated the faint green glow of the security wards. “Just the way I left them.” He chuckled and pressed his finger against the shimmering shape of a long, thin star with only four points. The wards flashed, then disappeared, and he pushed open the door.
Rusty hinges squealed, and a blue-skinned troll sitting at a long desk of computer monitors and keyboards whirled around. “Who the hell are you?”
“Oh, come on, Persh’al. Is that how you treat an old friend?”
“Look…” The troll chewed his bottom lip and raised both hands. “I don’t know how the hell you got in, but whatever you think you’re gonna find—”
L’zar snapped both hands’ fingers, and his human glamour melted away. He gained another foot in height, his short brown hair lost all its color and dropped into the white knot tied loosely at the back of his neck. His pinstriped suit returned to a white t-shirt and a pair of thin gray pants with CDR printed down the left leg.
Persh’al leapt to his feet with a shout of surprise and slapped his hands together. “L’zar! You dirty thief.”
The drow spread his arms and grinned. “That’s what they tell me.”
“Well, ‘O’gúl Crown be damned.” A bark of a laugh escaped the blue troll before Persh’al stalked across the warehouse’s main room toward L’zar. “You’re full of surprises, ain’tcha?”
“Comes with the territory.”
The magicals clapped one another in a quick embrace before Persh’al stepped back and stared his old friend up and down. “What’s with the getup?”
“I’m serving a hundred-year sentence, Persh’al. Chateau D’rahl ran out of ceremonial robes before they booked me.”
“No!” The troll’s golden eyes widened, and he clapped a hand to his head shaved bald on either side of the neon-orange mohawk sprouting from the center. “You broke out of high-security prison for O’gúleesh, and you decided to come here?”
“Well, it wasn’t my first stop. But yeah.”
Persh’al sniffed, looked the drow over one more time, then nodded and turned toward the three long desks spread out in rows in the center of the warehouse. “I wouldn’t be my first stop, either. You sure nobody followed you?”
L’zar raised an eyebrow.
Persh’al snorted. “‘Course, you’re sure. Who am I kidding?”
They stopped at the first desk where lines of code blinked and scrolled in white, blue, and green across four different monitors. “I’m assuming you guys have been keeping an eye on things in here while I’ve been gone,” L’zar said while glancing over the data feeds.
“Well, you’d be right.” Persh’al nodded and folded his arms. “None of us wanted to see you chained and locked up, but we’re not abandoning the ship just because you weren’t here breathing down our necks.”
“And here I thought the whole operation would fall apart without me.”
Persh’al blinked and stared at his friend before huffing out a laugh. “I see prison hasn’t humbled you a bit.”
“I was born with an indestructible immunity against humility.”
“If that’s what you wanna call it.”
“So, tell me what’s happening with the rez at Border 4.” The drow nodded at the center monitor and folded his arms.
“Everything’s running smooth as ever, man. Fifteen came through in the last two weeks. Half a
