“Hey.” About Cheyenne’s age, Katie gave Cheyenne a genuine grin when the half-drow came to the register. “It’s been, what, a week, maybe? Feels like forever.”
“A lot can happen in a week.” Cheyenne set the burrito on the counter and waited for the girl to ring it up. “I didn’t know you were working mornings.”
Katie shrugged and released a skittish laugh. “It was time for a change. I’m not sure I’m into the nightshift anymore, you know? Did you…did you hear what happened?”
Would you believe I was here for it? You wouldn’t have recognized me with the gray skin and white hair and magic shooting out of my fingers.
“Cheyenne?”
“Huh?”
“You okay?”
She gave Katie a slow smile and nodded. “A little tired. Sorry. Yeah, I heard what happened with the robbery and everything.”
“Attempted robbery. I, uh…” Katie rubbed the back of her neck and wrinkled her nose. “I passed out when it happened, but I’ve been told somebody came in here and saved my life. I don’t know. It sounds kinda crazy when I say it out loud. I figure days are safer for me at this point, you know?”
Cheyenne handed over her credit card. “Sounds like a good call.”
“Hey, thanks.” Katie appeared touched to hear someone supporting her decision or not calling her a weak idiot for passing out when she had a gun pointed at her face. “The thing I don’t like about the switch is I’m not around to say hi when you come in at night. But hey, turns out you buy all your meals here. Who knew?”
With a little chuckle, Cheyenne grabbed her burrito and the napkins Katie offered and said, “Best breakfast burritos within a block of where I live. I’m glad you’re doing okay.”
“Thanks. Have a good one.”
“You too.”
By the time Cheyenne got to her car, she almost had the burrito unwrapped. She felt those eyes watching her again—a cool, tingling, crawling feeling at the base of her neck. It spread over her shoulders and down her arms, and she knew it wasn’t her imagination.
Look at this. Goosebumps.
She took a violent bite of the burrito and slipped into her car.
Not gonna let Mr. Eyeballs freak me out today. I have a lot to do.
* * *
Cheyenne strode into Professor Hersh’s graduate class five minutes before 8:00 a.m. and grabbed her usual seat on the far-left side of the room. That made it a lot harder for anyone else to sit close to her since nobody wanted to climb over her at the end of the row to get into another seat.
The class filled up with the small number of graduate students taking Hersh’s course for 2021’s fall semester. Exactly one minute before the class was scheduled to start, Hersh bustled in, his haggard face redder than usual.
It’ll return to its normal oatmeal color in the next half-hour.
Cheyenne pulled her laptop out of her backpack and pretended to take notes. It was impossible to pay attention to Hersh. The man droned on in his tepid monotone, never asked questions, maybe wrote equations on the whiteboard, and pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose every forty-five to sixty seconds. For all the man’s posturing and lines like, “I hope you’ll use this opportunity to learn something and expand your mind,” he didn’t leave much room for either of those things in his class.
She hadn’t realized she’d been dozing off until someone’s phone rang, accompanied by a surprising buzz in the pocket of her black jeans, which were checkered with squares of black satin. The halfling lurched in her seat and clamped a hand down on her back pocket before somehow fumbling around and pulling the FRoE burner phone from her tight pants.
Hersh glared at her from behind the desk at the front of the room.
“Excuse me. I’ll…I have to take this.”
“It better be important,” Hersh muttered.
The phone kept ringing with its super loud, annoying digital ringtone from ten years ago, and Cheyenne jogged to make it out of the classroom and into the hall before the ringing stopped. She jerked open the flip phone and pressed it against her ear. “I’m a little busy right now.”
“Not too busy to answer the phone we gave you,” Rhynehart said. “That’s good to know.”
“Yeah, well, we made a deal. Can you call me back in like an hour?”
“Ha. That’s funny, Blakely.”
For a moment, Cheyenne had forgotten about giving the FRoE her middle name instead of the name the rest of the world used. Besides “halfling.” “No, seriously. I have a lot going on today.”
“Well, move it around. That was part of the agreement, remember? You’re on call.”
Cheyenne rolled her eyes and waited for him to keep talking.
“I need you to come with me this morning. There’s a low-level asshole making problems for some people we don’t want to piss off, and he needs to be sat down for a little chat.”
Cheyenne frowned at the closed classroom door before her. “That sounds like something way below your paygrade.”
“Of course, it is. But I told you I’d be keeping an eye on you, so guess who pulled the short straw in being your partner for this first assignment?”
“Assignment?” Listen to him, talking like I get a paycheck for any of this. “Lucky you.”
“Yeah, lucky fuckin’ me. Where do you want me to pick you up?”
Cheyenne paced and shook her head. “Give me an address. I’ll meet you there.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“I don’t need a chaperone. Unless you’re doubling as an Uber driver now.”
Rhynehart paused. “Look, the place we need to go is two hours away. Right outside Prince Frederick, Maryland. And you need a ride.”
“No, I don’t. I have a car.”
The man exhaled. “You’re not gonna give me this one, are you?”
“The chances of that
