The man’s blue eyes bored into Cheyenne’s. She leaned away from him, so she didn’t have to smell the wintergreen gum on his breath. “You done?”
Huffing out a breath, Rhynehart dropped his hand and turned away from her. “Keep up.”
Somebody crawled up his ass about keeping me around. I bet it was Sir. This guy knows he’s walking a fine line with me anyway. Okay, Cheyenne. There’s more to learn from these people. Don’t give them a reason to think you’re angling to find something. Play the little rookie.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The space they’d walked across three times now looked different than the other quarters. Short, squat houses spread across the entire area. Some of them had neat yards and flowers growing in well-tended gardens; others were plain with no personal touches. All of them had narrow walkways leading to the front doors, and while they were arranged in something like a neighborhood block, thick green grass blanketed the space between the houses. Trees sprouted here and there to break up the monotony.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Rhynehart muttered as they made their way across the final quarter.
“Q4’s residential. Obviously.”
“There you go. The whole general breakdown of every single Border reservation on this side. Hell, I don’t know if they have ‘em on the other side, but I don’t care.”
“How many people live here?” Cheyenne peered into the yard of the closest house, where two small green orc children played with a bubble wand, the barest hint of tusks protruding from behind their lower lips. Their laughter made her smile despite the chewing-out she’d gotten two minutes before.
“It varies year to year. Once they’ve been cleared, some magicals branch off into human society if that’s what they want. We’ve got more coming over all the time, but the Border crossings are a lot more regulated now than they used to be. Most of the magicals who get one of these plots as their own stay forever, I guess. Roughly two hundred families.”
Cheyenne grinned at the little orc boy waving the bubble wand through the air. He snarled at her, and his mom clapped from where she sat in a lawn chair in front of the house. The orc boy shot the drow halfling an apologetic smile and waved while his little sister wobbled after the bubbles floating around her. “Most magicals have gone no farther into our world than this?”
“Pretty much.” Rhynehart tipped his head toward the sky and took a deep breath. “Not a bad place to spend the rest of one’s life as a refugee. Plenty of friends. Nice ocean view. Your own little cookie-cutter house.”
“What about the magicals who leave?”
“What about them?”
Cheyenne hurried to catch up with Rhynehart as he turned down a row two houses away from the edge of the tree line. “If somebody comes through and leaves the reservation, can they come back?”
“Huh.” Rhynehart rubbed his chin and shrugged. “I guess if they wanted it enough. That’d be one hell of a headache with the paperwork. Might have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Why, halfling? You thinking you might wanna get your own little plot?”
The drow halfling rolled her eyes. “Nope. I’m good.”
I’d never hear the end of it from Mom if she learned I’d found a magical commune at the edge of the ocean. Maybe I’d never hear from her again. Wouldn’t have enough space or power for Glen and all my tech gear, anyway.
The farther they walked, the quieter things got. Cheyenne noticed the houses in the northeast corner of Q4 weren’t occupied. They’d already passed beyond the shadow of the massive black tower, and while there were hardly any clouds and nothing to cast another shadow over them, the space they were headed seemed to grow darker, and the birds stopped singing.
“Did it get dark and creepy, or is it my imagination?”
Rhynehart stopped in front of an empty house, glancing between the buildings with a cautious frown. “Not you.”
Cheyenne checked the sky, which hadn’t been filled with heavy rainclouds but now seemed gray enough to threaten rain. “Who are we sitting down to have a chat with?”
“More of a stern warning. Probably not a lot of talking involved, unless the guy’s feeling chatty. He normally isn’t.” Rhynehart tugged the thick dampening gloves onto his hands, then rested one hand on the weapon at his hip, perhaps to reassure himself he wasn’t walking unarmed into a tense situation.
“Hey,” Cheyenne said.
Rhynehart turned to look at her.
“What does he do?”
“Black magic. At least, that’s what all the reports point to.”
“Black?”
“Yeah, Blakely. The dark stuff. Super powerful, pretty deadly, highly illegal on both sides of the Border. The kind he’s gotten himself into, anyway. Nasty stuff.”
“And they sent a human FRoE operative to take care of him.” Cheyenne folded her arms and frowned at the guy.
“And a drow. Right?” Rhynehart’s attempted smile didn’t get across his attempt at lightheartedness. “Fine. Half-drow. Whatever. Good enough for us.”
“You want me to handle a black-magic practitioner who boobytraps his house on a Border Reservation. Did you guys stop to think about how many holes are in that plan?”
“Yep. Two seconds ago. You can handle it, halfling. You almost took down an ogre last Thursday. Almost, but still. Short of a fell cannon, that’s
