“Useless. You weren’t kidding.”
Cheyenne glanced at the line of prisoners and cocked her head. “I know. I’ll send you the location.”
“Yeah, that’ll help.”
“And thanks. For, you know, not trying to dig too deep.”
Rhynehart chuckled over the phone. “You’re not goin’ soft on me already, are you?”
“Not even close.” She hung up to solidify her point and imagined the guy laughing when he realized the line had gone dead. After that, she texted the agent a pin on a GPS map and slipped the phone back into her jacket pocket. When she turned again, she found Corian standing there with his arms folded. “What?”
“You know, I’ve spent a long time watching you get yourself into varying degrees of trouble and blasting your way out of it again.”
“You realize how creepy that sounds, right?”
Corian snorted. “I’ll own it. But I gotta say, kid, that was the first time I’ve seen you deal with a mess without spreading it around any farther. That was clean.”
“Not completely.” She glanced at the prisoners again as she approached him. “These guys are crossing the Border no matter what. They’ll either make it and get all their senses back, or they’ll end up as monster food, and I won’t ever know which one it was.”
“True. I won’t lie to you and say you’ll forget about it in no time, but they have a chance. That’s more than they would have if you hadn’t taken this on.”
“Yeah. Doesn’t feel like it.” Cheyenne watched him cast his spell to summon another portal into the warehouse, then blinked and looked into the trees. “Where’s Gúrdu?”
Corian grinned as the portal bloomed in front of them. “Hard to keep track of a raug. Even harder to keep track of an Oracle.”
“He can’t open a portal, right?”
“Nope. I wouldn’t worry about him, though.”
“No, I’m just worried about whoever runs into him before he shuts himself back up in his creepy throne room.”
Chuckling, the nightstalker gestured for her to step into the warehouse. “I stopped trying to figure him out centuries ago.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
Persh’al’s warehouse was as quiet as the clearing when the portal closed behind Cheyenne and Corian. Ember spun her wheelchair around to face them and broke out in a grin. “You know, when someone says they’re right behind you…”
“Sorry, Em. I had to take care of a few dozen prisoners first.” Cheyenne felt L’zar’s eyes on her and glanced briefly across the room to see them narrow. She shook her head and turned back to her friend.
Ember frowned. “I’m guessing you’ll tell me about that later.”
“Good guess.”
“Ember.” Corian pulled a thin metal band from his pocket and handed it to her. “Use this until you figure out how to cast an illusion spell for yourself. I’m sure Cheyenne has a whole book for you to dive right into.”
The fae studied the bracelet and slipped it over her glowing pink wrist, and her newly awakened fae form melted into the human form she’d inhabited her entire life. Ember chuckled. “Thanks. I still don’t even know if I’ll be able to cast spells.”
“After what you did with that portal, I have a feeling it’ll come quite easily to you.”
“A hell of a lot easier than it is for me,” Cheyenne added.
“Well, that’s not hard.”
She shot Corian a sidelong glance and pursed her lips. Then her activator flashed in the corner of her vision, and she turned that way to see Persh’al staring at the small metal orb in his hands. “What are you planning to do with that thing?”
The troll didn’t look up at her. “Take it apart and poke around a little.”
“Can I see it?”
Persh’al blinked, then rolled his eyes and handed it over. “Knock yourself out, kid. It’s dead.”
Cheyenne studied the round attack machine, with its scrolling lines of data and flashing lights. Soft blue light pulsed weakly in the center of the orb like a fading heartbeat. “Not entirely.”
The blue troll looked at her and scoffed. “Because you’re wearing that fancy headpiece that tells you everything you wanna know about everything, huh? No, I get it. Use what you got, right? And you’ve got halfling superpowers that let you do the impossible with tech that doesn’t do shit for the rest of us over here.”
Meeting Persh’al’s gaze, Cheyenne offered him a small smile. “You’re a little cranky.”
“Am I?” He folded his arms and glared at her, but his resolve broke and he gave a wry chuckle. “Shit, kid. Do your thing. I won’t stop you.”
“Like you could.” She returned her attention to the orb. Those are some kind of tracking codes underneath a little puzzle. “Can I take this with me?”
“What? No. Get your own leftovers.”
Cheyenne wiggled the metal orb at him. “Give me a day with this thing, and I’ll find out where all the machines that attacked us in that clearing were supposed to report afterward. Then we can go take out whoever’s been sending them at us.”
“A day.” Persh’al snorted and rubbed his head. “Kid, I’ve been working on tracing signatures back to the source for weeks. Yeah, that’s right. Before we found that damn shipment at the new portal.”
“I’m sure you’d get there eventually.” Cheyenne pointed at the activator behind her ear. “But I can do it faster.”
“Please. You’ve had one of those things for two days.”
“And you didn’t know half of what a transport shuttle could do before I showed you. How many times did you ride in one of those things?”
Persh’al’s mouth dropped open. Leaning against the wall of the warehouse, Byrd snickered.
“The sooner we find the rest of the tech Lex’s goons are hiding, the sooner we can cross one more thing off our list.” Corian nodded at the blue troll, who rolled his eyes again and stalked toward his computer.
“I’ll give it back when I’m done,” Cheyenne called after him.
“Whatever. Have fun.”
She watched him until he sat behind his huge center monitor and all but disappeared. He’ll get
