She stepped into the hall and made a beeline for their apartment without bothering to close his door behind her.
Ember blinked and spun her chair again to look at Matthew. “What’s up?”
“I’m just trying to help people. I mean, yeah, this is my business and my livelihood, and I have to do things a certain way to keep things running the way they’re supposed to.” He leaned toward her. “But I would never willingly enter into business with someone if I knew they’d use my work and my services to hurt people. You have to believe that.”
Ember gave him a small, patient smile. “I want to believe it. Maybe you had no idea what was happening, but you have a lot stacked against you right now. I just hope you didn’t give Cheyenne bad information she won’t be able to use. For your sake, I mean.”
“No, that would make me stupid, wouldn’t it?”
“Yep.” When he didn’t say anything else, she turned her chair toward the door again.
“I hope this doesn’t change things,” he blurted after her. “You know, between us. Whatever that is. Because I do enjoy spending time with you the way we have been.”
Ember looked over her shoulder and raised her eyebrows. “Honestly, that’s the last thing on my mind right now. You’ve been nothing but helpful and decent to me, but all this? It kind of changes things, yeah. Just don’t screw anything up, and maybe we’ll keep hanging out. I don’t know.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Matthew nodded, ducking his head and sliding his hands into his pockets. “Thanks for being honest with me.”
“It goes both ways.” Without waiting for him to reply, she wheeled across the hall and through the open door of her apartment on the other side. The last thing Matthew saw before Ember shut the door behind her was Cheyenne’s glowing golden eyes locked onto his face.
“Asshole,” she muttered, still glaring at the closed front door.
“Don’t.” Ember wheeled toward the kitchen. “We did what we went over there to do, and you got a name, all without having to blast things to pieces. Mostly.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know if this is the name we want. It could be useless.”
“I know that.” Ember flicked her hand toward the cabinet above the sink, which opened with a flash of violet light before one of their drinking glasses floated down from the cupboard and into her hand. She took it with her to the fridge to fill it from the water dispenser in the door. “We still can’t assume that he’s always lying to us.”
“Em, we had to show him this to get him to tell the truth.” The halfling gestured at her body, which was still in full drow form. “He’s known about the other side and magicals being over here for at least five years, which is way longer than I expected, and we had to shove that in his face before he said anything.”
“Well, just talking didn’t work very well with you at first either, did it?” Ember took a slow drink of water, then gulped down half the glass.
“That’s totally different.” Cheyenne leaned against the back of the couch and folded her arms. “I wasn’t supplying O’gúl loyalists with a program I wrote to help them power war machines. I wasn’t involved in anything but trying to hide from everybody.”
“All I’m saying is that you didn’t tear down your walls until someone shoved proof into your face. It makes sense that that’s what he needed too.”
“I’m not a fan of comparing me with him.”
Ember chugged the rest of her water and set the glass under the dispenser to refill it. “I know, but don’t you think finding things we have in common with people we don’t like is a solution? We both know you better than that.”
Cheyenne stared at her friend, who now drank a lot more slowly. She’s not looking at me on purpose. I can take the hint.
The halfling walked around the couch and the coffee table and slumped into the dry leather recliner. Then she pulled out her phone and opened the text with the file Matthew had sent her. It looks legit. Time to find out.
“You’re not planning on hanging out with him again after this, are you?”
Ember’s glass clinked on the granite countertop of the kitchen island before she wheeled back into the living room. “I have no idea. I could say it’s none of your business, but that wouldn’t be true, knowing what we know about him now.”
“Right. And you don’t know?”
“No. Now let’s move on to the more important question, which is why you haven’t called Corian yet to go after that guy.”
“What do you think I’m doing right now?” Cheyenne wiggled her phone in front of her, then made the call to her nightstalker ex-mentor.
He picked up on the second ring with a gruff urgency. “Everything okay?”
“Whoa. Yeah. We’re fine over here. You?”
“Spent all afternoon getting L’zar’s fell-damn audience back home and making sure they’re safe.” Corian lowered his voice, his lips brushing the speaker on his phone. “I might kill him for doing that.”
“Well, don’t bring me into it. As long as everyone made it out of there today, I’d say we pulled it off. And I have some information for you.”
“Like what?”
Cheyenne looked at Ember, who lifted her hands and slowly lowered them, mouthing “Gently.” “I found the guy who wrote the program powering the war machines.”
“Who is it?”
“The owner of a company called—”
“Hey!” Corian pulled the phone away from his mouth to shout. “If you guys seriously have to do that right now, you know how this works. Take it outside.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
Cheyenne grinned. “Goblins?”
“No, it’s the other pain-in-my-ass magicals who can’t keep it together long enough to spare the rest of us from their constant nagging.” The nightstalker sighed. “You were saying?”
“The company’s called Combined Reality, Inc. Owned privately by ThomasSafe. Ember and I met with the owner, and he gave us the name
