“Thanks, Em.” Cheyenne held out her hand, and the earrings dropped into her open palm. “Purple and sparkly.”
“Just shut up and put them on. If you’re that worried about a pair of earrings cramping your style, don’t put your hair up, and no one will see.”
“This is ironic.” Cheyenne removed the silver studs from her earlobes and slipped the charmed earrings into place. “It’s always something with the ears.”
“Yeah, because hiding pointy drow ears so people don’t notice you’re a halfling is totally the same thing as hiding a pair of sparkly earrings? You think people won’t take your Gothness seriously if they see you wearing those?”
“No. I just don’t do dangly and sparkly, but it’s fine. Look, I put them on.”
“Uh-huh.” Ember folded her arms and watched Cheyenne unconsciously pull her black-dyed hair around her face to hide her ears. “The only thing that matters is if they work, so go.”
“Right.” Cheyenne drew her drow magic into being, the hot rush of it racing up from the base of her spine. She gazed at her hands, which were still as pale and human-looking as ever. “Feels like when I was wearing that pendant.”
“Seriously, try some magic. Something small, though. You know, in case I missed a piece of the charm.”
“You’re not sure about this?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’m just saying.” Ember shrugged, watching Cheyenne’s open palms in expectation. “Go.”
Cheyenne conjured a burst of purple sparks at her fingertips and grinned. “That’s nothing like wearing the pendant.”
“No, it’s not.” Rubbing her hands together, Ember nodded. “Okay, try something else.”
The purple sparks flared in Cheyenne’s hand before she replaced them with a sparking orb of black energy. The magic hissed in her palm, illuminating her pale, human-looking face with black and purple light. “This is weird.”
“Yeah, but it’s so cool. It looks like I just mastered combining three spells into your tailored illusion charm.” The fae girl slapped the armrests of her chair. “You are one lucky halfling, you know that?”
“Compared to a few weeks ago, yeah. I’d say I have it pretty good.” Cheyenne snuffed out the energy sphere. “Seriously, Em, thanks. This’ll make things much easier.”
“It better. You can pay me back by making coffee.”
“Ha. Deal.” Cheyenne headed for the kitchen but stopped when she heard her phone buzzing in her bedroom. “Crap.”
“What?”
“Phone call. Then I’ll make coffee. Promise.” The halfling skirted around the furniture toward her room.
“I’m constantly surprised that you can hear half the stuff you hear.”
“It’s a gift and a curse,” Cheyenne called as she darted through the door and snatched her phone off the bedside table to answer the call. “Corian. Hey.”
“Turns out the business owner you’re covering for gave us mostly good information.”
“Shit.” She spun and paced across her bedroom. “What happened?”
“We hit all three addresses last night. Whoever this guy is, he needs to update his records because the first place had been demolished.”
“What about the others?”
Corian said, “Not that much better. We found a few pieces of gear left behind, but everything else had been packed up and shipped somewhere else. No clue where that is. And apparently, Syno thought it’d be super-hilarious to rig the place with a bunch of traps.”
“You were attacked.”
“Yup. A few wards that were easy enough to tear down and a handful of machines. They didn’t put up much of a fight, though. Persh’al thinks they were programmed to respond to anyone entering the building. It didn’t look like they had an active feed sending anything back to whoever’s handling them, but we don’t know for sure. And I’m not sure I’m a fan of that extra nugget of info you sent with that text about this company owner’s affiliation with your other friends in black.”
Yeah, that’s one name for the FRoE. “He said it was his uncle.”
“Either way, if the connection between that organization and Syno runs any deeper than a one-time business transaction a few years ago, it’ll make things that much more difficult for us. We need to try again.”
“We do. And we’ll try again after I’m done teaching my class this morning.”
“Cheyenne!”
“Nope. I’m not telling you where the company owner lives and leaving you to handle it your way when I’m not around. I’ve seen what happens to magicals when you ‘try again,’ and I seriously wanna avoid that this time. We’ll go talk to him together when I get back.”
“What if he still doesn’t give us what we need?”
“Then we’ll take a different tack, sure. But that’s not gonna be the first or even second option, okay?”
There was a long pause on the line, followed by Corian’s soft chuckle. “You’re getting a lot better at this.”
“At what?”
“Responding instead of reacting. It’s good to see. Call me when you get home after your class, Professor Summerlin.”
“Whatever.” With a snort, Cheyenne ended the call and went to her dresser to dig around for a change of clothes.
Ember stopped in the doorway. “What happened?”
“Apparently, Syno thought it was a good time to clear out his buildings and set a bunch of traps for anyone wanting to snoop around the place.”
“That’s not good.”
“Nope.” Cheyenne changed quickly, tugged her hair out from under the collar of a plain black t-shirt, and crossed her room again to search through the pockets of the pants she’d worn a few days before. “So when I get back from teaching, we’re gonna go pay Matthew another visit.”
“Wait, Corian doesn’t think Matthew lied to us, does he?”
“No, he said the information was mostly good. Just not good enough.” Cheyenne found the folded slip of paper and unfolded it, dropping her pants back onto the floor. “But the timing does seem a little too perfect.”
“Matthew wouldn’t have called Syno to warn him. He said he didn’t like the guy.”
With a shrug, Cheyenne picked up her phone again and dialed the number written on the piece of paper. “I hope not, Em. But there’s no way to know until we go talk to Matthew again.”
“I’m coming too.”
Looking up from her phone, the
