Borris glared at her and readjusted his grip.
“So, I’m gonna ask you once.” She spread her arms. “You gonna put that peashooter away or what?”
“Fuck you. You’re a halfling. You don’t even belong with those magicals. Who came here illegally, by the way.”
Cheyenne accepted every action prompted by her activator. With two quick swipes of her fingers through the air, her tech-synced magic pulled the fell pistol apart, revealing the green glow of the fell firepower. The pieces thumped into the grass one by one. Borris struggled for a second to keep his grip on the pistol, but his eyes widened as the metal parts flowed through his fingers like water, and he stepped back.
The fell ammunition flared in a glowing green pile on the ground, and Cheyenne’s activator gave her the perfect spell option for snuffing it. It left behind a puff of dissipating green smoke, and that was it.
She folded her arms and gave Borris a deadpan stare. “If we’re gonna do what needs to get done, man, there are no sides. It’s all the same. Now do you get it?”
Borris looked at Rhynehart.
Rhynehart frowned at the pieces of the fell pistol. “Cheyenne, how the fuck did you do that?”
“Nifty little trick I picked up in Ambar’ogúl.”
“Trick.”
Borris slapped a hand on his holster, forgetting that his firearm had been pulled apart in front of him. The other agents shifted nervously, and while none of them took their hands off their weapons, they were smart enough not to aim anything at the halfling.
“Technology, actually.” Cheyenne stepped toward the agents and pulled the activator out from behind her ear, her eyelids fluttering at the small pinch. Every operative on Rhynehart’s team stepped back.
“Whatever that is, keep it the hell away from me.”
“We get it. You win.”
“You made your point, halfling.”
She stopped and held up the silver coil for everyone to see. “It’s an activator. Top-of-the-line O’gúl tech that syncs with magic. Kinda hard to wrap your head around, I know, but it makes anything possible. Almost.”
“Bullshit,” another agent whispered.
Rhynehart’s eyes narrowed. “If those things are so amazing, halfling, how come I’ve never seen one before?”
“They don’t cross the Border.” She shrugged and stuck the activator behind her ear again, cocking her head when the tech synced and made her eyelids flutter again. “Unless I’m the one ferrying it back across, apparently.”
He chewed the inside of his lower lip. “Just you?”
“Well, there’s a chance it’s a halfling thing, but a few magicals went through a bunch of trouble to make sure no one on the other side could tell that’s what I am.” Cheyenne stuck her hands in the pockets of her trenchcoat and felt the thick silver cuff stolen from Ur’syth, the Oracle crone. “Most halflings don’t have that luxury, do they?”
Rhynehart licked his lips, his gaze flickering over her. “So, you’re the only one who can use that thing?”
“Earthside, yeah.” She gestured at the magicals on his team. “And something has to change with the way you pick your operatives. Seriously. Or at least set them up with somebody who knows what the hell you’re dealing with when refugees cross the Border. They’re all clueless.”
“Speak for yourself,” a troll agent muttered, but he immediately stepped back and stared at the grass.
“No, I’m sure I’m speaking for all of you. Did anyone ever stop to think why your employer only takes magicals born Earthside?”
“Cheyenne.” Rhynehart nodded away from his team and took off toward the house. “A word.”
“Yeah.” She gazed at the startled, confused operatives staring at her and shrugged. “Think about it.”
When she joined Rhynehart in the middle of the lawn, the team leader folded his arms and leaned toward her, his chin dipped low. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know about the selection process for your agents.”
“No, I’m well aware of that. The way you’re saying it makes it sound like there’s something else going on.”
“Yeah, well, there is.” She folded her arms in a nearly perfect imitation of his posture and leaned forward too. “The people running your organization don’t want O’gúleesh on their payroll, Rhynehart, only Earthborn magicals. They know the cities and the way the human world works, and they’re powerful enough to deal with whatever magical trouble pops up before you get shipped out to handle it. It also keeps every FRoE agent in the field dumb enough not to pick up on what’s happening behind the scenes.”
Rhynehart snorted. “You’re walking a thin line, Cheyenne.”
“I’ve been walking a thin line since we met. That hasn’t changed. Now I don’t care, ‘cause I have a lot bigger problems to deal with.”
“Spill it, then. What’s happening behind the scenes?”
“Colonel Les Thomas.”
The agent’s frown darkened. “What about him?”
“Jeeze, I’m gonna know this story inside and out after explaining it to every single…” Cheyenne ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “Look. The colonel’s connected to someone who wrote a program that works with old-school O’gúl tech. Not like my activator, but just as effective—and seriously dangerous in the wrong hands, which are the hands that have it right now.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Okay. Let me put this into bite-sized chunks for you.” Cheyenne ignored his irritated scowl. “Colonel Thomas is connecting O’gúl loyalists, magicals who came over here to organize seriously nasty stuff for the ruler of the other side, with the resources to make O’gúl tech that isn’t supposed to function over here work. And it does. I’ve seen it, and I’ve fought it. I’m also sure he’s been feeding everything about me right to those loyalists.”
“What the hell is a loyalist?”
“The bad guys, Rhynehart!” She took a deep breath and forced her anger back down. “That simple enough for you? One of the FRoE’s top officials is a traitor who doesn’t give a shit about the Border regulation and is helping unregistered magicals build an army of war machines to use against us, and none of your
