There wasn’t any sorcery nearby. Lyssa hadn’t even risked throwing up defensive spells on her room that might lead the assassin to her. Minimal sleep and Jofi would have to be enough to keep her safe.
Lyssa strolled in front of the rooms and headed for the covered alcove with soda and ice machines near the fenced-off pool. The pool was in need of a serious cleaning, given that algae was beginning to take over. Along the way, a man with an unkempt beard leaned against his doorjamb, smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, babe,” he called to her.
“I’m taken,” she replied, not slowing.
“I bet I’m better.”
Lyssa stopped to glare at him. “Listen, asshole. I’m not having the best week, and a good friend of mine just got shot several times. So, why don’t you leave me the hell alone before I decide to see if you can smoke that cigarette from another end?”
He grimaced and looked away. “Geeze. Okay. I’m sorry.”
Lyssa continued scowling at him as she passed his room on her quest for ice. The housekeeper knocked on a door closer to Lyssa’s room. When no one answered, she pulled out her keycard and let herself in, bringing along a trash bag.
This wasn’t a big trap waiting to happen. The housekeeper wasn’t a clever Sorcerer waiting to blast Lyssa with a water essence. She was at a cheap motel with sad people like her trying to hide from the world.
Lyssa filled her bucket and let out a sigh. “Next time, I should make Samuel put me up in the Traveling Club.”
“Is that even possible?” Jofi asked. “It’s not a hotel, is it? And would it have been safe? It’s a place where your kind is known to congregate, but it doesn’t have the same level of security as Last Remnant.”
“It was just a joke,” Lyssa replied. She shook the bucket to level the ice. “I wasn’t expecting to spend the time leading up to my trip in a place like this, is all.”
“Your job often leads you to unexpected situations.”
Lyssa snorted. “That’s true.”
She headed back to her room, shaking her ice and enjoying the rhythm of the cubes clinking together. Her stomach rumbled.
Lyssa had stuck to delivered pizza since checking in, concerned that using a food delivery app would lead to her assailant tracking her down. Traveling too far from the motel increased the chance of being spotted.
She couldn’t live like this. It was bad enough she had to keep a secret identity and lie to her boyfriend and neighbors, but it wasn’t easy to separate Hecate from the rest of the world. Keeping Lyssa Corti apart from the real world would destroy her.
“Something is wrong,” Jofi said.
Lyssa stiffened. She crouched and set her ice bucket down before reaching into her jacket and resting her hands on her guns. A survey of the nearby area yielded only the smoking sleazeball and the housekeeper pulling a vacuum cleaner off her cart.
“Are you seeing something I’m not?” she whispered.
“There is unusually high spirit presence in this area,” Jofi replied.
“Meaning what?”
“There are more spirits nearby than would be expected, and more are gathering.”
Intense pressure attacked Lyssa’s chest, also marking a huge and sudden amount of sorcery. She backed away from the bucket with a frown and edged back toward the alcove. There was a dark corner she could use.
The smoker collapsed to the ground in a heap, his cigarette falling out of his hand. The housekeeper dropped, knocking her vacuum over with a loud crack as it hit the hard concrete.
The stars died above. Darkness spread overhead, tracing a dome. The lights outside the room and the light poles in the parking lot continued to work. A wall of pure darkness cut them off from the outside world.
Her mystery assassin had made things easier for her by knocking everyone out. She pulled out her mask and slipped it on before reverting Night Goddess to its default dark and sinister appearance, including the shadowy aura.
Lyssa drew her guns. One was loaded with a penetrator magazine and the other with conventional rounds. The bag in the room contained whatever else she might need.
“Spirits, huh?” She scoffed. “Then we have a pretty good guess of what our assassin’s essence is.”
“Be cautious,” Jofi said. “There’s little I can do, bound as I am to this weapon, to directly aid you against spirits.”
“There’s only so much they can do other than stunts without manifesting in the physical world.” Lyssa summoned her wraith form and crept toward her room, keeping her guns up. “Let’s grab some more mags and get to the parking lot. There’s more room to shoot there without accidentally hitting somebody.”
“You should consider fleeing in your vehicle.”
“I don’t think that big dome of darkness is just about cutting off light,” Lyssa objected.
She knelt by the downed smoker. He was still breathing. Whatever spells had been cast, at least she didn’t have a bunch of semi-innocent people’s deaths on her conscience.
Lyssa continued toward her room. The massive amount of sorcerous pressure generated by the dome made it hard to focus on any other spells. Her new friend could be sneaking up on her from any angle, and she’d have a difficult time knowing.
It didn’t make sense. Throwing up that huge a spell risked other Sorcerers detecting it. There might not be a lot of Illuminated in the world, but most tended to cluster in bigger cities. Caroline wasn’t the only other Illuminated in Los Angeles.
“They’re going all in,” Lyssa whispered. “I’m almost honored.”
“Almost?” Jofi replied.
“I can’t help but be a little insulted that someone is trying to kill me. It’s a personal thing.”
“Understandable.”
Lyssa was almost at her room. She might have made a mistake using her magic and regalia. The enemy might have known her general location and thrown up the other
