“Eight or more right,” Dan said.
The field was quickly narrowing. Essie felt a tingle of anticipation.
“Nine or more right, keep your hand up,” he said next.
Two other tables besides Essie’s still had their hands up.
“Three teams left.” Dan smiled. “Did any of you get all ten correct?”
Blaise nodded at Essie. “Go on. This was your idea. You take the win.”
Essie stood up, scoresheet in hand. “We did.”
All the other hands went down.
Dan gestured to her. “Bring that here and let me verify that scoresheet.”
She took it up to him. He looked it over, checking it against his cards, then raised it high. “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve all been stung. The Queen Bees are the winners of our first round tonight! Let’s give them a big hand and get ready for round two.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Maude headed home with a smile on her face. Apparently, she, Essie, and Blaise were now the trivia team to be reckoned with. After winning three rounds in a row, they weren’t just the champions, they were, according to Dan, the emcee, the dominating champions, displacing the previous champs. Ironically, a team of men called the Worker Bees.
“Looks like you’ll have to work harder, boys,” she said to herself as she went inside, laughing at her own joke.
The evening had been a lot of fun and Blaise and Essie were cool. Maude was really glad she’d gone.
Now it was time to log intoNightforgefor an hour or so. After she ran a few raids and spent some time with her enclave, she would turn her attention to Ollie’s ex.
Actually, Maude would probably start the dive into Emily Elizabeth Louden Keen on her laptop while she playedNightforgeon the big screen. No reason not to multitask. Especially since Ollie had texted her Emily’s maiden name.
“How’s it going, Pixy? Did you miss me?” She left her purse on the side table and bent to sniff the flowers Ollie had given her.She’d brought them in from the porch before she’d left. She went to check on Pixel.
The timer on his light had switched him from daylight to moonlight, meaning his tank was bathed in blue lighting to simulate actual night. Because he was a red and white dragon variety, the blue light made him look purple. Beautiful no matter what time it was.
He slowly swam past, no doubt already half asleep, his fins floating behind him like a fancy dress caught in a slow-moving breeze.
“I know,” she said. “I’m bothering you. Sorry. I’ll try to keep it down.”
Her stomach rumbled. Popcorn and pretzels didn’t really qualify as dinner. She searched her fridge and came up with the lemon orzo and chicken pasta she’d made a few nights ago.
That would do. She heated some up, filled her Stanley cup with ice, water, and a big squirt of cherry electrolytes, then took all of it to her chair in the living room. She set her drink and her bowl of orzo on the side table, then went back to her desk for her laptop.
She leaned the closed laptop against the chair. She’d eat first, then get to work. While she ate, she watched an episode ofFlimflam Man, a new docu-drama about a con man and the female FBI agent hunting him. It was good and Maude was tempted to watch a second episode, but she had work to do.
And orcs to raid.
She took her bowl into the kitchen then fired up her laptop. She started with Google, typing in Emily’s full name in quotes, then adding the city of Beechwood. She hit Enter before turning her attention toNightforge.
She logged onto the computer attached to her TV using the wireless keyboard she kept beside her chair. She put on her headset, grabbed her controller, greeted her enclave, and set upa raid time for ten minutes from now. They’d need at least fifty members if they were going against the Red Camp. Those orcs were powerful and fully armored. There were plenty of enclave members online, though, so they’d be good.
After that first raid, she set up a time for another raid, this time on the Blue Camp. Then she accessed the War Room chat board, which was reserved for the members of the enclave who ran things. She’d been the Crown Regent of the Elthar Enclave for over a year.
The more she got involved with the Queen Bees and got to know them personally, the more she’d come to realize something: it was time for someone else to be Crown Regent.
She still loved the game and the friends she’d made in it, but there was something truly magical about connecting with people in real life.
She’d never imagined that would happen for her at the Colony. It was embarrassing to admit but she’d thought this place would be filled with a lot of boring old people. At fifty-five, she did not consider herself old.
