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“That’s right, you don’t, do you?” Her tone was as sweet as mine, but her words were meant to cut. Pretty arrogant for a woman who didn’t even notice the power from the second mark I carry.
“Exactly. So, I have a job to do, and I suppose that means a trade if you have what I want.” I crossed my legs and rested my hands on my lap. “Do you have what I need?”
“I don’t know.” Her smile grew like the Cheshire Cat. “Can you describe what it is?”
Here we go. “It will be small enough to fit in your palm, a stone, perhaps with carved markings on it, and a sort of an inner glow.”
“Can’t say I’ve seen it.” The sweet smile faded from her grandmotherly face, leaving only cold blue eyes staring back at me. “And even if I did, what could you possibly have to trade that would be worth anything?”
I reached for the artifact with my mind, gently flexing my power that didn’t seem to hit her radar. Testing her wards, I push a little more, dialing up the volume on my power to find out what she would notice. It wasn’t until the air in the room buzzed like a plague of mosquitoes that she finally blinked and frowned at me.
“What is that?”
“I’m seeking. It’s what I do, remember?”
She shook her head and licked her lips, blinking rapidly. “No, seeking is passive. You’re not seeking anything.”
I flexed my hand, and the bookcase across the room rattled. “I suppose you’re right. It isn’t seeking so much as calling, if we’re being technical about it.”
She leaped toward the bookshelf rattling so hard now it looked like it would fly across the room. “Stop it. Whatever you’re doing, just stop it.”
My palms up in surrender, I pushed just a little harder. With an audible pop, the rune flew through a hole in the bookcase that must have been another little leather-bound hiding place. It flew to me and settled on my lap.
“You know, you’d think wealthy and powerful people would use like… safes for their valuables.” The rune sat in my lap, safely away from my skin, as Moira and I stared each other down.
“You have no right to take that from me without payment.”
“And I have taken nothing from you—yet. But I’m getting a little tired of every other creature treating me like I have no value because you don’t know what I am. So instead, how about we start over?”
She chewed the inside of her cheek, making her look much younger than the sixty years and change I’d guessed she was. “What do you want?”
“For starters, how about you tell me where you got this stone?” I turned my focus outward to the purple-painted door to the office. I push outward and call it like the stone until it closes.
I could get used to this.
The stone, a white obelisk, pulsed in my lap, radiating such happiness to be home it seemed alive. It’s not my favorite sensation, but I feel incredibly powerful.
“Why does it matter where I got it from?”
“It matters who you got it from and why it was worth taking on a little field trip to send me chasing echoes.” I sighed. “I’ve survived by being too unimportant to bother with for a long time. If someone’s decided that’s no longer the case, I’d like to find out who sooner rather than later.”
21
“I don’t know who created the artifact echoes you found in the bayou, but I got the artifact from a succubus called Samara. If you worked for the Syndicates, you must have heard of her.”
“We’ve met,” I said with a straight face and an even tone.
Moira had reached for the stone with one long-fingered hand, her rings glinting in the candlelight that allowed shadows to cling to the walls. But her hand halted in mid-motion, and she pressed her lips together, then dropped them to her lap so we mirrored each other.
“How did you do that? I didn’t think you were telekinetic,” she asked, pursing her crimson lips and watching me with a small frown. She had been trying to work out my powers.
“I’m not. I think the stone inside me calls to the others.”
“But the door? I don’t know that removing the mark is the right choice, girl. You could be extremely powerful,” she said, the frown disappearing from her face.
“I don’t thirst for power, ma’am,” I said as I raised my hands in surrender. “I’m a simple person. I only want enough to stay alive. Mostly, I prefer to be left alone to find cool shit for my clients, so I can pay my bills. I prefer to be left out of turf wars that had nothing to do with me and only made life harder for everyone.”
“You sound like your little witch-friend,” she said.
