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“I have contacts who help casters escape,” I replied, and it was true. “Over the last three years, I’d followed the rumor of runaway casters who had disappeared into Calgary. From there, with Zane’s help I found contacts who could promise safe passage.”
“Contacts from the demon world, correct?”
I nodded.
“And where do you think those casters end up exactly?”
I shrugged again. I really didn’t know, and frankly had never cared. The less I knew in advance the less likely I was to let slip anything that could lead the guilds back to me if they bothered to try to find me.
“What do you know about Sarnas?” Marik asked - the switch in topics giving me whiplash.
“Not much,” I replied truthfully. “I know you don’t normally come here, maybe once every five years or so, and you’ve never picked anyone from Red Pines.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“Elitism.”
“Is that what they told you?” he asked with a chuckle, one eyebrow raised.
“If by ‘they’ you mean the sisters, no. This is simply through my own observations. I tend to have a lot of those.” I winked at him, but he just stared at me with the same amused expression. “You come here only once in a blue moon, show no interest while you’re here, and disappear as soon as possible. That tells me you are recruiting somewhere else. And considering we have had four graduates in the past three years join the Sentori ranks in under two years post-selection, you either don’t value combat expertise at all or have a chip on your shoulder against us.”
Marik scoffed, the lightness coming back to his eyes. “Well, you’ve got a couple things right.”
“Which are?”
“Well, for one, you’re right that we don’t give a fuck about your so-called combat expertise.” I pulled my head back wrinkling my chin. Very attractive I know. “And second, we do recruit elsewhere. Not that often, academies can be just so fickle.”
“Are you saying you recruit wildlings?” I sat up and leaned across the bed to grasp his wrist. Why I had - nobody knew, but I was rolling with it. “Do you have any idea how dangerous wildlings are?”
Marik studied the hand on his wrist but took no action to dislodge it. “Dangerous to you maybe.”
“Dangerous to everyone. There’s a reason casters are raised in guilds. No matter how underdeveloped, you couldn’t trust a five-year-old with pyrokinesis to not burn down a grocery store when his mother refused him a Snickers. Plus, the Guild Council literally bans their existence. If you’re found harboring them, Sarnas could be dismantled.”
“First, it’s not hard to forge sales and Academy documents to legitimize Wildlings when you know the right people. Secondly, Sarnas can’t be dismantled. Thirdly, they’re not our only recruits.”
It clicked then. “The runaways?”
Marik shrugged. “Well, we don’t buy recruits from academies much, that’s for sure.” He said. “Drew was the last one, seven years ago now. He came from the Western Winds Academy in Texas.”
Seven years? How the hell did these guys maintain their status as a guild if they never recruited? There were over a thousand casters up for selection annually across the globe – to not recruit from them meant each guild grew hundreds of members a year more than Sarnas did. “So why not recruit from academies? It would be easier I would think, and less troublesome.”
Another shrug. Seriously was that his arm workout? If so, I should have been buff by now. “We don’t need to. We only recruit a very specific class of person, and not that often. Plus we offer great incentives to those who join.”
“Class of person?”
“The unique. And you certainly fit that bill.”
Unique. I could think of better adjectives with freak coming to the forefront.
“A healer and an empath with a shoebox with twenty four grand in American dollars wreaking of shifters, a driver's license with a fake name courtesy of that same shoe box, and a well taken care of very old truck that you couldn’t simply have found on the side of the road which just happens to be registered to a Zandarin Raven, the alpha of a small but extremely influential pack on the international stage.”
He could have finished there, but he continued. “A healer and an empath who, regardless of what type of essence it is, can fire sparks at people that can tickle.”
“Hey!” I cried, releasing his wrist. But he was having none of that, grabbing my hand and placing it back where it had been.
“Don’t take that personally. It takes a lot to cause me harm.”
I very legitimately giggled, and Marik’s lip twitched in a sideways grin. I was becoming such a girl in his presence.
