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“I like you, Nora Blake. You’re mature for your age and speak your mind. I think we would do well together. You have special abilities, which I doubt anyone within the system knows anything about. I could teach you how to use those skills and about the world.”
“And what would I have to do?”
“Learn from me. Be my shadow and on occasion run and accomplish errands and small jobs for me. I won’t lie to you; the tasks will become more dangerous as you get older, but I will endeavor to keep you safe. After all, the longer we’re together, the more time and money I will have invested in you.”
“Are any of these tasks illegal?”
“Some,” he admitted.
“I won’t have anything to do with drugs or being a hooker.”
“I would never ask you to do either of those things. I stay away from both.”
“I would have access to this room?”
The man nodded. “You would have access to the entire house. It would be your home. I would expect you to do well in school and follow the rules, but I think you’d find your life here quite comfortable.”
Nora moved around the room, trailing her fingers along leather-bound spines, making her way to the French doors that led outside. She watched as the ocean crashed into the jagged coastline. Abraham Strode didn’t seem like a pedophile or a pervert, and she was fairly sure he’d been honest with her. Nora suspected whatever he had up his sleeve wasn’t usually done by a woman, so she’d be able to more easily slip in and out of wherever it was he wanted her to go.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two of the beautiful horses she’d seen earlier race along the fence line and beyond the breakers, and she was pretty sure she saw dolphins playing in the sea. Compared to any other prospective places to grow up, this one was heaven. She turned her back on the panoramic view.
Offering him her hand, she said, “You have yourself a deal.”
Nora wasn’t sure exactly what she’d just agreed to, but it had to be better than anything else on the horizon, didn’t it?
CHAPTER2
NORA
Boston, Massachusetts
Present Day
The knock on the door startled Nora. No one ever visited her but Fallon, and she’d been in London consulting in her capacity as a paleozoologist. Fallon Kent was the only true friend Nora had ever had—that was if you could define ‘true friend’ as not having a clue as to your true profession. Nora attributed her frequent absences to her friend as being a travel writer and blogger, and in fact Nora did have a popular blog about travel to exotic, and some not so exotic places. Checking her phone’s doorbell camera app, she saw a young man in a delivery uniform. Nora opened the drawer of the entry table just to the right of her front door, withdrawing the SIG P365 and flicking off the manual safety.
The delivery man handed her the envelope before spinning on his heel and trotting down her front steps. Inside the unexpected envelope had been a picture of a man with ‘Boston Commons. Today. After 4.’Terse and to the point. It was uncommon for her to be given an assignment in the city in which she lived, but not altogether unknown. At least with the timeframe she had time to plan for both the kill and her escape. The good thing about the timing was at this time of year, it was beginning to get dark at four. In addition, Boston’s notorious rush hour would have begun, and it would be easy to just disappear into the crowd.
No worrying about a vehicle or mass transit. Boston Commons was inside Beacon Hill, where Nora had a federal-style row house on a cobblestone street lit by antique lanterns. She was also well aware of the locations of the CCTV cameras that kept the city under surveillance. There were also several good locations where she could conceal herself and what she had been tasked to do.
The Master might be a monster—well, technically he was an ancient dragon-shifter, but he had held to his end of the agreement. Nora had been given a lifestyle most would envy. She’d had the finest of upbringings, the best of educations, and had a job that while she might not like, she had convinced herself was necessary and at which she excelled. No one, save the Master, knew who she was. In fact, they knew nothing at all about her, including her gender. Known only as the Ghost, she had been at the Master’s right hand, dispensing justice and revenge in equal measure.
At that hour of the day, to get a clean shot, she’d need height. Gaining access to buildings anymore with a rifle, even one broken down into parts, could be tricky. She thought about long-acting poisons, but figured if she was being given little notice, it must mean the Master wanted the target dead immediately. That meant up-close and personal. She scanned the internet for happenings in Boston. Good, there was some kind of gathering or festival today that was to get underway shortly before the designated time.
Nora glanced at her watch. She had plenty of time to grab something to eat, do her job and get back home. Her stiletto would be easy enough to conceal in her everyday, nondescript clothes. All she needed to do was locate the target, get close, do the deed, and walk away.
At first, she had believed the Master’s assurances that those who he sent her to kill were either a threat to them or deserved to die. Recently, more often than not, she doubted that still held true. Slowly but surely, the Master had wielded his influence on the Ruling Council and had taken control of those known as the Shadow League. They were supposed to be the Council’s enforcement arm, but these days they did the Master’s bidding; only most didn’t know that.
She was unsure which had been more of a shock to her: that the Master was an ancient dragon-shifter, once revered by the Egyptians and feared by Merlin or that she herself was a clouded leopard-shifter—a human-creature hybrid that could shift at will. The latter had been a relief, as her clouded leopard had begun to make its presence known within her psyche, making her fear she was crazy. The Master had assured her she was not.
“What kind of creature is it you see in your mind’s eye?” he asked one day as they walked the wind-swept cliffs above the beach and jagged rocks below.
The question had caught her completely off guard but had been oddly reassuring.
“A clouded leopard,” she answered without hesitation.
“Ah, a predator. I thought that might be the case, and an interesting one at that. Do you know much about them?”
“Yes; I’ve made a study of them. They can purr like small, domestic cats, but cannot roar like the largest ones, like lions and tigers. They have ankle joints that allow their hind feet to rotate so they can descend trees headfirst. They are the most arboreal of all cats and can leap fifteen feet or more from branch to branch. They are their own unique genus, forming a bridge between the large predatory cats and the smaller ones.”
