12. Unexpected Delivery
Chapter 12
Unexpected Delivery
The next day, Liliana got a delivery. She saw it coming with her fourth eyes.
She took a moment to inhale the sweet scent of the opening rose bud in the vase on her dresser. Alexander had plucked that flower with magic from the bush at the center of his power. Instead of fading, it seemed determined to grow. The red that outlined the ivory petals spread as it opened, becoming even more lovely and releasing more scent.
With reluctance, Liliana limped to her back door to take the package from the drone as it arrived. The little flying machine zipped under her porch roof. It lay a metal box at her feet. She opened the box with her thumbprint, and set it back down, leaving it on her porch. The drone would get it later to take it back to the warehouse. Inside the box, she found a sleek, modern smart phone.
It was not the usual wrist phone that most people used. In fact, while there was an armband in the box, it was just heavy-duty cloth with no electronics in it, simply a way to carry it, not part of its function. There were none of the usual sensors that measured health statistics of the wearer like heart rate, blood glucose level, and oxygen saturation. This phone was flat, like a tablet computer, but smaller. There was no return address on the box, no note, or anything to show who sent it.
The spider seer tried tracing the phone backward in time with her fourth eyes, but that was more difficult to do with objects than with people. She saw the device in hands and machines that built and packaged it. In her living room, she sat in her big recliner chair studying it. She plugged the phone into its charger. That seemed like a logical thing to do. Beyond that, she wasn't sure why she would need such a device. Or how she could possibly make use of it.
Liliana didn't have an official last name, although she used Solifilia, daughter of Solifu in Latin, when required. She had no credit cards or bank account. She bought most of what she wanted at second-hand stores. The house she lived in had been willed to her by her second mother, Ixchel, thirty years ago. She had a sixty-year-old land line phone that she paid for every month via snail mailed pay cards, along with her electricity and water bills.
Getting a cell phone had never been an option she considered before. Cell phone companies wanted all sorts of information that she didn't have. Smart phones had all sorts of functions that had nothing to do with calling people, functions she saw no use for. Besides, until Marilyn Bradley handed her a huge bag of money, she couldn't afford the fees to operate one.
The phone was pretty, though. Olive drab was not a lovely color, but the shiny, lightweight, sturdy metal had some of the utilitarian beauty of a good knife. The smooth front screen was like a black hand mirror.
Could the drone have delivered it to the wrong address by mistake? Not likely, since her thumbprint opened the box. It was probably a gift from someone. It seemed likely the giver was military since it had the color and utilitarian simplicity of a military thing, but many of her clients were soldiers or their family members, so that didn’t narrow it down much.
It startled her when the thing rang.
Even with the flashing instructions on the screen saying, Accept Call with a green circle, or Refuse Call with a red circle, it still took her a few seconds to figure out how to answer it.
"Hello?"
A small hologram of Alexander's head and shoulders, the back of his chair, and the wall behind him appeared inside the phone as if she looked through a window into a tiny, miniature office. "You got the package I sent."
Liliana smiled. "Yes, I did." She opened her fourth eyes so she could see him better while they talked. The actual Alexander in his actual office looked just like the tiny Alexander in the tiny holographic office.
"Don't worry about the data plan. It's paid. The phone is secure military, no tracing, no tapping." He leaned back in his chair, playing idly with a pen. His dress uniform was pressed and tailored. He had a new pure white shirt on with undamaged buttons.
"The phone is a very nice gift. Thank you."
"I have ulterior motives."
"You always do."
He chuckled. "I wanted to be able to check on you without you having to get up to go to your hard-line phone."
"You could check on me again in person like you did last night. I enjoyed that."
"So did I. But I think we should wait until you're fully healed before we see each other again."
Liliana thought that was probably a wise decision, but still wasn't too happy about it. "I will be functional in about a week."
"A week? Your arm is broken."
"In two places, yes. My ankle is also badly sprained, and I have deep bruises over half of my body."
"All that will be fully healed in a week?"
"My left arm will not be as strong for some time, but as I said, spider seers heal quickly."
"That's very impressive."
"I'm glad I could impress you."
"You always do."
Liliana grinned, warm down to her toes.
"I'd like to take you out, then." He looked at the calendar on his computer. "A week from this Friday night. I'll pick you up at seven."
"Take me out? Like a date? Dinner at a fancy restaurant and all that?"
"That is the general idea, yes."
The request seemed odd to Liliana, based on her previous experiences with men who desired her. "Why do you want to take me out on a date? I already want to have sex with you."
He barked a surprised laugh, then leaned forward in his chair, looking into his office communication center. It made his head fill all the space inside the tiny window of the phone screen. "Maybe I want more from you than sex."
Liliana's heart fluttered with nerves. The prince had been impressed by her fighting skill, her dancing, and her honesty, three things she excelled at. "Alexander, I am not so good with crowds and strangers." She didn’t want to disappoint him.
He nodded. "I noticed at the hanger. You'll be fine. I'll take care of you." His deep voice filled with a softness that she’d only heard from him a few other times. She didn't want to question that voice. She certainly didn't want to say no to something Alexander seemed to really want.
"Okay. I will expect you at 7:00 next Friday night." Liliana hung up. She fiddled with the scarves that made up her skirt. A date. The spider seer had never been on a single date in her life that didn't end in disaster. She knew where she excelled and where her skills were lacking. Her dating skills were truly abysmal.
She was not alone now, though. She had friends. She would enlist their aid to make sure this date succeeded.
If I can defeat a powerful lion-kin alone, I can manage a simple date with my friends' help. Right?
The spider seer told herself that repeatedly as the week wore on and her injuries faded.
The only distraction she had from worrying about the date was watching the investigation into the brutal killings happening in the forest just outside the boundary of Fort Liberty.
She saw inhumanly long shaggy arms rip people apart, but didn’t see anything she thought would really help Pete, Sgt. Giovanni, Lt. Runningwolf, and Alexander. A few of the victims she saw had axes or saws in their hands when they died. They must have been cutting wood for a campfire.
Not all of them, though. Some of the soldiers hadn’t been doing anything but drinking too much in a place where intoxication should have been acceptable, the deep woods. But again, she saw great arms rip a beast-kin man’s leg clean out of the socket. Something was different this time, though. The big arms she saw doing the killing were stockier. They seemed more … furry.
Then she saw something else and sighed.
I’m not even healed from the last fight, dammit.