11. Emory Blake
11
EMORY BLAKE
T he floorboards creaked as if humming a sad tune.
Emory Blake stared up at the rafters, thinking about the woman he met.
Uremma, she called herself. He couldn't stop the smile that spread across his face. What are the odds we both made it out alive, and even more unlikely, that we ran into each other again?
Emory poured himself another drink while his eyes shifted to a few of his patrons chatting at the next table over, making sure they weren’t likely to overhear him talking to his pastel pink-haired friend lounging against the bar across from him.
“Dai, that woman who came looking for you the other day, what did she want?”
She turned around and gave him a funny look. He’d never shown an interest in any of her clients before. “She wanted a tattoo. Why else would she come to me?”
She chuckled as she pushed off the side of the bar, making to leave, but Emory leaned over and grabbed her arm. “What tattoo did she get? Where did she get it?” he pressed, keeping his voice low to not draw attention to them, but she still appeared annoyed as all hell by his insistence.
“What, are you obsessed with her or something?” she sneered playfully, but Emory knew she was hiding something.
“She might prove to be very important to our cause ,” he stressed the last word, knowing it would get her attention. Nothing was more important to her in this world. “So, I need you to be as honest as possible, Dai. Where did she get her tattoo?”
“She got it on her shoulder. It was to cover up some werewolf pack marking she had. Why?” Now Dai seemed intensely intrigued by my asking about her.
I knew it. It is her!
From the moment he’d tasted her potion at the party, he had thought it might be her. She could change her appearance all she wanted with potions, but she couldn’t hide her unique abilities from his keen sense of such things—not after he’d watched her work miracles in that prison cell over and over again.
Emory closed his eyes and released a breath as if he was ridding himself of all the pent-up tension along with it.
“Am I missing something? What does she have to do with our cause? I mean, she seemed different than the other monsters that live in Theskin, but she’s still working with them.” Dai shrugged, taking her arm out of his grip.
“Is she working with them, or is she infiltrating them?” Emory posed, relaxing back to his side of the bar, taking a swig from his drink as he watched her over the rim of his glass. “You see, when I was imprisoned in Ryklira, I met a woman there whose magic abilities were far beyond anything I'd ever seen. She was able to mix ingredients that seemingly made no sense together, and forced it to do what she wanted. She had an extraordinary intuition about her, too, and she used it to protect those around her… I believe that the woman I met in prison back then is Uremma.”
“Are you sure about that? Why didn't she seem to recognize you as the guy she met in prison then?” Dai was understandably skeptical. She wasn't a firm believer in fate the way that Emory was.
“I'm sure she thought I died back then. After all, I was dragged out of the cell right in front of her and never returned. She has no reason to think I'm still alive. Besides, many things have changed about me since then. My face, right down to my soul, is unrecognizable to the person I was. I endured being experimented on for years after that, after all.” His eyes danced away from hers, unwilling to face anyone when speaking about the part of his past he’d give anything to forget.
“If that's true, then why don't you just confront her? I'm sure she would be delighted to learn that you're still alive.”
“And blow her cover? Whatever she's doing, it must be important, but it would be worth it to keep an eye on her. I have a hunch we’re working toward the same goal.”
Dai nodded without hesitation.
Their cause didn't have the numbers they needed to have anything like an uprising, so anyone who might side with them was a blessing.
“By what name did she know you back then?” Dai asked, her gaze filled with solemn understanding. “I'm assuming she’s not the only one who thought it necessary to change her name after escaping that place.”
He looked over at his friend and comrade with a desolate look in his eyes. It still pained him to think about the person he’d once been.
So much has changed about me since then.
“Miller… She knew me as Miller.”