Chapter 6 #2
She simply stood there with the phone in her hand and the dry, surprised irritation still settling over her, trying to decide whether she was more annoyed or curious that he had escalated from email to a direct call so quickly.
Leena sat in the kitchen a while longer before she finally played the message.
She put the phone on speaker and set it on the counter beside the cooling mug of tea. For a second there was only the soft static of the recording starting.
Then Elias’s voice came through.
It sounded tired in a way that went past ordinary exhaustion.
Lower than it had been that night at the San Jacinto.
The controlled edge she remembered was still there, but something underneath it had worn thin. He spoke without rush and without any attempt to smooth the rough places.
He said her name once, the full one, then the shorter version she had given him at the bar.
He apologized for the earlier request without making a production of it.
Said he had not meant to treat the work like a game.
The words came out steady, but the fatigue in them was unmistakable.
There was a broken quality sitting just under the surface, the sound of a man who had been carrying something heavy for a long time and had finally set a piece of it down long enough to make the call.
He did not explain the A, B, or C.
He did not try to fill the silence with extra talk.
He simply said he had not known another way to ask and that he understood if she wanted nothing further to do with it.
The last part landed quieter than the rest. Sad, almost.
As if he already expected the door to close and was only making sure he had not left the attempt unfinished.
The message ended without a dramatic close.
Just the soft click of the recording stopping and the quiet of the kitchen rushing back in.
Leena stayed where she was, eyes on the phone.
The dry irritation from earlier had not vanished, but it no longer sat alone.
The voice on the message had sounded like someone who had run out of cleaner options and was left with this one.
She picked up the mug, found the tea gone cold, and set it down again without drinking.
The house around her remained still.
Whatever she decided to do next would have to wait until she finished turning the sound of that tired, worn-down voice over in her mind.
Leena stared at the phone a little longer, then muttered a short curse under her breath and hit the call back button.
Fuck it.
The line rang three times before someone picked up.
A man’s voice came through, louder and more casual than the one on the voicemail, with the
unmistakable background noise of glasses and overlapping talk behind him.
“San Jacinto.”
Leena blinked once.
She had expected Elias. Instead she had the bar.
“Uhh,” she said, the sound coming out flatter than she meant it to. “I think I’m calling the right place.”
There was a short pause on the other end, filled with the clatter of someone setting a bottle down harder than necessary.
“You looking for someone specific, or you just want the bar?” the bartender asked.
He sounded like he had already handled a dozen similar calls that night and expected this one to be equally vague.
Leena leaned against the counter and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. Of course the number on the voicemail belonged to the San Jacinto itself. Of course she had not gotten Elias directly.
The universe apparently still had a sense of humor, and it remained as dry as her own.
“I’m looking for someone who works security there,” she said, keeping her voice even. “Tall. Quiet. Name’s Elias.
He left me a message from this number.”
The bartender made a noncommittal sound.
“Security’s upstairs most of the night.
I can try to get a message to him if he’s still on.
Who should I say is calling?”
Leena hesitated only a second.
“Tell him it’s the Sorceress.”
She heard the bartender repeat the word under his breath like he was writing it down on a napkin, then he told her to hold on.
The line filled with the full noise of the bar while he presumably went to find someone who could carry the message upstairs.
Leena stayed where she was in the quiet Sacramento kitchen, phone to her ear, already half regretting the decision and half curious whether Elias would actually come to the line.
There was a longer stretch of bar noise, then a shift in the background as someone took the phone.
“Leena.”
Elias’s voice came through low and clear, the same controlled tone she remembered from the end of the bar, only worn thinner the way it had been on the voicemail.
Something in her reacted before she could stop it.
Her soul perked up, sharp and uninvited, like a part of her that had been sitting quiet for months had suddenly lifted its head.
She felt it land in her chest and along her spine, a clean, startling recognition that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the sound of him saying her name over the line.
Oh what the fuck.
The thought arrived hard and immediate.
She stayed silent a second longer than she meant to, fingers tight around the phone, the quiet Sacramento kitchen suddenly feeling too still around her.
She had called him back out of a mix of irritation and reluctant curiosity.
She had not expected her body to answer first.
She drew a short breath and forced her voice to come out even.
“You’re a hard man to reach,” she said. “I got a bartender and a hold message before anyone handed you the phone.”
The words were practical.
The reaction still moving through her was not.
She stood there with the phone pressed to her ear, the unexpected lift in her chest refusing to settle as quickly as she wanted it to, and waited to hear what he would do with the fact that she had called him back at all.
Elias let out a long breath on the other end of the line.
The sound carried the same worn quality as the voicemail, the kind of tired that sat deeper than a single long night.
When he spoke again his voice stayed low, the controlled edge still present but softened by whatever weight he was carrying.
“Darlin, I need those readings.”
He did not rush the words.
He let them sit for a moment against the background noise of the bar before he continued.
“I can’t leave a paper trail of cash to you. So I’d like to send you a gift if you’d allow it.”
The offer came out careful and deliberate.
No attempt to dress it up.
No pressure layered underneath.
Just the practical problem stated plainly and the only solution he seemed willing to put on the table.
Whatever A, B, and C stood for, he still wanted the three cards pulled, and he was trying to keep the exchange clean of anything that could be traced the usual way.
Leena stood in the quiet kitchen with the phone against her ear and the unexpected reaction from a moment earlier still lingering in her chest.
The word darlin had landed softer than she expected.
The request itself remained as blunt as the email that started the whole thing.
She could hear the San Jacinto moving behind him, glasses and voices and the ordinary business of the night, while he waited on the line for her answer.
She did not give it right away.
She let the silence stretch just long enough to make it clear she was still deciding whether to reopen the door she had tried to close with the Magic 8 Ball remark.
Leena let out a short, dry breath that was almost a laugh.
“A gift,” she repeated, turning the word over like she was inspecting it for defects. “Perhaps a moonstone bracelet. Sterling.”
She paced a slow step away from the counter and back again, the phone still pressed to her ear.
The suggestion was not random.
Moonstone sat against her skin most days.
It was the stone people associated with the Sorceress, the one that turned up in photos and in the quiet details of her work.
Sterling silver would keep it simple and clean.
She offered it the same way she offered most things, without soft edges.
“Or maybe a ruby,” she continued. “Maybe an emerald.
Something with a little more blood in it.”
She stopped near the doorway and stared at nothing in particular while the San Jacinto’s background noise hummed through the line.
The earlier lift in her chest had not fully settled.
Hearing his voice had woken something she had not planned on dealing with tonight, and now she was standing in her kitchen testing him with stones and metals as if the right answer might tell her more about the man on the other end than the request for three unnamed cards ever could.
“What would the great Elias give?” she asked, the title carrying a thin edge of mockery that did not fully hide the real curiosity underneath. “You’re the one who called.
You’re the one who needs the readings bad enough to dodge a paper trail.
So tell me. What does a man like you send when cash is off the table?”
She waited, phone warm against her ear, the quiet Sacramento house holding still around her while the question traveled the distance back to Austin.