Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Luis waved at me from the security desk. He was talking, too. Maybe even shouting. It took me a moment for the words to make sense. “Susan! Hey, Susan, I got something of yours over here.”
I blinked, confused. I must have zoned out on the walk back from the restaurant. Giving myself a little mental shake, I walked across the black marble floor of my building’s atrium and approached the security desk. “Hey, Luis. What’s going on?”
“I got your service dog right here,” Luis said. He wagged his finger at me. “Your doctor says you gotta take him with you to the office, on account of your heart problems.”
I frowned. “My service do?—”
I looked down and spotted Cecil in his Labrador form, sitting behind Luis’s chair with an angelic expression on his face. He’d made himself a nice new service animal jacket. This one had the words Working Dog—Touch Me And Lose Your Fingers. I frowned. “My doctor said what?”
“She said you have to keep him with you, Sue. To be honest, it was hard to concentrate on account of your doctor being such a hottie, but I believe her exact words were ‘keep him with you, or you could die at any moment.’ That sounds serious.” He nodded at me sympathetically. “I didn’t know you had heart problems.”
“I didn’t know either,” I muttered. “Come on, mutt.”
Cecil trotted to my side and followed me into the elevator.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him as the doors closed.
“I’m your security detail, you bitch,” he said snippily. “There’s no need to be ungrateful.”
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t need a security detail, Cecil.”
“Well, I might have burned my bridges as Cress’s security detail.” He scowled. “That woman has no sense of humor.”
“Why? What did you do?”
“Cress and I were undercover as narcotics agents so we could try and find some of the other Middle World portals. I committed to my role, Chosen. I am an actor,” he said haughtily.
“If I smell cocaine on someone, I’m going to sit down and alert my handler.
” He went on, a little quieter, “And I’m going to take that bag off them and sell it to someone else. ”
I rubbed my temples. “Cecil.”
“You’d think that Cress would have some sort of entrepreneurial instincts, but no,” he whined.
“She’s all like, ‘Cecil, no, you’re disrupting our mission.
Cecil, no, you’re drawing the attention of the cartels.
Cecil, no, you’ve got white powder all over your face.
’” He pouted. “She made me stay outside at her therapy session; I didn’t even get to listen at the door.
And I don’t want to have to stay with Violet all the time, Chosen.
It’s so boring there when no one else is home. ”
“Nate isn’t back, yet?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. He’s still in Faerie, and we don’t have any answers on what’s going on in the Under. So, I’m here. I’m your early alert warning system in case of danger.”
“I don’t need an early alert warning system, Cecil.”
“You do, actually. That’s the other reason I’m here. The prince received some intelligence that his dastardly brother is planning on targeting some specific Middle World spark stones with a view of harming you directly, so the whole company has gone on high alert.”
“What kind of intelligence?”
“Just the usual mutters and whispers from the trees.”
“Sorry?” Maybe I didn’t hear him correctly. “From the trees?”
“Oh, yeah. They’re a gossipy bunch of bitches. Sometimes they hear stuff. And sometimes they’re even willing to share it, provided you offer them something in return.”
My head spun for a second. “What would a tree want?”
“Shit.”
“What?”
“Manure, Chosen. What the hell do you think a tree would want, a snazzy car? Some fabulous heels?”
“I’m sorry I asked.” My eyes were itchy, but I resisted the urge to ball up my fists and rub them.
“Anyway, most high fae tend to disregard the gossip of what they would consider a lowly spirit creature, but Prince Donovan has always valued the information they provide. Connor would never,” he added, turning his head to try and unzip a pocket on his service jacket.
“He would never believe that a tree’s information could be valuable. ”
“Cecil… please tell me you don’t have a packet of cigarettes in there.”
He paused and turned to face me. “I don’t have a packet of cigarettes in here.” He mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch, something that sounded like I don’t have ten grams of cocaine in here either.
I stifled a groan. “Listen, Cecil. If we’re going to be stuck together, here, at my workplace, you have to behave.” I wagged my finger at him. “Promise me. No talking, no smoking, no doing anything that a medical alert service animal wouldn’t do.”
He hung his furry head, managing to look both adorable and miserable at the same time. “Fine.”
The elevator dinged, and I got out onto the office floor and did a quick check of the floor. Everyone looked busy, and nobody was on fire. Luckily for me, I had the whole day blocked out to conduct interviews, and now they’d all been canceled.
I took Cecil back to my office, shutting the glass door firmly behind me, and checked my emails.
Cheryl from HR had sent me the resumes of every single person who’d applied for the Team Leader positions, as I’d requested.
As a special fuck you, she didn’t exclude anyone.
There were over three thousand applications.
Cheryl didn’t know who she was dealing with.
I opened the applications and filtered them by searching for the words Base Budget Insurance, found the two applications I wanted, and sent calendar invites to both of them to see me first thing tomorrow.
I was promoting in-house, and Cheryl could go to hell.
There. Now I had the whole afternoon free.
“Let’s get back to the subject,” I said, mentally taking off my Manager hat and putting my Chosen One hat back on.
“The trees heard that Connor was targeting some specific stones that would help him defeat me. What specific stones are we talking about here?” I covered my mouth and yawned again.
Damn, I was tired and feeling a little wobbly, too.
It served me right for drinking wine at lunchtime.
How many glasses did I drink? I couldn't remember. With a little effort I forced myself to focus. “What realms are being targeted?”
Cecil had settled himself into the seat across from my desk.
“We don’t know. All we know is that he’s decided to strike at you directly and personally.
The Prince and Eryk have gone to scout out some portals to see where he might have gone lately.
They’re thinking maybe the yeti stone or the minotaur stone.
Something to make Connor stronger, because now that you’ve got berserker strength, it might have rattled him a little bit.
You took out two of his assassins easily, so he probably wants to try and regain the upper hand, strength-wise. ”
“Hmm.” I chewed on the side of my thumb for a second, running over the little scene on the street with Detective Striker.
It was weird; that felt like a million years ago, almost another lifetime.
“I don’t buy it. I think Connor’s next most likely move is to focus on building his army.
” Quickly, I outlined for Cecil what had happened with the wolf-shifter detective.
“Connor seems to have put a lot of energy into painting me as the bad guy, so to turn around now and attack me directly would negate all that.”
Cecil gave a little doggy shrug. “He’s got to get rid of you somehow. You’re kinda standing in his way for Total World Domination.”
“He’s not going to give up, I get that. He knows he can’t seduce me, since I easily threw off his seduire magic, and he knows he can’t overpower me physically, so he’ll shift his focus again.
He’s already started by getting the womanhaters on his side, but he needs more support.
I think if he was going for more spark stones, he’d go for something that can give him the kind of magic he needs to manipulate crowds of people, not something that makes him punch harder.
He deliberately ate the seduire stone so he’d have the power to seduce people, but unfortunately for him, it only lasts a moment or two. ”
“Okay. Look at you, miss Art of War. So, what do you think he would do instead?”
“The trick with the stone did work, so I bet he’d want to do something similar to that. We already know he keeps trying—and failing—to get the vampire’s spark stone. If he devoured that one, he’d be able to hypnotize people to get them to do what he wants.” I squinted at Cecil. “Is that right?’
“That’s right. Vampires can compel their victims. It’s not foolproof, but it works.”
“I think he’s going to go for something similar to that.
He wants the power to know what buttons to push to get people into doing what he wants.
How to manipulate better. He already has the creative stone to give him the power of expression.
Maybe… I don’t know, maybe he wants to have the power to…
” The edges of my vision went watery as another wave of exhaustion overwhelmed me.
Cecil tilted his head to the side, his long tongue hanging out of his mouth. “Are you okay, Chosen?”
“I’m fine. Just tired, I guess.” I rubbed my eyes and shook my head to try and rid myself of the cobwebs. I had a strange compulsion to keep moving. As long as I was moving, I was productive. “What was I saying?”
“You think Connor will go for another stone that can help build his army.”
“Oh, yeah. So, if we’re sure he’s going after another spark stone, we just have to figure out what stone, and we might be able to catch him in the act. So far, he has focused on stones that help manipulate people. Is there anything that would give him the ability to find out what people want?”