Chapter 1 #3
Like most of Gwen’s clients, Farhanah didn’t have much cash to spare.
She did, however, have a new knitting habit and a substantial yarn stash accumulated via recent thrift store visits.
Right this second, Gwen was wearing a very pretty, very lumpy sweater beneath her oversized bowling shirt.
The matching hat and gloves—equally pretty, equally lumpy—had been deposited in the trolls’ bags of supplies.
All Farhanah’s work. All gifted in exchange for occasional prophecies, despite Gwen’s protest that her piddling visions weren’t worth the time and effort required to knit the items.
“I’m so glad your aunt’s family heirloom survived unscathed,” Gwen said sincerely. “Farhanah’s a kind lady.”
For the first time, Haziq smiled. “She says the same about you.”
With that smile? If he was single, it was because he’d chosen to be. Wowza.
“Um…” Gwen wasn’t sure how to broach the topic of Hugh Blacke again. “I don’t suppose…”
Haziq’s forehead crinkled in thought. Then, before she managed to find the right words, he dug out a notepad and pen from somewhere in his uniform and offered both to her.
“Write your note,” he said decisively. “I’ll make sure Councilor Blacke receives it right away, although I can’t promise he’ll agree to talk with you.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Sheer relief turned her knees to baked Camembert, and she blinked back grateful tears as she accepted the writing supplies. “Thank you so, so much, Haziq.”
Bracing the notepad on the brick wall beside the entryway, she jotted down the only message that might convince a sleepy SERC councilor to leave his bed at four in the morning and speak to someone of zero importance whom he hadn’t seen in two decades:
Twenty years ago, you said to contact you if anything changed. It has. The park’s power has figuratively gone out, dino chomping is in progress, and you need to know.
P.S. I’m not lying this time.
She didn’t sign her name. Given their history and her infamy within the Supernatural and Enhanced human communities, she shouldn’t need to.
At her verification test two decades before, when her blood offering to the prophetic Powers had only elicited the most inconsequential of visions—not enough to earn her a job or even guarantee simple verification—she’d panicked under the pitiless auditorium spotlight.
Desperate not to fail her family or humiliate herself in front of the cute demon who’d deceived her, she’d blurted out the most apocalyptic prediction imaginable.
Unfortunately, that prediction had been a total fabrication. Even more unfortunately, the most recent movie night at her dorm had featured Jurassic Park.
Somehow, for some godsforsaken reason, her eighteen-year-old brain had prompted her to recount the film’s entire plot like a prophecy, as if a hungry T.
rex were poised to menace Jeff Goldblum and devour unsuspecting porta-potty inhabitants at that very moment.
She’d watched herself ruin her entire future from a weird sort of mental remove, horror stricken but unable to intervene.
Her cockamamie, obviously false prophecy had made her the laughingstock of SERC in an instant and destroyed her reputation as an oracle before she’d even graduated from Delphi Academy.
Hugh Blacke would remember that particular verification test, whether or not he remembered their waiting-room encounter beforehand. He would remember her.
When Haziq left to ferry the folded note she’d written, the trolls remained in their distant doorway. As they’d explained earlier, their presence at her side would ensure her safety—but it might also dissuade potential helpers.
“Our size and strength intimidate common humans,” Lorrie had matter-of-factly told Gwen after braking at a stoplight, in between hurried bites of squid-ink pasta with sea urchin.
“And since Kip and I stopped buying glamours after trolls’ existence became public knowledge, we can’t pretend to be humans too.
Besides, other Supernaturals consider us dimwits, so the councilor wouldn’t consider our explanation of events credible. ”
Kip had chimed in through a mouthful of butter-poached lobster. “Hoist by our own incredibly clever petard.”
A mere forty-eight hours ago, Gwen too had been convinced that trolls were extremely jolly, incredibly clumsy, not overly bright giants…
rather than extremely jolly, somewhat clumsy, cunning giants.
Who, by strategically deploying their reputation, managed to stay out of interspecies politics and smite their enemies with impunity.
After all, how could they be blamed for any bloodshed? Trolls wouldn’t hurt a fly shifter, according to common belief—and due to being so very klutzy, they couldn’t help the occasional inadvertent murder or maiming, right?
They’d been trolling—ha—everyone for centuries. Very cleverly, as Kip noted. Also very inconveniently, since all that trolling meant they couldn’t serve as believable emissaries of apocalyptic information now.
If she made it up to Hugh Blacke’s apartment, she’d have to go alone.
That was a big if, however.
Five minutes later, Haziq reappeared through the lobby’s massive glass windows, and Gwen held her breath as he hustled back toward his assigned front-door post.
When he finally arrived, he opened the door wide for Gwen. “The councilor will see you in his apartment.”
She bit her lip. Braced her still-wobbly knees.
Then she stepped inside.