“I thought you were happy, too,” Cha said, more than a little chagrined.
“I am happy,” Dy insisted.“That’s just day to day shit.I have what I want and I thought you did, too.”
“I didn’t have you,” Cha said quietly.“I just never thought there would come a day that we stopped being friends.”
“I thought I was too boring for you,” Dy admitted, tears swimming in her big blue eyes.“I didn’t want to be the domestic stone around your neck.”
“Oh honey.”Cha pulled her into an embrace.“Never.You’re my favorite person.And I love my snotty, bickering nieces and nephews.After the chicken incident and Phin was so mad… I thought you didn’t want a bad influence around your kids.”
“Phin worries,” Dy agreed, “but even she didn’t mean for you to stay away for so long.You’re part of the family, Bandit.”
“You know that you’re the only family I’ve got.”She braced herself, as heartfelt confessions really weren’t her thing.“I guess I’ve been lonely.”
“Oh, honey, I feel terrible.”Dy sniffled against her.“I guess we should’ve talked.Why is that always the answer and also always what we don’t do?”
“Yeah, well, water under the bridge, Goldilocks.”Cha stepped back and tugged one of Dy’s spiraling curls as she said it.“We have a decision to make right now.Go forward or go back?I believe we can still make the turnaround, but not if we keep burning our time.We’ll soon hit the point of no return.”
“And we’re out of time to rescue Monat,” Dy said on a sigh.
“Not necessarily.”Cha considered, wondered if she’d kick herself for this later.She should wake up and smell the Eloko blood, most likely.Heroics were for suckers.But Dy was more important than the rest.“Our gig relies on you getting Big Betty back with the shipment,” she pointed out.“Otto will pay you whether I’m there or not.Once we meet the contact in Moonstone, you can hightail it back to Rockton.I can see you clear over the border, then circle back to grab Monat.”
Dy hesitated, clearly torn.“You would do that?”
“Just said so, didn’t I?But it means you would be on your own.If we go now, you should be able to travel back at legal speeds, but you’d have zero margin for mistakes or hang ups.”
“I can handle that part, but….”Dy put a hand on Cha’s arm.Squeezed lightly, her magic effervescent and calmingly familiar as the hug had been.“I don’t want you to risk yourself.”
“You know I’m too selfish to do that,” Cha cracked.
“Right.”Dy dropped her hand and planted fists on her hips, all annoyed mama now.“What I do know is you’d only have fought an Eloko if some kid needed rescuing.”
Cha snorted.“Seriously?Better to clear the gene pool of the idiots, I say.”
Dy gave her a knowing look.“You call me a softy, but I know you, Arantxa Evermore.”
Cha clapped a hand to her heart.“Not the full name!Please, I cry uncle.”It made Dy laugh, but that heart Cha wished wasn’t quite so soft panged at the sound of her name, Azul’s voice speaking it in that caressing way echoing through her mind, her lips burning with the memory of that kiss.Any minute now, he’d leave her thoughts and quit haunting her.He was like that Eloko, a fae creature with an alluring magic trick.Son of a Bitch.Had Azul used enchantment on her?Seduced by the fae was such a tired old tale, but she clearly wouldn’t be the first of her family line to fall for that silver bell of adventure sex.
“We go,” Dy said, breaking into her thoughts that jangled like the silver bell hitting the ground, and—fortunately—bringing her back to the moment.“If you can get to Monat, great,” Dy continued, “but only at no risk to yourself.”
“Yippee!”Her cheer sounded hollow even to herself.Spinning on her heel, Cha headed for the purring Katu.“Let’s ride.”She pumped a fist in the air, trying to be her old self again, not quite sure where she’d left it.
“Cha,” Dy called after her, not yet moving.“I’m sorry about Prince Charming, whatever happened there.”The sorceress always did read her too well.
“Not a thing,” Cha replied with forced cheer.“In every sense.”She hopped into Katu and pulled out, waiting for Dy to lay them a line through the dark to the ley to Moonstone.
And told herself she didn’t miss the broody prince.Not one bit.No way could you miss someone you’d known for all of five hours.
“Easy come, easy go,” she chanted under her breath, willing herself to believe it.Maybe repetition would work to break the spell.Soon she’d have forgotten all about him, except as a colorful footnote on the greatest haul of their lives.
~29~
Through the Veil of Stone
Warg warbled fromBig Betty’s open windows as Dy anchored her ley magic to him, her sorcery dense in the air like the smell of ozone before a lightning strike.Though the sorceress had done this part any number of times, it still required finesse, creating a whole ley line where one not only hadn’t been before, but wasn’t supposed to be.The fae authorities weren’t fools.Far from it.They knew smugglers used temporary ley lines to circumvent the depot and its customs agents, and they’d enchanted the ground all around to prevent the creation of new ley lines.
That was one of the many reasons Dy was the best—she could outpower that enchantment.But it required a sizeable portion of her magic plus unbroken concentration to focus on keeping it all circumscribed so as not to trip any magic-sensitive alarms and alert the fae.To get the job done, Dy and Cha needed fast, but they also needed discreet.Too much power tended to radiate increased magic along several dimensions not detectable to human senses.
Other magic-workers could create new ley lines, and obviously did, as Bandit and Goldilocks were far from the only smugglers out there—and likely quite a few teams had cropped up to take advantage of the lucrative business Cha and Dy had abandoned—but Cha seriously doubted any had tried to connect to the Moonstone Throughway.Instead, they’d done what Cha and Dy had always done before—created short hops of ley lines to meet up with their fae counterparts off in the backwoods beyond the faux fae village and other rural areas around the depot.The area was littered with clandestine meeting points, some shrouded in permanent enchantments to hide them from all but the key players.Dy and Cha had one of those on the far side of the depot, a snug little hidey-hole that would hopefully still be there for them to use on the return trip, if necessary.
