Page 14 of Snag (Conduit #2)

Coda makes it to the top of the stairs, glaring daggers at me, leaning on the top of the newel post, and clearly trying not to pant. “I’ve been texting,” the awry tech snaps, a large laptop in their hands.

“I’m sorry,” I say, because apologizing is the quickest way to move forward with whatever info Coda has deemed explosive enough that they needed to come to me in person. “I actually don’t know where my phone is.”

Coda pushes off the railing, practically stumbling around the desk after eyeing Rath and skirting in a direction where they avoid interacting with the massive shifter. The tech falls into the desk chair, placing the laptop down on the desk and opening it. The screen is black.

“Don’t bite me, asshole,” Coda says, eyeing Muta over the top of the screen.

Muta disappears.

“What the fuck!” Coda shouts, freezing with their fingers hovering over the keyboard.

Preceded by the weight of his robust essence, the bushmaster reappears, draped over my shoulders.

Coda shakes their head. “New tricks for the death god? That isn’t fucking terrifying at all.”

“He’s always been able to teleport,” Rath rumbles, sounding just a little too glib for my liking. “To protect Zaya.”

I narrow my eyes at the shifter. “Coda is not a threat. ”

Blatantly ignoring me, Rath crosses his arms, then says imperiously, “Show us what you deem so important, awry.”

Coda snorts. “Okay, Daddy Dragon.”

Despite the sarcasm, Coda’s fingers fly over the keyboard of the laptop. The screen remains black, but presumably the password or protections they’re activating are similar to the ones installed on the phone I’m terrible at carrying around with me.

“I’m going to imbed a chip in your ass, Zaya,” Coda says, as if reading my mind.

“Doesn’t work,” Rath says matter-of-factly. “Her essence fries it.”

I throw him another narrow-eyed look. Muta shifts, trying to get comfortable on my shoulders.

Coda chuckles darkly. “Not my tech.”

Rath takes a step closer, so he’s within Coda’s peripheral sight. “Remember, awry. Zaya is the fucking Conduit now.”

“The name is Coda,” the tech says sourly. They don’t otherwise argue Rath’s point.

Various programs open on Coda’s laptop screen, arrayed in small boxes. Coda clicks on one of the boxes, enlarging and pulling it forward. It appears to be a new still shot of the person we spotted with Kris at the salon.

Bellamy.

“Is that the dire mage?” Rath asks.

“I think so,” I say. “Hard to confirm without being near her.”

“You don’t need to be near her,” he says with a note of warning.

I ignore him, settling my hand down on the corner of the desk and peering at the still frame on the screen.

Bellamy’s eyes are hidden behind sunglasses. Her skin is paler than before. But in a photo, I have no idea if that’s a side effect of the corrupted power she wields or just her natural complexion. Her lips are outlined in blood red, then glossed over in a pale pink.

She’s looking directly toward whatever camera or vid feed Coda caught her on.

“Where is this?” Rath asks, his phone in his hand and already texting.

“Newport,” Coda says. “I’ve texted Zaya the coordinates.”

“Send them to me as well,” Rath says.

“What’s the magic word, Daddy Dragon?”

“When?” I ask, interrupting the argument sparking between Coda and Rath. The tech does not, and will not, answer to a shifter. Not even an Outcast lieutenant. Also, I’m a little creeped out by the ‘Daddy’ moniker. Rath is only a couple of years older than Coda, if that.

“Ten minutes ago.”

I straighten. “Where’s my phone?”

“Wait!” Coda says. “That’s not the important part.”

“What could be more important?” Rath snaps.

Coda toggles a key on the laptop. And the image of Bellamy shifts, rewinding a few seconds. So not a screenshot, but a paused vid. “The dire mage was occluding all the other vid I found between the salon yesterday afternoon and this ten minutes ago.”

“What? How?” Rath asks.

Coda flicks their long fingers toward the screen, as if all three of us aren’t already riveted to the footage playing out on it. “Until this …”

On the laptop, Bellamy looks directly at the camera, then raises her hand into frame with her red-polish-tipped forefinger and middle finger extended in a V. Or like scissors. Because she then pantomimes snipping something, straight at the camera.

The vid glitches, then the camera feed disconnects or goes dead.

“What the fuck?” Rath murmurs. “Did you lose the connection?”

“No,” Coda says, sour to even be asked that.

“She showed herself deliberately,” I say, slightly shocked that a dire mage can snip the energy flow of tech in that fashion, like Coda can manipulate such things.

Coda rewinds the vid and plays it through again. “Yep.”

“Proving she can walk where she wants,” I say, “go where she wants. All without us being able to track her.”

Coda minimizes the vid, which is running on a loop, then pulls forward the footage from the salon that the tech found earlier of Kris and the so-called seer.

“Same person. Skin color is off, different makeup. Or a glamour, maybe. But the angle of the camera clearly isn’t optimized, so I can’t get a hundred-percent match. ”

“Knocked out of alignment,” I murmur. I already noted that. “And the paler skin color … might have something to do with how much power she burned to manipulate and kill Kris remotely.”

“She doesn’t want us to see her full face,” Coda says, nodding in agreement. “Same with wearing the sunglasses in the more recent footage. Plus the vid was partially occluded until you cleared it up for us, Zaya.”

“She showed herself deliberately in the salon as well,” I say. “But … like it’s a game.”

“She wants to get caught?” Rath asks incredulously.

“No,” I say, knowing I’m correct even as the assertion falls from my lips. “She wants an in-person confrontation.”

“She’s luring you,” Coda says .

“Zaya specifically?” Rath sounds a little disconcerted. “She can’t know that anyone is tracking her, or that Zaya even … exists.”

“She saw me …” I say quietly. “Through Kris. While possessing Kris. During the confrontation with Chains.”

“Might not be Zaya specifically,” Coda interjects. “She could know that Rought is a hacker, could assume that’s who she’s playing with.” They add snottily, “Unfortunately for her, she’s got me on her tail.”

“You don’t fuck around with a dire mage,” Rath all but snarls, clearly feeling out of the loop. Perhaps Rought is still dealing with the Authority agents or tracking down their other brother, Reck, and hasn’t reported back to Rath yet.

Coda shrugs, snapping the laptop closed and standing. “The dire mage can’t reach me. It’s your asses they’re about to ream.”

“Try,” Rath says. “Try to ream.”

“That mage buggered you hard and fast last night, shifter,” Coda says nastily, heading down the stairs without waiting for another retort.

I’m on the tech’s heels.

“Zaya,” Rath growls behind me.

“Have you eaten, Coda?” I ask, ignoring the presumptuous, controlling shifter.

“All good,” Coda says, which isn’t actually an answer. “Keep your fucking phone on you, Zaya. Better yet, send the shifters after the dire mage and stay on the property with me.”

“You know I’ll be fine.”

Coda spins around at the base of the stairs, the open door at their back.

The movement is swift enough to give me pause.

“One of these fucking days, it will be your last death, Zaya. I don’t want to be the one desperately searching for evidence of it.

Of what happened to you. Like you’re doing with fucking Disa. ”

I open my mouth to speak, not quite certain what to say.

Shoulders hunched, head bowed, Coda turns their back on me, swiftly heading down the upper hall.

“So I’m not the only one,” Rath says quietly behind me.

When I don’t answer him either, he steps around me, brushing his big body against me because there isn’t enough room on the stairs.

Inexplicably — for someone who pretended they didn’t know me, denying our previous connection, playing some game — he brushes his lips across my temple as he passes, not otherwise touching me.

Essence gently shifts between us, warm and sweet.

It’s hard to lie through pure essence like that.

To me, at least.