Page 13

Chapter Thirteen

I tried a few gentle questions on the ride home to see whether Gwen wanted to talk about anything that had come up at lunch, but she shut me down, yawning and staring out the window, so I wasn’t sure whether she was jet-lagged or avoiding the conversation.

Once we were home, she crashed until dinner when she emerged to eat, still looking half asleep. We watched a vidlink of an old movie she liked for an hour or so, before she fell asleep on the couch. I shook her awake gently and shooed her back to bed.

The next morning she slept late. I’d been up and working for most of the morning before I smelled coffee coming from the kitchen. Coffee seemed like the perfect excuse to see how she was doing.

“Good morning,” she said, stifling a yawn.

“Hey.” I poured coffee, not pushing for a conversation. I drank half a mug and found a cookie, eating it before I spoke again. “Got any plans today? We could do some sightseeing, if you’d like.”

“I’m still kind of tired,” she said, shrugging. “There’ll be plenty of time for sightseeing.”

“Alright,” I said. “Anything you would like to do?”

“Do you have any games?” she asked eagerly.

I stifled a snort. “You’re in Damon’s Riley’s house. Yes, we have games. You want to play something?”

“That would be awesome.”

Games, I could do. Especially if it would build some trust with her. “Let’s go.”

“Sweet setup,” Gwen said when I showed her the gaming room.

“It’s one of the perks,” I said, with a grin. I pulled a couple of headsets out of the cabinet where we kept spare gear and handed one to Gwen.

She took it, then hesitated. “You have a chip.”

“Yeah, but it always feels uneven if one person is playing with a headset and the other has a chip.”

“Does a chip give you that much of an advantage?”

“It makes the sensory sensations more realistic and a tiny bit faster. I think it helps your reaction time, though Damon says they adjust for that when the players are using mixed access modes,” I said. “But you know how it is sometimes. Half a second in making a decision can be the difference between success and, you know, dying in some embarrassing way.”

“Thanks, that’s nice of you.”

“Pick a chair. The system is set up to go to a foyer, the usual kind of thing. We can choose from there.” I said. “Hang on, I need to set you up first. Madge, can I have a holoscreen?”

“Of course,” Madge said.

A screen appeared in front of me, and I swiped my hand down to summon a keyboard as well while Gwen settled into one of the game chairs. “I’m going to set you up an account.” I typed in the commands. Damon had set up an account for Gwen on the house comp so she could check email and calls and have access to our general link feeds, but I knew he’d locked everything else down.

I didn’t know if he’d done the same with the game collection. We had Riley betas and even pre-beta concept games loaded on our servers. I locked those off Gwen’s menu, making sure she would only have access to released games.

There were more than enough to choose from. Damon collected games as well as making them. His game library was vast. Name a game and he probably had it. He certainly had hundreds I’d never even heard of. He got some kind of weird geek kick out of converting old games to run on new tech.

So it didn’t matter if Gwen hadn’t gamed for four years. She could probably find anything she liked from her teenage years and far earlier.

“There,” I said when the system confirmed the account. “Come over here and let Madge scan you again so you can use facial recognition to log in.”

“Brilliant,” she said. “No passwords to remember.”

I laughed. “Most things tend to use biometrics now.”

“If you’re fancy,” she said. “If you’re playing with an old deck at boarding school, then passwords are definitely still a thing. Even at university. Some people in halls had ancient systems.”

“Halls?”

“Halls of residence. A dorm I think you’d call it?”

“Right,” I said. Of course she would have lived on campus, though she presumably could afford not to, but maybe it was a rule over there like it was here for most first years to live on campus

Yoshi had an exemption because of his sister.

“Alright,” I said. “Log in and see you in the foyer.”

I settled myself back and put the headset over my temples. The bonus of this being Damon’s system was as soon as I had the set connected, Madge logged me in without me having to activate anything.

I blinked my eyes and I was standing in the white square foyer. Gwen was there, looking around curiously, wearing a default avatar with a black skin suit and her own face.

“Do you have an avatar?” I asked. “If you don’t, you can build a basic one via the menus.” She could build something much better than basic, but I didn’t want to stand around waiting.

“I’ll decide once I know what we’re going to play.”

“Sure.” I waved a hand and brought up the game menu, scrolling through slowly. “See anything you like?”

Gwen made a little ‘go on’ gesture. After a few more scrolls she gestured for me to stop. “What’s ‘training ground’?”

Crap. I’d forgotten Damon’s monster simulator was sitting on our main menu. I hadn’t blocked it.

“That’s something Damon built for me so I can practice…well…witch stuff.”

Gwen leaned a little closer to the menu. “Fighting? You know the s’ealg oiche, right. The ones who were with you in the realm?” she said. “I assume they’re training you to hunt or something?”

She was clever, I had to remember that. She had made some bad decisions in the realm, but that didn’t mean she was stupid. And she probably knew more about Fae creatures than I did.

“Or something,” I said, not wanting to tell her more.

“Can I see it?”

I hesitated. For someone who didn’t want anything to do with magic, it was an odd thing for her to be curious about. “Not just yet. I need to talk to a few people and get permission. A lot of the information in here belongs to the Cestis.”

She didn’t argue, even though her face fell. “Okay.”

“What was your favorite game before you went into the realm?” I asked, wanting to get us heading in the right direction again. If this was going to work as a bonding session, then Gwen had to enjoy the experience.

She named a space exploration game.

“You might like Serenity Falls ,” I suggested. “That’s Righteous’s newest sci-fi game. Actually we’re going to Decker’s tomorrow night. Damon’s playing an exhibition bout of Serenity.”

“He games publicly?” Gwen’s eyebrows shot up.

“Not often. This was a contest that Decker’s ran back in April. Proceeds go to charity. The winner gets to play Damon. He does a couple of these a year. You can come along, if you’d like.”

“Is he good?”

“He’s hard to beat,” I said. “I mean, he’s not a pro-gamer, but he could have been.” If he hadn’t decided making billions inventing games was more fun. “Plus he knows the games inside out.”

“I guess that helps.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” I agreed and started the game.

By the time we got to Decker’s on Sunday night, Gwen had started to relax. She’d spent most of Saturday with Yoshi, touring UC and had arrived back at the house practically bubbling over with excitement. She’d talked Damon’s ear off at dinner asking him for his views on various options for studying. He’d answered patiently, but after about an hour had retreated to his office to finish up some work, leaving Gwen to research schools and courses on her own.

She’d spent most of the day continuing her research. I’d reminded her about the event and it seemed a game club trumped wading through course catalogs because she’d been ready thirty minutes early.

Decker’s was crowded, which I’d expected. Damon’s public sessions were always sold out. The crowd was a wall of noise and only grew louder as we were escorted down from the private rooms on the upper floor to the main gaming stage. But they stayed mostly respectful as we moved through the room surrounded both by our own security and the club’s.

Damon climbed the stairs to join the MC onstage, and Jake and Maia shepherded Gwen and me over to a small area to the left of the stage to stand with some VIPs and the competition winner’s family and friends.

Damon walked out on stage and the whole place went crazy.

Gwen’s hands flew to her ears, her mouth dropping open, eyes wide as she watched the reactions. Knowing Damon was famous and seeing the reality when he was surrounded by fans, was a bit of a mind-fuck. I’d seen it enough times now to get used to the adulation, but it was loud . Loud enough that the instinctive part of your brain interpreted the sound as danger as much as appreciation.

I had no idea how rock stars got up on stages in front of tens of thousands of people screaming at them. Maybe all they felt was the enthusiasm and love. Knew how to ride the emotion to fuel their music.

Damon, I knew, would have preferred to stay out of the spotlight, but he did whatever he needed to do for Riley Arts and he did it well, charming the crowd with the full wattage version of his charm-the-universe smile and waiting the noise out. After a minute or so, the roaring and applause died down enough to let him make his speech, congratulating Lia Wang, the woman who’d won the right to play him, before taking his place in one of the two game chairs and logging in.

The crowd roared again as the Serenity Falls title sequence started to roll on the massive screen set at the back of the stage, filling the back wall above the level of the game chairs and then split into two, showing Damon and Lia’s individual views of the game. Damon’s avatar appeared in the familiar room at the hostel, looking down on the market, ready to start his adventure. Lia, in a different room, was doing the same.

Neither of them wasted any time. But as Damon left the hostel and entered the market, looking to buy some extra equipment, I faded back a little. I didn’t need to be in the front row. I’d played Serenity Falls quite a bit. It was the game that had led to me meeting Cerridwen, but I enjoyed it enough that I’d pushed through those associations to play quite a bit with Damon. And it was one we’d tried with Callum, though he seemed to prefer historical games. Gwen had loved the game and we’d played several sessions since our first one. Gwen was a bit rusty, though improving fast enough I could tell she would be great if she practiced enough.

Damon’s bout with Lia was scheduled for an hour. The Righteous programmers had developed a separate shorter route through a few key sections of the game. The full version of Serenity Falls could take months to play through. An hour was only a taste, though I was sure it would be a close contest.

But I’d spent a lot of time in game clubs watching other people play and supporting Nat back in the day. It had never been my favorite activity and it still wasn’t. Not even when it was Damon. Surely no one would mind if I went to the bar? Nobody would pay any attention to me with Damon playing on stage.

I cast a glance over my shoulder toward the nearest bar. I knew my way around Decker’s and security had cleared the club before we arrived. I felt like being normal for once. The bar was about twenty feet away. Maia would still be able to see me.

I sidled over to her. “I’m going to go get a drink.”

She frowned. “Someone can bring you one.”

I shook my head. “It’s fine. It’s just over there.” I pointed to the bar. “You can see me from here. And everyone’s watching the stage. No one will bother me.” Decker’s had a couple of floors, but the two top ones were for VIPs or pro team gaming. The second floor was filled with rows of gaming booths on each side of several long hallways. Those were open to anybody who paid the fee.

The first floor, once you got past the entry where people paid their fee, checked gear, and were scanned in to confirm their rank if they were pros, was one big square with the main gaming stage at the far end. There were a few larger gaming booths along each side, strategically interspersed with bars. The rest of the floor was set up with seating to watch the main stage or the screens streaming games from the other floors if people chose to stream. Though tonight, those were all showing the main stage. Now that Damon and Lia’s game had started, the seats were all full, with more people standing behind the seats. From what I could see, there weren’t many people at the bars.

Maia scanned the crowd and then the bar, lips pursed. I gave her my best version of puppy dog eyes. If she said I had to stay put, I’d stay put. But my pathetic look must have worked.

“Don’t go anywhere else,” she said, sternly. She tapped my wrist. “And use your panic button if you need to.”

“I won’t need to. But I won’t leave the bar,” I promised. “Watch Damon. This should be fun.” He and Lia were now walking out of the town toward the first bridge.

That was one of the first tests in Serenity Falls . Also the part of the game that had led to me finding out Fae were real. I had no particular desire to see the circle of rocks where Cerridwen had hidden a summoning rune again, so I turned on my heel and wriggled my way through the crowd to the bar.

As I expected, nobody paid me much attention. A few people nodded as I walked past, but no one tried to block my way or start a conversation. The bar itself only had a couple of people waiting to be served.

I slid into a space between a tall blond guy and a shorter one with spiky red hair who looked barely old enough to be able to play at Decker’s—which was an eighteen-plus club—let alone buy a drink. The bartender, a pretty black woman, was checking his ID with a scanner, a skeptical expression on her face. Her eyes were a coppery shade too metallic to be natural. Her long thin braids echoed the metals, dyed shades of bronze, copper, and gold. Her makeup was the same colors. In her black uniform she looked like a futuristic goddess.

She took my order of straight whiskey with a nod, asked my preference as to brand, and smiled approvingly at my choice before pouring it into a heavy glass and putting it down in front of me with a bowl of the little spicy things Decker’s always served with booze to make you drink more.

I pulled out my datapad to pay and she shook her head. “Mr. Decker said you drink free tonight, Ms. Lachlan.”

I hid the wince at the fact she knew who I was. “Thanks.” A few years ago, Nat and I would have been more than happy to score free drinks at Decker’s but now, when I didn’t need it, it felt weird.

But Damon was making Decker’s plenty of money with his appearance tonight and by running the tournaments, so I guessed it worked out.

I took a sip, letting the whiskey’s smoky burn distract me from the restlessness I knew was leftover adrenaline from the last few days. Between Gwen and nixlings and afrit, the week had been crazy. And it wasn’t over yet.

“How is the whiskey?” the blond man asked.

“Not bad,” I said absently, not really looking at him. I had no particular desire to make small talk with a random stranger.

I took another sip, starting to turn away, looking down to try to let him know I wasn’t interested, preparing to go back to the others if he wanted to pester me.

The stranger held up a hand. “Not so fast, Maggie Lachlan.”

My head snapped up. I knew that voice. Knew in the pit of my stomach, rapidly turning to ice, all the pleasant warmth of the alcohol vanishing.

He was wearing dark smoked glasses, which was not a completely unusual fashion choice in a game club. But as I watched, the glass cleared, leaving me with a clear view of completely black eyes. No whites, just bottomless pools of darkness.

The face was unfamiliar, but I knew those eyes. All too well.

Usuriel. Lord of the Darker Hours. Who should be safely in the Fae realm, not anywhere near me.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed, bracing myself to run. The bartender was serving another woman, not looking at me. I tried to keep my face calm, not wanting to drag anybody else into this.

Usuriel’s hand was still raised. A subtle whisper of magic brushed by me. Fae magic. The sound of the club receded.

Fuck . He’d cast an illusion around us. Probably to anyone watching it would look as though we were having a friendly chat. Question was, was it only an illusion or a physical ward? In other words, could I walk away?

Don’t panic .

Easier said than done. I took another swallow of whiskey, hoping it might burn out the shock at seeing him here. It seemed to work, the thump of my pulse in my ears died down to normal levels. I squared my shoulders. I had broken Usuriel’s magic before. I could do it again, particularly out here in the human world, where his magic would be slightly weaker. But only slightly. He was an Elder, like Cerridwen. One of the greater Fae powers.

“You told my watcher you wanted to speak to me in person,” he said, coolly. “I thought it was only polite to comply with your request.

“So you did send the nixlings. What the hell are you doing spying on me?”

He shrugged and tiny pinpoints of rainbow light shimmered over his black shirt. I would have sworn it was silk but watching the glimmers of light, I wasn’t so sure. It was beautifully tailored, setting off his pale skin and the hair that was shorter and several shades darker than it was in the realm.

The face was different, too. Human, not unearthly Fae lord. Which was a relief. It made it slightly easier to control the fear still prickling down my spine. I could probably see through the illusion if I tried hard enough, but I didn’t want to waste my power in case he tried something. My hand slid into my jacket pocket, seeking the familiar smooth disc of my panic button. I could activate the one programmed into my chip with a flick of my wrist, but I didn’t want the movement to draw his attention. And I didn’t want to pit Maia or Jake against Usuriel, let alone any of Decker’s staff, none of whom were witches.

Safer to see what he wanted and try to get him out of the club as fast as possible. “I asked a question.”

“Not so much spying as observing,” he said.

I frowned, lifting my chin. “Sounds like the same thing to me.”

Another liquid shrug.

Irritation crawled up my spine, tightening my shoulders and jaw. Were they all taught to do that? Callum, Gráinne and Cerridwen were all masters of the ambiguous gesture, which could mean any number of things. Perhaps in a society where people couldn’t lie and acknowledgment could be taken as a debt, you had to develop other ways to deal with nuance and fill spaces where it would be dangerous to say something definitive.

“Very well, why are you watching me?” I asked, trying to temper my tone to something more polite. Not pissing off the scary Fae lord seemed like the smart thing to do. Particularly when I didn’t want to test my magic against him. Especially when I could hardly set him on fire like an afrit. Crowded club aside, I was sure there would be nothing but a world of hurt waiting for me if I physically attacked an Elder.

I could defend myself under the contract, but crossing Usuriel in the realm had so far led to me being persona non grata for over a month. If I actually injured him—let alone killed him—I doubted I’d ever be allowed back.

“I have learned more about the person you were pursuing through the realm.”