Page 60 of Smuggler's Beauty

“Yeah. Fuck the alphabet.”

He handed her the disk box, noticing that her hands trembled as she went to shelve it. Frowning, he gave her a more thorough once over. She was covered in a fine sheen of perspiration. The trembling wasn’t isolated to her hands. Her whole body was quaking. He didn’t like it. This unsteadiness was a new element, and he wondered if it had to do with her training.Siphoning all that energy and not putting it back couldn’t be good.

If this is how her hands are taking the strain, her heart must be doing the fucking samba.

Studying Evelyn was not a sacrifice on his part. Aiden relished looking at her. He adored cataloging her responses to things, her little sighs of contentment, the way her nose wrinkled in displeasure.

But watching her tremble like a leaf in a windstorm chilled him to the bone. Learning to use her abilities was a necessity, but doing so without guardrails felt incredibly foolish. Aiden would never forgive himself if she came to harm under his watch, even self-inflicted. He mentally sped through his options, desperate to help her.

That’s sort of my whole gig in this coup, anyway.

Not wanting her to hear how worried he was, he kept his tone light as he said, “You ready for a break?”

“I’m almost done. No sense in stopping now.”

He gave her shoulder a squeeze and murmured that he’d return in a few before hurrying back to his office and locking the door. He engaged the privacy protocols and pulled up his communications center to dial Corvinia’s secure line, his worry turning to anger.

How dare Vinnie be so fucking reckless with Evelyn’s life? He spent the next five minutes convincing himself that Evelyn’s heart wouldn’t explode in her chest before they found a way to dispel the energy her body was trying desperately to work off. It was touch and go.

The call connected, and his screen filled with Vinnie’s face. She appeared to be at the helm of her ship. It threw him a bit to see her in a T-shirt, her greying auburn hair shoved behind her ears. The woman he knew as Vinnie was always dressed to the nines. Crisp shirts, bespoke suits, elaborately knotted ties.

“Problem?” she asked.

“Yes, there’s a fucking problem,” he hissed. Aiden didn’t know why he was bothering to whisper. His door was locked. The room was soundproofed.

“Would you care to elaborate?” Vinnie took a sip of her coffee. Well, Aiden assumed it was coffee. The mug screamed coffee, but for all he knew it could be full of scotch.

“Evelyn is currently so buzzed on energy transfers that she’s literally vibrating. For fucks’ sake. Is she ever going to be able to sleep again? Does this shit have a half-life? Is there any reference dataanywhereyou could point her to? Are thereanysafety protocols in your rinky-dink spy organization? Oh, and great advice, by the way. ‘Figure it out’ is the most thorough training regimen I’ve ever seen.”

Aiden’s voice had risen in volume by the time he stopped to take a breath. Realizing how close to yelling he was, he pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, inhaling slowly. Feeling vaguely more centered, he opened them.

Corvinia had set her coffee mug down and was now leaning closer to the screen. “What do you mean she’s vibrating?”

Aiden described the way her hands were trembling as she’d shelved movie disks. “I don’t think she’s slept since we left Vegas. She looks like she snorted a pile of stimulants.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Brilliant summation.”

She rolled her eyes. “Normally when people with martial talents are identified on Tanalia, we get them enrolled in a special boarding school.”

Hope sprung up in Aiden’s chest. “So there is some training course available?”

Vinnie bit her lower lip. “Um. Not really.”

“Not really?” Aiden’s screech reminded him of a small bird of prey.

“Everyone is different! There’s a lot of trial and error. The contact that you’re meeting on 14 And. should be able to help her out. In the meantime, you’re going to have to help her expel the energy back into the sources or burn it off some other way. Her system needs to learn to recalibrate itself.”

Aiden was quiet for a moment. While he wanted to hurl the contents of his desk against the wall, the resulting mess would only put off helping Evelyn.

How would he help her if any other electrical object was acting up? Lillian was a brilliant hacker, but Elenor fought with electronics all the time. Aiden had done his fair share of troubleshooting.

“Are you suggesting,” he said, speaking every word deliberately, “That I figure out a way to . . . turn her off and back on again?”

Vinnie snapped her fingers. “Exactly!”

Turn her off and on again. Fuck’s sake.