Page 49 of The Shade of Things
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Accordingto my old analog watch, we’d been up until 4AM Vancouver time before falling asleep. We crashed for a whopping six hours, before we were woken up by that same ethereal female voice asking if we could survive the Human Race.
My head felt fuzzy and stuffed with cotton, my limbs were heavy, and worst of all? There was no caffeine to guzzle thus psyching myself into feeling awake. No, wait. The worst was having to squat outside behind a bush to pee.
It was now Friday morning; the game would end Sunday. It couldn’t come soon enough, and yet it didn’t feel like enough time to save whoever was left.
Eli was pissed off that we hadn’t yet found a single living player, snapping at all of us to hurry and hit the road. Emmett was as grumpy as a toddler who hadn’t had a long enough nap, and my feet were still swollen and throbbing when I stuffed them back into my boots. We were a delightful bunch.
Only Laurent, now shifted to wolf form, seemed rested, which was ironic given he hadn’t slept at all. Emmett had been given his small pack, which the golem hung by its straps off his cane, carrying it all like a hobo’s bundle.
We walked in single file under the perpetual night sky with Eli in the front and Laurent bringing up the rear. The road out of the retirement complex was a steep switchback, darkness pressing in from either side. Had I not been with Huff ’n’ Puff, it would have been terrifying.
I kept my eyes on the ground, so tired that I didn’t trust my feet to work without visual confirmation, aware of Laurent prowling behind me. I missed him prodding me in the back with his heavy muzzle like he usually did and our weird human/wolf conversations, but the things we had to discuss required us both in human form.
There was, however, another topic I wanted to talk through with someone, so I quickened my pace, moving ahead of Emmett, who was singing loudly off-key to himself, and falling into step with Eli.
“We’re on another connecting section,” I said, gesturing around us. “Like the bridge and fog earlier. I’m sensing a trend.”
“Another good place for an ambush,” Eli retorted. He was twitchy, his hand on his gun.
“Laurent’s got wolf smell and hearing,” I said. “Nothing will get the jump on us.”
Eli dropped his hand to his side.
“Something’s bothering me,” I said, low enough that Emmett wouldn’t hear us over his mangling of Aerosmith’s “Dream On.”
“Only one thing?” Eli shook his head. “You’re doing better than I am.”
“Between her art career and being a fixer for the magic community, Tatiana rubs elbows with some pretty powerful people—Sapiens and Ohrists—but she’d never heard of this game?”
“You think she lied?”
I shook my head. “Tatiana wouldn’t have let you go poking into it if she was involved in any way.” I felt so guilty over keeping the secret of the Ascendant and the true nature of her car accident from her that I couldn’t come out and directly voice what I was thinking.
“Ah, but if she wanted information about the game that she could use to her advantage?”
I sighed. “Yeah. That’s what I’ve been wondering. Three ways that Tatiana could profit somehow from the details of the game. Go.”
“Blackmailing people for their involvement, getting to bet on the game herself.” He pursed his lips, thinking. “We’ve assumed that people are betting on this game, which means this Consortium is making bank. What if Tatiana wants to join that secret club?”
“She does love her filthy lucre. The third reason seems more likely than the second. As for blackmail?” I resettled the weight of my pack. “That only works with the threat of exposure. The Lonestars have written it off as a Sapien problem, not that Tatiana would get into bed with the magic cops. She also wouldn’t go running to the Sapiens, even if she was believed, because she’d be violating the prime directive.”
“Either we’re back to joining the Consortium or she doesn’t have a hidden agenda,” Eli said. “She just subcontracted you for a hefty fee.”
It was the option I’d wanted to hear, that Tatiana didn’t always have an ulterior motive, but I was glad to have someone else who I trusted agree with me.
“I wonder if Tatiana suspects there’s more going on here than moneymaking.” I twirled a finger around. “You and I agree it would take a lot of magic to create it. This place covers more physical territory than Blood Alley, and we haven’t even seen it all yet. There’s a specificity to all this that we’re missing. I feel like I’m looking at a puzzle through a window hazy with condensation. If I could just get a clear look at it, I’d understand what I’m seeing.”
Eli kicked a rock out of his way. “One step at a time.”
We walked for so long that my blisters got blisters and my shoulders burned from the pack. After zigzagging around another corner, we were confronted with the glow of office towers in a downtown core about a half mile away.
Emmett and Laurent caught up with Eli and me, the four of us in a line.
“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my,” Emmett said.
I slugged him. “Are you trying to get us eaten?”
