Within the hour, they were in the house he and Jasque had been living in. Sam and Shilloh’s agent were on the couch and spoke with an easy, professional rapport.
To an outside observer, it would have looked casual. But Wade knew just enough to spot how deftly they were avoiding privileged information. Every other word was a polite deflection. Honestly, it was a wonder they were able to string two words together in the first place, considering how much they were trying to omit.
When his emergency signal went out, Sam had made a U-turn and raced back to Forsythe. Despite the frantic rush, she looked just the same as always. She smelled like car, generic soap, and hidden firearms. She was casually dressed, but all her clothes were of a quality and cut where she could walk into most places, so long as they weren’t absolute dives or five-star hotels.
The agent, who called himself Daryl, was normal height for a man, fat in a way that suited him very well, and sported a head of incredibly thick and glossy black hair. He wore khaki slacks, a comfortable polo shirt, and a tan, baggy jacket. He smelled like a father, and the magic coming off of him was like coral snake venom: small but potent enough to leave fields of corpses behind him. But only if the coral snake had camouflaged itself as a middle-aged dad who snuck away from his wife to break his diet and proselytize about 401Ks.
Wade was floating in and out of the conversation. Sometimes he listened, other times his mind flew away to observe his territory, make small tweaks, and test the connections between new additions.
Mostly, he just let the gentle tides of small talk soothe away his anxiety.
Abruptly, he stood.
“She’s waking up.”
Deryl nodded and stood as well. Though he needed an extra hand on his armchair to do so.
“Well, I guess it’s time to get this show on the road. Sam, if you’ll excuse me?”
“Of course, don’t rush things on my account either.”
After that, she and Wade waited in silence. Just outside the living room, Jasque maintained his silent vigil on the stairs that led down to the basement, where Daryl was speaking to Shilloh.
Wade made sure not to eavesdrop. This house was more thoroughly marked than almost anywhere else in this part of the state: nothing happened that he couldn’t sense if he so chose. But ignoring input was a skill any Were learned, and Wade was not just any Were.
Still, he was not so naive as to ignore everything. He was immediately aware when the agent in the basement stood up. He was already moving towards the door before the man had a chance to call up and summon them.
With a wave, he motioned the other two to follow.
They clomped down the stairs so that the four of them and Shilloh could all gather together in a perfectly normal basement. It was not big, but not small. The walls were shabby, and the floors were concrete. It showed both the usual mixture of organization from the first weeks of the move and the ugly accumulation of whatever was thrown down thereafter.
They all sat but Jasque. Sam and Daryl took plastic folding chairs, Shilloh had something comfortable from the kitchen table, and Wade was in a camping chair. His bodyguard refused and slinked so that he was perpendicular to Shilloh.
The dryad looked surprisingly good. Sure, her clothes were dirty, there where holes and ripped seams in her pants, and she had lost her ball cap at some point. But hell, aside from the bruises and the bandage on her arm, he would have believed anyone who told her she had spent an evening unloading gardening supplies. Especially now that her skin was no longer green
Then again, it would have had to be some real heinous garden supplies to make her radiate such an intense aura of leashed rage.
She was surrounded by empty water bottles and even had her phone in her pocket. They had hoped it would calm her. The second they reached roads that were consistently on his Marked land, they had removed the conventional restraints and given her back her handgun. In a place that belonged to him, there just wasn’t anything she could do.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Honestly, aside from having a stick up his butt and always saying ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’, there was no reason why Jasque should be acting like Wade needed a body guard here: if he was on his land, and he was aware of a threat, then it was no longer a threat.
Shilloh cocked her head to the side and he felt a flicker of that strange power of hers move. It was a liquid thing. Made of rainbow and spirit, and very interesting. Looking at it, the magic she called on had been part of the land this whole time, but he had never been able to notice it. Like it could only be seen if you already knew about it and were told to tilt your head just so.
Huh. You know what, Jasque may have had a point. Maybe he wasn’t as safe as he had assumed.
Deryl spoke, and Wade quietly wove protections into the air between Shilloh and the rest of the room’s occupants.
“Shilloh has debriefed me, and I have told her what I can. She is aware that Wade has an ability to claim territory that is unusually deep.” Shilloh snorted at the profound understatement. “She is also aware that he is moved to strategic locations. Once there, he assists in various projects and processes that she is not cleared to know about”.
“In turn,” Deryl continued, ”I have explained that everyone in this room knows that she is a Dryad. But only Sam has been allowed total access to her files.”
The female agent smoothly interjected, “I have not disclosed any of that information to either Wade or Jasque. I only told them that you were of interest to the Blightbanes and we could not easily relocate you, so they had to play nice.”
“Is there more to disclose now?” Jasque asked, displaying an unrivaled ability to be perfectly cordial while every fiber of his body screamed resentment and tightly coiled violence.
The blond agent crossed her legs and waved him aside so she could continue addressing Shilloh, “Has Mr. Deryl spoken to you about the situation and our offer?”
Shilloh nodded, her eyes flickering to Wade before focusing on the other woman. A touch of nerves showed in the way her hands opened and closed, but she hid it well. “He said I will need to make an excuse to leave town for a while so I can be assessed for higher clearance. After that, I may never come back to Forsythe.”
She took a moment to purse her lips with distaste at the thought. “The question is if I will be relocated like before, or if I want to consider a role helping the banes.”
“Exactly, correct,” Deryl said. “We will talk about the details later, just you and I. However, now that everyone is on the same page, we can move on to the meat of the issue. Wade and Sam, we have a few questions that you might be able to shed some light on.”
Wade steeled himself. All of their past conversations flashed through his head. He mentally rehearsed a few lines.
‘I swear, you will do the most good anyone can.’
‘I can’t say how dangerous it is, because I don’t know what you can do.’
‘No, I wasn’t joking around. Your mistakes will cost lives. But, so does choosing inaction when you have the ability to help.’
Shilloh leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees, and locked eyes with Sam, completely ignoring him.
“Four questions. First, if I sign up with the Banes, can I keep the land I’ve bought?”
“Yes.”
“Will I be able to write a will that will define its purpose should I die. A guaranteed one, even with all the issues that can come with changing identities.”
“So long as you’re not doing something heinous or giving away classified information, we can get a team of lawyers to help you. Consider it a sign-on bonus.”
Some of the nerves left her, and Wade could swear that he saw her back straighten. She also, for maybe the first time, opened up her body language slightly and leaned forward, claiming some of the space. “Excellent, thank you,”
“You’re welcome. What’s your third question? Though, obviously, you can ask as many as you’d like. We’re not limited to four.”
A very small, very neat, professional smile came to Shilloh’s lips.
Inexplicably, Wade shivered. His instincts told him that a predator had just passed by his window in the night.
“These four questions should be a good start. So tell me,” she leaned a bit forward, ”are you authorized to negotiate the terms of my employment?”
“Not directly,” Sam frowned. She glanced at Daryl, and he just smiled in a way that could be comforting, but mostly gave the impression that he knew something she didn’t. ”I can tell you generally what is possible, though. If you decide to help us, you will join Mr. Raslow on a trip to a site with someone who can negotiate. There, we can have you cleared for a higher level of classified knowledge, and you can hammer out the fine details of your contract.”
Shilloh nodded, and that smile came back. The one that made Wade feel unsafe in a way he was not used to. “Thank you. Now, Deryl says the wages would be ‘considerable’. That interests me. I would like some numbers, please. Also, if you would, could you please give me mortality rates, the bonus structure, a list of benefits, any standard sign-on incentives, and a calculator?”
Sam blinked, the exact same shiver he had just experienced passed through her spine as Shilloh’s eyes unwaveringly locked onto her.
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
Piracy Notice: If you’re reading this anywhere other than Scribble Hub, Royal Road, or my Patreon then this is pirated. Please let me know by going to the Jeffrey Nix website’s contact area so I can get really annoyed, complain to my cat, have her tell me this never would have happened if I had just gone back for a Ph. D, send a takedown notice, and get back to writing.
