Page 46 of Obsidian Prince

His heart is well-guarded, but I am good at getting past guards.

Chapter12

Unexpected Delivery

The next day,Liliana got a delivery. She saw it coming with her fourth eyes.

She took a moment to inhale the sweet scent of the opening rose bud in the vase on her dresser. Alexander had plucked that flower with magic from the bush at the center of his power. Instead of fading, it seemed determined to grow. The red that outlined the ivory petals spread as it opened, becoming even more lovely and releasing more scent.

With reluctance, Liliana limped to her back door to take the package from the drone as it arrived. The little flying machine zipped under her porch roof. It lay a metal box at her feet. She opened the box with her thumbprint, and set it back down, leaving it on her porch. The drone would get it later to take it back to the warehouse. Inside the box, she found a sleek, modern smart phone.

It was not the usual wrist phone that most people used. In fact, while there was an armband in the box, it was just heavy-duty cloth with no electronics in it, simply a way to carry it, not part of its function. There were none of the usual sensors that measured health statistics of the wearer like heart rate, blood glucose level, and oxygen saturation. This phone was flat, like a tablet computer, but smaller. There was no return address on the box, no note, or anything to show who sent it.

The spider seer tried tracing the phone backward in time with her fourth eyes, but that was more difficult to do with objects than with people. She saw the device in hands and machines that built and packaged it. In her living room, she sat in her big recliner chair studying it. She plugged the phone into its charger. That seemed like a logical thing to do. Beyond that, she wasn't sure why she would need such a device. Or how she could possibly make use of it.

Liliana didn't have an official last name, although she used Solifilia, daughter of Solifu in Latin, when required. She had no credit cards or bank account. She bought most of what she wanted at second-hand stores. The house she lived in had been willed to her by her second mother, Ixchel, thirty years ago. She had a sixty-year-old land line phone that she paid for every month via snail mailed pay cards, along with her electricity and water bills.

Getting a cell phone had never been an option she considered before. Cell phone companies wanted all sorts of information that she didn't have. Smart phones had all sorts of functions that had nothing to do with calling people, functions she saw no use for. Besides, until Marilyn Bradley handed her a huge bag of money, she couldn't afford the fees to operate one.

The phone was pretty, though. Olive drab was not a lovely color, but the shiny, lightweight, sturdy metal had some of the utilitarian beauty of a good knife. The smooth front screen was like a black hand mirror.

Could the drone have delivered it to the wrong address by mistake? Not likely, since her thumbprint opened the box. It was probably a gift from someone. It seemed likely the giver was military since it had the color and utilitarian simplicity of a military thing, but many of her clients were soldiers or their family members, so that didn’t narrow it down much.

It startled her when the thing rang.

Even with the flashing instructions on the screen saying, Accept Call with a green circle, or Refuse Call with a red circle, it still took her a few seconds to figure out how to answer it.

"Hello?"

A small hologram of Alexander's head and shoulders, the back of his chair, and the wall behind him appeared inside the phone as if she looked through a window into a tiny, miniature office. "You got the package I sent."

Liliana smiled. "Yes, I did." She opened her fourth eyes so she could see him better while they talked. The actual Alexander in his actual office looked just like the tiny Alexander in the tiny holographic office.

"Don't worry about the data plan. It's paid. The phone is secure military, no tracing, no tapping." He leaned back in his chair, playing idly with a pen. His dress uniform was pressed and tailored. He had a new pure white shirt on with undamaged buttons.

"The phone is a very nice gift. Thank you."

"I have ulterior motives."

"You always do."

He chuckled. "I wanted to be able to check on you without you having to get up to go to your hard-line phone."

"You could check on me again in person like you did last night. I enjoyed that."

"So did I. But I think we should wait until you're fully healed before we see each other again."

Liliana thought that was probably a wise decision, but still wasn't too happy about it. "I will be functional in about a week."

"A week? Your arm is broken."

"In two places, yes. My ankle is also badly sprained, and I have deep bruises over half of my body."

"All that will be fully healed in a week?"

"My left arm will not be as strong for some time, but as I said, spider seers heal quickly."

"That's very impressive."

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