Page 86 of Elven Shadow

She had to ensure he didn’t start digging even deeper after this. More than that, she had to prove whoever was responsible for this attack had absolutely no affiliation to her whatsoever.

Which would be really hard to do if it ended up being one ofherenemies instead of some disgruntled enemy target coming to seize vengeance on all of Shade as a whole. Rebecca had to figure out which one was which, because only then could she prepare for exactly how to handle the fallout.

Then she thought of her room and what she’d left there. Not just the hex doll, which she couldn’t let anyone get their hands on before she understoodhow to work it, but something else too. Something else far more personal and far more valuable.

And if anyone got their hands on it—anyone like Maxwell or any number of Rebecca’s enemies from her former lives finally coming for her—the game was up. She couldn’t hide who she was anymore after that.

So instead of barreling straight for the garage like they’d all just been ordered, she headed straight for the hallway into the residential wing and her private room almost at the very end of it.

The other operatives scattered with her almost at the same time, some of them darting down the hallway after Maxwell, others splitting off down the different branching hallways to look for other members who might’ve needed help.

Rebecca passed several of them on her power-walk down the halls of the compound’s residential wing. A handful of faces peeked out from open bedroom doorways to search the hall for clues. She ignored them all, well aware of the other operatives running and shouting behind her.

The order to get everyone to the garage was clear enough without her getting involved.

She had to make it to her room before anyone else did.

In the distance—and admittedly growing less distant by the second—more explosions rocked through the compound. Nothing had become quite so destructive yet that it interfered with the building’s electrical power, though overhead lights flickered with each resounding blast.

Over and over, the walls trembled, the ground shook, shadows danced across the walls, and the constant scream of the alarm siren blared through it all.

Right when she reached the door to her own room, another fierce explosion rocked the building. This one seemed to come from directly above her—seeing as the shockwave of the blast crashed down from the ceiling and nearly on top of her.

The ensuing roar of some unknown detonation—magical or otherwise—drowned out all other sound before it was instantly replaced by an endless ringing in Rebecca’s ears.

The entire hallway shook like a box of cookies rattling around in an overeager child’s hand. Plaster, drywall, and shaves of dust poured down on top of her as the ceiling fractured with a blistering crack from the blast.

The walls groaned and trembled beneath the pressure, and that snapping, crackling break in the drywall continued ahead of her along the ceiling and down the hallway.

As if the building were being ripped in half.

The surprising force of it sent Rebecca flying off balance. She staggered sideways, banging her hip and shoulder against the wall just beside her door. Then she sent a bolt of bright yellow security magic flaring around the door handle to open both physical and magical locks before pushing herself away from the wall and through the open door of her tiny room.

Stumbling inside, she found herself coughing violently at the giant cloud of dust and debris and drifting smoke ballooning into her bedroom from behind. She managed to shut most of it out when she slammed the door shut again behind her, though not all of it.

The lightbulbs freely dangling from the ceiling by thin ropes of frayed electrical wires swung madly above her, illuminating the dust clouds and drywall fragments as much as any of the furniture.

Maybe she shouldn’t have come back for this. Maybe it was a stupid move, potentially endangering herself to retrieve one simple personal item that didn’t even possess any real monetary value at all.

Nothing in Rebecca’s possession really did these days. Not anymore.

But she had no idea who was staging this current attack. She had no idea where they’d come from or what they wanted or what they would do after attempting to blow this compound and its inhabitants to smithereens.

It could have been a robbery or a random act of violence. The most likely scenario was that all this pain came at the hands of one of Shade’s many existing enemies amassed over the years. Even more so over the last six months alone.

No doubt Aldous hadn’t spent much time considering the implications of so many intentionally failed missions when the enemy targets hadn’t been properly dealt with or made sufficiently aware of the consequences for any attempted retaliations.

No, a guy like Aldous never thought about how his epic fuckups would come back to bite him in the ass. And now, those epic fuckups were very possibly already here.

Rebecca had always taken stock of whatherconsequences might eventually become. There was always a risk of making the wrong move. Of exposing herself. She was careful, but there was never a guarantee that whoever was behind this attack wouldn’t come searching through her room anyway.

She couldn’t let them find a damn thing.

As some kind of desperate battle waged above her on the second story, characterized by scuffling thumps and clomps of storming footsteps across the floor, more explosions blasted directly above Rebecca’s head to send even more debris sifting down through the ceiling panels to cover every surface in her room.

Rebecca dove toward the three-drawer dresser and yanked open the top drawer with both hands.

There was the hex doll nestled beside random bits of clothing, right where she’d left it. She stuffed the creepy-ass doll into her jacket pocket, then fumbled urgently around the rest of the drawer’s contents for the second thing she needed—maybe even the most valuable, most dangerous thing she could have possibly kept with her all this time.

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