Page 4 of Edge of Secrets

I trudged through the bustling, congested city campus toward the English Department offices. The office door opened as she approached, and Marielle, a fellow grad student, came out holding a sheet of paper, looking bemused. “Hey, Nell. This just landed in my inbox. Weirdest job posting ever.”

I took it, and looked it over.

WANTED Writer-Editor-Proofreader for a fantasy video game project

MUST BE EXPERT IN POETRY

Good Pay Flexible Hours

Ask for Duncan

A phone number followed the name.

“Weird, huh?” Marielle commented. “I’d follow up myself, but I’m in the middle of writing my thesis right now. And this Duncan is probably a total weirdo. So … nah.”

I stared down at it. “Interesting.”

“Thought you might think so. Good luck with it. Later, Nell.”

I bade her an absent good night, still staring at that weird posting. What would a video game want with poetry? Particularly now, when cheap doggerel was so easy to generate with those infernal AI programs that were rotting my students’ brains.

I scribbled the number, wondering what “good pay” meant to Duncan. It was an extremely subjective concept, but my standards were high. I often picked up temp legal secretary jobs at night when I was extremely low on funds, but working nights exhausted me. I was always on the lookout for gigs that paid well enough to actually consider quitting the Sunset Grill job and living a life that resembled … well, normality, if such a thing existed. Which was to say, working only one or two jobs, not three or four. Getting a full night’s sleep occasionally. Having time to cook a meal or do my laundry. Leisurely, luxurious activities like that.

But a ‘normal life’ was pie in the sky for me, considering all the terrifying things that had happened, starting with the day that Lucia was killed.

I didn’t dare think about Lucia for long, or I’d start to cry again. I reached up and fingered the jeweled ruby pendant she had given me, hidden under the fabric of my blouse. It had become an automatic gesture, reaching for comfort. My sisters and I had decided that we should keep them hidden, but I didn’t feel like leaving mine anywhere, not even in a safe deposit box. Plus, it made me feel closer to Lucia to have it on my person. The necklaces had been her final, posthumous gift to us.

The beautiful golden pendant, studded with small rubies, was a reproduction of a Renaissance Italian-style pendant. My foster mother, Lucia, had commissioned three unique necklaces in that style for me and each of my two sisters, Nancy and Vivi. Nancy’s was decorated with sapphires, and Vivi’s with emeralds—our respective birthstones. They looked like the kind of bling a haughty Florentine duchess with a lace ruff and a brocade gown might wear. They were extravagantly beautiful.

Lucia had bestowed them upon us, commissioning them right before her violent and untimely death. They had become talismans of love and power for us. The jeweler delivered them to us on the very day of her funeral—a gift from beyond the grave.

But a shadow clung to them. Lucia had given them to us for a very specific reason, according to a fragment of a letter we found in Lucia’s garbage. We didn’t have enough information to figure out that reason, just that the pendants were the key to a puzzle Lucia had devised. One that the three of us had to solve by working together.

And there the matter stood. Lucia could give us no more clues from the other world. We’d already lost one of the necklaces to Snake Eyes, so the key to Lucia’s puzzle was lost forever. Which made us all wild with frustration.

My fingers tightened around the gold pendant. Snake Eyes had ripped Nancy’s pendant off her throat when he’d tried to abduct her. The angry red welt the chain left had still been visible on her neck the last time I saw her.

We could never solve it now. We had to swallow that bitter pill. And it was risky, stupid, and childish to wear my pendant—a blatant provocation to that bastard. Come on and take it, dickhead. Go ahead. Try me. That was what I said by wearing it around.

Like I was prepared to go mano a mano with Snake Eyes. Hah.

Still, I felt stronger when I wore it. I had run my own risk/benefit analysis, and I had opted to continue wearing it. It was a power object. I needed all the power I could get.

I’d compromised by tucking it between my boobs, well out of sight. I kept pepper spray in my bag now, too. And I fully intended to sign up for a self-defense class, as soon as I could establish one free night a week when I didn’t have to work.

Who knew, maybe I’d even learn to use a gun. I’d never dreamed I would ever do such a thing, but after what happened to Nancy, all bets were off.

Then again, just knowing how to use a gun meant very little when all was said and done. I had to be willing to point the gun at someone and actually pull the trigger.

That terrifying thought propelled me straight to my closet-sized office to call my sister, desperate for the comfort of a familiar voice.

Since Nancy’s wild adventures in the past weeks, I’d begun to come around to the concept of cell phones, and I was eating crow. I’d made such a big fat deal of how much I hated them all these years. All my pompous tirades about potential brain tumors, the sinister loss of privacy, the looming shadow of Big Data, how I hated to be constantly on call, how they impeded reaching deep levels of concentration, how important it was to tolerate boredom, etc., etc., blah-blah-blah. I had my tail firmly between my legs after what happened to us.

Privacy had completely lost its charm. When evil killers with unknowable agendas lurked in the shadows, eating crow didn’t seem so terrible anymore. The world was weird and dangerous, and it was very good to be only an electromagnetic frequency away from the people I loved and trusted most. An actual smartphone was outside my budget at the moment, but I had bought a flip phone, and I was glad to have it.

Vivi picked up promptly. “Hey, babe. Everything okay?”

“If you keep the bar low,” I said. “Nobody’s abducted or murdered me lately. How about yourself? No duels to the death?”

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