Page 27 of Amethyst Flame
Dane’s cold gray gaze held mine. “Please don’t give him your trust until he has earned mine.”
“Oh, I’m not giving him anything.” Not. A. Thing.
“You’re more interesting, however,” Dane went on. “You’ve kept your power secret for months and haven’t made any moves to exploit it beyond tormenting those disaffected youth at the Slurping Shanty. Further, you’ve had good reason to act in self-interest—money is tight, your mother lives with chronic pain, and considering what happened at BantaMatrix five months ago, you’d be shrewd to seek an entity who can protect you and your mother from predators like Greg Alling.”
Seek out an entity who could protect me.That was a damn good idea. I should’ve thought of that. I should’ve thought of a lot of things that would make my life easier, but even though I had literal magical powers, I was somehow still stuck in my grind. “I’ve been thinking about quitting school. I don’t think I have the talent to make it, anyway. And with all this going on…maybe I should just find that entity, after all.”
One of his brows twitched. “Imogen, you’ve rejected all those easy options for a reason, andthatis what intrigues me about you. You’re not looking for a protector because you think on your own. By the way, I’ve seen your artwork. You don’t lack talent.”
“You’ve seen my artwork?” Weird.Reallyweird.
He was tapping on his laptop as he replied. “I’m thorough with my research.”
It was like he’d seen me naked. Or some part of me. And that wasn’t allowed. Not by him. No way.
He glanced over. “You’re good. The blue one with the dark fish was…”
It’d been part of my AP Art portfolio submission from over two years ago. It was titledLoneliness.“It waswhat?”
“Evocative.” He turned the laptop screen toward me. “Now, I need you to take a close look at this.”
Flustered, it took me a second to even focus on the screen, and what I saw there looked like some 3D rendering of a complex molecular structure. Yeah, I wasnotthat kind of a nerd in school.
“What am I looking at?”
“Next-gen MoTH tech. I need you to get everything they have on this configuration.”
“Am I, like, getting an upgrade?”
A shadow seemed to pass over his gaze, but his expression remained fixed. “How about we figure out your current operating system first?”
“Yeah, sure.” Whatever. I flattened my hand in the [map] command because there was no way in hell I could memorize the thing on the screen on my own. In my mind’s eye, my current gen moths copied the configuration while my artist’s eye made shapes out of the connected dots—which was like looking for shapes in clouds, a favorite pastime of mine that I wouldn’t be able to indulge until the temps dropped back below triple digits.
I relaxed my vision so I could see beyond what was in front of my nose, and the dots and lines of the molecule map formed what looked like a dragon with its wings partially unfurled. Fire leaped off its back in sharp, jagged peaks.
Yeah, baby. This EldWitch was going dragon hunting.
A banging at the front door brought Dane to his feet, hand to his weapon. When the banging started again, Dane touched the pad on his laptop, and the screen blinked to security footage of the front porch.
Jacob stood there, restless and twitchy.
“Looks like he has to pee,” I said.
“Then I better let him in.” Dane touched his laptop again, and the screen went back to its original login.
“Does he know about the dragon?” I gestured to the screen.
Dane’s mouth twitched. “Dragon, huh? And no. Not specifically. Do you think we should tell him?”
This was a test. I hate tests. I was never a good test taker in school.
“Well,” I said, irritated, “if we’re all going to be on the same team, then I think he should know. So we can work together.”
Jacob banged on the door again as Dane gave me a long appraising look. “Okay. Let’s see what he does with it.”
As Dane turned and walked through the kitchen, I wondered if I had passed his little test or if he was setting one up for Jacob. And then I had a realization, something it seemed I had already known implicitly, but now hit me in a lightning bolt.Bam!
Wewere Dane’s team. As in, hiswholeteam. There was no sign of any other minions staying here. Just him. In this vacation rental property. That anyone could rent. Jacob was his tech person, and I was his undercover agent on the inside. There was no backup. Just…us.
