I’d left a note that I would be gone. After, I’d walked Xest several times, hunting for grouslies. I’d come here, thinking I could work out the aggravation. The only thing I’d accomplished was being cold, tired, and now bruised as I got up and headed home—but I had one stop left.
I took the long way to the rusty mailbox and dug out the letter that was bent and wrinkled from being in my pocket all day.
I didn’t have an address, only a name: Xest Immigration.
I’d have to deal with those three unpleasant hags again, but they’d have answers. Hawk had made one very good point: we knew I was linked to Dread. If we traced back my origins, we might find Dread’s as well. There was only one place to start—my mother. She’d come from Xest, and they were the best source of information.
Zab was going to have to lend me his cauldron again. If I brewed them up something nice, things would go easier.
The sky was dark when I returned to the broker building. Getting back after dinner hadn’t been an accident. I swung by the back room, hoping there might be some leftovers, and found a plate waiting for me.
It was still hot, as Bertha’s food always was. She had a spell to keep everything at the perfect temperature. It had been handed down from generations in her family, and no one else knew how to do it. She said she’d only give it out on her deathbed. Yes, there might be other spells that would heat food, but not keep it just as moist as if it had just left the oven. The woman was a near genius with anything culinary.
I carried my plate up to my room to find a note stuck on my door.
Meeting in the back room at moonrise, Hawk, you, and me.
Oscar
I shoved the note in my back pocket, debating whether it was wise to go. Was there really a choice? It was hard to avoid. If I wanted a cup of coffee or tea, boom, I was at the meeting. Plus, he’d just stalk me until I met with him anyway. That was the trouble with living with the people you wanted to avoid.
I changed into something that didn’t scream I’d been out hunting grouslies while I choked down my stew. Then I slowed my pace. Choking down anything Bertha made was a crime.
By the time I made my way downstairs again, Oscar and Hawk were already sitting in the back room. The fact Hawk was willing to attend was probably an improvement, even if it was only because Oscar asked him to. Or they were combining forces to tell me how stupid I was.
Oscar waved his hand toward the other side of the couch. “I know you two are out of sorts, but we’ve got bigger issues. I’m not overly confident in our ability to take care of Dread in a month.” He turned to Hawk. “If we lose her, the only thing Dread seems to avoid, I’m even less confident we have a chance in hell of fixing this situation. Those idiots over from hell don’t know their asses from their heads. They’ll definitely blow it. And I know she got us into this situation, but we need to come together and fix it.”
Was this him trying to bridge the gap and mend fences or another way to spend the night calling me stupid?
“I was trying to do the right thing,” I said, for what seemed like the fiftieth time in days. You would’ve thought they’d all be grateful that I was willing to put my life on the line. No. Every single one of them was annoyed by it.
“It wasn’t, though, was it? We had this talk. Let’s not drag out the ugly details,” Oscar said.
“You talked. I didn’t agree.”
Hawk leaned forward, resting his forearms on his legs, and we both fell silent. Oscar might’ve been in a state of shock over Hawk’s appearance of possible participation. He wasn’t the only one. I’d thought he was going to sit and glare all night.
Hawk looked at me, and I could see the anger still swirling, like I’d betrayed him somehow, before he turned to Oscar.
“It doesn’t matter if they want to take her,” Hawk said.
He might as well have packed my bags and tossed them in the alley. We’d had our problems, but I’d thought this was just a tiff. Could he really turn his back on me so easily? Would there never be any loyalty between us? Would he be willing to toss me away continually like I was nothing?
I didn’t say a word. I was too busy swallowing the big, fat boulder in my throat and pretending my eyes weren’t burning. I didn’t cry, ever, and I wasn’t breaking that streak for this man. He didn’t deserve to hurt me.
Oscar, who looked like he’d taken the same sucker punch I had, said, “How can you say that? Even if she did screw up, she’s not only our only hope, but she’s our friend. Say you don’t mean that.”
“You’re missing my point. It doesn’t matter if they want to. They can’t.” Hawk’s voice was ice cold and calculating. This was the Hawk I’d met when I first came here. The one always looking at every angle.
“What do you mean? She put herself up as collateral,” Oscar said.
At least I wasn’t the only one confused. Nice of Hawk to fill us in. He’d let me sweat it out for days and he’d already worked something out.
“She offered up collateral that isn’t hers to give,” Hawk said.
“She put herself up. You’re not making any sense.” Oscar was still frowning, trying to wrap his head around what Hawk was saying. I was already getting a bad sense that I knew where this was going.
“Hawk, what did you do?” I asked.
“I safeguarded for this very situation.” It was the longest sentence he’d said to me in days, and I immediately wished he’d gone back to not speaking to me.
“How?”
He leaned back in his chair, calm and emotionless. “That spell, way back when you agreed to work for me. It wasn’t quite as cut and dried as you might’ve thought. You agreed to work for me until a time of my choosing. I couldn’t fire you, but you can’t quit either, so you aren’t actually able to offer yourself as collateral, since you’ve already been promised to this place.”
Oscar gasped. “I knew something seemed off about her right around the time she started working here as a broker. That’s what it was.”
While Oscar was relishing in his ah-ha moment, I was having one of my own. “For how long? How long am I actually stuck here?”
“Until we do a joint release. It was an insurance policy against immigration being able to evict you from Xest.”
All the nerves, wondering if I’d done the wrong thing, went up in smoke from the fire he’d just lit. “How could you do that without telling me?”
“Don’t act as if you had no idea. You were aware I did something. It was very obvious you didn’t want to know the details. After the immigration trial, you asked me what I did that swayed the hags. I told you the timing wasn’t right to answer that question. You dropped it then, and in the months since, you haven’t once mentioned it. That’s not someone who wants to know.” He was still being that calm, ice-cold Hawk of old.
“I never thought you’d do something like this, or I would’ve asked.”
“Then you should’ve. You know me well enough to realize I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Oh, he was right there. I never should’ve underestimated that at all.
“You might’ve mentioned this earlier,” Oscar said.