“I need the daggers sooner. Go tonight.”
My mind raced. “The jungle is more dangerous in the dark. We’ll do it if you pay us more.”
“Twice the usual,” Del said.
A tinny laugh echoed from the charm. “Pay you more? You’re lucky I pay you at all.”
I gritted my teeth and said, “But we’ve been working for you for four years without a raise.”
“And you’ll be working for me for four more years. And four after that. And four after that.” Annoyance lurked in his tone. So did his low opinion of us.
Del’s and Nix’s brows crinkled in distress. We’d always suspected that OMB wasn’t planning to let us buy our freedom, but he’d dangled that carrot in front of us. What he’d just said made that seem like a big fat lie, though. One we could add to the many others he’d told us.
An urge to rebel, to stand up to the bully who controlled our lives, seethed in my chest.
“No,” I said. “You treat us like crap, and I’m sick of it. Pay us fairly.”
“I treat you like crap, as you so eloquently put it, because that is exactly what you are. FireSouls.” He spit the last word, imbuing it with so much venom I thought it might poison me.
I flinched, frantically glancing around to see if anyone in the bar had heard what he’d called us. Fortunately, they were all distracted. That didn’t stop my heart from thundering in my ears as rage replaced the fear. I opened my mouth to shout at him, but snapped it shut. I was too afraid of pissing him off.
“Get it by dawn,” he barked. “Or I’m turning one of you in to the Order of the Magica. Prison will be the least of your worries. They might just execute you.”
I gasped. “You wouldn’t.” Our government hunted and imprisoned—or destroyed—FireSouls.
“Oh, I would. And I’d enjoy it. The three of you have been more trouble than you’re worth. You’re getting cocky, thinking you have a say in things like this. Get the daggers by dawn, or one of you ends up in the hands of the Order.”
My skin chilled, and the floor felt like it had dropped out from under me. He was serious.
“Fine.” I bit off the end of the word, barely keeping my voice from shaking. “We’ll do it tonight. Del will transport them to you as soon as we have them.”
“Excellent.” Satisfaction rang in his tone, and my skin crawled. “Don’t disappoint me, or you know what will happen.”
The magic in the charm died. He’d broken the connection.
I collapsed back against the chair. In times like these, I wished I had it in me to kill. Sure, I offed demons when they came at me on our jobs, but that was easy because they didn’t actually die. Killing their earthly bodies just sent them back to their hell.
But I couldn’t kill another supernatural. Not even OMB. It might get us out of this lifetime of servitude, but I didn’t have it in me. And what if I failed? I was too afraid of his rage—and the consequences—if I didn’t succeed.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Nix’s green eyes were stark in her pale face. “He means it.”
“Yeah.” Del’s voice shook. “We need to get those daggers.”
“Now,” I said.
“I wish I could just conjure a forgery,” Nix said. “I really don’t want to go out into the jungle tonight. Getting past the Dvarapala in the dark will suck.”
Nix was a conjurer, able to create almost anything using just her magic. Massive or complex things, like airplanes or guns, were outside of her ability, but a couple of daggers wouldn’t be hard.
Trouble was, they were a magical artifact, enchanted with the ability to return to whoever had thrown them. Like boomerangs. Though Nix could conjure the daggers, we couldn’t enchant them.
“We need to go. We only have six hours until dawn.” I grabbed my short swords from the table and stood, shoving them into the holsters strapped to my back.
A hush descended over the crowded bar.
I stiffened, but the sound of the staticky TV in the corner made me relax. They weren’t interested in me. Just the news, which was probably being routed through a dozen techno-witches to get this far into the jungle.
The grave voice of the female reporter echoed through the quiet bar. “The FireSoul was apprehended outside of his apartment in Magic’s Bend, Oregon. He is currently in the custody of the Order of the Magica, and his trial is scheduled for tomorrow morning. My sources report that execution is possible.”
I stifled a crazed laugh. Perfect timing. Just what we needed to hear after OMB’s threat. A reminder of what would happen if he turned us into the Order of the Magica. The hush that had descended over the previously rowdy crowd—the kind of hush you get at the scene of a big accident—indicated what an interesting freaking topic this was. FireSouls were the bogeymen. I was the bogeyman, even though I didn’t use my powers. But as long as no one found out, we were safe.
My gaze darted to Del and Nix. They nodded toward the door. It was definitely time to go.
As the newscaster turned her report toward something more boring and the crowd got rowdy again, we threaded our way between the tiny tables and chairs.
I shoved the heavy wooden door open and sucked in a breath of sticky jungle air, relieved to be out of the bar. Night creatures screeched, and moonlight filtered through the trees above. The jungle would be a nice place if it weren’t full of things that wanted to kill us.
“We’re never escaping him, are we?” Nix said softly.
“We will.” Somehow. Someday. “Let’s just deal with this for now.”
We found our motorcycles, which were parked in the lot with a dozen other identical ones. They were hulking beasts with massive, all-terrain tires meant for the jungle floor. We’d done a lot of work in Southeast Asia this year, and these were our favored forms of transportation in this part of the world.
Del could transport us, but it was better if she saved her power. It wasn’t infinite, though it did regenerate. But we’d learned a long time ago to save Del’s power for our escape. Nothing worse than being trapped in a temple with pissed off guardians and a few tripped booby traps.
We’d scouted out the location of the temple earlier that day, so we knew where to go.
I swung my leg over Secretariat—I liked to name my vehicles—and kicked the clutch. The engine roared to life. Nix and Del followed, and we peeled out of the lot, leaving the dingy yellow light of the bar behind.
Our headlights illuminated the dirt road as we sped through the night. Huge fig trees dotted the path on either side, their twisted trunks and roots forming an eerie corridor. Elephant-ear sized leaves swayed in the wind, a dark emerald that gleamed in the light.
Jungle animals howled, and enormous lightning bugs flitted along the path. They were too big to be regular bugs, so they were most likely some kind of fairy, but I wasn’t going to stop to investigate. There were dangerous creatures in the jungle at night—one of the reasons we hadn’t wanted to go now—and in our world, fairies could be considered dangerous.
Especially if you called them lightning bugs.
A roar sounded in the distance, echoing through the jungle and making the leaves rustle on either side as small animals scurried for safety.
The roar came again, only closer.
Then another, and another.
“Oh shit,” I muttered. This was bad.
~~~
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Author’s Note