Home > Storm Forged (Death Before Dragons #6)(6)

Storm Forged (Death Before Dragons #6)(6)
Author: Lindsay Buroker

“He has multiple advanced degrees.”

“So, if I start taking correspondence courses, I can raise my rates?”

“No.” Willard glared at me and strode out.

I didn’t know if she was truly irked with me or just annoyed that she’d had to ask this guy she didn’t like for a favor, but she didn’t look back as she stomped down the stairs.

“I will pay for the doctor,” Nin said gravely when we were alone with the unconscious gnome.

“You don’t have to do that. As you could tell, Willard is delighted to work with him, and her office will be happy to foot the bill.”

Nin looked dubiously toward the open door. “I do not believe you are good at reading people.”

“Why do you think I became an assassin instead of going into the hospitality business?”

In her sweet precise English, Nin asked, “You like to blow shit up?”

“Well, that too, but mostly I suck at dealing with people. It’s why Dimitri hasn’t asked me to take a shift at the coffee shop.” I smiled at her.

Nin managed a fleeting smile, but her focus returned to the gnome. “For so many years, I have believed he was dead. That is what my mother and grandmother believed and told us children. I loved him very much as a little girl and was so pleased to learn the interesting skills he taught me. I also wanted to tinker and build things, not play with dolls. I only reluctantly learned to cook because my mother insisted that we girls learn skills to properly please a man.”

“And cooking works? I suppose that’s true. Zav is into it when I feed him.” I was trying to lighten her mood, but she didn’t crack another smile. Maybe I needed to let her talk about it, not make jokes. Nin was right. I was bad at people. “What’s his name?”

“Ti.”

“Ti? That’s it? He can’t possibly have a name that I can pronounce.”

“It is possible he has a longer name and that it is short for something in gnomish, but I do not know what it is. I was only ten when he disappeared. He told me a little of his home world and how he had been looking for interesting crafting components on the wild worlds when he met my grandmother and fell in love with her and her country, but I do not remember that many of the stories. It has been many years now.”

“Yeah.”

A soft knock on the doorframe made me turn. Thad stood there.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I’d forgotten about Amber and our sword lesson, not that there hadn’t been a good excuse to.

“I need to get back to my office for a meeting,” he said.

“On Saturday?”

“Don’t you work on Saturdays?”

“Yeah, but I’m weird.”

“As Amber reminds me.” He smiled, but as with Nin, it was a fleeting gesture. “I’m going to take Amber home. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think sword lessons at your house are a good idea.”

I grimaced, but how could I object after he’d been here to witness a gunfight in the front yard? The orc’s parting words rang in my mind again.

“An hour ago, I would have said you were wrong, but I’m forced to agree. If everything works out okay here—” I waved to the gnome—to Ti, “—maybe we can try again tomorrow afternoon, back up at the park in Edmonds.”

“How about one evening this week?” Thad asked. “Tomorrow, we’re back-to-school shopping. That usually takes eight or nine hours.”

“So few.”

“Yes. She offered to let me stay home if I just gave her a credit card.” His mouth twisted wryly.

“Teenagers are extremely thoughtful.”

“I thought I better go along and pretend I have some say in placing spending limits and yeaing and naying purchases.”

“She tried to get me to buy her a Prada purse. Apparently, that brand is superior for clubbing enemies.”

“I have no doubt. How about Wednesday evening?”

“That should work.” I was relieved he wouldn’t put an end to the sword-fighting lessons permanently after witnessing a deadly battle at my house. They were my only chance to see Amber regularly.

“Are you all right?” Thad asked softly, touching Nin’s arm.

They must have had time to introduce themselves to each other and exchange a few words while Willard and I had been fighting.

“Yes.” Nin smiled at him. “Thank you for offering to stand in front of me if the enemies made it into the back yard.”

“You looked small and fragile. That was before you pulled out a miniature magical gun.”

“It was only a pistol ring. Val did not inform me that I needed to come well-armed to her barbecue.”

“I’m getting the feeling anyone who visits her should be well-armed.”

“You guys are hilarious,” I said.

“This does seem to be true,” Nin said, ignoring me. “Next time I come to Val’s home for a barbecue, I will bring semi-automatic weapons.”

“I’ll bring spoiled potato salad,” Thad said.

Nin’s brow creased in confusion.

“So the bad guys eat it and get food poisoning,” he explained, then shrugged. “I’m not much of a combatant.”

“Oh, I see.”

I rubbed my head. Thad hadn’t gotten any smoother with women over the years. It was a wonder that he’d managed to snag a girlfriend, though from what I’d seen of Shauna, it might have been better if he hadn’t snagged her.

It had grown quiet outside after our battle, and my keen ears picked up the rumble of a vehicle pulling up in front of the house. Expecting Willard’s monster-disposal van, I went to the window in case they couldn’t figure out that the bodies were under the tarps. But it wasn’t a van. A gleaming fire-engine red SUV pulled into a spot that had opened up between Willard’s Honda and my Jeep. It had a similarly boxy frame to my Jeep, but the Mercedes emblem on the grill promised the similarities ended there.

“Is that Banderas?” Willard walked back into the room to join me at the window.

“Not unless the government is paying a lot more for corpse-pick-up vehicles than I thought.”

Willard curled her lip when she saw the SUV. “That’s our doctor. In his outrageously priced box on wheels.”

“I didn’t know Mercedes makes SUVS,” I admitted.

Thad walked over. “Oh, that’s the AMG G 63. They’re posh.”

“It looks like a red toaster oven,” Willard said.

“The seats are heated and have a massage function,” Thad said.

“If the front window flipped down, you could slide a Hot Pocket right in.”

“Colonel Willard is impressed by ostentatious displays of wealth,” I informed Thad.

“I see that.” He didn’t look offended, maybe because his BMW was only half the price of that thing.

“I’ll go get him,” Willard growled and stomped out again.

“I think they may have dated,” I whispered to Thad.

“And it didn’t end well?”

“I don’t know, but I hope to tease her mercilessly about it.”

4

Dr. Daku Walker wore an impeccable navy-blue suit, blue tie, and dress shoes, despite the warmth of the late-August afternoon. He was a handsome man in his forties with skin dark enough that he ought to meet Willard’s previously expressed tastes, though maybe the thick mane of red-blond hair threw her off. I assumed that was natural—a byproduct of his lion-shifter heritage—and didn’t represent a dye job, though his trimmed nails and perfect cuticles suggested a passion for salons, so it was hard to tell.

When Willard had said he’d been in the army, I’d assumed the US Army, but he spoke with an Australian accent, so maybe that was wrong. While examining the still unconscious Ti, Walker mixed terms like “Buckley’s chance” and “a few stubbies short of a six-pack” with “liver sinusoidal endothelial cells” and “tissue macrophages,” none of which I found comprehensible, though the latter was part of an explanation about Ti’s liver and detoxification pathways being overwhelmed.

“How can you tell that without a blood test?” Willard asked.

“I’m gifted.”

“Please.”

“And have highly refined magical senses to go with my medical knowledge. I can see with my mind’s eye what mundane humans would need a microscope to glimpse. But I don’t know what is overwhelming his liver, nor can I tell if his unconscious state is due to hepatic encephalopathy—a buildup of toxins in the brain—or is magically induced.”

“When I examined him with my senses,” Freysha said, “I thought I detected a hint of something foreign in his bloodstream.”

Walker’s brow creased. “Did you?”

“Are her magical senses more highly refined than yours?” Willard asked.

“It is possible. Elves are sensitive and sophisticated magic users.”

“And here I thought he’d deny anyone could be more refined than he,” Willard told me.

“With your permission, ma’am—” Walker raised his eyebrows toward Nin, “—I’ll take some blood samples and have my lab run them on Monday.”

“Of course,” Nin said.

“Not until Monday?” Willard frowned.

Walker glanced at a gold-and-crystal watch on his wrist. “They’re already closed for the day today, and another lab won’t do. My people can check for evidence of magical tampering as well as mundane problems.” He smiled at her, flashing white teeth. It was only in my imagination that his fangs were more pronounced than a normal human’s would be.

“Your laboratory in the plastic-surgery clinic where you work?” Willard asked.

“It’s restorative surgery, and we have several kinds of practices in the building, including a lab with a half-gnome analyst who is precisely the right person to run this.”

   
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