Southwest Nights (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 1) by Kal Aaron (large ebook reader txt) 📕

She’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong essence six years ago, but she couldn’t change it now. All she could do was try to make sure she helped people with his power.

Lyssa shook her head. The fewer lies a woman told, the easier it was to keep track of them. Wrap the lie up in a nice truth, and it became trivial. “I met an old acquaintance.”

“You don’t like this person, do you?” Jofi asked.

Lyssa pulled off her jacket and holster and hung them up. “Why do you say that?”

“You look and sound tense. You looked and sounded the same when you left. Your face and voice.”

“I’m not a huge fan of the guy, no, and he’s not a huge fan of me, which is why he’s an acquaintance and not a friend.”

“But not an enemy?” Jofi asked.

“You need to try to kill me at least once to qualify as an enemy.”

“A useful schema.”

Lyssa dropped onto the couch and laid her head back. “If only I was born with a healing essence instead of darkness. I probably wouldn’t have ended up a Torch, and I wouldn’t have ended up with so many complications in my life.”

“Do you believe that?”

Lyssa lifted her head and frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I would have assumed your family history was your primary motivation for your choices rather than your essence. There’s no inherent non-dangerous essence. You could invert healing spells to harm. Your combat style and tactics might be different, but you would have ended up a Torch.”

“I don’t know about that.” Lyssa’s heart rate increased, and she let the other comments slide. The last thing she wanted to talk about was her family situation on that day of all days.

“Your past informs your future,” Jofi said. “I know your brother’s disappearance bothers you.”

“Enough,” Lyssa snapped. “I don’t want to talk about that right now. Sure, I’ve got a lot on my mind, but don’t worry. I’ll work through it. I always do. I’m sure Damien will find something useful, and I can busy myself taking down shard smugglers and not have time to think about anything else.”

She grabbed a remote off her end table. Some mindless TV might get her mind off the feelings Lee’s visit had stirred up. She pressed the ON button and hoped to avoid any anti-sorcery propaganda.

The noon news played, and fortunately, there was no sign of Grant Harris. A bright chyron at the bottom highlighted something she’d stopped worrying about in June.

A Reflection on the Post-Summer Anniversary of M-Day.

“Although many people take it for granted,” the anchor announced, “it’s hard to believe that it was only five years ago the truth of magic and sorcery came out. Although Sorcerers remain rare and the average person is unlikely to have a direct encounter, we can all agree that the world is no longer the same place it once was. It all started with this one spectacular incident.”

Camera footage appeared, showing a royal procession in London with the Queen of England in an open horse-drawn carriage. The elderly monarch sat with a smile in a powder-blue outfit and a matching broad-brimmed hat with her husband, the Prince. Mounted guards in red preceded and followed the royal couple, along with carriages filled with other members of the British Royal Family. Commentators chatted about the dignity of the queen during her part of the opening ceremonies for the event, a horse-racing cup.

Lyssa watched, even though she, like everyone else on the planet, had burned this video and others taken from different angles into their minds. The current video, shot by a team from an American sports news channel, was among the most famous because it provided the clearest view of the events to follow, the events that had changed modern history.

Four men ran toward the carriage from either side, pistols in hand. Screams erupted. They began firing, dropping nearby guards. The Prince and the Queen sat, unflappable, their smiles gone and their expressions hard. No one was surprised that the two royals didn’t immediately hop out of their carriages.

The first major anomaly wasn’t pointed out for two days after the video hit the net. Horses in front and behind the first carriage lost control, charging away when the gunfire started, but the Queen’s horses stayed unusually calm and didn’t move. The video had been picked apart by internet sleuths and news organizations, including showing frame-by-frame where the would-be royal assassins had emerged on camera and the first clear piece of evidence of something being wrong: two fleeing birds at the edge of a frame.

One of the Queen’s Guard who hadn’t been hit jumped off his horse, his uniform shifting and growing around him. He pulled out what looked like a simple bandana and pressed it to his face. His appearance wavered for a moment, and the red-uniformed Queen’s Guard was replaced by a man in close-fitting black and red metal armor, complete with a solid red mask that extended to his chin.

It was the first publicly identified regalia, the rather appropriate Royal Knight. It belonged to a sergeant in the Queen’s Guard, Gareth Smith. The closeness of a Sorcerer to the Queen would later fuel conspiracy theories about how extensively Sorcerers controlled the world. The revelation that they belonged, by their admission, to a group they called the Illuminated Society had done the rest.

The Society had only done so much to squash the link between the Illuminati and themselves, partially because they couldn’t. The truth was the Society had interfered with politics, and some of that had become indirectly known and exposed through conspiracies related to the Illuminati.

All of that had come later. The glory of sorcery had dazzled people during the attempted royal assassination.

Sergeant Smith thrust out his arms, and protective walls of dirt had shot up on two sides of the royal carriage. The assassins paused for a couple of seconds at the strange sight