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

it back might not be as fun, but it would save her pain. There was no reason to prolong the meeting.

Lyssa wasn’t sure why they had such trouble getting along. She’d dealt with other Elders without this much trouble, and regalia aside, she wasn’t a BBD—bitch by default. Given that his essence was light and hers was darkness, there could be some fundamental repulsion between their souls.

She waved a hand. “Okay. I apologize. You caught me off-guard, and I’m hungry.”

“I’ll accept your apology for now.” Samuel lifted his chin, going into full-on haughty mode. “I thought it best if we talked directly concerning the shard incident, given this is a matter of importance beyond your new city or even your general region of primary responsibility.”

“The investigation is proceeding,” Lyssa said. “I’ve got some solid leads. The EAA hasn’t come up with anything since I last talked to Agent Riley, but they’re not getting in my way. I can’t guarantee anything yet, but this isn’t anywhere near going cold. It’s heating up. I’ll be checking out a place tonight.”

“I see. I’m glad to hear that.” Samuel stroked his beard. “Setting aside your questionable personality, I have confidence in your ability to rapidly see this incident through. That was why I decided to come here directly—to place it in the proper context and reinforce my expectations. I wanted us to both understand your position in this.”

Lyssa tensed. “Expectations?

“There’s extreme concern in the Society over this incident,” Samuel said.

“The Alvarez Shard incident?” Lyssa asked, wanting to be sure.

Samuel nodded. “Of course. You’ve not been involved in anything else of note in recent months.”

“I was well within my rights to take Alvarez and his men out.” Lyssa shrugged. “Those were powerful shards they had. I could have been seriously injured.”

“Yes, I agree with that evaluation. Please note I have other people tracking down the provenance of the artifacts. The robe goes back centuries, so it’s unlikely its creation will be traced to a living Sorcerer, but the crossbows present a better possibility.” Samuel held up his palm, and tiny three-dimensional images of the crossbows appeared and circled it. “It’s because of our concern that we aggressively encouraged the EAA to ask for a formal contract in this incident.”

“Huh?” Lyssa stared at the fire crossbow. “Why go through middlemen? If this is something the Society needs to handle, we don’t have to beg their permission. That’s not like you.”

Samuel waved his hand, and the images vanished. “Miss Corti, I hope you learn to consider the future. I’m disappointed but not surprised you aren’t doing that in this case.”

So much for controlling herself. What was the point? It was like Samuel couldn’t go a minute without being insulting.

“Enlighten me, O Great Elder.” Lyssa rolled her eyes.

“We need to strengthen our political image and power with the rest of the world,” Samuel replied. “M-Day weakened it in many ways, although it was necessary. One method to increase our power and influence is to ensure that when incidents exposing potential rogue activity occur, the relevant Shadow governments are kept well-informed about what’s happening and our efforts at mitigation. Having them hire you does that while reinforcing the appearance of control on their part, but it also leaves you free to do what is needed and filter information as necessary.”

Lyssa ignored the rest of the political considerations to focus on one word. “’Rogue?’ You’ve confirmed there’s a rogue Sorcerer? Not saying I’d be surprised, but we need to consider the possibility that someone might have gotten lucky and found a cache of shards somewhere. I’m looking into an organized crime group that might be supplying people, but it’s unclear how many they have.”

“We haven’t confirmed anything on our end.” Samuel returned his hands to his back. “It’s the most likely explanation, but we’re more concerned about the damage this might do to the Society’s relationship with the United States government.”

“What about it?”

“There was an unfortunate spate of similar shard smuggling incidents in Japan last year. The Society was better able to control the news with the help of the Japanese government, which was why it didn’t penetrate much into the media.”

Lyssa nodded. “I heard about that, but I didn’t realize it was a big deal and that they’d had a lot.”

“The incident created extreme friction between the Japanese government and the local Elders.” Samuel’s expression darkened. “What’s worse, they were never able to determine the ultimate source of the shards. The Torches assigned to the matter solved it by helping the government crush the Shadow smugglers involved. The Japanese accepted that outcome, but the belief that the Society was covering something up lingers.”

“That’s too bad since that’s probably where we’ll end up with this job, too.” Lyssa shrugged. “If it is a rogue, they might be good at covering their tracks. They’d have to be if they didn’t want to end up on the bad side of a Torch or an Eclipse.”

Samuel stood silently, looking at her for a long while, concern etched on his features. “I tell you all this to encourage you to please keep in mind the political considerations of this job. It’s a delicate time for the stability of the relationship between the Illuminated Society and the Shadows. Every time an incident such as Phoenix occurs, groups like the ACSS take their chance to denigrate us. At least they’ve stopped bringing up the Sicilian Inferno at every opportunity, but that doesn’t mean it’s not in the back of many people’s minds.”

The incident was one of the highest-profile public massacres involving sorcery, where a rogue Sorcerer had participated in a Mafia war and killed not only criminals but scores of innocent people. The Society had declared it a heinous abuse of power, and in an unprecedented move, they had assigned an entire team of dedicated Eclipses in the hunt for justice.

Lyssa protested, “That was four years ago, and Eclipses took out the Sorcerer responsible, and it was criminals—”

Samuel lifted his hand to quiet her. “We won’t