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

Given your previous encounters, you should take her threat seriously.”

“Yeah. Not planning to blow her off.” Lyssa threw her batons to the ground and drew her guns, then backed up slowly, keeping them trained on the Sorceress hovering above her. “We don’t have to do this, Fire Deva,” she called. “You haven’t done anything you can’t take back. Don’t be an idiot.”

Avoiding real names might encourage Aisha to do the same. Lyssa didn’t know who was listening. This could end with her convincing Aisha to see the folly of her actions or a brutal fight, but thinking ahead wouldn’t hurt.

“Do you know what it is like to be lucky, Hecate?” Aisha laughed. “To find you of all people, you daughter of thieving cats, here. I’m truly blessed. It’s like you’ve been delivered to me, complete with an excuse to kill you.”

“Don’t you think tossing fireballs and lanterns around is going to attract interest from the Shadow cops? Whatever twisted excuses you have, you start hurting them, and you’re going to get an Eclipse on your ass.”

Aisha shook her head. “There’s a sound-swallowing shard outside this room. It’s on the back of the column. How could you of all people not know? Pathetic.”

Lyssa frowned. She hadn’t noticed it, but she hadn’t tested for sound and hadn’t been alert for a different type of shard. She also wasn’t the rogue helping the scum. Why would Aisha expect her to know about that?

Damn it. Aisha had set things up too well. Lyssa wasn’t surprised. The woman might have a temper, and she was letting revenge guide her down a dangerous path, but she wasn’t an idiot.

“We all have things that slip by us.” Lyssa chuckled. “But I don’t like the part where you tried to kill me. This doesn’t have to happen. I don’t want to kill a Sorceress, but you’re really pushing my buttons.”

Aisha rapidly chanted something in Sanskrit. Her wings vanished and she dropped to the ground, smoke rising from the concrete floor beneath her feet. A pulse of sorcery preceded the appearance of a hazy, wavering field around her, flecked with bright sparks of red and white. A ball of flame hovered in her palm.

“I see you’re still using guns.” Aisha scoffed. Her voice dripped contempt. “Are you Illuminated, or are you a Shadow who has to rely on such tools?” She chuckled, but there was no mirth in the sound. “It fits your essence perfectly.”

“Yeah, nothing says Shadow like enchanted guns with a bound spirit. You got me. I’m so sorry, O So Great Flame Deva.”

“Excuses.” Aisha scoffed. “Typical for someone like you. Typical for a Corti.”

Lyssa kept her distance, slowly walking in a circle while Aisha did the same. This wasn’t some idiot gangster playing with her first shard. Aisha was a trained Torch with an essence that lent itself to combat.

But she’d also given up Lyssa’s family name. Time to return the favor.

“There have been darkness essences in the Khatri family, too,” Lyssa said.

“Not like you,” Aisha shouted. “Your soul is as dark as your essence. You have no standards. No true pride.”

“By the way, you’re not the only one surprised to see someone,” Lyssa said. “I suspected I’d run into someone eventually, but you? Whoa, boy. I didn’t see that one coming.”

Aisha tossed her fireball from one hand to the other. “A thief from a family of thieves. Of course you’d end up here. In that sense, this was inevitable.”

“Screw you,” Lyssa growled. “You can call me what you want, but you don’t disrespect my family. I don’t talk trash about the Khatris, even though you’ve ridden my ass for years.”

“Your thieving mother took the Night Goddess!” Aisha shouted. “When it had been in my family for generations!”

“Really? We’re going to do this now?” Lyssa scoffed. “This is what you want to talk about, with everything else that’s going on?”

“Why shouldn’t we discuss it?” Aisha asked. “Don’t you understand what this is? What’s going on?”

“I see someone who can’t let go of an unfounded decades-old grudge, who I’m trying to stop from making an even worse mistake.”

“No.” Aisha shook her head. “It’s fate guiding us together. Fate granting me a gift. I can’t punish your dead mother for my family, but I can punish her daughter with the knowledge of my virtue.”

Virtue? How could she talk about virtue when she was helping shard-smugglers? Lyssa was done with the self-indulgence, especially since Aisha had insulted her mother.

Her jaw tightened, and her heart thundered in her chest. She wouldn’t be able to hold back much longer, Sorceress or not.

“She didn’t steal crap!” she yelled. “The Night Goddess didn’t reject her. It didn’t reject me. Your family doesn’t own this regalia. No one gets to declare dibs on a regalia. Stop being an idiot.”

Aisha sneered. One advantage of her half-mask was that she could get her facial expressions across a lot easier than Lyssa.

“Is that your excuse for how far you’ve fallen?” Aisha asked. “It won’t matter. Once I kill you here, my family will reclaim it in the next generation.”

“What makes you think I’m going to be so easy to kill?” Lyssa closed on the crates and the column. Cover could make a big difference in combat. “Don’t get cocky, bitch. You’re not the only Torch in this room.”

“A Sorceress who has to use the tools of the non-Illuminated is one who is not confident about her abilities,” Aisha replied. “I will destroy you.”

Lyssa hoped to talk Aisha into surrendering by appealing to her pride and honor. At the least, she hoped she could get the woman to leave.

A Khatri, let alone Aisha, being a rogue didn’t make sense. They were a proud line that had produced great Sorcerers and Sorceresses for centuries. Working with criminal scum to smuggle shards when she already had wealth, status, and influence was insane. Aisha had always been competitive, but it was hard to believe it would come to this.

“Don’t diss the guns.” Lyssa waved one. “The best Sorceresses work smarter, not