Southwest Days (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 2) by Kal Aaron (best book recommendations TXT) 📕

select Illuminated, run by this woman Kanya Suwan. She bears the Questioning Hedonist regalia, so you can figure out the kind of person she is.” Lyssa snickered. “It’s called the Traveling Club because it travels from place to place throughout the world.”

“It was my understanding there was no teleportation sorcery,” Jofi replied. “This Sorceress can teleport an entire building?”

“There isn’t, and she can’t.” Lyssa grabbed the door handle. “She goes to a place, then uses a big package of spells and shards to remake the location into the latest iteration of the club. It’s a wild, always changing place. At least, that’s what they say. I’ve never actually been there. It’s usually for people with more political pull than I have. Huh. I wonder if that means I’ve made it?”

“I would advise caution. You lack political pull.”

“You manage to care about and insult me at the same time.” Lyssa chuckled and reached for the handle. The desire to leave had vanished, suggesting it was a defensive spell that could be disabled by recognizing and reading the Lemurian text. She hoped it also unlocked the door.

With a gentle tug, she opened the door. The dusty, cobwebbed barbershop had disappeared. Round tables filled the front area, popping into existence out of nowhere. An elderly man in a white uniform and black bowtie stood behind a tiny bar with no obvious bottles. He nodded at her. Samuel stood near the bar in his white-suited regalia.

Ghostly forms wandered behind the tables. A translucent forested mountain landscape filled the back wall, shifting with each passing second, the peaks rising and falling as if they were in a sped-up film. Clouds flowed overhead. Colorful birds flew side by side with dragons and strange amalgamations of birds, dinosaurs, and insects. People from tiny villages spread out to hunt three-legged dancing flowers or tend glowing stalks.

“Is it always like this?” Jofi asked.

“As I said, it’s different every time,” Lyssa whispered before walking over to Samuel. “I’m here.”

“I was curious to see if you’d be able to resist the urge to leave.” Samuel looked pleased. “It’s good to test certain things now and again in the Torches under my supervision. The job involves more than just destroying targets.”

“Is that why you chose this place?” Lyssa asked, too excited to be annoyed anymore.

“One reason, among others.”

Samuel inclined his head toward the only normal-looking thing in the room, a white door just past the bar. He walked over and opened it. Lyssa followed him.

The room inside was surprisingly mundane compared to the outside, with just a few comfortable-looking leather chairs and a small square glass table in an otherwise white room. After the exotic main room, the normalcy felt odd.

Lyssa reevaluated her opinion when she noticed the table was showing shifting close-ups of the villagers from the mountain scene. She sat and chuckled.

“This is your idea of a good place to meet?” she asked, staring at the table.

“It has its advantages,” Samuel replied. “Including extensive defensive spells and protections, and the ability of those with appropriate pull to ensure total privacy. That’s what I’m availing myself of today.”

“Where’s Kanya?” Lyssa looked around.

“Absent at my request. Now, let’s get to why I called you here.”

“Let’s do that.” Lyssa shrugged. “I thought we were putting a team together to clean out the mine, and suddenly I’m taking side trips to an acid factory. I thought you, of all people, would appreciate that we don’t have a lot of time to mess around. If I’m right about a ritual being involved, we’re down to days to clean this up before we have a huge mess on our hands that the EAA won’t be able to cover up. Even if I’m wrong about that, we have a monster army that could be released at any moment. It was one thing when I thought it was a handful of them, but if they come boiling out of that mine at night, they’ll spread out too much to contain easily.”

Samuel adjusted his skinny white tie while keeping a harsh gaze on her. “Tell me here and now, unfettered by the restrictions of the mirror communication medium, what you feel is happening. That will inform the rest of my response for the entirety of this incident. I promise to evaluate everything with the utmost seriousness and devote the appropriate resources.”

“Something big is about to go down.” Lyssa punctuated the sentence by spreading her arms wide. “There are too many things adding up for this to be a simple rogue having fun. It’s a war or a terror machine designed to inflict maximum pain on a lot of people.”

“Why are you so sure it’s not a simple rogue paid to assassinate Mr. Colmes and Mr. Nardi?” Samuel’s brow lifted in challenge. “Using our gifts for paid murder is hardly unknown. Elaborate murders also aren’t unknown among our kind. It could be a game to a rogue.”

Lyssa laughed. “You’re so out of touch with popular culture that you don’t get how ridiculous that sounds. These guys were minor internet personalities, not big-time celebrities. Going to the expense of finding and hiring a rogue to kill them would be insane.” She shook her head. “Their houses are in their videos. Someone could have walked up to them and shot them without spending a lot of time making a monster army. If it were a game, I don’t think it’d involve so much sorcery.”

“Then what do you think?” Samuel asked.

“Between the email, the effort spent to cover it up, and the special shard, I think this is about a lot more than killing two college kids who liked to prank people.”

“That’s a possibility. I’ll accept that.” Samuel nodded.

“A possibility?” Lyssa frowned at him. “No offense, Samuel, but that wasn’t exactly a couple of angry chickens in the mine. The level of sorcery involved has to be tremendous. Someone powerful spent a lot of preparation time getting those monsters ready for something nasty.”

“We don’t know that,” Samuel replied.

“We don’t?” Lyssa stared at him,