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

“Very well.” Aisha smiled. “Our little scuffle earlier is proving to have been a nice warm-up.”

“You mean, between you and me?”

“Yes.”

“We’re not fully recovered from that. It was a waste of resources.”

“How often does either of us get to fight another Illuminated full-out?” Aisha’s eyes brimmed with excitement. Even the regalia-influenced flutter of her fiery hair appeared to speed up. “I prefer being a Torch to being an Eclipse, but facing another of our kind is the ultimate challenge.”

Lyssa sighed. “We’re here to do a job, not prove anything. Remember that. If he surrenders, we take him alive.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Aisha shot her a thin smile.

“Then we fight him. Maybe he survives. Maybe he doesn’t.” Lyssa shrugged.

“You sound reluctant. Are you afraid, Corti?”

Lyssa prepared a taunt before tossing it aside. Aisha could be annoying, especially when she was trying to kill Lyssa, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t understand where the other woman was coming from. Being a young person trying to prove herself in the stultifying morass of the Illuminated Society would mess anyone up, but someone needed to be the bigger woman.

Whoever they were going after wasn’t some greedy criminal dazzled by the idea of cash. It was most likely a Sorcerer who had turned his back on his people to help destabilize the Shadow world. When Samuel spoke of coexistence, he didn’t mean giving arcane weapons to criminals.

“You’re right.” Lyssa smiled. “Two Sorceresses? This will be easy. You ready?”

Aisha offered a hungry grin. “Always.”

“Jofi, you’ve been quiet. You ready?”

“As she said,” Jofi replied. “Always.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Lyssa waited astride her bike. Cloaked, she watched the array of long metal shipping containers spread out on the asphalt before them. With the help of Lyssa’s spells, the Sorceresses had established a hidden recon perch on a flattened pile of stone and dirt in an adjacent field filled with large piles of various types of rocks.

A massive yellow crane on the dock whirred and rumbled as it unloaded containers from a cargo ship waiting in the channel. Lyssa hoped the mysterious Nelson didn’t flee to the ship when they caught him. She relied heavily on experience, and she’d never had to fight aboard a ship before. She could already imagine Samuel asking her to explain why she had sunk a huge cargo ship and how he was supposed to justify it to the government.

She snickered quietly. What was she thinking? Aisha would be the one to sink the ship. All Lyssa might do was put some holes in it.

Uncloaked, Aisha lay flat next to the bike, peering through Lyssa’s binoculars. Her low profile would make her hard to spot from land, but anyone or anything flying overhead would notice her easily. Lyssa hoped they wouldn’t regret that.

The plastic was warped and the lenses were scratched from the flame Sorceress’ attack in Midland, but the binoculars still worked. Lyssa wasn’t going to bother asking Aisha to pay her for the damage. It was enough that they could work together without killing each other.

The recon position looked uncomfortable, given the nature of Aisha’s regalia and lack of defensive spells, but she claimed she didn’t mind. Whether that was true or part of her continued quest to one-up Lyssa wasn’t clear. Lyssa was more than happy to let Aisha feel like she was proving something.

Twenty minutes remained until the handoff. They hoped to tag the container as it was unloaded rather than running around the lot looking for it with minutes to spare. A survey of the unloaded containers closest to the docks hadn’t located it.

They also came up with a more specific battle plan. Not a complicated plan, but a plan nevertheless. Lyssa wasn’t used to working with other Torches on jobs, but she couldn’t deny how useful it was to have a brave partner with combat training.

“Do you trust Aisha?” Jofi asked.

Lyssa jumped, startled by Jofi seemingly reading her thoughts. She realized she’d been staring at Aisha and probably had a confused look on her face. Being observant wasn’t the same thing as being telepathic. At least, she hoped it wasn’t.

“No.” Lyssa didn’t bother to whisper. “But I trust her to get the job done, and I know she can deliver the pain when necessary.”

Aisha snorted. “It’s rude to talk about someone when they’re right there, and twice as rude to do it when said person can only hear one side of the conversation.”

“Sorry, I honestly don’t know a way to invite anyone else to a conversation with him. It would be handy a lot of times.”

Lyssa had asked Lee about it once, and the Sorcerer had spent five minutes screaming at her about the seals and the risk. He didn’t even want anyone else knowing she had any sort of spirit in the guns, but she’d made it clear a half-lie was easier to swallow than a full one.

“See our container yet?” Lyssa squinted and surveyed the lot. “As much as sitting on rocks outside a Houston port is how I love spending my days, the sooner we take Nelson down, the sooner I go back home and enjoy my bed and a couple pints of premium strawberry.”

“No, I haven’t spotted it, but there are five left on the ship.” Aisha furrowed her brow. “This scenario does make me question our earlier conclusions.”

Lyssa resisted a rude reply. Aisha might be stubborn and obsessed with their families’ shared past, but she wasn’t a novice Torch. She’d been operating for four years, three years without a mentor. She’d completed plenty of contracts.

Aisha wasn’t Lyssa’s bratty younger semi-sister. She was a colleague, and Lyssa needed to keep that in mind.

“What did we get wrong?” Lyssa continued sweeping the containers with her gaze. “I don’t think Sellers was lying. I’m good at telling that sort of thing. With both of us there, I don’t think he could bring himself to lie. We have extreme reputations.”

Aisha smirked. “True, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Sellers didn’t know if