Fallon turned, narrowing her eyes. “I notice you aren’t speaking to her.”
“I’m smart enough to recognize my weaknesses. I don’t do that empathy shit. That’s Ais’s department.”
As if in answer to their words, the elf came through the door, followed by a man Larissa had not seen before. Overlong dark blond hair and deep-set yellow eyes, and a scar that ran from the bridge of his nose below his cheekbone to end somewhere under a close cropped beard. He wore blue jeans and an open flannel shirt over a T-shirt.
He came to sit in front of her. “I’m Wulver,” he said, smart enough not to offer his hand when his advance caused an involuntary flinch on Larissa’s part. “I’m leader here.”
Fallon was still standing with her back to the mirror, not reacting to those words at all. Larissa pointed to her. “I thought that was her, the way she acts.”
He smiled but refused to be drawn in by her words. It was a nice smile, his teeth white and sharp.
Maybe a little too sharp.
No, no she was not going to ask. There was enough on her plate right now without wondering if the guy in front of her was a human or not.
Guess the human. That might make a neat game.
Well, he said he was boss. It gave her someone else to yell at. “Since you are in charge and not her, I’m assuming it was your order that brought me here?”
He nodded. His eyes did hold some compassion, but something in the set of his shoulders, the way he carried himself, all told that while he might be sorry she was so upset, he felt no remorse in grabbing her and bringing her here against her will. “I’m sorry it was done this way, but with that last attack, we decided it was too dangerous for you to be free any longer.”
That was an interesting way to put it. “Who’s this we if you are the leader?”
Once again, he didn’t answer her question, the compassion in his eyes morphing into something harder. He said instead, “We want your stay to be enjoyable. Is there anything we can bring you?”
“A nail file.”
“Sure. Any nail polish? May I suggest red? It’s a personal thing, but I prefer when women stick with the classics.” He smiled again, and in that grin she saw the easy charm he possessed and could project when he wanted to. That might be the secret why he ran things, because in moments she was half under his spell, imprisonment be darned.
Enough of that. Charm wasn’t going to get her home. “How long are you going to keep me here?”
His grin faded, and her stomach sank to the soles of her feet. “You must understand how much danger you’re in-”
“How long?” she repeated.
He leaned back in the chair, trying to project nonchalance but failing. “Until you’re safe.”
She crossed her arms and directed at him her hardest stare, the one that kept even her most unruly student in line. It didn’t do anything to free her, but she got some satisfaction in using it. “Meaning you’re keeping me here indefinitely, unless you know why I’ve been targeted and are only holding me here until you get your man – well, necromancer. Is that the case?”
“There are things going on-”
Screw this. She was here against her will, but she was here, and she was going to get some gods damned answers right now. “How are they going to use me to rip the realms apart?”
Wulver jerked, and she’d bet money he rarely looked as surprised as he did right now. He looked at Fallon. Her brows were lifted slightly, the lines of her face softened from their usual intensity. She shook her head.
He turned back to her. “You’ve learned a lot in a relatively short period of time.”
“Did you think I was sitting on my butt waiting for the zombies to eat my brains?”
Laire turned away from the mirror. “It’s not really true that zombies eat brains, it’s an urban legend…mrph.”
The impromptu lesson was finished when Fallon clapped her hand over Laire’s mouth. Wanting to move the conversation forward before any possible explosion between the two could take place, Larissa said, “So why me?”
Wulver settled in the chair, the smile and charm fading as weariness settled over his features. He half-opened his mouth before closing it, his gaze shifting away for a bare moment. His confusion was tangible. “We’ve searched and dug and researched and watched, but there is nothing about you that tells us what is going on.”
That was not telling her anything she didn’t already know. She pressed on. “Do you know how the spell works that the necromancers would use?”
“It isn’t one spell. There is a final spell that would need to be cast at the end – the one that rips the realms asunder. That one doesn’t change, but before that spell can be cast, certain requirements must be met. The problem we have is there are a lot of ways and a lot of roads to get things ready for that spell.” Wulver’s jaw tightened, and certainty once again infused his demeanor. “Bottom line is you are in danger. We still don’t know why you’ve been targeted, and all the paths we’ve traveled thus far have led to dead ends. With you here, maybe together we can figure this out. Isn’t that why you were going to meet us tonight, to get some answers?”