do it just like them. I never did it because unlike my other skills, it evoked too many memories of a childhood that died and took my peace and sanity with it.
I opened the side door of the habitat and started to sing.
19
Chapter Nineteen
Snake charming, from a human perspective, was seen as a parlor trick or just dangerous and stupid. I couldn’t blame humans for that perspective, either. It was stupidly dangerous for most humans to attempt, and those who did it well didn’t charm the way snake charming was meant to be. In ancient times, they had seen nagas doing it and imitated them, but didn’t have the magic to back it up.
Lifting a hand, I began to rock my body back and forth while my hand moved in the opposite direction. The tune I sang was melodic and simple, calming and patient. Snake charming was magical, but it still relied on the snake to budge, to give a little in return before the magic could grab hold.
Naksha slithered off her rock and came toward me. She rose up, and her hood opened, but I wasn’t worried about her spitting. She began to follow my hand, not my face, which was the reason I was taught to do it differently. Naksha could now spit at the hand if she so desired, but my face and eyes were safe. She couldn’t kill or blind me, but it would sting quite a bit, and I would have to wait to try again.
“What…” Raphael was behind me, but I didn’t stop singing.
“Don’t move,” Cassius whispered urgently.
“What is she doing?”
“Charming the snake,” my ex-lover answered. “Consider yourself blessed. Outsiders don’t usually get to see this.”
“Have you ever?”
“No.”
I wanted to chuckle. Cassius was right. This was something nagas normally did privately or with others of our own kind. We didn’t do it for show or to show off. To charm a snake was to make a bond with it, to bend its will, and be something more than another predator. Nothing crazy or permanent, but if I succeeded, Naksha would do anything I wished for a time. I needed that if I was going to move her without proper equipment.
I continued to sing gently and lowered my hand, keeping my palm up. Naksha lowered her head, resting it in my palm. Still singing, I lifted, and she began to wind around my arm, climbing up to my shoulder, then wrapped twice around my neck. Since she wasn’t a constrictor, there was no worry. I kept singing as I stood and continued the side to side, smooth motion, rolling my shoulders. She played on my arms and shoulders, keeping one coil around my neck at all times. She was mine.
“Good girl,” I whispered as the song ended. Naksha moved up and laid her face in my hair. “There are no threats here,” I promised, reaching up to run a finger over the top of her head. There was a sense of awareness nagas had with snakes, and charming a snake only heightened it. I would be able to read her mood until I released her from the charm.
“That was…”
“Beautiful,” Cassius finished for Raphael. “Is she okay to travel?”
“Yeah, she’ll be fine on me if I stay calm,” I said. “Raphael, did you find anything?”
“The stuff in our bags was tossed around, and I looked through everything as best I could, but your phone is gone.”
“They tore up this computer. It would only make sense that they stole your phone, Kaliya.”
“Yeah, they’re looking for information. They’ll want to know every place I own, where I hide when things get tough. If they’ve already broken in, there’s a chance the fae could be watching us on the security feed—”
“You hooked your security cameras with your phone?” Cassius asked, his eyes bugging out a bit.
“Just the habitat cameras,” I answered. “I can’t leave Naksha unattended for too long, but if there’s nothing wrong, I can leave her undisturbed for a couple of weeks and having a state-of-the-art, internet-enabled system allowed me to go do my job.”
“Any fae could have used magic—”
“No, not any fae could have,” I snapped at him. “Don’t make your kind more powerful than they are. You could, but excuse me, we weren’t talking about you. Paden couldn’t do everything I needed for Naksha, and I didn’t want him having to drive out here every day I was gone to check on her. So yes, my phone is hooked into part of my security system.”
I