of her hair. "I understand you helped stop Tarakona from taking the Hua back. I find it amusing that he hired you to steal it."
"Life's funny that way."
"Yes. A zero sum game for you, isn't it, Conor?"
She knew my name. She wanted me to know she did. I couldn't guess why. "Intel, not current events."
Her eyes seemed to flash a brighter gold. "Of course. Ms. Red knows where the Hua is. She's your best lead to it."
"I have a feeling that even if you tell me where she is, and I reach her, she isn't going to just give me the location of the artifact."
"You've met Mr. Black." It was a statement, not a question.
"So?"
"Use your mind. I know it was sharp once, when you were a doctor, instead of a necromancer."
I froze. It was one thing that she knew my name. It was something else that she knew about my past life. I didn't think that was common knowledge. I had been declared dead, after all. "How-"
"Don't worry. Mr. Black doesn't know. I doubt that Karen and Molly would be safe if he did. Not once you cross him in this."
"It's just business," I whispered, suddenly very afraid.
"It might not be, this time. It's more, Conor. So much more. He intends to overthrow the rest of the Houses, to remove them from his equation."
"Equation to what? I know he's tired of being constrained to his power. That he lacks freedom." I paused, not quite believing the thought that came to me. "He wants to force another reversal."
"Yes. It was done once before. He wants to do it again."
Shit. Causing another reversal would get rid of magic, which in a lot of ways would be a great thing. The trouble was that it would also kill anyone who had the mutations, and anyone who could use the fields. Elves, dwarves, orcs, ogres. They'd all die. Instantly or slowly, I didn't know, and it didn't matter. They'd spent the last forty years trying to gain equality in the new world. Now Black wanted to destroy them in a mass fit of selfish genocide?
Then there was the fact that I would die, too.
What would happen if that were what got me? Would Death be silenced by then, unable to take me to the eternal torment that I was certain awaited? I didn't believe it and couldn't count on it.
Black was powerful. The most powerful of all the Houses. He still wasn't strong enough to stand up to all of them combined. Not at the moment. If he had a plan to change that, it was a plan that couldn't be allowed to succeed. I didn't know if Tarakona knew the full reach of what was at stake.
Now that I did, I wished I didn't.
"Jin wouldn't side with him on that," I said.
"You have to hope not," Sandman said. "You need to go to her, and you need to convince her. If you can't convince her, then you need to force her. There's no other choice."
"Why would she believe me?"
"She's an elf. She'll know if you're sincere."
"There's a big gap between sincerity and belief."
"She's not at the Bellagio, as Tarakona's decoy team believed. She's staying at the Luxor. She hasn't left since she planted the Hua three days ago. They were following an illusionist, and you would have been, too."
Fucking illusionists. "How do you know all of this?"
"Because Mr. Black is pompous, selfish, and overconfident. He can't even fathom that anyone might disagree with his view of the world. He's certainly underestimated me, and I think he's underestimating you, too."
She stepped towards me, leaning in and putting her lips on mine. Her kiss was awkward, as if she had never done it before. I felt a warm heat from it regardless.
"I've passed the security details on through your connection to the Machine. Recover the datafile when you exit. The password to open it is 'charybdis.'"
"You can do that?" Prithi asked.
"I just did."
"One more thing," I said, backing a step away from her. "Let's say I get Jin to help me out, though I can't for the life of me figure out why she would. Let's say I get the Hua back to Tarakona. Why wouldn't Black come snap my neck the moment he found me?"
"Who can say that he won't? Stay out of sight, or stay under Tarakona's protective wing. If I were you, I would do both."
Lovely. Even though my body was made up of code, I still felt a chill race