The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,75
how to distract your opponent. Step two: disarm the opponent by manipulating said weaknesses.” He rubbed his thumb gently over hers, and leaned closer. “Something like this?”
She cleared her throat, which had suddenly gone tight. “Yeah, something like that.” She set the cards on the table. “Consider that your first lesson—and I need your help in return. We’ve run into a problem getting Anya out of the Temple. There’s no backstage area.”
He shook his head. “I am watched too closely by the Council to extract her myself.” He dug in his pocket until he found a temporary removal pass. “But if you cannot get her through the tunnels, perhaps you can devise a way to go in through the front.”
She pocketed the tag, though using it seemed like an impossibility with all the Kindred guests there. “Dane’s a problem too. He isn’t going to be happy I’m still alive.”
He considered this a moment, then went into the other room and came back with Dane’s yellow yo-yo, which she’d last seen abandoned on the savanna sands. “Step one,” he said. “Learn how to distract your opponent.”
“You’re saying I should cheat him?”
“I’m saying you need to get rid of him. And if I’m starting to understand the way humans think, the best way to do that is to set up a lie. A crime, perhaps. Something that will force the Kindred guards to take him away.”
“You mean frame him.” She wrapped her fingers around the yo-yo, stashing it in her dress next to the tag. “That might work.”
By the time they returned to the Hunt, a dozen Kindred sat in the lounge, awaiting their safari departures as though it was just a regular day, completely unaware that it was the morning after Cora had killed a man. Dane was onstage announcing the most recent kill. His eyes swung in her direction; they were hooded in the spotlight, but she could read the shock in his voice as he saw her.
“I buried the body beneath the acacia tree on the far side of the watering hole,” Cassian said quietly. “It will be absorbed by tomorrow. I’ll return then, and we can restart our sessions. I’ll teach you to read minds. You’ll teach me to cheat.” He nodded toward a far table, where Arrowal sat with Fian. “Be cautious. They are always watching.”
Her lips parted. With his metallic skin reflecting the Hunt’s low lights, she thought of Nok’s stories of the gods from the Ramakien with blue skin and the ability to control the winds. But Cassian was no god. She didn’t want him to be. “Thank you.”
He gave her a nod and left as the ceremony onstage ended.
There was a scramble as Jenny and Christopher dragged a stunned antelope backstage, but Dane remained by the microphone. He shaded his eyes against the bright lights.
“I see you there, songbird.” His voice was unreadable. “Come on. Time to sing.”
She stepped onstage, fighting the urge to claw his face. He smirked, but she detected an undercurrent of fear. He was guilty of conspiring to kill humans and animals—if she breathed a word about it to the Kindred officials, he wouldn’t be headed to Armstrong.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” he muttered, through a smile for the audience. “Alive, that is. Either you convinced Roshian to let you go or you offered him an even better quarry. I had an agreeable business arrangement with him. If you messed that up, I’ll shoot you myself.”
“Well, you can ask him about it next time you see him, though I have the feeling he won’t be coming around much anymore.”
Dane glared at her as he stepped down from the stage.
She squinted into the bright lights until she could make out Arrowal’s silhouette at the farthest table. She smiled grimly to herself as she sang through her set. She picked old songs her grandfather had liked about card sharps and con men. In the loose part of her dress, she could feel the yo-yo.
“You won’t know what’s coming,” Cora sang, and then the words died on her lips.
The yo-yo gave her an idea.
On her next break, she managed to slip onto the veranda and wave over Mali, who was working out of the garage.
“Listen, I only have a minute,” Cora said, fumbling in her dress for Dane’s yo-yo, and then scrawling a note on the back of a cocktail napkin. “Take this. Give it to Lucky next time you go backstage and tell him to do what’s on the napkin. Then