the South.”
“A choir,” she corrected.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. The room was painted to be dark. I counted at least thirty, and one died during their song. I remember their emblem, though.”
“Paper,” Sandro’s mother barked.
I turned carefully on my stool to keep from pulling my stitches, amused as Sandro’s brothers scattered to fetch the requested paper.
In less than a minute, I had a notepad and a pencil, and I went to work drawing the emblem I’d seen the music mages wear.
Ignoring his mother’s demand, Sandro sipped more of his soup. “If you’re a scryer of any type, you’re even smarter than I thought, Jade. Mansfield is sequestering every damned scryer he can get his hands on. The future scryers are working on twister predictions, and I don’t want to know what he’s doing with the rest. They’re in Asylum, though, and he’s careful to keep them there.”
“It looks like somebody is systematically wiping out Tulsa. That’s my thought. Mansfield would benefit from that.” I considered hiding my disgust, but I decided if he couldn’t handle my feelings regarding Asylum, we’d have more problems than I could readily solve. “He likes playing god. He likes deciding who will live and die.”
“Yes, he does. He is attempting to cultivate a friendship with me because he is aware of the Moretti family’s general influence and wealth, and we’re not an enemy he wants. He isn’t particularly happy I’m in his territory, as he isn’t confident he can control me. That said, he isn’t precisely unhappy with me, either, as I’ve made his Asylum expansion plans go better than he anticipated. He’s playing nice with me because he can’t afford not to. And in a week, he’ll miss my presence, I’m sure. He’s going to discover that my influence is part of why he’s been able to stay so well supplied.”
“He’s buying supplies from your family?”
“No, but those he’s buying supplies from are aware I’ve been hanging out in the Alley, and they’ll play nice with him assuming I’m one of his friends. And since I haven’t said he isn’t my friend, they’ll do business with him. Now, if he gets shunned by our family, chances are, most of his affordable supplies will dry up. And no matter what his plans are, he can’t continue his work in the Alley without an intact supply chain.”
Interesting. “Are you? One of his friends, I mean?”
“Well, I haven’t written him a poem yet.”
“Sandro,” his mother warned.
“What? He opened hunting season on foxes in Tulsa. The only reason she signed a provisional contract with me was because of that. She’s smart, and she figured she was safer with me than others. Which she is. I put some serious thought into writing him a poem. It would have been a nice one, but the last two words would have been ‘fuck you.’ And I would have said them with a smile. He’s basically going to traffic the entire Tulsa fox hybrid population, and he’ll get away with it because the other option is to face a slow death outside of Asylum.”
I winced, as after what I’d seen with my magic, I believed he was right.
“We’ll talk about that later. Jade, are you all right spending some time with Sandro? I would really like for you two to get to know each other. Is there anything I can do to help with that?”
“Give me a bucket of water,” I muttered.
Everyone stared at me, and his father snickered while heading for the door, still carrying his youngest son.
“What do you mean by that snickering, Marco? Don’t you leave now! Translate before you go.”
“I need to get ingredients so the boy can cook for the girl. She wants salsa, Stephani. Having been married to you this long, I recognize when I need to take my ass to the store and get the boy the fixings to make his salsa. She wants salsa, and she’s getting it. I’m also going to rampage through the grocery store for every comfort food I can think of, and then we’re going to spend all day tomorrow cooking. If she doesn’t know how to cook, she will learn, and it’ll keep the boy from fidgeting all day.”
“But what was that snicker about? Tell me before you go. You have to translate first. Translate, you beast.”
“Take off Sandro’s jacket and dump a pot of water over his head,” Sandro’s father suggested. “I’m sure you can figure it out from there.”
Sandro’s shoulders shook, and he covered his mouth with his