Price had come to stand beside her while she watched the activity. The CEO looked quietly pleased with the scene unfolding before her, but she could not forget the tone in her voice when the woman spoke of the trade-offs she had made to bring this company to profitability. She was very, very sure she did not want to get on the wrong side of her.
“Is there anything else you can think of that you need?” Price asked her.
“Nothing you need to bother yourself with,” Amber said. “I know you must be very busy. We appreciate you taking the time to do this yourself.”
“It’s why I started the company.” The woman glanced at her. “There’s nothing more important. My C-suite knows that I am prone to disappearing at times. It’s why I’ve been so careful in choosing them. Each is authorized to make decisions regarding their initiatives.”
Amber looked curiously at her. “So there are other projects like this.”
“There have been.” Anna’s jaw clenched slightly.
She knew better than to ask any more questions, and the pit of her stomach lurched. When this started, it had seemed so simple and it had seemed to work. She had to remember that there was still a great deal that could go wrong.
“I met a neurosurgeon once,” Price said. She did not look at her companion and her gaze was still fixed on Justin’s pod. “He specialized in a particular type of tumor that killed one hundred percent of the people who had it. Any lives he saved were considered a victory. I tell myself that we are in a similar situation with this work.” She looked at Amber now and smiled. “Do not allow fear to blind you or the complexity of the situation to overwhelm you.”
She nodded in response.
“I’ve made sure you have my number,” Price said, in a way that suggested it was somehow already in everyone’s phone. “Call if you need anything—at any hour. And…” She smiled again. “You know, I would like to try one of those pods if you don’t mind. Another time, of course.”
“Of course,” Amber murmured. She watched her stride away and shivered for a reason she didn’t quite understand.
Was this someone else’s life? It felt like it.
The ritual the widow described was so complicated that Justin’s eyes crossed within thirty seconds of her starting the explanation. Zaara, who he was beginning to think might be a terminal nerd where magic was concerned, leaned forward to listen but wound up staring at a single diagram with a shell-shocked expression.
“All of which is to say,” the woman finished sometime later, “that I’ll need to come with you.”
Everyone had hunched slack-jawed in their chairs but now, they sat bolt upright with wide eyes.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Justin protested. “We can’t ask you to—”
“To what, child?” She raised an eyebrow. “Perform the spell only I know how to perform?”
“I have a question about that,” Lyle said. He drummed his fingers on the table and frowned at the widow. “D’ye care to explain exactly how a widow in a tiny cottage knows all this about magic but never thought to stop Sephith?”
“Hey.” Zaara looked up. “He’s right. Why did you let him terrorize everyone? You hid away here, pretending to be a harmless old woman, but you could have helped.”
“I couldn’t, actually,” she said. “I was the one person who would never be able to defeat Sephith.” She looked at their confused expressions and sighed. With a snap of her fingers, she vanished and was replaced by a man who looked vaguely familiar.
Zaara’s jaw hung open.
“You’re the mercenary,” Justin said. “The one who sent us into Kural’s hideout and had us get the book.”
“Ye bastard,” Lyle added, for good measure.
The man smiled at him. “That book is how your friend first learned magic. I don’t think you should complain, Master Stout.”
“You’re a mercenary who disguised himself as an old widow?” Justin asked.
Zaara made a kind of strangled noise.
“No,” the man said patiently. “I’m a defeated wizard whose magic was chained by Sephith’s spells. Once I finished wandering around like a heartsick fool after my defeat, I decided to see who I could train to defeat him. The world needed it, of course.”
“You are Kural,” Justin said, awestruck and faintly smug because his suspicions had been correct.
“Just so. And you’ve made quite an apt second pupil, might I say.”
“Second?” Justin asked.
Kural looked at Zaara. “Hello again.”
She gulped and finally regained the ability to speak. Her expression one of confusion, she looked at Justin