Southwest Truths (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 3) by Kal Aaron (the red fox clan .txt) 📗

of Caroline’s mansion and willed her regalia into a normal-looking white t-shirt-and-leather-jacket combination. Tristan’s Snow Ghost became gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He pulled off his veil and looked like an old man on his way to jog in the park. They reached the car.

Lyssa missed her bike. There was something confining about a four-wheeled vehicle. Next time she had to run for her life, she’d bring it with her, flashiness be damned.

“Drive where you wish,” Tristan replied, sliding into the passenger seat. “That was merely a place of opportunity. I have no special link to it.”

“Fine.” Lyssa started the engine. “We’ll drive and talk. The assassin might get lucky and take us both out in the car. If I’m going to die, it might as well be efficiently.”

“I’ve answered your questions,” Tristan said, looking straight ahead. “Now I want to know about where you got Helga’s name.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t demand Caroline do lie detection on me.”

Tristan smiled. “I have no way of knowing if she’d lie about it to protect you. You have a preexisting relationship. I’m merely a bogeyman most Illuminated would rather never see in the flesh.”

“Okay.” Lyssa pulled into the street. “When I took out Adrien Allard, he gave me the address of a storage unit. I found a bunch of shards there, which I turned over to the EAA, and I also found a memory card containing pictures of a lot of different Sorcerers and Sorceresses in and out of regalia.”

Tristan nodded. “Where is this card now?”

Lyssa reached into her pocket and pulled out the card. It was cracked and missing chunks. She tossed it to Tristan. “Your little spirit stunt earlier killed the card. You’re one of the few people I’ve told about this because I don’t know what it means and who I can trust with the information.”

Tristan pursed his lips and frowned at the card. “It was necessary to test you. I won’t apologize for what I did.”

“You could just say, ‘My bad.’” Lyssa rolled her eyes. “Helga was on the card, along with pictures of my brother from three years ago. Theodora’s on there too, and so are you. There’s a few dozen Illuminated.” She rattled off the names she could remember, about three-quarters. “I’ve been trying to figure out what the pictures mean, but I can’t establish a relationship between anyone in the pictures other than they’re all our kind. The essence patterns, locations, ages, all of those are random.” She looked at Tristan. “So, we got Helga and you and Theodora. That’s three people it sounds like you’re not interested in killing, and you don’t know much about my brother, so that’s four.” She shrugged. “What about the others? I have the names on whiteboards hidden at my place, the total list, but I’m curious if what I’ve said tells you something.”

Tristan furrowed his brow in deep thought, murmuring names underneath his breath. Lyssa didn’t bother him and let him work through the information dump.

“None of the people you’ve mentioned needs special handling or is on my list,” he offered.

Lyssa blew out a breath. “It’s not a list of conspirators?”

“If it is, it’s not one that overlaps with any of my investigations, which have been rather thorough.”

“It’s a list of targets or victims or enemies of whatever conspiracy you’re investigating?” Lyssa asked. “That would fit with Helga being on the list, based on what you told me earlier.”

“Perhaps.” Tristan turned the damaged card over in his fingers. “I left out some details about the incident with Helga.”

“I’m listening.” Lyssa headed toward an on-ramp. She wasn’t sure where she wanted to go but figured they’d be safer on the highway than tooling around surface streets.

“It wasn’t a simple assassination attempt,” Tristan replied. “It was more of a kidnapping attempt.”

“Why did they want to kidnap her?”

“I presume because they thought she had useful information and wanted to know who she’d shared it with. Based on what she’d overheard, that’s my best guess.”

Lyssa merged onto the highway, jealous when she spotted a motorcycle behind her. “But you took out everyone except the ones who killed themselves.”

Tristan set the broken memory card in a cup holder. “The kidnapping wasn’t what was important, or even the perpetrators. They were like those involved with your incident, overly well-equipped Shadows. What was important was their tactics.”

“Did they prepare themselves for Helga’s essence? That’s what they did with Aisha and me. They used specialized equipment to try to exploit weaknesses in our tactics.”

Tristan looked angry. “Spirits were heavily used during the kidnapping attempt. They had shards to control spirits. That, you see, is the link that originally got me interested in my side investigations. All of them directly or indirectly involve spirit sorcery.”

“What about the ghost town?” Lyssa asked. “Was there a spirit involved? Jofi didn’t mention it, but he was able to sense you gathering your spirits at the motel.”

Jofi had remained quiet at Lyssa’s suggestion. She was grateful for that, but she worried about what he was thinking.

“Lubon had a shard that let him block spirits,” Tristan said, looking uneasy.

“Maybe he was expecting you in particular to show up,” Lyssa replied.

“Perhaps. It has a limited range. I realized it right away with spirit perception, but he could only block spirits, not sense them. I made sure I was out of range. If he was expecting me, he knew I don’t have to be close to kill someone.”

“Again, the Society hasn’t advertised any of this. And what about my brother’s incident? Where does he fit into all this? His essence is illusion, not spirit.” Lyssa frowned at Tristan. “If you’re holding something back, don’t. This is about my brother, and I’ve been looking for him for fifteen years.”

Tristan’s eyes flicked in her direction before returning forward. “Even I don’t know all the details of that incident, but the rogue I eliminated who might be linked to the incident also had access to sorcerous spirit shards.”

Lyssa’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Depending on when this all