Monster Mansion 2 by Dante King (best way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

setting up a portal in his shop, and anyway I wanted to see his face when he saw the quality of the gear I was going to be supplying him with.

Kyrine and I had been working on creating a supply of magic items for Trevor. We had created a stack of level 4 and level 5 healing potions, and Kyrine had recreated some of the better stimulant potions that the dungeon runners had used as well. It turned out that potions the dungeon runners used when they were actually in the dungeon became part of Kyrine’s database, and I was pleased because they came with modern polymer containers. Kyrine’s potions all came in old-fashioned glass bottles, and it was good to bring our potion game up to date.

We had a stack of enchantment sheets as well, and a bunch of high-quality arcane inks to write on them with. These were of a quality that had never been seen on earth, I was sure of it. They came straight out of Kyrine’s database of things that she had absorbed back on Eosor, where the creation of such things was much more highly developed.

“Old Trevor’s gonna shit when he sees this stuff,” I commented, as I looked over the stack of supplies we’d created. “I bet you he’s never seen quality like this in his life.”

“If he does his job right, he’s going to be a rich man, too,” said Amanda.

“Oh, yeah, there’s no doubt about that,” I said. “The only worry is that he might decide to retire before he’s finished being useful!”

Everyone laughed. The truth was, there was little danger of that. Trevor was a greedy dude, and I happened to know that he had some pretty serious debts. He would be selling our magical gear for a year or so at least before he would be in a position to retire, and if I knew Trevor he would want to make as much hard cash as possible before doing so.

The potions and inks were packed in wooden crates, but we would leave them here for the moment. Once we got the portal set up, we would carry the stuff directly from the mansion through the portal to Trevor’s shop.

It had been decided that Astrid would stay in the mansion with Kyrine, while Amanda, Selena, and I would go through to the city to see Trevor and set up the portal. Once there, Amanda would see her contacts in the Drow underground, and set up a protection detail for Trevor, drawn from the toughest and most reliable Drow foot soldiers.

Once the portal was in place, we would be able to travel between the city and the mansion any time we wanted, and that would no doubt prove very useful.

Selena drove. It was her car, the big shining black Chrysler that she had brought out of storage and driven to the mansion when she’d got the call to come in. We’d lived together for a year before I knew anything about her true role as an EDI agent. During that time, I’d never seen this car. She’d driven an old wreck of a car to keep up her image as a stone-broke student, but now I saw the true Selena.

She looked good behind the wheel, one window rolled down and her arm hanging out, the wind ruffling her long, straight hair around her cat’s ears. She glanced at me where I sat in the passenger seat, and smiled, but we didn’t say anything.

Amanda had curled up and gone to sleep in the back seat.

This was the first time I’d ever been out of the mansion in daylight since I’d joined with Kyrine, and it was strange to see the wealthy, sleepy suburb awake. Kids were playing in driveways and folks were talking to each other over fences, washing cars, and working in their gardens. It was just a regular place, and the magic that cloaked the mansion meant that none of them had any idea what was hidden in their midst.

“Looks pretty normal, doesn’t it?” I commented, and Selena nodded.

I’d wondered if we would get any funny looks out here, but Selena’s shining Chrysler was all the camouflage we needed. If anyone thought it was odd to see an Outworlder driving a fancy car through their suburban neighborhood, nobody commented on it.

We drove down the hill and out onto the highway. I wanted to take the shortcut through the woods, past the place where I’d first met Astrid, but Selena adamantly refused.

“I’m not taking this beautiful car down a dirt track through the woods!” she’d exclaimed in horror when I’d suggested it. “It’s only been out of storage a few days and it might get scratched!”

I laughed and didn’t insist. If it had been my car, I sure wouldn’t have wanted it scratched up either, so we took the long way round. The Chrysler ate up the miles on the highway, and it wasn’t long before we saw the city opening up in front of us, a massive urban sprawl stretching away to the distance, with the shining river winding lazily through the middle, crisscrossed with bridges.

“Feels strange to be back,” I said as we drove down though the old neighborhood. Our old apartment was near here, in a run-down block only a few minutes from the enchantment shop.

“I’ll bet,” said Selena. “Feels kinda weird for me too, to be honest.”

“I guess we’ll have to go back and clear out the old apartment sometime,” I said.

She gave me a look. “The EDI will do that,” she said. “There will be no trace of us there once they are through with it.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “How come? That seems a bit overkill?”

She shrugged as she turned down the street Trevor’s shop was on.

“Just policy,” put in Amanda from the back seat as we pulled up. “You were