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Two nights later, Xhex aith a strange conviction hounding her Kind of like she&039;d sed her alar off in her belly

Intuition Anxiety Dread

No snooze button on that shit

As she went and took a shower, she continued to be dogged by the sense that forces unseen and unknowable were coalescing, that the landscape was going to shift, that the chess pieces of various people were about to be moved by hands not their own, to places not part of their strategies

The preoccupation stuck with her during the short trip into Caldwell proper; persisted as she got things started at the Iron Mask

Unable to stand it any longer, she removed her cilices and went out into the city hours earlier than she usually did And as she de out the Bastards, she had a feeling tonight was the night

But for what?

With that question weighing her down, she was especially careful to stay far fro

The fact that she had coest factor in her delay at finding that rifle The Band of Bastards was out in the field every night, but as the skir Society tended to happen only in the desolate parts of the city, it was hard to get close enough while retaining a distance frorids that were new in her repertoire, but it was difficult to isolate as Xcor - and even though that was academic, because she needed only one of those soldiers to slip up, get injured and have to be taken back to their lair in a car she could track, she wanted to know her larger target intimately

Check out his secrets frootten nowhere so far was driving her nuts And the Brothers weren&039;t crazy for it, either, although for a different reason: They wanted to just take the other fighters out, but Wrath had KO&039;d that one: They needed the rifle first, so the king had declared that renegade group of traitors off-li, the procla thelyht-after-night was tough going

At least they had one thing in their favor: It was unlikely that rifle had been destroyed

The BoB would want to keep that shit as a trophy, no doubt

It was ti she was rockingto

On that note, and under the theory that doing the sa a different result was insane, she decided to stop looking for Xcor

Nope, tonight, Assail was going to be the one she was after - and what do you know, she located his imprint in the theater district inside the Benloise Art Gallery, natch

A quick shift down to street level and she got an eyeball full of cocktail party going on at the facility

As the artsy set was perfectly capable of wearing leather and considering it business attire, she slipped in -

Hot Cra around

Jeez, in a place like this, you couldn&039;t tell the sexes apart - everyone had bird-wing hand gestures and nail polish on

Two feet past the door she was prone - as if blowhards with delusions of being Warhol ran on Veuve Clicquot

"No, thanks"

As the waiter, a nice-looking guy in black, gave her a little nod and sauntered off, she almost pulled him back just for the company

Yeah, , there were so many arched eyebrows and pointed noses up in the air, you had to wonder if these folks even approved of thelance around at the "art" told her that she and herto have to coet a sense of how truly hideous and overindulgent soet

Durih all the shoulders, turning this way and that while sidestepping around other waiters She didn&039;t bother hiding her face Rehv had handled all his deals by hinize her

And pretty quick, she identified the way to Benloise&039;s office It was just so da trays, were standing on either side of a nearly sea

Assail was up on the second floor She could sense hi: It was tricky to try to dematerialize into spaces unknown There was probably a staircase on the far side of as being guarded, but she didn&039;t want to Swiss-cheese herself by re-for in the middle of it

Besides, she could always catch the guy on the exit Chances were good he&039;d coh the back, and would leave the saey, and his visit was not about the frickin&039; art

Good thing, too, as it was difficult to see Q-tips glued to a Tupperware bowlother than trash

Heading deeper into the building, she slipped through a staff-only door and found herself in a concrete-floored, concrete-walled warehouse space that sed fluorescent lights were set into the high, unhung ceiling, and exposed ductwork and electricals burrowed through joists like moles in a lawn Desks were set back, and file cabinets were out to the sides, the center of the space reularly rolled in froht ahead were made of steel and had security alarm contacts on them -

"May I help you"

Not an inquiry

She turned around

One of the bouncers had followed her inside, and he was standing with his feet spread and his blazer open like he had a gun in there

Rolling her eyes, she waved a hand and put hiht in hison, she sent hi-ass buddy that, in fact, there was nothing unusual going on

Not exactly rocket science with these Homo sapiens But just to be on the safe side, she fritzed out the security cameras as she went toward the back doors Shit One look at the way the steel panels ired and she decided not to push on through and risk an incident involving the police

If she wanted to be in the alley, she was going to have to work for it

With a curse, she headed back for the party It took her a good ten h all the denizens of questionable taste and undeniable ego, and as soon as she was out in the night air, she dematerialized up to the roof and walked to the far side

Assail&039;s car was parked down in the alley below, facing out

And she wasn&039;t the only one looking at it

Holy crap

Xcor was in the shadoaiting for the male as well

Had to be him - whoever it was had a lockdown on his inner core to such a degree, there was little superstructure to be read: By habit or by trauma, or likely some of both, the three dimensions had shrunken in on each other until they foret a bead on any emotion whatsoever