Hired Hunter (The Rover 2)

Chapter One

The downside to receiving a lot of money after you almost die is that it feels like guilt money. During the fight against the Black Mage, I was badly injured and when I woke up still alive, I left Fin’s mansion and hadn’t gone back.

After I’d gotten home, an embarrassing amount of money had landed in my bank account and now every time I peeked at my bank balance I was flooded with pain. In my mind, all I could see was Fin lying flat on his back under a rocky ceiling, slowly being tortured to death. I saw Olivia’s red-tipped nails forever still against her lifeless body.

We’d both survived, but I hadn’t recovered. Not physically, and certainly not mentally.

I shuddered and wrapped my arms around my knees while I sat, curled up on my couch in my tiny apartment.

My cell phone vibrated in my pocket for the tenth time in the last hour. It was barely nine a.m. and Fin continued to call, even though I’d told him to leave me alone. After my last night at his mansion, and seeing Sol in my dreams, I’d left.

I made the excuse that I needed to get back to work, my real work, and fix the damage I’d done between the chief and me. Despite whatever I felt for Fin, the office was my home, and had been for fifteen years. The fact that I couldn’t go back cut deeper than I wanted to admit.

My phone vibrated again, and then a series of dings followed. I stared down at the screen to watch a barrage of text messages cascade in a line. Obviously, because I wouldn’t answer Fin’s calls, he’d switched tactics and now resorted to text message. Two words. Every single message said call me.

I flipped the silence switch on the side of my phone and tossed the phone toward the corner of my desk. It clattered against the department store plywood and remained still. I folded my hands on the desk and lay my cheek flat on top of them. I’d been awake since four a.m. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw Sol.

A fresh wave of acid turned in my gut. How could I tell Fin about his sister? He might be happy for five minutes thinking she was still alive, until I told him she contacted me through a sending.

One minute, the warm morning light was seeping through the window next to my desk and the next, cool mist rained down my arms. It took a second for me to get my bearings, standing around the same forest from my dream. The scent of peat and moss pressed into me, along with trees. So many trees. Miles and miles of them. Evergreens and oaks, redwoods and other species I couldn’t recognize by sight.

Why did I keep coming here? If Sol had mage power, then why didn’t she escape this place and come home? It was obvious her brother loved and missed her. The fact that she was now a power-sucking mage might throw him off for a second. But if he faced her standing in front of him, I was pretty sure he would work around it. Or at the very least, learn to live with it.

I opened my eyes and I was in that dream again. Shit!

I pushed off the ground and brushed the pine needles from my pants. After the incident at the Black Mage’s compound, my clothes fit a little looser than usual. I stared through the trees, trying to figure out where I was, and instinctively looking for a way out of here. But from what I could see, there were no roads, no sidewalks, no trails, nothing but chirping in the trees and the rustle of the limbs as the wind broke through their branches.

A flash of purple caught my eye, and I spun trying to spot where it had come from. I crouched down and attempted to get a view from a ground angle, to see if the purple returned. It had to be Sol. She was the only person I met in this place.

Something about the vibe of this place rubbed me the wrong way.

Another flash of purple. I stepped forward and then ducked between underbrush and a large oak.

There she sat, cross-legged on the ground. Her honey brown hair, the same shade as Fin’s, hung down to mingle with the fallen evergreen needles. Even her eyes were the same crystal shot blue as her brother’s eyes. I swallowed the wave of longing pressing into my lungs.

“Sol?”

She waved me forward. “We meet again. I keep trying to reach out to you, but you are getting better at blocking.”

I approached slowly, carefully, unsure. “Well, I’m here now. What can I do for you?”

I tried to instill some of my usual sass into my words, but the guilt and anger which had eaten out my insides for the past few days made it impossible. I couldn’t even muster up a smile.

She shook her head. “No, we can’t talk now. You have a guest.”

I glanced around the eerily empty forest. Maybe she’d fallen off her rocker while under the Black Mage’s care.