Episode Twenty-Eight: Graduation: Scene 14

Of course, now I was looking at shadows for a fire giant assassin that had people geased not to talk about him.

Or her.

Or whatever. With Zaid around, it was hard to forget the existence of “or whatever” when it came to these things. Oddly, I thought her was more likely, though.

Maybe I was just biased.

Or maybe we’d been told that to make us look over our shoulders for a fire giant assassin. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if it wasn’t some kind of trick, as nice as the kid had seemed.

Either way, it was definitely making me nervous, no matter how much I told myself not to be. I could handle it, whatever it was.

Or so I thought. I won’t say I’d got cocky, but I really had got cocky. I had a shoot on Saturday and afterwards, flush with cash, I took Kanesha out for dinner at a cheap, but excellent steak house. We planned on going back to my place afterwards. For dessert, as it were.

The meal was excellent, nobody tailed us home, but when we got there…

…the firefighters were blocking the street. The building had caught fire not long after we left and was now gutted. They didn’t let us through to look for our belongings.

I knew our weapons would be okay when we could find them. But everything else was gone. Our clothes. Our laptops. And I knew what it was.

A message.

Somebody had done this just to piss us off, and the fact that it was fire told me the source.

“Tell me you had your notes…”

“I had everything on Google Drive. It’s…it’s fine.” It clearly wasn’t, but…

I slipped an arm around her. “We’ll get them for this.” Which might be the reaction they wanted, but I was hoping they would underestimate just how dangerous I could be.

But I should have come up with some way to stop this from happening. “I should have…”

“The only important things are us, right?”

She was right. I closed my eyes for a moment. “Charles won’t be pleased about the dress.”

She laughed weakly. “I guess…”

“No, I have money. We’re getting a hotel room.”

And later, when they weren’t looking, I went through the rubble and retrieved the swords, undamaged. Mine, though, seemed to be rather annoyed.

Swords don’t like threats they can’t stab.

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