@if-we-re-talking-stories
Jax stuffed cartridges into his shot gun and gave Lydia the side-eye.
“So let me get this straight,” he complained while he worked. “You hired a world-class hitman to do what- chase a fairy?”
Lydia leaned forward and pushed her black hair over her shoulder. Her necklace was something gold and heavy with gems. Her clothing was too expensive for her smile, and her nails were too silver to be polish.
She never wore anything but grey, and her voice always sounded like a scream.
Jax tired not to notice that sort of thing. That was where trouble waited. His job was to kill people, and bring Lydia proof.
“Right, Fae. You want him dead I assume?”
“For the moment I want him found,” Lydia said, and took a sip that painted her lips red. “What happens after that depends on what he says after that.”
This sounded like the worst parts of a snipe hunt and an ambush. Jax could smell a trap a mile off and this one stank of trouble.
“And if he takes exception to being found?” Jax finished with the gun and went to his Stacy of weapons. Despite his needling, he knew what it took to bring in a Fae. They were hard to catch and harder to kill. “This is gonna cost you.”
“Favors, money, secrets, or a kiss?”
The last brought him up short and he looked at Lydia cautiously. She had never offered a kiss before.
With the way her red lips curled, that was a trap too.
“Half in money half in secrets, the same as always.”
Jax took the safe road. Lydia was dangerous in her own right and he walked a thin line working for her.
“The money is already in your account,” she laughed. “Think on the secrets you want and I will find out answers. Do you accept the contract?”
She was funny about contracts too. That was alright. She wasn’t the weirdest he worked for.
Silver-edged knife. Powdered iron. Darts with barbed tips that were made to break off in the wound. Iron cable with a quick-lock, because there was no way Lydia wanted someone found and didn’t want them captured too.
“He goes by Tanglethorn in most circles,” she told him as he armed up and selected a gun loaded with iron-tipped bullets. “His true name is Tserafel. Find him. Whether he comes to me or dies will depend upon his next decisions.”
A true name was serious business for a Fae. That Lydia knew this one meant it was worse than business- it was political.
Why could it never be easy? Fae political issues- which this probably was, with his luck- were nasty. Changes in power were fueled by deaths. How many depended on how big the change was.
He gave her a wary glance. She stared back with eyes that were never the same color twice.
“Alright Lyds,”he agreed again and strapped his guns to his hips. “Where do I start?”
A glyph shimmered into existence on his wrist, blue against his dark skin.
Lydia smiled like a crack in reality.
“Start at the Troll Market. Look for the Silver Rose.”
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