Page 89 of Wicked Deeds

“Neither Gwen nor I are a threat to your people.”

“That is for me to decide.”

“Within the realm, perhaps. Your authority ends once you step through the door.”

“She is tanai.”

“But not of your family.” I said firmly. “Unless you are making a claim otherwise? Is her mother one of yours?”

His mouth flattened. “No. Whoever her mother is, she has not made herself known.”

And looking at Gwen, it was hard to believe she came from one of the Nichtkin. Usuriel’s illusions aside, I had no doubt whatsoever I’d never seen his real face. “This conversation is going in circles, my lord. And I have other business.”

He scowled. “You are here in one of these game worlds. You cannot be so busy.”

“My work involves these game worlds. The same cannot be said for you.”

“I grew curious after your adventure in my realm. About what you and your Damon Riley do. It is like a dream of a kind and I rule dreams and nightmares.”

Yeah, not creepy at all. “So you got someone to teach you to game?”

“I have not spent all my time locked up in the realm, Maggie. The door here was closed, but others were open and I visit your world often enough. There are tanai who are mine. It was not difficult to find one to show me this thing.”

Thankfully, I hadn’t been anywhere near a public game system since we’d returned from the UK. And Damon had done only that one exhibition game at Decker’s.

A dumb part of my brain suggested I should try locking him in here. Find out if he, too, could leave a game without needing a kill switch. I squished it hard. No sharing secrets with the scary Fae lord with a chip on his shoulder. “Well, it’s nice to have a hobby.”

My brain caught up with my previous thought. I hadn’t been gaming, but Gwen might well have. She could use her datapad to link up to the public game networks. Or had she asked Damon for a link? The account we’d made for her didn’t have access to anything sensitive. But if Gwen had been gaming…had Usuriel been watching her? Maybe even before she came to San Francisco?

So many questions. None of them I was willing to ask because he would want something in return.

“You do not spend much time in the game. At least, not where you can be found.”

I raised an eyebrow. “As you can imagine, Damon protects what is his as well.”

“Your guest on the other hand, is here often.”

Fuck. Hehadbeen spying on Gwen. “How do you know that?”

“There was quite a stir when she returned from the realm. And there are those who remember her from before she came to us. It was not hard to find her.”

In other words, someone she’d known at university or one of the tanai she’d met had sold her out to Usuriel.

Charming. I cursed them mentally, wishing I could turn them all into frogs. Or bugs. I was going to have to talk to her about staying off the public links for a while. And about whether her username was from before she went into the realm. And about Usuriel, because she’d need a good reason to not go onto the links when she was probably trying to build some networks and meet people who gamed here.

“She has been talking to someone in game. Quite often. Especially the last few days.”

I bristled. He shouldn’t know that. Unless whoever had helped him find Gwen was helping him poke around in places he shouldn’t necessarily have access to. I was going to do my best to find out which tanai had helped him. And then hand them over to Mitch. “How do you know that?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps she is not as security conscious as you and Damon.”

“Well, she’s allowed to talk to people.” I used my chip to access the menu and start a search for links between Gwen’saccount and Usuriel’s. And to download the activity on hers. If Usuriel was telling me this, he thought he had a reason.

“This person sought her out.”

“That happens, too.” I didn’t point out he was doing a fine line in stalking himself.

“I do not think they are who they are pretending to be. Their account has no history of other activity in other games. It was created recently.”

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