Page 22 of Okay, I Regret a Little
Chapter 17
Dakarys
W
e had our thief, and we had our witch. It was our turn. No one knew how we were pulling off our black market. It was pretty fucking easy. Rajack was the one that found out about the marvelous invention of smartphones while we were in Scorchwood. After we were assigned to work in the mailroom in Silverhold, we snuck one in through the mailroom.
Rajack wasn’t totally cut off from his family. Sure, most of them washed their hands of him when he got sent to Scorchwood because they thought they’d never see him again. It wasn’t like they allowed us phone calls there or let anyone write letters, but he’d always been close with his sister. After a bit of research, he could call her.
The guards who listened to our phone calls to ensure we weren’t up to no good weren’t even remotely bilingual. We knew they didn’t even try to translate the calls either because they got happy with the shock batons if they heard us speaking in our native tongue. They sounded like the fucking humans as they’d shriek at us that this was America, so we needed to speak English. Xenophobic assholes.
The guards read all the letters that came in, but they left scanning the packages to us criminals. That’s how Rajack got a cell phone in here in the first place, and his sister linked it up to a plan and a bank account with money that belonged to Rajack. Rajack and I totally took advantage of our prison jobs.
We got nothing like that in Scorchwood. There were no phones, no computers, no books, and no jobs. They stuck us down there to rot with nothing to entertain ourselves. People were either drunk on hooch, found themselves a prison bitch, or started fights and killed people to pass the time.
I didn’t miss that at all, but I would exploit everything they gave us here because I was done with prison.
Finding contacts again was easy once I figured out how the damned phone worked. I had several witches that were happy to sneak ingredients in here to help the poor incarcerated witches. That was back when Astrid ran things. Even if we stayed, I had a feeling my contacts would cut us off if they found out Venus had Astrid killed after ratting out so many people.
Astrid told us the potion was possible, but Wren was the one who wrote the ingredients down for us at breakfast. These new messaging systems available for phones were genius. I didn’t have to wait for letters or ravens anymore. I typed what I wanted in the little box, and most of my contacts responded pretty quickly.
That little blind spot in the mailroom was genius. It looked like we were stacking boxes, but we were usually conducting business.
“Celestina responded quickly this time. She said to give her a week, and we’ll have it. I love she doesn’t even ask questions. She has to know what that potion does,” I said.
“I miss when witches were just corrupt,” Rajack said. “Venus took things to an entirely new level. I get we need to get the fuck out of here, but I wouldn’t mind letting Wren loose on her.”
“Who do you think would fuck her up the most? Wren, Faust, or the Aether Circle?” I asked.
“She wouldn’t see Wren coming. They never do. There’s a certain beauty in unleashing Faust on her. Honestly, I’d rather have the Aether Circle do it and tell her to her face right before they do it, so she knows how badly she fucked up killing Astrid.”
“We’ve got a thief, a witch, and the ingredients we need heading our way. We need to plan how we are going to cause a distraction so Rei can lift Brody’s keys.”
“A Kitsune is supposed to get new powers when they gain a tail. We need to figure out what we are working with now.”
Yeah, about that. Rei was fucking adorable when she was a full fox or half fox, but I’d never seen a fox with two tails before. It looked like she wasn’t expecting it either.
“Are we going to talk about the extra tail? We didn’t have time before the bell rang. Rei is a Kitsune, and you seem to know about them. You both seemed surprised, and she was super antsy before she ran to the corner to shift.”
Rajack just shrugged like I was supposed to know about magically appearing tails. I wasn’t fascinated by demons like Rajack apparently was. This was unchartered territory for me. If Rei got supercharged in the mailroom last night, we could definitely use that, but I had about a million questions about our demon.
“She’s probably read the same things I have. Some lore says age, and some say deeds. She probably didn’t know it was coming. I’m a little pissed she’s totally alone here. She needs someone around her who can tell her this shit for sure. Like, why isn’t she in Hell?”
I had an idea. It was the least we could do for her after she robbed Brody for us. Maybe she would want it. Maybe she wouldn’t. We should at least offer. It was the one place the Aether Circle couldn’t get to her.
“We should find a way to get her home when we get out. She might have family there that wants to see her here. There should be other Kitsunes there that can explain things to her. Let’s be honest. They can keep her safer from the Aether Circle than we can.”
“Unless something is after her in Hell. Seriously, you’ve heard her talk. Someone went through a lot of trouble to keep her hidden. She just had other ideas about that.”
Well, shit. Were they looking for her now that she made the news? We’d be on every station when we broke out. We might be able to hide from the Aether Circle. We didn’t know enough about demons.
I doubted we could keep her safe from both.
