Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
“You’re going to get a lot of challenges from visiting shifters,” he said. “They’ll see this and think you’re as weak as your outfit looks.”
“They will challenge,” Nessa said, still cheerful regardless of what she must know waited for us, “and then they’ll get flown around by their ankles as they drip blood on everyone below.”
I could see Sebastian nodding. “Only an absolute moron would challenge her. I definitely didn’t want to. Now, to business. The alpha was kind enough to send me a picture. This clown is a low-level collector for Momar’s enterprise. On one hand, his sending such an idiot here is an absolute insult.”
“A slap in the face,” Nessa supplied.
“I went to all that trouble at the meetup, showed you off, freaked out the visiting mages—”
“The ones Jessie’s crew didn’t kill,” Nessa said.
“—and he sends a peon to grab you.” Sebastian rested his elbow on the window ledge and looked out. It was hard not to think of him as Elliot right now. He was in his element. He might not love this role, but he was very good at it. “It’s perplexing. But you know what? It’s also great news. For a moment there, I’d been thinking the worst, but…no, this is good because now you have a chance to send a message.”
“Like a very strongly worded letter, only in blood,” Nessa added.
“Right. Bottom line, Jessie, is that Momar clearly doesn’t believe the stories about you. In the grand scheme of things, that’ll work in our favor.”
“Sorry, what’s a collector?” I asked. “It sounds like it isn’t for money.”
“Not money, no,” Nessa said. “People. Collectors are musclemen. They collect the people who owe the money. Or, in this case, the people Momar wants to question.”
“And the Guild doesn’t care about this since I’m not in the actual Guild? He can kidnap me and question me and do whatever he wants without them getting involved?”
Nessa toggled her hand. “See, it’s like this. Ordinarily, a new mage, especially a powerful mage, would draw interest from the community. What form that interest takes would depend on the power scale. Someone with a lot of power, like you, would be checked out. Like when that mage Kinsella came here. The new mage—you—would also start trying to get invited to parties, dinners, that kind of thing. You’d try to get your foot in the door, basically. Maybe you’d even offer to work for someone for a while to prove your worth.
“Somewhere in that timeline, the Guild would approach you. Now, that could also go a variety of ways. They might be standoffish or friendly, depending on your perceived worth in the community at that point. That worth is obviously all about power and money. Whatever their disposition, their goal would be to make you pay a membership fee to be in the Guild, pay more to be protected, and grease their palms to get the gilded treatment.”
“What’s the gilded treatment?” I asked.
“It’s an unofficial tier in the Guild,” Sebastian said. “I call it the gilded tier. It’s essentially paying them to turn a blind eye to your activities. That service is only offered to a select few, those with the most power and prestige. Those who can pay a hefty sum to buy the Guild’s silence or help cover things up, in some cases.”
“Is that the tier you had?” I asked.
Sebastian gave a humorless huff. Nessa glanced over with an uncharacteristic straight face.
“No, I have never been part of that tier,” Sebastian said into the quiet car. “I’ve been on the receiving end of that tier.”
I shook my head. “What does that mean?”
“Killing one of their gilded lilies, as I call them, gets you an inquisition—”
“Torture,” Nessa said. “Killing one of them will get you tortured.”
“An excellent way for them to extort money. Pay me, and you can walk away now. The fees for that are always extravagant.”
“Sebastian killed one of their lilies,” Nessa supplied unnecessarily.
“Who did?” Sebastian looked her way.
She glanced over for as long as she could before crashing. “Really? After all these years, you’re suddenly going to out me?”
“Why not?” Sebastian shrugged. “Jessie won’t ever get the chance to be a lily. What will it matter if she knows?” He went back to looking out the window. “A mage broke into my lab—”
“This was a long time ago,” Nessa said.
Sebastian nodded. “Yes, I was a new, up-and-coming mage. I’d made the rounds and then some and earned a reputation for having a lot of power and being good with potions and spell work. Naïvely, I’d also been open about the setup of my lab. I didn’t have any allies to give me helpful tips.”
“I was his friend,” Nessa said, “but had too little power to warrant status in the mage community. I’m better at making friends, but none of the people Sebastian was meeting could be bothered to speak to me. So I couldn’t help him get allies.”