The Luck Thieves by James Beach

Author:James Beach [Beach, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Mind Fu Media
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Lyita followed other persons through the building’s main entrance. She examined everything around her as closely as she could while still looking like she knew exactly where she was going. It was easy to seem cool on the outside, but this place made her deeply nervous. This was high society, and nothing she’d ever been a part of in her life. She knew how to look good in a dress. But who knew what sort of elite social cue she could miss, that would reveal her poor origins?

She found the stairwell that Aurelian said would lead to the bathroom with the window. She was about to head up. A large man in an impeccable suit stepped before her, with the unmistakable manner of a sentry.

“My apologies, but you cannot enter the other parts of the museum.”

“Oh,” said Lyita. She put on her best little girl impression. Most macho guys fell for it immediately. “But I just want to powder my nose.”

The guard smiled apologetically. “If it were up to me, you could do that and then come to the gathering. But the Arbiter does not want others sniffing around his sanctuary. You understand.”

Lyita froze her face to hide her confusion. “Yes, of course. Silly of me.” She walked towards the same area all of the other entrants were congregating in. As she did, she pulled out her cellphone to warn Aurelian she couldn’t reach the window.

As she took a step past the threshold, her cellphone screen went blank as if it was turned off. She tapped the screen a few more times, then tried to reboot it. It was simply not working at all.

Her anxiety increased to feverish levels. How was she going to get Aurelian in here? Was she going to have to manage this all on her own?

She spun around to go back outside, just as the door was closed behind her. She swallowed and faced the room.

There were about 30 other people in there with her, about evenly males and females. All were well dressed, but some seemed quite out of place. She noticed strange tattoos on some of the men and women, occasionally extending to their faces. She was familiar with prison tattoos, and also some of the more stylish tattoos that were popular with club goers for years now. These were none of them. They seemed to be a lot of complex patterns that were hard to look at. Some of them were hard to even see, and appeared to emerge only if their owners’ skin was in shadow. None of the tattoos looked exactly like what they had seen on the luck thief’s body. None looked entirely different either.

Other denizens of the space might have looked completely comfortable behind a lunch counter. One man was even wearing the uniform of a city bus driver, and had brought a cat. The man stared ahead bored, as the cat eyed her with curiosity.

The room itself had three entrances, evenly spaced around its edge. There was just enough floor area for the amount of people gathered to be comfortable.

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