Rogue Victory (Rogue Agents of Magic Book 8) by T. R. Cameron & Martha Carr & Michael Anderle

Author:T. R. Cameron & Martha Carr & Michael Anderle [Cameron, T. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2022-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

Sloan walked slowly along the outside of the hotel’s spacious glass lobby, keeping a surreptitious watch on the square bar in the center. He’d recognized Lila’s back immediately, so familiar it was as if she’d left his view only a moment before.

He entered, waved off the concierge who came toward him, and made his way toward the bar. It didn’t have a mirrored back, so he had the opportunity to take his time, to frame what he might say when he arrived. Nonetheless, as he slid onto the seat next to her, he found no useful words. He said, “This is a step up in the world from your usual haunts.”

Lila turned, broke into a smile, and threw herself off her stool, standing next to his and wrapping him in a hug. She pressed her cheek against his and whispered, “Chuck. You’re okay. I was so worried, no matter what they said.”

He hugged her back, unable not to, then pushed her slightly away. “Sloan. Not Chuck. And yes, mostly.”

Emotions flickered across her face, starting with denial, moving through anger, and ending in pain. She climbed onto her chair, finished the liquid in her glass in a single gulp—she’d barely touched it before he arrived—and gestured for another one. Sloan pointed at her drink, then in front of him. The bartender nodded, understanding his order. She looked down at the bar, then raised her eyes to his. “So, it was a trick all along?”

Lila sounded offended, which Sloan thought was a little inappropriate. He replied, “Given what y’all did to me, trying to gain the moral high ground in this conversation probably isn’t an option for you.”

She frowned and bit out the word, “Granted.”

He sighed. “Sorry. I’m a bit touchy about it all. No. It wasn’t only a trick. Chuck’s feelings were real.”

She shook her head, confusion obvious on her face. “Explain.”

Sloan did his best. “At first, the most appropriate analogy is that I was an actor playing a role. But, like, a method actor. Someone who deeply gets into it and kind of sets who they are aside in favor of living the character.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay. So that was before things started between us?”

“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I had feelings there, but just initial attraction. Then you all did the thing in the basement.” His voice caught, and he sipped his drink to drive away the emotion, the fear that always accompanied that memory.

“As part of dealing with the intrusion, something weird happened.” He realized he was rubbing his shirt over the resting spot of the tattoo that was the calling card of the artifact. “My personality got driven down, so far inward I couldn’t interact with the world anymore. Chuck became real, for lack of a better word.”

To her credit, she seemed to be trying to understand. She’d left some of the earlier emotion behind or willed it away. “So, he was essentially a different person?”

Sloan sighed. “This is so hard to explain. Not entirely different. He was partially me, even when the artifact pushed me further away from the real world.

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