War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2) by BR Kingsolver

Author:BR Kingsolver [Kingsolver, BR]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-12-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

That evening, I went to meet Kirsten at Enchantments. Downtown and the harbor had seen rioting, looting, and general mayhem over the previous few months. At first, people picked up the pieces, hauled off the debris, fixed their buildings, and got on with their lives.

That was no longer the case. Windows boarded up, stores smashed and burned, piles of debris littered the street, burned-out wrecks of cars. There were more cops and soldiers on the street than civilians. Most of the larger office and apartment buildings had contingents of security guards. The area looked more like the fringes of the Waste than the Metroplex’s foremost tourist attraction.

“Let’s go to Jenny’s,” Kirsten said as she got in the car.

After a day of reading incident reports, intelligence assessments, case notes, and statistics on the violence engulfing the Metroplex, I was horrified.

“Are you crazy? We’re living in the middle of a war zone.”

Kirsten chuckled. “You’re letting your job get to you. Were you outside at all today? I did about triple a normal day’s business. Pent-up demand. I’ve been closed and all my customers just flooded the place. Mychal and Aleks are going to meet us for dinner, and I’m starved.”

As I drove, I noticed that there were a lot of uniformed cops on the street, both on foot and in patrolling cars. Reaching out with my magik, I also encountered an unusual amount of drones overhead. At least downtown, Whittaker was controlling the streets.

I relaxed a little bit. “So, what kind of gossip did you pick up from all those customers?” I asked.

“The mages are anxious, concerned. But a lot of my customers are trophy wives and the Magi’s children. As long as the supply of cosmetics isn’t affected, they don’t get too worked up. The witches are either oblivious, or the politically aware among them are excited that the magiocracy is undergoing a shakeup. The norms are concerned about the demons and the escalating violence.” Kirsten shrugged. “About what you’d expect.”

Not what I would expect, but I lived in a different world than her customers. On the way up the north-south freeway, I saw a lot of little red and blue blinking lights in the sky over the freeway. More drones.

The neighborhood around the Kitchen Witch Café was lit up, decorated, and there were a lot of people out on the streets. It was a completely different scene from the part of the city we had just left.

“Christmas?” I said.

“Yeah, Christmas. Only a month of shopping time left. Do you realize what all this craziness with Findlay has cost me? I lost three weeks of time between Samhain and Thanksgiving. Do try to keep the lid on things for another month, okay?”

Walking along the sidewalk, I couldn’t see anything in the faces or demeanors of the shoppers that indicated fear or concern. People sounded happy, laughing and chatting. The shop windows were filled with goods.

Aleks had arrived at the restaurant before us and dropped Kirsten and my names. Jenny had seated him in a private booth.

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