Cloak Games: Rebel Fist Read Free

some perilous task like the thefts of the Ringbyrne Amulet or the ancient tablet from Paul McCade’s mansion. Instead, Morvilind had sent me to steal a set of backup drives from a bank vault in Cincinnati. It had been dead easy, and the entire job had taken only two days. I had even able to help myself to several bundles of hundred-dollar bills on the way out, which had given me enough money to live on for a while. Morvilind had not summoned me since, and it had been the longest time I had gone without hearing from him…well, ever. 
    Maybe something had distracted him. Maybe the contents of the backup drives held his attention. Maybe he was taking a vacation, if someone like Morvilind ever took vacations. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. 
    “The entire day,” I said, “assuming Lord Morvilind doesn’t summon me for work.” 
    “It’s unusually generous for him to give you so much time off,” said James. “His lordship is of course a wise man.” I kept a straight face at that. “But he usually works you quite hard.”
    “I suppose he’s busy,” I said. “Well, when he wants to find me, he…uh, he has my cell phone number.” Of course, Morvilind had never once used a cell phone to summon me. I glanced at Russell. “Ready to go.”
    “Almost,” said Russell. There wasn’t a crumb of food remaining on his plate. “Are there seconds?”
     
    ###
     
    Lucy had discouraged Russell from riding with me on my motorcycle, but she hadn’t outright forbidden it. 
    So of course we took my motorcycle. 
    The bike was black with orange highlights, so I had a leather jacket with orange stripes on the sleeves and chest to match. I had a black helmet with a mirrored visor, and both helmet and padded jacket were uncomfortable in the summer, but were still better than wiping out and leaving half my skin on the asphalt. As the weather got cooler, the jacket and helmet got more comfortable, until it got too cold and too snowy to use a bike. 
    I had bought Russell a helmet, but I wasn’t going to get him a jacket until I was sure he wouldn’t outgrow the damn thing in six weeks. Of course, by then maybe he would be living on his own and could afford his own bike. I was pretty sure he had acquired a taste for motorcycles. And maybe the motorcycle would impress a girl. 
    Russell with a girl. Now there was a thought I wasn’t ready to process. 
    “Ready?” I said, swinging my leg over the side of the bike and pulling the helmet over my head.
    “Yep,” said Russell, climbing on the back of the bike. His thin limbs and the helmet made him look a little like a shiny black lollipop. 
    I grunted, reached back, and pulled his arms around my waist. “Arms there. If you fall off the back, I’ll never hear the end of it from Lucy.” 
    “True.” He got a good grip around my middle. “Too bad you aren’t a real girl.”
    I looked back at him. He couldn’t see my expression through the visor, but he had to know how I would react to that. “A real girl? What does that mean? Last time I checked, I was pretty sure that I was a girl.” 
    “Well, you know,” said Russell. “A girl who isn’t my sister.”
    “Ah,” I said. “You’ve hit adolescence. Did James and Lucy have the talk with you?”
    “Er…they did,” said Russell. He was getting embarrassed. “It was…pretty frank. Of course, he’s a doctor and she’s a nurse, so they don’t mind being…candid. Then they gave me a book to read. It had a lot of diagrams.” 
    I grinned behind my visor. “And then they explained that Jesus disapproves of sex before marriage?” 
    “Well, he does,” said Russell with perfect earnestness. 
    I wasn’t sure what I thought of the Marneys raising Russell in their church. My attitude toward God was basically embittered cynicism – if he loved humanity, why did the Elves rule over us? Still, I wanted Russell to grow up with a sense of right and wrong, and raising him to believe in God was the most