The Witch: Book Two of The Sorceress Saga Taliesin Govannon (best free ereader .txt) 📖

said, walking over to the closet, “but you can sleep in your bed tonight. I don’t know how I know, but Jexo isn’t going to do anything to harm me.”

                “Fine.” she said. “But I’m going to switch with Evelyn tonight so I can have the room next door.” I started to protest, but she held up her hand. “I’ll sleep better if I do.”

                “Fine.” I said back, smiling.

                I opened the door and looked at the selection of dresses that Tiffany had scrounged up for me. They looked nice… far nicer than the sweats that Katsu got, I thought… and I picked a purple one that looked like it would reach just past my knees.

                “I’ll go and see what the plans for breakfast are.” Gaia said, and left.

                And then it’s time to look around.

                                                                                                *                *                *

                I had never eaten filet mignon and quail eggs for breakfast before, but the chef offered and I couldn’t turn him down. Jack was certainly pleased.

                Afterward, I notified Tiffany that I would like to wander around for a bit. She straightened her uniform and sidearm and told me to lead the way.

                I walked down concrete corridors randomly before coming upon a door labeled ‘Warehouse #3-C’. I raised an eyebrow at my escort.

                “Anything especially dangerous about this one?” I asked.

                “Everything in here is dangerous in some way." Tiffany replied. "But there's nothing really… reality-bending in there."

                I nodded and pushed the door open. I soon stood in a tall… probably three stories… room stacked with crates of varying size. It looked very industrial, with colored tape on the floor of wide aisles marking spaces for forklift, handcart, and pedestrian traffic.

                I could see that the walking path would keep us safe from the various people loading and unloading wooden crates all around us, so I walked down that path, Tiffany two steps behind.

                I eyed a crate on one stack that we passed, and saw ‘G11-assault’ stenciled on the side.

                “So this is a weapons warehouse?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

                “One of a series.” Tiffany answered. She grinned at me. “So, you know weapons?”

                “Please!” I grinned back, waving my hand. “Watching my boyfriend and Jack play Black Ops for two weeks straight has some of them burned on my memory!”

                “I always liked my Spas-12 in Modern Warfare two.” Tiffany said.

                “Oh Gods!” I mocking exclaimed, my hand to my forehead. “Another one!”

                We both had a good laugh, and moved on. I saw a woman on a forklift pick up a crate of surface to air missiles and drive them to a freight elevator. I also saw muscled men picking up crates of rifles to put them on a motorized transport. A couple of physically powerful-looking women… one with a shaved head, the other with the most gorgeous mane of jet-black hair I had ever seen… on a human, anyway… tied back in a french knot… were chatting at a water cooler about some ‘squirrely merchandise’ in warehouse four-seven as we passed by. All in all, I saw people of every shape, size, and skin tone imaginable.

                “You have a pretty diverse crew around here.” I observed.

                “Uncle Jex is a brutally practical man.” Tiffany replied. “While that can make him difficult to work with sometimes, it has other, more progressive, results.”

                I could see her swell with pride. “He honestly doesn’t care who you are, what you look like, how you identify…” she continued, “any of it. If you can do the job, and do it without being a massive asshole, then he’ll hire you. And he will move heaven and earth to make sure you have the tools you need in order to do your job safely.”

                “It sounds like he really cares about his people.” I said.

                She smiled. "He'll say that it's just good business, that it's just not cost-effective to have to train new people all of the time, but I know… deep down… he cares a lot.”

                “I originally thought that our greeting,” I said, “you know, with all of the guns? I thought that it was a little overblown, almost comically so. But now, with the pain that the body counts from Trevor’s misadventures must have caused… it’s actually a rational response.”

                “He physically destroyed a metal desk over the soul-sucker thing.” Tiffany responded, shaking her head. “I swear, if you hadn’t been with him, he would not have let Hawkins in.”

                I thought back to the briefing in the parlor just last week, where this mission had been started. I wasn’t originally included in the team I thought. Now, if the hellephants would have attacked regardless, then it was a good thing I came along. If they only attacked BECAUSE of my presence, then… well then it gets more complicated.

                I shook my head. “Why the reverence?”

                “I don’t know how universal it is in the occult underworld,” Tiffany said, “but the legend of the Sorceress… this powerful woman who draws her magick from life itself… in my family, it was told and re-told to each generation. My father and uncle heard it from their father, who got it from his father, and so on. Uncle Jex told it to his daughter, and then to his grand-daughter, and then to me.”

                We stopped by an elevator. Tiffany turned to me, completely serious.

                “I want you to know that my Uncle didn’t assign me to this detail, I demanded it.” she said. “I never thought that I would ever meet a Sorceress, and… “ She trailed off for a moment, smiling.

                “And what?” I asked gently.

                “I had a great childhood.” she said confidently. “I really did. But… well, let’s just say that para-military mercenary compounds aren’t exactly teeming with little girls for me to play with. I could get some of the younger adult women… maybe nineteen or twenty… to play ponies with me when Uncle Jex would let