Hunted by Lindsay Buroker Page A

the woman asked, a
smile in her voice.
    Kali glanced at Cedar, but his face was
masked, and he said nothing.
    “A witch who studied engineering?” Kali said
to the woman. “Or an engineer who studied witching.”
    “Witching.” The woman chuckled.
    “Oh, good,” Kali muttered. “I amuse her.”
    “Your first guess is most accurate.” She
smirked. “Huzzah.”
    “And what do you want with me?” Kali asked.
“It is me, right? I couldn’t help but notice your little
butterflies had a fixation for my bottom.”
    “I’m here to kill you.”
    Cedar took a step forward, his knuckles white
where he gripped his rifle. “If you try, I’ll kill you first.”
    “Not likely, dear,” the woman said. “You
don’t seem too bright.”
    “Why?” Though Kali did not think Cedar would
be rash enough to charge the woman, she put a hand on his arm
anyway. The hard knotted muscles beneath the sleeve testified to
the tension in his body. “Why kill me? Most people just want to
kidnap me. Which is a might inconvenient, too, but preferable to
death.”
    She eyed the woman’s vessel as she spoke,
mulling over a way to sink it or push it out into the rapids. If
they could manage that, the river might sweep their foe miles
downstream before the woman could pull herself to shore. That would
give her and Cedar time to escape. But if the “cicadas” truly had a
setting three times as powerful as the one she had already felt,
she might be filled with holes before she could reach the shallows
and the boat.
    The woman’s gaze fixed on the drill. Kali had
turned it off, but the flake of flash gold continued to glow, as it
would for all eternity unless someone destroyed it. Maybe it was
visible from the boat.
    “The secret of flash gold must die,” the
woman said.
    Ah, yes, visible from the boat indeed.
    “Most people want the secret,” Kali
said, “which I don’t have, by the way, so there’s no need to kill
me. As far as I know, nobody living has the secret.”
    Kali subtly poked through the innards of the
broken cicada, looking for a clue that might let her nullify them
all. If they were decommissioned somehow, charging the boat might
be a less foolish proposition. Her fingers tingled as she touched
some of the fine gears. Magic?
    Cedar watched her hands through hooded
eyes.
    “You know how it’s made even if you lack the
power to imbue it,” the woman said. “You’ve studied your father’s
notes, I’m sure.”
    “Notes?” Kali said. “Was he supposed to leave
notes? He must have forgotten. He was busy dying.”
    “Ezekiel kept excellent notes. I know. I was
his research partner for more than ten years.”
    Kali blinked. “You knew my father?” She had
never met anyone outside of Moose Hollow who did. Old Ezekiel had
done a good job of falling off the map when he came north. If
Sebastian had not blabbed to the wrong people, all these
troublemakers would never have known of her existence.
    “Yes, did he never speak of me? Amelia?”
    “No.”
    “That figures,” the woman said, voice like
ice. She—Amelia—picked up something. A small bronze box. Some sort
of controller for the cicadas? Had she grown tired of chatting?
    “My father didn’t speak to me about
anything,” Kali said, trying to buy more time. She went back to
prodding the wreckage of the broken cicada. “If you were lovers or
something, he might still have cared. I just wasn’t...a confidant
of his. He barely acknowledged me.”
    “Because you lack power, I imagine. If the
arrogant coot hadn’t been obsessed over looks, we might
have...”
    She did not finish, but Kali could guess.
They might have had a child. So, this was some spurned woman her
father had not chosen for a lover. Maybe Amelia wanted Kali dead
for more reasons than flash gold.
    “Sorry, he didn’t love you,” Kali said. “But
it’s not my fault. Killing me won’t—”
    “It will ensure no more flash gold is ever
made,” Amelia snarled. “It’s bad enough that it