Running Hot

good idea to hang around to try to explain things. In the end they called it a heart attack but the fact that I was missing along with the money didn’t look good. I knew I had to stay gone. I could not have gone back into that house under any condition.”
    “That’s when you hit the streets?”
    “Yes. I told you, my talent kept me alive there. It let me know who to trust and who to avoid. You could say that I was endowed with the ultimate in street smarts. I slept in shelters for a while. Washed a lot of dishes. Made some connections. Eventually I built up a successful small business selling . . . things.”
    “But not yourself,” he said, very sure.
    “No. Even if I had been desperate enough to sell myself, it wasn’t an option. It’s hard enough for me to touch people I like. I can’t even imagine trying to have sex with someone just for the money. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.” She made a face. “I probably would have freaked and wound up killing off my clients, which would not have been good for business.”
    “What did you sell?”
    “Mostly I brokered fake IDs on the Internet. My mother was a high-level crypto talent, a computer wizard. I learned a lot about navigating the online universe from her before she died. I was very good at putting buyers and sellers together.”
    “You took a commission on the deals you set up?”
    “Yes. It was actually a fairly lucrative line of work but it was also a tad risky. One day I decided to get a real job, something beyond dishwashing and selling fake IDs.”
    “Why?”
    She raised a shoulder and let it fall. “Mostly because I wanted to see what it was like to feel normal. I should have known better. I don’t think people like us ever get to feel normal.”
    “What kind of job did you get?”
    “Believe it or not, I went to work in a flower shop.” She smiled a little, thinking back. “I loved it, even if it didn’t make me feel normal. After a while I was promoted to manager. That’s where Martin found me. He came in to buy a dozen roses for one of his women. He recognized me immediately as a strong sensitive. He was a high-level strat and he understood right away that I could be very useful to him. He was managing a small casino at the time and he was having problems. He offered me a position on his security staff.”
    “What kind of problems was he having?”
    “A ring of cheats had targeted the casino. They were bleeding it dry. Martin’s boss began to suspect that he was the one responsible for the losses.”
    Luther gripped her hand more tightly. “What did Crocker have you do?”
    “I profiled the players. Pointed out the members of the ring. One thing led to another. Eventually Martin was promoted to president of the company that owned the casino. We branched out from there.”
    “He used you.”
    She shook her head. “It was an equal partnership. In exchange for my help, Martin saw to it that I made a lot of money and got an education. He used to refer to himself as Pygmalion. After he founded Crocker World, I not only got a very, very good salary, I got stock in the company.”
    Luther whistled softly. “A slice of Crocker World, must have been worth a fortune at one time.”
    “It was. When I first noticed the effects of the drug in his aura, I thought about selling off my portfolio and tucking the money away in an offshore account, but I was afraid Martin would find out. Once he started taking the formula, he became extremely suspicious of everyone around him. I had to be careful. Then I found out about the arms dealing.”
    Luther’s hand tightened around hers. “And the bastard tried to kill you.”
    “After Martin’s body was found, the value of the company shares plummeted to almost nothing. They never recovered.”
    “It wouldn’t have mattered if they had bounced back. You still couldn’t have sold off your portfolio. The authorities would have noticed the activity in the dead butler’s accounts.”
    “Yes. Turns out the Arcane Society pays well, though, and it doesn’t cost a lot to live in Eclipse Bay. I’m doing fine.”
    “Still, you had to walk away from the empire that you and Crocker built.”
    “Toward the end the profits were tainted by the arms deals that Martin had arranged for Nightshade. Blood money.” She shivered. “Even if it had been safe to do so, I couldn’t have touched those shares. Not for anything. It sickened me to realize that, for a time, I was a part of that