Read Cloak Games: Thief Trap for Free Online

happened before Morvilind finished casting the spell to cure frostfever, Russell would die. 
    Six more years. I just had to hang on for another six years. And then…well, then I would figure something out. 
    “What brings you over?” said James, gesturing towards the house’s back door. We walked there in a slow group, in deference to James’s bad leg. “I thought you’d be busy.”
    “Lord Morvilind has a job for me,” I said. James and Lucy and Russell didn’t know what I really did. They thought I was a computer programmer, and I knew just enough about computers to maintain the illusion. Russell was pretty clever, and if he got interested enough in computers that lie was going to come back to haunt me someday. “It’s going to take a couple of weeks, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
    Russell looked anxious. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”
    “Nope,” I said. “Just sitting at a desk and pressing buttons. The only danger is that I’ll die of boredom.” 
    “Lord Morvilind must have great trust in you,” said Lucy, unlocking the door. 
    I laughed. “I wish he would find someone else to trust. His lordship can be pretty demanding at…”
    “Don’t be elfophobic, dear,” said Lucy as she stepped into the kitchen. 
    That was the other thing that bothered me about the Marneys. Though to be fair, it bothered me about most people.
    They…revered the Elves. Respected them. I had spent too much time around Morvilind to think that way. I knew the Elves regarded humans as loyal dogs at best and cattle at worst. But the Marneys had been raised to revere the Elves, and even James with his experience of the Shadowlands still respected Morvilind. 
    They were teaching Russell to revere the Elves.
    I don’t know why it bothered me. It shouldn’t have bothered me. Russell had a good home, and if things went well he would have a good life once he was cured of frostfever. I wasn’t a Rebel, to dream of liberating mankind from the Elves. I wanted Russell to have a good life…and I wanted to have enough power that no one could ever have a hold over me the way that Morvilind did. 
    So it shouldn’t matter what the Marneys and Russell thought of the Elves, but it still annoyed me. 
    “You’re right,” I said. I didn’t want to fight. “I’m sorry. Russell, how’s school?” 
    He brightened up at that. Russell liked school. I worried that his inability to join athletics and his intellectual interests would turn the other kids against him, but he had the rare gift of pursuing his interests without giving a damn about the opinions of his peers. Paradoxically, that seemed to make him popular. Teenagers are weird. James encouraging him towards medical school, though Russell’s natural interests were toward computer science. Yet he took to biology well. If he could get his head around the math requirement, he might have a good career as a doctor. God knew the United States wasn’t about to run out of sick people…and plenty of wounded veterans returned from the High Queen’s campaigns in the Shadowlands.
    He might have a life that was nothing like mine. 
    We spent most of the afternoon talking. Russell told me about his classes and his friends. Apparently he had joined an automotive club, and spent some of his afternoons taking apart cars and rebuilding them. I approved, though I was careful not to show too much approval. Car repair was a practical skill, and if any of his other career choices didn’t work out, it might give him a good living away from the notice of the Elven nobles. I told some highly edited versions of my work for Morvilind that contained maybe five percent of the truth. James managed to work in a few invitations to his church, and Lucy asked in skillfully indirect ways when I was going to find a husband and start having children, and mentioned that their church had a plethora of eligible bachelors of quality character. 
    I didn’t mind the questions about my marital