Read Promise: Caulborn #2 for Free Online

eyes. Now I saw a modern office building, the kind that’s made totally out of glass and seven stories high. Wow. The amount of energy needed to glamour an entire building was enormous. How was it the Caulborn had never heard of these people before?
    I’m not sure what I was expecting when I walked into the building. In my mind’s eye, I saw dimly lit rooms, the scent of incense thick in the air, and maybe the faint tinkling of some mystical chimes. So I was a bit disappointed when I found a simply furnished lobby with a tile floor. The chairs were the stock kind you’d find at a conference center, the low tables next to them were simple, yet tasteful plain wood. And much like a doctor’s office, all the magazines neatly arranged atop the tables were at least a year old. A young woman in a blue sweater looked up at me and smiled. “Good afternoon, Mr. Corinthos,” she said with a gleaming white smile. “Keeper Laras will be with you in just a moment.”
    I blinked at her. “How do you know who I am?”
    “We’re well informed here, Mr. Corinthos,” said a voice from my left. I turned to see a man in his mid-thirties in a blue suit approaching me, his hand extended. “Name’s Laras. I imagine you have questions; everyone does on their first trip to us. Julie,” he turned to the receptionist, “I’ll speak with Mr. Corinthos in conference room two, should anyone need me.” He turned back to me and gestured down the hall. “This way, if you would, Mr. Corinthos.”
    We walked down a plain white hallway lined with wooden doors. Each one had an unmarked, white frosted glass window. It was like walking down one of those corridors from the background animation in a Scooby Doo cartoon; every door was perfectly identical and the hall seemed to go on forever. After a minute’s walk, we stopped at a door that looked like all the others and Laras opened it. “How can you tell the difference between one room and another?” I asked.
    Laras’s smile was genuine. “You get used to it after a while,” he said as we stepped inside. The room was furnished with a plain tan industrial carpet, a round wooden table with two chairs and a couple of photos of the Boston skyline. The place was so lackluster that they seemed to be taking great pains to not have anything stand out. Given that they’d flown under our radar for so long, that was probably exactly what it was.
    Laras took the seat opposite me. “Now then. You asked how my receptionist knew your identity. I wish to put your mind at ease on that. I assure you that there is nothing nefarious going on; one of our clients mentioned that he’d passed on one of our cards to a friend of his and he thought you might be dropping by. Just the same, I’m sure you have other questions.” He extended his hand, palm up. “Please, don’t be shy.”
    “Cather tells me you gave him a treasure sense,” I said. “That’s like giving the blind sight. How’d you manage that?”
    The corners of Laras’s mouth turned down a bit. “Understand, Mr. Corinthos that typically we do not discuss the particulars of a client’s situation. Mr. Cather has granted us permission in his case, but just the same, in the interest of decorum, I will leave out the exact details of the procedure. Suffice it to say that we barter all manner of goods and services from beings all over the universe, including medical procedures. One such being knew how to restore a similar sense in a creature much like Earth’s dragons, and our physicians were able to adapt it for Mr. Cather.”
    “And in return you get a third of all the treasure he finds,” I said. “Isn’t that a bit steep?”
    Laras spread his hands in front of him. “How much is your sight worth to you, Mr. Corinthos? If you lost it, but the only way to regain it was to sacrifice a third of your earnings, would you not do it? Besides, we worked out an equitable arrangement with Mr. Cather. He won’t be giving us a third of his findings